I live in the ancestral lands of the people known to us today as Coast Miwok and Suisun where Big Sagebrush and Madrone trees freely grow. I honor their ancestors. My place of birth, southeastern Massachusetts, is the lands of my grandmother’s ancestral people, the Wampanoag, “People of the First Light”. It is a place where freed black slaves found embrace in the remnants of the local indigenous communities. It is also the land where my mother’s Cape Verdean immigrant ancestors first arrived. So, though I now live in the San Francisco Bay, the land spirits of Massachusetts and the water spirits of Cape Cod periodically draw me back.
My bio-cultural heritage combines African American, Cape Verdean, Wampanoag, Irish, West Indian, and much more. Yet my identity is something else.
I am Coyote. Preston Vargas. Efuntade. I am a Reclaiming witch and priest-ess. I am an Iyawo crowned with the Orisha Obatala and strive to uplift Ifa and my Ile. I am a mesa carrier and animistic healer. I am a black man. A queer man. I am an anti-oppression scholar and activist. I am an artist of the spirits.
I am Oracular Artist and trust in the healing guidance of spirits who wish to have their stories re-presented in works of art. My ancestors are ever present in my journey. My ritual practice is a blend of witchcraft, animistic inspiration, ancestral medicine training, rootwork and Fey magic. The medicine I carry is interwoven with the knowledge I developed in my M.A. degree in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness as well as a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies. The gifts I offer from my training in indigenous ancestral healing traditions are tempered with healing justice, my awareness of privileged power dynamics and my commitments to anti-oppression. I am imperfect and ever-growing. Overall, I believe that the actions we make can stretch backward in time to heal the wounds of all our relations and stretch forward in time to manifest the best possible future.
Live.Laugh.Love. Coyote
Due to the high need of my current clients/students during COVID-19 and Shelter in Place I am no longer accepting new clients/students.