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Summary
In this episode of the Love Yourself Podcast, host Allie Serrano interviews Priestess Shoshana, owner of Spiritual Teachers Voodoo and Temple de la Luna. They discuss the importance of embodying authentic beauty, overcoming adversity, and the power of spiritual healing. Shoshana shares her mission to include people from all backgrounds and historical platforms in her work, which combines elements of voodoo, witchcraft, Kabbalah, and more. She also emphasizes the importance of partnership in healing and offers advice for those seeking help. The conversation concludes with a discussion about accomplishing dreams and the continuous journey of growth.
Keywords
self-love, authenticity, overcoming adversity, spiritual healing, voodoo, witchcraft, Kabbalah, partnership, growth
Takeaways
- Embodying authentic beauty and embracing our true selves is essential for self-love and confidence.
- Overcoming adversity, such as sexism and racism, is a significant challenge that many people face.
- Spiritual healing can be a powerful tool for personal growth and transformation.
- Partnership and collaboration are important in the healing process, with both the healer and the individual seeking help playing an active role.
- Accomplishing dreams is a continuous journey, and it’s important to keep growing and evolving.
Sound Bites
- “We’ve been trained to believe that we have to have the perfect image, the perfect background, the perfect relationships, the perfect clothing, the perfect shoes. And then in all of that, we miss out on being reunited with the innocence of our nature.”
- “The biggest challenge I had to overcome was sexism and racism.”
- “When someone wants to be helped and they’re committed, they’re gonna take up their part because part of the problem with being a healer is sometimes you forget that the other person needs to show up as strong as you do for them.”
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Embracing Authentic Beauty
08:54 Overcoming Adversity: The Journey to Healing
22:29 Partnership in the Healing Process
27:17 The Continuous Journey of Growth
Transcript
Allie Serrrano (00:02)
Welcome to Love Yourself Podcast. My name is Allie Serrano and I am a portrait photographer, fashion stylist and a podcast host. And my goal is to help you shine with portraits of you in a magazine quality, to empower you to look and feel beautiful and to bring you back to self -love and confidence and to live life of your dreams. Thank you so much for being here and I’m super excited because today we have a special guest.
Her name is Priestess Shoshana. She is the owner of Spiritual Teachers Voodoo and Temple de la Luna. She’s a mambo, she’s a life coach, spiritual leader, psychic, and her goal is to provide a healing and empower people to live a happy life. Thank you so much for being here. I’m super thrilled to have you on.
Shoshana (00:46)
It’s awesome to be here with you. Thank you for interviewing us today. I have a lot to share. And I know that when we’re doing these kind of interviews, the goal and the idea is to offer something that is going to help people offer something that is unique and then to really express each and every person’s individual piece of the pie, like what we bring to the table. Right. And in
the recent years, I feel like now more than ever, people taking like a leap or going an extra step forward to really embody their authentic beauty, to enjoy the body that they live in, to take the resources that they have and to use those resources to move them forward. I think for many, many years, we’ve been trained to believe
that we have to have the perfect house, the perfect image, the perfect background, the perfect education, the perfect relationships, the perfect animal, the perfect clothing, the perfect shoes. And then in all of that, we miss out on being reunited with the innocence of our nature. And so I feel like in my time with you, Allie Serrano,
What it is that you do with people, individuals, animals, women, couples, and people that are wanting to create a better life for themselves and really capture that perfect image of their essence. And especially one of the things that I’ve admired about your photography is how you bring forward the male energy and then also the antiquity of our ancestry to honor the lineage that we come from.
And these are not easy things to capture in a photo, right? But I feel like what it is when I was considering taking this interview with you is to just acknowledge that what you do is you draw forward their innocence. You draw forward the original self or the self that’s free from all of the obligations that we have to be a certain image. And when I’ve done pictures with you, what I have found
is that you have this very powerful intuitive quality that kind of peers into the layers of insecurity that all people have and peer through it and then slowly honors it. It doesn’t conflict, but slowly pulls it away until you capture that picture where that person is just shining and free and beautiful and bright. And I also just want to acknowledge,
Allie Serrrano (03:40)
Peace.
Shoshana (03:40)
I want to acknowledge that with the kind of work that I do, which is I work as a what’s called a caballo de misterio. So I’m someone who works with spirits. And today, just like any field, you’re going to have people that say they’re spirit workers. You’re going to have people that say they do religious ceremonies and spiritual development.
But if we’re not constantly developing ourselves and we’re not reaching to understand different traditions and different avenues of spiritual development, then we cut ourselves off from a portion of the planet that may have hidden information that is valuable to all individuals. And that’s kind of my mission is to make sure that we include people from all backgrounds and
and historical platforms. And we include their ancestry, all ancestry, inside of a tradition that has primarily had some taboos around it. And those taboos are taboos that come from the media. They come from people who don’t understand. They wanted to glorify something, the Caribbean image or the concept of voodoo.
and they wanted to glorify this image and use it to sell the image and subsequently ended up creating a dark platform where people actually think that Vodou is some sort of dark space that people reside in. And the contrary is the truth. The truth is that in these traditions, there is an avenue for spiritual development that is healthy, healing.
very, very sacred and secret and remain secret because of the intensity and beauty of our work. So that’s how I’d like to start today’s podcast.
Allie Serrrano (05:45)
Thank you so much for sharing that. What is the biggest thing that you love about what you do?
Shoshana (05:53)
That, well, I mean, helping people. Yeah, I mean, I love helping people. So people come, they need help and I can help them. And I’ve been trying to help people since I was a little girl. You know, I started my training when I was about nine. And when I started my work, I worked with who I could access, which was the people who I lived around, which was the Native American.
tribal people inside of the areas that I lived in in New Mexico. And then I just continue to learn ever since. But the purpose has always been to help people. And so some cures are good for some people, but when you’re looking at curing an individual’s spirit, or you’re looking at curing an individual from a trauma, or you’re trying to help somebody overcome a financial dip,
or a psychological imbalance, these things deserve and should have huge amounts of training behind it because you’re working with people’s lives, right? And so I think at the end of the day, what it comes down to is my joy is helping people, but the helping people is an outcome of the knowledge base that I’ve acquired, which is Western.
It’s witchcraft and Wiccan. It’s the Kabbalah. It’s the shamanic work, the Caribbean work, the voodoo work, herbal medicine, anatomy, physiology, nutrition, psychology, coaching. And so when you put it all together, what you have is the ability to not only live a, like for me, I get to live a life that I love. Like, look at this.
This is what I come to every single day. And I have thousands of little tiny essences that I’ve collected from around the world, different dirts and sands, washes and herbs. And the joy of it is that I get to be myself.
Allie Serrrano (07:48)
You
Shoshana (08:11)
And that’s what we’ve seen of it.
Allie Serrrano (08:12)
That’s awesome.
That’s awesome. To be able to love what you do and help people all at the same time, that’s always been a dream of mine too. And it’s amazing. Every time I talk to somebody that gets to do that and I could see you’re so joyful. Every time I see you, every time we talk, you’re always so joyful, always so full of life, so positive energy. It’s so beautiful. Thank you for everything that you do. But I know that what you are, who you are today has not.
Shoshana (08:37)
You’re welcome.
Allie Serrrano (08:43)
been for the lack of adversity and you had to overcome a huge amount of challenges in your life. What would you say is the biggest challenge you had to overcome and how did you overcome it?
Shoshana (08:54)
Sexism.
Sexism and racism. So as a young girl, like being a female, I lived in New Mexico and every story can be painted in the positive and it can also, you can see the other side of it, the negative, right? And where I’m from, which is a small town, when I was growing up in Santa Fe, it was not famous like it is now. We had dirt roads.
I had an outhouse when I was growing up. I had to walk out to the outhouse. We had chickens in the chicken coop. Okay. So where I grew up and with the heavy influence of the different cultures that I grew up with, women were considered to be lesser than men. And our education was not as important. If we raised our hands in class, the boys were going to be picked first.
had problems. It was our, we had to figure it out ourselves. In my personal household, the men and the boys, they took control over everything. And I had no idea what feminism was until I left my home. And I just happened to end up in California, Berkeley and Oakland, California.
where there was a huge movement with bringing together the African -American communities with the Latino communities, with the white communities, with the Asian communities, with the men, with the women. And I had never seen that before. I never seen so many people like fighting and working towards something that for me was new for them. It wasn’t new because you had this history of the Black Panthers.
you had this history of all of the women’s rights movement really blossomed in California. And so I got to be around women who were strong, educated, huge part of the music scene that I was involved in. And I learned really fast that I was valuable. I learned fast that what I thought and what I learned was important.
and that we could work to learn to create a life that was based on, this is a trigger word, but this is the truth. And so like, for those of you who might hear this word and have a judgment, just look past it for what it is. But I was involved in like what we call the anarchistic community. At that time, what that meant is that you were free to be educated. You were free
to be a part of your community. And we did a lot of organization to get people who were hungry and on the streets, we would go out with the community doctors organizations and we would go out and we would offer herbal medicines, we would get food, we worked for Food Not Bombs, we made jewelry, we took classes, we educated each other.
And we worked as a community to develop like kitchens for cooking and warehouses that had a printing press I worked at for a very long time. And people made these in bound together and made these big, huge areas where we could do welding and have fire pits and bring people together, create a life. And it was beautiful.
It was beautiful. And it was something that I got to be a part of at a young age. And it opened my mind and it allowed me to realize that all we need is many hands. You know, there’s one hand, but there’s many fingers on a hand. And all we need to do is work together. And maybe, you know, there was one man that I used to love to go visit and he taught me a lot about history. His name was the Watermelon King.
Allie Serrrano (13:20)
You
Shoshana (13:20)
And so maybe the watermelon king, he’d been growing watermelons in Oakland his whole life. And then, you know, but he has a whole story behind him because the block that he was sitting on was the same block that he sat on in the 1920s. Okay. The same. And so he saw the whole transition of Oakland, California, going from a richer African -American area to being oppressed and suppressed.
and then people fighting to regain their space. And now it’s not a good area. Okay? So now here we are years later, and a lot of the things that people, our people, our ancestors, blood related or not, we’re standing on the backs of many individuals in the United States that have fought for the things that they know that they need to have fought for, but are now left feeling like, wow, we did all that and now
Now, if you look up the word feminism, there is a very sad reality to it that, you know, it’s like the right to sell yourself as a sex worker. All right. Or the right to take pictures of yourself nude. OK. So these are not these are not qualities that are wholesome and honor.
the people that have come before us. And I guarantee you most people, and you’re not from the US, so you have a different educational standard.
Allie Serrrano (14:59)
My version of feminism is slightly different.
Shoshana (15:02)
Yeah, I guarantee you that the majority of people right now do not know their history. They do not know how hard people that women ended up in prison for the right to vote. That men and women that we right now can meet and see because they are still alive fought for equal rights. These people have a life that’s still here.
and our people don’t understand where we have come from. And so that anarchism, that concept from my upbringing gave me this strong understanding of like, wow, I gotta know more than what school teaches me. I learn more than what the system says is our history. And I gotta take these things into my own hands.
And I started traveling to learn from as many shamans and as many healers so I could understand, well, what is the herbal treatment for this thing? What is the herbal treatment for this thing? And wait, so there’s not only just an herbal treatment, but there’s also a song that goes with it. And we have to sing that song to that person’s spirits. And when you do that, the song somehow
transfers into the plant and makes the medicine work. And there’s cures for things that I’m not legally able to say on this podcast. I just not legally able to say it.
Allie Serrrano (16:41)
But talk about treatment.
Shoshana (16:43)
I could go through hundreds of different treatments that we know how to cure because of the racism and that our culture comes from a community of people that A, this is really important that I say this, A were either enslaved and so it was oppressed and then therefore got to be saved. Does that make sense? Like,
The people in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and Haiti and all of these places, they were so not listened to that their secrets were able to remain secret. So it’s positive and negative right there too. But then there’s the other side of it, which is that it’s not just a slave land. There are very, very, very well -educated family lines that have come from all over the world that
developed those countries. Those countries have not just been slave run countries. They were also developed by high level ministers.
Allie Serrrano (17:52)
Yeah, that’s a conversation for another hour chat. But let’s focus on the story of the people that you help. I know you can’t legally say how you help them or what you do to help them. So let’s talk about who you like to help and what are the kind of people that should reach out to you if they need help and knowing that you’ll be there for them.
Shoshana (18:00)
Yeah.
Well, I like to help people that want to be held.
Allie Serrrano (18:25)
All right.
Shoshana (18:28)
When someone wants to be helped and maybe they’ve gone everywhere and they’re like, you know, ready to try something new and different, but they’re committed, they’re gonna take up their part because part of the problem with being a healer is sometimes you forget that the other person needs to show up as strong as you do for them. And so we can kind of get into an issue where we’re working as the healer harder for our clients.
And again, that’s a cultural thing that happens in the United States where US citizens feel very much entitled that they’re going to go to you and they’re just going to like sit down and you’re just going to cure them. And usually people from other places in the world, they know that they have to come equally. You know, if I’m going to ask for help, I’m going to come equally.
Our healing practice is very much of a partnership. And I like to develop my programs for curing any kind of ailment that I might be working with somebody on with that individual.
Allie Serrrano (19:38)
What are some of the examples of the things that people come to you with?
Shoshana (19:42)
my God. A huge is infertility issues. So this would be male or female where there’s like either a blockage in the karma of having a child or there’s a physical hormonal imbalance that needs to be balanced. Right now, the majority of my people are therapists. So they come to me with
like mental imbalances, they’re on the edge of their own depression or anxiety. But they can’t reach out to their therapist community because the therapists feel that what it is that they needed was never taught to them in school. And you are helping 20, 30 people per day and it’s adding up on them and their life, it’s getting slower. So in my work,
we say the human spirit is like a flame, it’s a candle. And when you have air and good wax, then that flame burns bright. But when the air gets oppressive, then the candle gets dim, and then eventually it might go out. And so these beautiful people that have really dedicated their lives to helping other people,
don’t have anybody to give them air. And air means, so Espiritismo, which is the tradition that I am a minister of, Espiritismo means, it means spirit. Okay. And the word spirit, the root word of spirit is breath. So it’s breath of life. I can breathe the breath of life into someone. Inspiration means spirit.
to be inspired is to be given air. And when you have air, that means that the people around you are like opening your being and that just opening your being and inspiring you allows your own flame to click right back on. And so mental imbalances, people with major financial issues, hormonal issues, life path issues, it all comes down to
realigning them with their own nature and then inspiring the light in them. That’s why we work with so many candles.
Allie Serrrano (22:13)
If you were to give today’s audience one advice or tip or with everything that we’re going through right now, what would you say to our audience?
Shoshana (22:29)
Like don’t stop fighting. Don’t stop fighting. Your teachers are out there, your healers are out there, your communities are out there, your mission is out there. The God and goddess gave you a life and formed you.
to be exactly who you’re supposed to be. And all you have to do is pull off what’s not you, and then you will have space to breathe and be what it needs to be. And then the other message that I have is don’t believe the majority of spiritual mission out there. It’s about the missions that people have to teach spiritual practices are about
their mission. They’re not about you. They’re not about healing you and putting you on your life path. And you were created perfect. And it’s a matter of just resetting that. And then all the good stuff comes forward. I knew somebody just last month who came in with a reoccurring case of cancer.
easy because it had happened two times, right? The first time they went and got the parts of their body taken out, right? This time we were able to look at, okay, what’s the pattern and how do we get that energy flowing through you and give you the right cures so that we can shift things.
because the divine wants you to be exactly what you were supposed to be. Anytime you’re off that path, you’re going to experience financial hardship, you’re going to experience emotional imbalances, you’re going to experience loss of love, and you’re going to experience heartache.
So that’s, you know, it’s all about coming back to where you are and resetting yourself, which can be upsetting to the communities around you, but it’s worth making a ripple in space and time than being a rock in a pond that never moves anything, right?
Allie Serrrano (24:35)
Because at the end of the day, it’s our growth. Whether it’s positive or negative in the pain aspect, it’s the growth as long as we keep going and as long as we keep moving forward. That’s the goal. All right. How can people reach out to you? Where can we find you?
Shoshana (24:54)
I’m located on Facebook. I am located on Instagram. I am located on YouTube. I am on every social media platform. I also have a wonderful podcast. I have really cool books out and then of course my website and they are all under the name Spiritual Teachers Voodoo.
Allie Serrrano (25:20)
Okay, wonderful, wonderful. I have three ending questions for you. This is something that I like to ask everybody that I speak with. What is the number one tool you use every single day and without which you cannot live without or do what you do?
Love that.
Shoshana (25:47)
This is my, you know how when you graduate from college as a PhD doctorate, this is my doctorate right here. This is my medicine cup. It’s called a Hado. And it’s this cup that was gifted to me to allow me to be a high priestess and Mambo leader of a temple.
Allie Serrrano (25:57)
Hmm
Shoshana (26:14)
And this is my one item that if everything decided to crash down, this would be the thing that I would grab.
Allie Serrrano (26:26)
That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Question number two. If you could meet anyone in the world living or not, who would it be and what would you want to ask them?
Shoshana (26:27)
Not.
If I could meet anybody in the world living not, who would it be and what would I ask them? I have to say I have let myself live a life that is completely filled with real saints, spirits, ancient mysteries, deities that I speak to. So I have met everybody living and not living.
Allie Serrrano (26:40)
living on them.
that you’ve wanted to talk to.
Shoshana (27:06)
I talk to them, they talk to me.
Allie Serrrano (27:08)
That’s awesome. Alright. And then question number three. What is the biggest advice you would give to your younger self if you had the chance?
Shoshana (27:17)
Just like, don’t be a pussy ass bitch.
Don’t feel insecure. Don’t think that what you’re doing, you have to change it. Don’t sell out on yourself. Just keep being that raw, real, gorgeous, gypsy woman that you are.
Allie Serrrano (27:38)
I love this. Thank you so much for this conversation. This has been absolutely amazing. You mentioned your podcast. Do you want to tell people where can they find you on your podcast?
Shoshana (27:48)
Yeah, so my podcast is on Apple, Spotify. It’s all over the place and it’s under Spiritual Teachers Voodoo. And there was one more thing that I wanted to say, Allie, and it was a question to you. Do you feel like you’ve accomplished your supreme dream?
Allie Serrrano (28:00)
Mm -hmm.
Yes.
Say that one more time.
Shoshana (28:14)
Do you feel like you’ve accomplished your dream?
Allie Serrrano (28:16)
It’s like,
I’m definitely the happiest that I’ve ever been. I feel like my dream is on its way, but there are still things that I want to do. But if you were to ask me this question 10 years ago, I would have not been at all on my path then. So if today was the last day for me, then I would have definitely been able to say, yes, I’ve tried and done.
the best that I had with what I had and I’m super thankful for everything. Everything that everybody has helped me accomplish including you. But I’m hoping that there’s a lot more time to accomplish a lot more because I feel like there’s so many more people to reach and so many more messages to share. But I’m definitely thankful to at least be on my path to be able to do that.
Shoshana (29:13)
Yeah, I feel like what you’re saying is really important. I feel like what you’re saying when I feel into it and reach into it is that what you’re saying is that we have a blessed life. No matter where we are right now in this planet, we are living better than kings and queens of old in every respect, in every country. And we have a blessed life.
And when we reach our dreams and we reach our visions, the most easiest thing to do is to stop.
and enjoy, right? But what I hear and what you’re saying is that you’re not gonna stop and enjoy. You’re gonna keep giving and you’re gonna keep elevating and going to that next space, not high, but deep, low, like into your.
where you get to know more of who you are and make that something that’s an equity, like a real soul spiritual equity that you can share with other people and draw them into something that is, it’s truly mystical. Like what you do with your photography has a psychic mystical aspect to it. And
We have gatherings here at my temple is very, very beautiful. It’s located in St. Petersburg. And it’s interesting because we run it as a collaboration. So the temple is not owned just by myself and then teared down. We have a collaborative, we have a community of people that run it. And because of that,
we’re able to bring in people like you and other people who can come in and like sit at the MISA table with us and give readings, give advice and grow in that aspect. And when I wanted to have…
my website redone, I went to you because I knew that you could take the people that were upcoming in the temple and you could bring them to a deeper level of knowing their mystical gifts. So I love you and I love what you do.
Allie Serrrano (31:33)
Thank you so much. I would not be able to do all the website stuff without my amazing fiance now. So excited that I could say that. So Excellence Digital is absolutely amazing. If any of you out there that’s listening need a website updated or start fresh, Excellence Digital will definitely help you. And if you need photography for your website, then I’ll be doing that share of the process, which I absolutely enjoy too.
Shoshana (31:43)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and Allie, you really took my vision of my work and my website and you and Pierre built it up to be an absolute gorgeous representation. And I think people should go to it just to look at it because it’s so, it’s just like a plum in heaven.
Allie Serrrano (32:22)
So everybody go to spiritualteachersvoodoo .com, schedule a reading and love on that website. Share it, talk about it. And if there’s anything that you ever need that you ever struggle with, then Priestess Shoshana is here to help.
Shoshana (32:39)
and to kick your butt in a little bit.
Allie Serrrano (32:41)
Thank you so much. Let’s do this again soon. I appreciate you coming on today and have a wonderful, wonderful day.
Great.
