moon king, or emma//essra rutenberg (they//them) is an archivist, astrologer, tarot reader, archaeologist, musician, artist, & antizionist jewitch herbalist grown from, tending, and based in lënapehòkink // philly. always learning from animism, diasporism, & antifascism, they weave ancestral ritual and myth meaning-making from each of their lineages into larger tapestries that explore time as a spiral, the textures of hope & despair, and the tectonics of land, grief, death, & memory.

𖦹

an apprentice of portals and lifelong student of water, emma draws from the antizionist jewish tradition & the intuitive nature of re//membrance. inspired by a concept by umar faruq abdullah, they describe their Jewishness as a river that takes on the colors and textures of the bedrock it flows through, acting as the framework and guide through which the traditions, deities, rituals, and lands of their other lineages flow. as a white, queer, nonbinary, and newly disabled person, they venerate the land and trees; the waters of prophecy; long, tectonic time; the moon as a guide; the divine mystery in all that is unknown.

𖦹

as they braid their lineages together, they hold intimate experiences with— and hope to support people navigating— death, grief, and loss // textures of radical change & transformation (broken//openness) // landscapes of surviving abuse // the divinity in mystery and memory. they encourage weaving ancestral practices as the necessary work of unlearning yt supremacy, and believe there is no place for any spiritual practitioners who are devoid of political analysis or frameworks of global liberation— the cosmologies of diasporism, solidarity, specificity, & anticolonial antifascism are necessary for any meaningful lineage work or connection.

let’s weave together

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

on connective // collective experience

born and shaped in lënapehókink // philly as a 3rd & 6+ generation settler, emma is enlivened by earthwork in this lifelong home. they have 5+ years of land-tending experiences that accompany their 7+ years of intentional ancestral veneration, ritual, and study, and reverently grow ancestral, diasporic, indigenous, and/or endangered flowers, roots, and herbs from seeds or seedlings. witnessing and moving through these cyclical seasons of life, death, and rebirth, they lovingly craft these plants into medicine including salves, tinctures, body & cooking oils for community.

through engaging with the land and learning about their lineage relationships with//in land, they find potent presence, comfort, and belonging– and every day feel a deeper calling towards land justice. emma has come to believe deeply in seedkeeping and earth work as the cultivation of storytelling, death work, land reciprocity, and spiritual intentionality —and an increasingly potent and vital means of anchoring more earnestly into our connected reservoirs of hope as we witness and respond to growing ecological collapses, genocides, and militarized violence.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

my framework intentions

alongside earthwork, caregiving for their sweet dad in the months and years leading to his recent death, and devotion to archival and ancestral reverence in their daily life, emma trained in 2023 through a 9 month course under black & indigenous herbalists [dom matti, maebh aguilar, & mercelyne latortue] in the ways of plant apothecary medicine, astroherbalism, and culturally specific land practices; has dedicated over 150+ hours spent in classes diving deeper into their ancestral & cultural traditions; attends classes and semesters at philly’s w.e.b. dubois movement & abolition school to study the teeming global ecosystems of abolition, indigenous land repatriations, & transformative justice; helps research and produce the radical jewish calendar which honors the births, deaths, and decolonial resistance movements of black, indigenous, jewish, immigrant, & other marginalized working class peoples; and holds a b.a. in archaeology, museum studies, gender studies, as well as a graduate certificate in celtic mythology.

experiences & qualifications

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