an introduction to woo-woo
issue 81 ♡ to woo is to seek the you-know-who or dance in the blues & to search for what is true for you
what is woo-woo? who the f**k is woo-tang? love wu-know-who
dearest wu & readers,
the year of the snake has slithered in and i have shed my former substack skin as dear doris and emerging as woo-tang (the substack formerly known as dear doris). it’s a name i considered a couple years ago in jest when i began writing here as a fledgling spreading her woo-woo wings. at the time, dear doris stuck and struck a tone however now as it feels i have outgrown this moniker and am taking the tang back from the wu and applied the woo to the tang.
let’s tune into woo-woo this week to channel what the f**k it means from a higher perspective in part I and in part II i share a story of my tang ancestral lineage.
part I.
DEROGATORY•INFORMAL noun: woo; noun: woo-woo: unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine. [oxford languages]
to woo is to seek the you-know-who or dance in the blues and to search for what is true— for you. we all land on earth for a multitude of reasons and rationale and for the most part we seek to fill our hearts with the radiance and resonance of love which filters through all parts of our human bodies and seeps into our souls.
to woo is to do what you can to seek answers from strange and esoteric realms, to keep asking and searching and digging and diving into the abyss, the unknown, to fully attempt, in our best human efforts to know thyself and to know a relationships with the divine source of consciousness.
to dance with the woo, you must always attempt to doo, what serves your soul first— which is the most honourable mention when you see it from a heavenly perspective. you see, to woo is not a dance with the devil, it is a dance with the divine, which is an amalgamation of all the lightness and darkness within us all.
the harry potter’s and anakin’s of the world seek to play in the realms of earth, to understand and overcome darkness and to harness lightness in equal measure.
to woo is to begin a wondrous journey into the unknown, finding gemstones along the way, as you muster through the dark, picking up magic and surviving ‘misery’ to pass tests of not so much courage but ones of compassion and care for others and your own self. to woo, is to be and to enjoy and rejoice in this miraculous matrix or simulation or existence we inhabit on this place we call earth home.
may the woo be with you and may the tangle to your jangle be there to guide and help you wrangle and fan-dangle your way through this wonder-full woo-rld.
part II.
i lived in a small town in spain for a year studying abroad with a group of sixty americano college kids when i was eighteen years old. i was the lone aussie from “purrrth”. it was the year 2000 and sydney was hosting the olympics, while i was sitting at the back of the bus en route to madrid from the mediterranean town of alicante. i sat across from a dude named casey champion— a sophomore pre-law from colorado.
i said, “hi, i’m dee”. and he was like, “dee what?” and i was like, “dee tang”. his mouth dropped open. “you mean, dee tang like the WU-TANG?” he exclaimed. i was like, “what woo who?”. he was incredulous, “WHAT THE WU! you have to listen to this”, handing over his headphones attached to his mini disc player.
that was my introduction into the world of the wu-tang clan— a legendary hip-hop group who derived their name from the kungfu film shaolin and the wu-tang and reverence for chinese philosophy. two decades later, i am now learning to truly connect with and see what the wu were so wooed by. my interest in my own tang clan piqued only in the the last year (of the dragon) when i began working internally to clear ancestral knots on my paternal side. i began receiving little messages from my deceased grandfather who rendered and resonated the significance of the tang clan.
i am the 29th generation of the tang family— one of the five original clans native to the new territories of hong kong. this area was settled over nine hundred years ago in the 11th century during the reign of the song dynasty.
the story goes— there was a princess (of course)— the daughter of the 10th emperor of song who fled south, to where it is now known as as kam tin— and she shacked up with a tang dude. the emperor gave them land and from there, the clan grew and grew and became known as the five wais and six tsuens (walled villages). the villages were walled to fend off pirates and bandits, who were common back in the day and it was a site of rebellion against british rule back in the colonial days.
my direct ancestors are from shui mei tsuen (lower end village) and my grandfather tang tim kau was the village leader until he passed ago at age 90. there is a picture of my yeye in their humble stone home. he is smartly dressed in a grey suit next to prince, now king charles who visited the tang village before the end of british rule in ‘97. the photo is hung in on top of multiple calendars, in a house with an open drain and electricity cables that ran outside of the walls, forming patterns across the rooms. to lock the door at night, you would have to close both heavy red wooden doors at the same time and bolt it with a giant plank of timber.
in a recent meditation my ye-ye appeared and he allowed me to know, that i was a kwai loi— a good granddaughter for visiting him while i was constantly on the move in my twenties. i would layover in hong kong and stop in to sek farn eat rice/dinner with him and my a-ma. my favourite street food as a kid was chee-cheong-fun and he would always get a bag for me— a rice noodle steamed, rolled and chopped into small pieces and doused in peanut and sweet sauce, placed in a paper bowl that you would poke and gobble with a bamboo stick.
he allowed me to know, that he had been my grandfather and elder many times before in tribal village and indigenous lifetimes. however in this timeline, we chose a soul pact with less direct connection, that he would oversee my soul development from afar. he told me, we chose this lineage of tang to incarnate with intention— to learn the art of yang action, hard work and tenacity— traits of the tang family that i had inherited through my ancestral line and that i could call upon to carry me through earth-bound life and to my higher woo purpose.
so, with no further ado— we bid adieu to ole’ dear doris and say what’s up woo-tang.
big love. d xx
ps. previous related posts you may enjoy.
the one about the secret menu at chinese restaurants or the one about my immigrant mum who does whatever the f** she wants or last week’s one about the year of the snake 2025.
please note: next week onwards, this newsletter will be ‘woo tang’ appearing in your inbox :)
I like it!
Love it!!! Woo-Tang. You said..."from strange and esoteric realms", I am not sure if this is the strange and esoteric realm on Earth and place of our ancestors much more real. ❤️