Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Amid the cacophony of a cicada emergence, we bring you our final story on the theme of initiation, a movement

into new rhythms and patterns of becoming.

While immersed in a unified chorus of insect voices, playwright and director Anisa George reflects

on her departure from the Baha'i faith and its promise of a new civilization,

and her choice to embark on her own path instead.

Cicada, you are blessed.

On the earth's bed, you die drunk with light.

May my heart be cicada upon the divine fields.

This year, the periodical cicadas of my region emerged after 17 years of subterranean living.

I learned about their impending arrival back in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, while many of us were leading contracted, if not light-deprived, lives.

During that particularly dejected year, the cicada emergence began to take on a mythic dimension for me. They would arrive in a great awakening of timbling hordes, just as we hoped

to be stripping away our masks and rolling up our sleeves for the vaccine. I knew, rationally speaking,

that the cicadas had been performing these emergencies for millions of years. I knew, rationally speaking, that the cicadas had been performing these

emergencies for millions of years. I knew they wouldn't adjust their schedule because we were

dying by the millions up here. Nevertheless, to me, their imminent arrival seemed proof

that we, too, could make it out alive.

Thank you. too could make it out alive. The genus Magi-Cicada lives in North America alone and consists of seven species that are

broken into two types.

Three magi-sicada species have a 17-year cycle, and four have a 13-year cycle.

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