You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2007.
In case you don’t regularly wander the essay section of Witchvox, I have an article up there this week:
Here, I discuss the spirituality of eating meat. I’ve seen a lot of discussion on how vegetarianism/veganism can be spiritually fulfilling; however, how can those of us who prefer or even need meat in our diets go about it in a spiritually conscious way? Click the link to find out more.
I just got back in from taking the kitchen scraps to the compost bin in the back yard. We’ve had the bin out there for a couple of months now. There’s no real compost yet, but that’s mainly because I started it so late in the year. Still, things are breaking down some, and I’m sure once spring hits and it starts to warm up we’ll see more decay. For now, the pile seems to have a few resident moths, and that’s about it.
People have this idea that compost bins are smelly, probably because garbage is smelly. However, it all depends on what you put in the bin. If you don’t put meat scraps, fats, and other such things in there, you’re fine. And of course, don’t put any animal waste in there–who wants that going ultimately into their garden? Unless you maintain one pile for edible plants, and one for decorative–but even then, animal waste will smell. So we limit the scraps to vegetable matter, paper towels (we always buy the ones made of recycled paper and bleached without chlorine), hair, and eggshells. There’s no smell, and other than a bit of mold nothing really scary in the decaying process.
This is my first compost bin, and I’m rather proud of it. I went and got one of these for thirty-five bucks–took me less than five minutes to assemble. However, I could just as easily have used a stack of four worn-out car tires held in place with posts. Or, if we didn’t have access to a yard, I could have taken two big plastic bins and made a cheap and easy worm bin–that’d be great to go with some indoor container gardening. (One way or another, next year, I WILL garden!)
Composting is a spiritual process for me. Sure, it’s Earthy, and involves things decaying. But mine is a nature religion, thanks. I know some pagans cringe when the term “nature religion” is applied to what they do. Fair enough–if your gods have been abstracted away from the natural forces that birthed them, then I’m not going to try to force you into a compost-bin-shaped-pigeonhole. But for me, Artemis isn’t just the abstract concept of the Hunt and the Moon and liberty–she’s also the reality of blood and death, and the moonlight trying to shine amidst blinding artificial light and air pollution. The totems aren’t just aspects of my psyche–they’re embodied in every living animal out there, from the moth in the compost bin to the kitties snoozing at my feet. And I seek greater awareness of the physical reality of my spirituality.
I am constantly amazed to see the transformation that occurs in the compost bin. The ends of carrots and celery, this past summer’s dead tomato vines, are all transformed from brightly-colored things to somewhat of a mush and mixture of browns and greys (and don’t forget the pale green mold). Maybe this isn’t lead into gold, but it’s an alchemy all on its own. Unfortunately, humanity seems to do its damnedest to interfere with that magical process. Yard Work As Viewed From Heaven may be a humor piece, but it has a message.
Take fertilizer, for example. Nature provides its own fertilizer. When something dies, it feeds the living. Taking dead trees out of the forest weakens the soil, the tree could provide numerous nutrients to small animals and plants and bacteria. Ultimately, the dead tree would enrich the soil. But instead the soil suffers, having fed the tree but not receiving the nutrients back through decay. And, to bring things closer to home for a lot of us, when we cut the grass and bag the clippings, we’re taking away the natural fertilizer in that grass. You know where that fertilizer is going? Into the landfill. And do you know what happens to grass in a landfill? Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t matter how biodegradable something is–if it goes into a landfill, it’s not breaking down. There’s nothing to break it down. I remember as a kid I watched a 20/20 episode where the reporter went to a landfill and excavated through several years’ of trash. He found a carrot that was almost perfect, other than being shrivelled and dirty.
Decay does take a certain mixture of factors. In my compost pile, for example, I need to balance the “greens” (carrot ends and celery leaves) with “browns” (dead leaves, paper towels). A lot of people make the mistake of not having enough browns, which makes the decay go slower. Additionally, I turn over the compost whenever I add more to the pile to help all the compost get air, which promotes decay as well. I don’t think that landfill is getting nearly enough air.
By composting, I’m returning some of what has been taken from the Earth and putting it back into the cycle, instead of the dead zone of a landfill. Rather than throwing away perfectly good, nearly free, fertilizer for the garden, I toss it into the compost bin and let it do its thing. It’s quicker than going to the store, and it keeps me locked into the cycles of Nature, instead of letting myself be drawn away from those cycles, pretending that they don’t actually affect me, numbed by the out of sight, out of mind of the landfill.
Much is made, in neopaganism, of the Wheel of the Year, and the mythology surrounding it. Sure, it’s important to pay attention to the Solar and Lunar cycles–but I think more is made of the symbolism and the abstract mythology surrounding those cycles, than the cycles themselves. It’s easy to get caught up in celebration in the living room with your coven or family or other group. But then, when everyone’s gone home, we can go back to our everyday lives, complaining about the weather and going to work far away from home and surviving trips to the crowded grocery store. The Sun God has been born, we know the sun will come back soon, and eventually we’ll switch back off of daylight savings time (and lose an hour of sleep).
Composting brings me into a cycle that hasn’t been so abstracted. There’s nothing glamorous about that pile of decaying matter in the bin. Nor are worms and moths particularly flashy. We have the Horned God, but we don’t have the Slimy God With Multitudinous Setae. Composting makes the processes of fertility very apparent to me in a way that the Sabbats and Esbats never did when I followed a more generic, Wiccan-inspired neopagan path. In that bin is death turning into the fuel for life. Next year, that compost can be mixed in with the Earth and feed tomato plants and mint and gods know what all else. It can feed the plants that become food for me. In that bin is nutrition cycling through one stage to the next. The compost is life.
This is why I’m so diligent about filling up the bucket of kitchen scraps. Every leftover scrap from making salad goes in there. Every paper towel that isn’t soaked in cleaning chemicals gets tossed in, and the hair from our brushes. Last night I poured the last of the milk on a bowl of cereal–unfortunately, the milk was spoiled (nothing says “Mmmmmmm!” like fluffy milk!). I drained the milk into the sink, and tossed the cereal into the bucket. Crumbs from the bottom of a bag of herb-flavored popcorn, every last bit of eggshell from breakfast–it all goes in there. Every bit of nutrition and energy that I can salvage gets poured back into that sacred cycle.
It’s not just a matter of waste not, want not, though that is a factor, too. It’s the fact that I have participated too much in breaking the alchemical cycle of decay, in taking the gifts of the Earth and locking them away in the landfill, away from where they could do any good. Some things can’t be composted–cardboard, for instance–but it can be recycled, and that in itself is a cycle that mirrors the natural cycle of decay.
As a species we’ve grown too detached from the cycles of Nature. We may still be ruled by them to an extent as mammals, but we tell ourselves we’re different. Composting reminds me that I am still very much a part of those sacred cycles, and that I have a very real connection to them even when I pretend otherwise. But I choose to engage in them again, to contribute to them and participate in them. I still haven’t figured out what I’ll do to celebrate the Equinoxes and Solstices, but I do feel comfort in at least one cyclical celebration–the humble, yet exceptionally important, joy of composting.
A recent discussion on my friend Ravenari’s Livejournal got me thinking about my place in the grand scheme of shamanic practice. Ravenari is one of my go-to people, so to speak, regarding shamanism, particularly when dealing with traditional forms of shamanism. She practices Vilturj, a form of Russian animism with a rich collection of shamanic elements that she learned from certain family members (she’s one of the very few people that I would consider being in possession of a “family tradition” of any sort). While this obviously doesn’t make her an automatic expert on every single flavor of shamanism out there, she does provide some really good insight from her own perspective.
At any rate, she made a very profound (to me, anyway) observation on my practice. She had written a post about how having a single power animal isn’t enough when journeying into the Otherworld. While a power animal can perform some tasks, there are also areas that s/he may not be of much help. While not everyone may agree with this assessment, I think she made a good argument in favor of having a diverse “team” of helping spirits, rather than just the power animal that is relied upon so much in many forms of core shamanism and neoshamanism.
Now, when I’ve done guided meditation, and in my limited journeying experiences, I didn’t think I had a whole entourage of spirits with me. At most I either turn into the animal myself, or I have one animal next to me, or offering me a ride. There are others I meet along the way, but most of the spirits and deities I consider to be companions and guardians never show up in any visible way. I brought up this observation in this thread. Ravenari pointed out that although I may not “see” such folks as the directional totems, the Animal Father, etc. on my journeys, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. I may very well be working with a lot more entities during my experiences than I initially considered.
Although this does make me feel a little more like I’m “doing it right”, so to speak (since I did agree for the most part with Ravenari’s initial post) it is rather humbling. I don’t think this means there’s anything wrong with me or what I’m doing, per se, but it does make it clear that as far as shamanism in particular goes, there’s so much I don’t know even the very basics of yet. Granted, I have years and years of practice and learning ahead of me; I don’t think I’ll ever stop being a student in a way. But it does put things into perspective.
I guess the way I see it is like university degrees. I have a B.A. in English, but suppose I went back to graduate school and got a Master’s degree in English as well. I see that as similar to my work with animal magic in particular, animal magic from a neopagan perspective mixed with some chaos magic. However, delving into shamanism in a deeper way would be like getting a second Master’s degree in a different subject. I’d have already gained the basic tools for dealing with advanced academia, but I would still have to learn specifics. In the same way, my decade and change of experience with animal magic, as well as magic in general, gives me some tools to work with, as well as some of the basic “curriculum” of shamanism, but there’s a lot more for me to learn before I can say I’ve mastered the material in any way.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that I can voice no opinions or comments, or that the experience I do have isn’t good enough. But this is why I like talking to other people; not only does it keep me in perspective, but it helps me to see things I might otherwise have missed.
As my work with the elements in my six-months continues, I’m becoming more aware of interconnections in my life.
A good example is one of the effects of my Earth month. During that time, I focused quite a bit on my body and physical health. One thing I became crucially aware of was what I take into my body–not just the obvious toxins through air and water pollution, but the more subtle things found in food. Sometimes it isn’t even about chemical additives as it is about quality. And I’ve been more interested in a balanced diet. My body usually starts craving fresh vegetables first, so that’s the first sign that my diet has gone to a particularly unhealthy point.
This greater awareness of my food intake has sparked a greater interest in cooking. I used to hate to cook. Last winter, though, I began craving my mom’s chili, and so I made a big pot of that. After that point I began to see how fun cooking could be, and came to regard it as a form of magic, bringing various elements together to create something new. (Kitchen alchemy!) This led to more interest in our pantry and what we kept stocked there, particularly how much of it was organic or otherwise relatively “safe”. While we can’t afford to get all organics, we buy what we can.
In turn, this has increased my awareness of where the food comes from, and who it impacts. This includes not just the people involved in the process, but the animals and plants themselves. My work with food totems works in with this awareness, and has actually helped me forge better relationships with them.
And all of this has gone towards changing my life in a very real, practical way. I am slowly improving my health through my diet, and supporting healthier, sustainable practices where I can. I’m putting more of my money where my mouth is, and being more considerate of my impact here.
So it is that my Earth month continues to cause very physical changes in my life for the better.
Okay, so the holidaze knocked me out for a few days. However, I have been up to plenty, and here’s the round-up of what you missed via my limited web presence.
First, I’ve added a few new journeying blogs to the blogroll. Love, Hope and Life is Danmara’s journey in working with the gods, including both observations as well as practical matters, described as “a living devotion”. Cynanthropy is Solo’s explorations on further discovering himself as a canine therianthrope, as well as thoughts on cynanthropy in general. And Poison Hara is a personal account of working within the Deharan magical system detailed in Grimoire Dehara: Kaimana by Storm Constantine. Go take a peek, see what you think!
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So, Solstice. I decided that the Stag-Wolf-Bear-Lion progression really wasn’t resonating with me, and the Animal Father was fine with that. So I took the formality down a notch. For now my ritual will primarily consist of a nature walk at a nearby park, regardless of weather conditions.
Winter Solstice in Portland is pretty mild. It was in the lower fifties, with rain (a staple of Portland weather). As I walked, I saw a ton of fox squirrels bouncing around foraging. In other places I’ve lived, they’d be all curled up in their nests snoozing away the cold, but it’s mild enough here that I still see orb weaver spiders on occasion. I was treated to the sounds of Stellar’s jays screaming (an odd sound compared to the blue jays I’m used to out East) and the occasional caw of a crow. Because of all the rain, everything is exceptionally green except for the deciduous trees, which I think must lose their leaves here more out of propriety than anything else–though it does get colder once Winter proper hits. But the grass and moss are verdant, and the conifers don’t really shed that much in the way of old needles. Winter is relatively gentle here. (Of course, I mean relatively–I get cold at anything under sixty degrees Fahrenheit!)
Once my six months are up, right around the Spring Equinox, I may start using the Solstices and Equinoxes as turning points for focusing on the elements cyclically. For example, I may work with Air in the Spring, Fire in the Summer, Water in the Autumn, and Earth in the Winter. Or I might just take the time to review how I’m doing with all four elements, and maybe (or maybe not) choose to focus on whichever one needs the most work. I’m just really not big on celebratory rituals–if there’s a magical purpose, that’s fine, but I feel kind of odd doing a solitary celebration. It’s kind of like throwing a party with no one there–I mean, sure, the spirits and such are there, but it’s not really quite as much of a celebration without other people there in the flesh. Plus it helps to have a solid cosmology to tell you what, exactly, you should be celebrating. Right now the only thing that really stands out to me about Solstices and Equinoxes is that a lot has changed in Nature since the last one, and it’s a good time for transitions (hence the potential elemental workings starting on each one). The rest of the existing neopagan mythology surrounding the holidays has always left me sort of lukewarm–I see why people celebrate it, and I’ve done a few informal Sabbat celebrations with other people, but it never really struck me on any deep level. So for now, I’ll just take my walks and see what the Equinox brings.
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My Air month ended over the weekend. Hawk was quite pleased with my progress, and told me to keep it up. I have gotten better with communication overall, both with others and with myself. Granted, one month isn’t going to fix things. But I’m a bit braver about scary confrontations, and I’m a bit less “clammed-up” about my feelings. Plus I’m more aware of my actions, being conscious of the choices I make. The last one is tough for others to see, sometimes, because it mainly involves me making an effort NOT to do something (such as say something really dumb/insensitive/etc.) and being successful entails being quiet, or saying something more civil/thoughtful/etc.
I’ve been pretty good about remembering to record my dreams, though I’m much better about it during the week when I have a routine to work it into. I’ve also been remembering to pray both in the morning and evening, and meditate over my lunch break, about four times a week on average. My meditation has mostly turned into “Conversations with My Wolf Totem”, which is fine–Wolf has always been one of my main connections to the spirit world. I’m going to keep working on it, of course.
Being more aware of my actions has also helped to calm me down–which, appropriately, has meant that I haven’t had my asthma crop up (it did once in my Earth month, as a reminder to RELAX). I find that I can “ground” into the Sky as well as the Earth, with just as much ease. And, as I’ve started my Fire month, I’m finding already that the burning energy of the cellular breakdown of nutrients flares up easily in conjunction with the Earth and Air energy. It reaches out to the sunlight (even through the clouds) and connects me to the Sun, which is a primary source of energy and nourishment sustaining life here.
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Which brings me to the beginning of my Fire month. Fox met with me to figure out what I should focus on. Sex and sex magic will be part of it, though for personal reasons most of that will remain private. However, there are also a lot of changes going on in my life (though this seems to be a semi-regular thing for me) and part of the Fire month will involve being more responsive and flexible with change. Also, reading through Starhawk’s The Earth Path, I gained a new appreciation for energy as an interconnected web among all things, and the implications thereof. It’s not that this wasn’t already a part of my perspective, but the six month process has done a lot for magnifying certain aspects of my beliefs and showing me what I really feel is central to my path.
I think the lessons in communication from the Air month will be broadened in the Fire month to include numerous types of communication, not just person to person. The importance of what we take into ourselves and what we put out, which I first concentrated on in the Earth month, is also revisited, though on a more energetic rather than physical scale. Fox instructed me to get outdoors at least a couple of times a week for purposes other than walking to and from work and the train station, even if it’s just to go to the park nearby. I get unhappy and sluggish if I stay away from the wild too long, and even a trip to the park can be an energetic quick fix, though I should still get out to hike in wilder areas when I can.
Fire has started pretty well, burning off impurities created as byproducts of communicating about some unpleasant things during my Air month. I’m looking forward to the rest of the month.
Last Tuesday, I requested links to blogs that dealt with people’s spiritual journeys. I wanted to introduce the initial round of journals to give readers an idea of who else is out there recording their journeys in the blogosphere. As I add new links, I’ll post intros to them as well.
★☆天死☆★ is Technobushi’s account of post-paradigm-shift explorations and thought processes. His interests, as ganked from the About page, include “Astronomy, cosmology, chaos magic, chaos theory, occult, mindhacking, reality-hacking, altered states of consciousness, memetics, technomancy, technoshamanism, abnormal psychology, psychology, cybermancy, techno and industrial music, to name a few.” This one promises some truly unique observations on spirituality in the 21st century.
Imagine Your Reality is my husband Taylor’s life coaching blog. While life coaching, in and of itself, takes a much broader view than only spirituality, Taylor has some good insights, spiritual and otherwise. He’s being trained in Whole Person Design life coaching, which supports a holistic view of the person that acknowledges and makes use of the various interconnections both within and outside of an individual. Spirituality is woven in with advice and observations as he walks his path.
Limen: Thoughts from a threshold includes observations on everyday spirituality from a pagan perspective. Part receptacle of essays and part daily record of progress, it’s an accessible and inviting read, and I’m curious to see where it goes.
One Pagan Group - Some Assembly Required - while my main focus with this section of the blogroll is to detail individual journeys, I do like this blog that records the efforts involved in forming Hemlock Vales Protogrove, ADF. Most folks encounter groups once they’ve been at least somewhat established, so the actual process of getting everything organized in the first place is already taken care of. This allows an intimate look into the nitty-gritty of one group’s seeding and growth.
Reconnecting to the Otherworld is another neoshaman’s journey towards creating a stronger personal path. There are a couple of neat posts detailing things like cosmology, as well as meditations and other miscellany. Well-written and a good read all around.
Searching for Imbas - as author Erynn Rowan Laurie deepens her practices of filidecht, the Irish Celtic poetic mystic tradition, she uses this blog as a record for her own journey. Given that there’s not a lot of first-hand information about this tradition, this is definitely a blog to keep an eye on.
Shadowolf - a relatively new blog that offers practical meditations in the process of seeking balance within the self. Should be an interesting eclectic pagan path to watch.
The Quest is a particularly unusual story, involving a Christian mystic who is in the process of also training in Ancient Order of Druids in America. The mixture of traditions is incredibly interesting, and I’m really curious to see how this one progresses.
Wildspeak (the blog) is a counterpart to Wildspeak (the site), viewable in the shamanism links on the left sidebar. Ravenari, the writer/artist behind it all, is a practitioner of a shamanic path that hybridizes Vilturj, an exceptionally rare Russian shaman tradition that some of her family practice, and her own relationship to the natural elements of the area of Australia she resides in, particularly the Koondoola bushland. Ravenari is one of the shamanic practitioners I respect the most, and while the Wildspeak site contains a lot of good information, I’m glad she’s mapping out her personal progress in this blog.
So that’s what I have so far. Go, take a peek, and see where other people’s journeys are taking them! Perhaps you’ll find some inspiration, a kindred spirit, or a step on your own pathway.
I’m currently most of the way through The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis, a new paperback release talking about the history of the study of paleolithic cave paintings in France such as Lascaux and Les Trois Freres. It’s given me a lot to think about, because it presents a lot of alternative theories to the ones I was most familiar with in regards to these works. For example, I had been enamored of the hunting magic theory that Henri Breuil put forth in the first half of the twentieth century and which Joseph Campbell elaborated upon; I hadn’t realized these theories had been seriously questioned later on. There are some pretty convincing arguments against them, though the jury’s still out (and probably always will be since we can never know for sure what the artists believed or why they created the paintings in the first place).
However, the thing that really struck me was when I read in one chapter about Curtis’ examination of the Sorcerer of Les Trois Freres, the painting of the deity that I call the Animal Father. Numerous people have attempted to decipher what animals his various limbs and features are reminiscent of. Just some of the ones that have been cited have been stag, bear, lion, wolf, horse, lion, and owl. Curtis himself saw the figure as primarily staglike, with some equine features besides. Looking at a reproduction of Breuil’s own tracing of the Sorcerer, I could see what he was saying, and the more I looked, the more I came to see that he really wasn’t any particular set of species, but a being all to himself.
This puzzled me. I had formerly seen him as a stag-lion-wolf-bear hybrid of sorts, as these were the animals he’d given me to associate with the equinoxes and solstices. However, now I wasn’t so sure. What was happening?
I decided the best thing to do was to go to the source, my usual answer to this sort of conundrum. So I asked the Animal Father what he had to say about it. “I am myself, that is all. I gave you those animals because you seemed to want to work along a four directions worldview. If that doesn’t work for you, let’s try something else until we find something that does”. Here, then, is one of the benefits and perils of creating your own cosmology and working largely with Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG). You have a lot more flexibility, and you can tweak things to make them make more sense to you. However, what do you do when you end up finding that research indicates that your UPG can’t be objectively proven?
I’m not about to say “Well, this ended up being wrong, so the rest of it must be wrong, so let’s just throw everything out, and quit”. Baby, bath water, does that ring a bell? However, it’s okay to admit when something doesn’t work quite right. This is, after all, a path I’m creating for myself. Therefore, I get to decide the parameters. One of my guidelines is that non-religious sources are quite acceptable as source material, including archaeology, anthropology, and other “ologies”. So I find that some things that I had initially assumed were true, to include Breuil’s hunting magic theory, may not stand on as strong a foundation as I thought.
It’s a delicate balance to maintain. On the one hand, if all I ever did was take these studies at face value, I’d have little to believe in. Even the more neopagan flavored things, such as my perspectives on totemism, have been created in recent decades, though they at least have the consensus of a number of people. However, I also don’t want to go down the road of the Irish potato goddess–UPG needs to be at least given a reality check.
And there is value in UPG. I’m not going to suddenly decide the Animal Father no longer exists; I’ve already have experiences that prove his objective existence, if only to me. But I am going to continue to consider the results of my meditations, journeys and other inspired experiences. As I have found in the past, sometimes it’s better to simply allow myself to believe something, rather than try to rationalize it to death.
In the end, flexibility is key. This is something that I am going to continue to develop over the years, a living, evolving path. That means that sometimes I’m going to have to scrap some things and start over when presented with new evidence. However, I’m in good company. Even the hardest of sciences ends up with new theories that overcome the old “truths”. It’s only when we stubbornly hang onto our dogma that stagnation sets in, and what may once have been a growing, evolving things turns to stone.
My schedule right now really sucks. I have a full day at work, plus three hours of commuting total. By the time I get home in the evening, I have about three and a half hours at most to eat (and sometimes prepare) supper, shower, do whatever recreational activities I have planned, get ready for work the next day, and get ready for bed.
Oh, and squeeze in shamanic work when and as I can.
Add in that my day pretty much wipes me out, and that I don’t always sleep well (especially when I have to drag myself out of bed at six every morning), and a lot of the time during the week when I do have time to shamanize, I simply don’t have the energy to do so. Fortunately, since this is a contract job, it’s only a temporary situation. However, in the meantime, I’ve had to be creative about time management, as well as admit that sometimes I simply can’t do what I planned.
For example, meditation. If I’m tired, it’s too easy for me to fall asleep while trying to meditate in a quiet way. For instance, I’m still doing my daily meditation with the spirits at lunch time. There are some comfy chairs down in the lobby at work where it’s nice and quiet most days, so I can get a few minutes to check in with the powers that be. Unfortunately, sometimes the comfort of the chairs works against me, and I start drifting off a bit (and whoever I’m talking to has to get my attention again!). I’ve also learned that meditating right after eating is a bad idea, since digestion makes me sleepy.
I’ve also had to resign myself to the fact that by the time I get home, get fed, and get settled in for the evening, I’m usually too tired for things like dancing or drumming. There have been several occasions where I’ve gone upstairs with the greatest of intentions, only to have the spirits tell me to march right back downstairs and rest. One of the goals with my Earth work last month was regulating my physical health. I’m dealing with years of accumulated sleep deprivation from pushing myself too hard, and so one thing I’ve been doing has been to try to get eight hours of sleep (or at least eight hours of laying in bed being relaxed). Unfortunately, that only goes so far, and even if I go to bed on time I still have to get up and going pretty quickly, when I’d rather get up at my own pace (I can take up to an hour to wake up completely). If I were to spend as much time in bed as I needed, I’d be going to bed around 8pm, which would give me just enough time in the evening for supper and a shower.
So I learn to compromise. It’s frustrating sometimes; I want to be able to shamanize every night. I have so much that I want to do that’s not getting done, and until I’m done with this contract (or find a reasonable replacement) I’m stuck. But I also have to admit my current limitations and learn to work within them. Therefore, I do more on the weekends, and I spend the week mostly doing less strenuous activities like writing or reading. I also remind myself that I need to pace myself, and that this schedule won’t last forever.
And, occasionally, I find I have an evening where maybe I’m not so tired, and I’m awake enough to make something happen. But until that happens, it’s best to not push myself too hard. Quality over quantity, and all things will happen in their own time.
In the past few months since I started this blog, I’ve had a few folks tell me that my work has inspired them in their own spiritual paths, or that, independent of what I’m doing, they find themselves in similar situations. So I’m not the only one who’s been seeking a more formal path, a closer connection to the Divine, and a more regular practice. I find this to be an excellent set of events, personally. One of my goals with this blog, along with helping me to keep track of my progress, is to demonstrate one person’s progress in creating a formal path essentially from scratch. While there are numerous elaborate and spiritually fulfilling traditions and religions out there whose adherents are quite satisfied (and in some cases are contributing to a great deal of positive growth), some of us prefer to wear down our own trails in the grass.
I do know that at least a couple of the aforementioned folks have their own spiritually-focused blogs that I’ve enjoyed getting to read. It’s nice getting to compare notes with other folks, whether they’re on a shamanic path or not. And while there are plenty of resources on how to be a solitary practitioner of an established path (such as Wicca, or as some would argue Neo-Wicca or eclectic Neopaganism), there’s not that much out there on constructing your own personal path. Oh, sure, there are books of correspondences and spells and whatnot, but most of the deeper texts on constructing a specific path, cosmology, set of rituals and celebrations, traditions, etc., seem to be group-oriented*.
Granted, some of that just comes with the group-based territory. If you’re already in a tradition of one sort or another that depends on groupwork, then you’re going to have the cosmology, rituals, etc. handed to you as part of your training. The same thing goes for those who are individual students working with a teacher or mentor. As I’ve mentioned before, though, those of us on our own have to create these things from scratch, determining what works best for us and what’s don’t really mesh well with our beliefs. One of the reasons I’m a “career solitary” is because I never found a particular tradition that I agreed with enough to dedicate myself to it, and now that I’m older and set in my ways, therioshamanism is the best choice, given that I’m its creator. However, I also value the input of others. Talking shop and trading notes are valuable practices for me–they allow me to bounce ideas off of others, and they help me to find inspiration in others’ work.
Here’s where, in the past, I might have said “Hey, I’m going to create a listserve/Livejournal community/forum/etc. for the discussion of creating your own path!” However, I’ve done that sort of thing before, and honestly, at this point, I haven’t the time. Additionally, it takes a TON of work just to get a bit of steady activity going on such a forum, and I’m stretched thinly enough that I don’t need another commitment. So I know better than to bite off more than I can chew.
However, I would like a way to gather a few resources for those who come to this blog seeking ideas on forging your own way through the spiritual world. Therefore, here’s my request. If you have a spiritually themed blog that you are primarily using as a journal to record your progress through a stage of growth, I want to link to you. Whether you’re creating your own path, starting a group, or working through a novitiate in an established tradition, if you’re recording it as you go along, complete with successes and setbacks, feelings and experiences, I’m interested. I’m going to create another section of links on the left sidebar of this journal just for these links. I want to offer the stories of others’ journeys for those who visit here who like using my experiences as inspiration for their own, and can benefit from reading even more first-hand accounts.
What I’m not looking for is personal journals that may include some spiritual content, but are also full of day to day minutiae, memes, etc. For example, I have my Livejournal for that sort of thing, but this one is specific to therioshamanism.
Leave a comment here (on therioshamanism.com, not the Livejournal feed post for those on LJ) and I’ll get you added in.
Thanks 
* For those curious, two of my favorite books related to this are Gathering the Magic: Creating 21st Century Esoteric Groups by Nick Farrell and Magickal Connections: Creating a Lasting and Healthy Spiritual Group by Lisa McSherry. While both of them are rather practical, dealing with things like group dynamics, and the latter text is particularly coven-oriented, they also are good for prompting thought about group-based spirituality and magic in general, creating a group mindset without becoming a cult, etc.
So last night I managed to make up for delaying my skin spirit ritual from last weekend. What I’ve been doing the past few months has amounted to me going to the pile of skins in the ritual room and letting one or two of them volunteer to dance or otherwise work with me. Last night when I went up, I was a bit surprised that the pheasant skin, one of only two bird skins that I have, made the most “noise”. I’ve had this skin for the better part of a decade, and most of the time he’d just been hanging on the wall by a string. However, when we moved to Portland, he insisted on being placed with the rest of the critters.
I picked him up and then lay down on the floor on my back with the pheasant spread out on my chest and stomach. He had me visualize my body as that of a bird:
Hollow bones, scaled feet with three toes and a heel, wings tucked up against a deep-chested body, feathers all over (modified scales), including a tail. Sensitive skin and delicate muscles to move feathers, crest, tail, fluff the body to stay warm. Stretch out the wings, wind resistance. Wings not important in the same way as legs–when on ground, feet and beak used to pick up things. Wings for locomotion. Like the two pairs of limbs were reversed. Stretching wings wide, then tuck close to body again. Food in beak, chew, then down gullet. Tip of beak pointed for precision pecking. Skin itchy, scaly, mites, take a dust bath to get rid of them. Slick with rain water. Intelligence to avoid predators, find food, mate, raise young. But die eventually–food, roadkill, shot. Pellets hit, tumble down as thunder crashes.
It was really an incredible experience. I’m so used to working with mammals in shapeshifting and other magic that this unusual experience really struck me. Birds may be warm-blooded, but in some ways they’re just as alien as reptiles. Not that this is a bad thing; it’s just mind-boggling to really be confronted by it. I’ll do a minor shift to Hawk when I call East/Air, but that’s mainly stretching wings in warm sunlight and clear blue sky. At least with the mammals I’ve worked with I’m still dealing with a quadruped whose forelegs are there for grasping or moving things as well as locomotion. It felt odd to keep my “wings” tucked in unless I was flying. And it amazed me how delicate the motor control over the feathers was. Most people can’t make their skin move independently of muscle, yet birds can move specific sections of feathers as opposed to the whole thing just with certain motions of skin and muscle. Even horses can twitch their skin to shoo away flies. Among humans, you’re talented if you can wiggle your ears. Other than that, it’s mainly lips, nose and eyelids that move.
Of course, birds are more body-expressive than humans. Birds pay attention to the whole body, not just facial expression (which is limited by the rigid beak). There’s so much more that I want to learn about what it is to be a bird with this sort of magic. While I’ve experimented with various totems over the years, my more intense workings have primarily been mammalian. If the pheasant skin decides to keep working with me, I look forward to the experiences ahead!
I’m actually not surprised that I ended up working with Pheasant. It’s still my Air month, and in addition, a large portion of Saturday was dedicated to a ritual involving the spirit of a free-range chicken I prepared, and Chicken, the cousin of Pheasant. Last night’s ritual only seems more appropriate for all that.
I added Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism to the bibliography. That is all.
I probably shouldn’t be surprised that my Air month has been more cerebral than anything else. I got used to Earth, with the drumming and the poking at my body to see what makes it tick (especially the stomach) and the solid feeling of being grounded on a daily basis. However, Air has primarily been about communication, and so I’ve been doing a lot of talking and a lot of thinking. As I was warned, the dream work really hasn’t taken center stage at all. I’ve been dutifully recording my dreams, though, mostly on my commute into work during the week. It’s become part of my morning routine, and I’m getting good enough at remembering that, half an hour after I first hear the alarm I can still remember the bulk of what I dreamed.
Still, I haven’t done much in the way of drumming. Instead I’ve talked, and talked, and talked some more. And then I’ve thought, and analyzed, and imagined inside my head. The interpersonal communication has been pretty impressive. I won’t go into details, but I actually ended up having to postpone my skin spirit work last weekend due to a personal crisis. It got worked out, but it involved some of the most intense communication I’ve had to do ever. With regards to communication with noncorporeal beings, I finally started doing the daily meditations as the Animal Father suggested at the beginning of my Air month. Today was the third day in a row that I managed to remember, and have a successful meditation. Hey, I’ll take any victory I can. Right now I’ve worked it into my lunch hour (I’m big on routine for changing habits). Not sure what I’ll do with regards to the weekend; I actually have more trouble with these things when I’m not on a schedule, because it’s easier to get distracted. (Oooooh…sleeping in…..)
I’ve also been getting better at being aware of my actions and thoughts and words. Not perfect, but getting there. I’ve shown some progress in stopping myself from speaking without thinking, and considering the potential results of my actions. Of course, the problem is that when the goal is to NOT do something, nobody notices 
But in seriousness, I’m noticing it, and that matters quite a bit. I like being more aware of what I’m doing, rather than going through my day in robotic mode.
So this weekend, at the very least, I am going to try to keep up my daily work with the meditation and dream records, as well as make it up to the skin spirits for missing out on last weekend’s ritual. And, in a week, I’ll be getting ready to switch over to Fire. It’ll also have been three months since I started this blog to track my progress in formalizing the best of the past decade-plus’s efforts and lessons. It feels longer in some ways. However, I think it’s actually a record in near-daily practice for usually-spontaneous me. Certain things have kept my interest for years; animal magic has been my main magical squeeze for almost as long as I’ve been practicing magic. But, as those of you who have been following this know, any sort of daily practice for me is another thing entirely.
Here’s to continued success!
A post this week from the Wild Hunt blog dealt with the topic of cultural appropriation. I’ve blogged about it here before, and I wanted to offer some follow-up thoughts.
There’s a rather lively discussion on the comments for the Wild Hunt post (and no, I couldn’t resist jumping into the fray ). It was a good reminder to me that not everybody sees things my way. While rationally/intellectually I’m well aware of that fact, and I tend to be in favor of things like tolerance and free speech, if I get into a discussion on something I’m horribly opinionated passionate about, sometimes my awareness gets a bit blinded by my enthusiasm.
Cultural appropriation seems to largely be a matter of opinion, at least as far as what’s “right” and what’s “wrong”. As was pointed out in the comments, just as not all pagans agree on the issue, neither do all Native Americans (and, one would imagine, members of other cultures that are sometimes borrowed/stolen from). And, while like so many other people, I have an opinion on the matter based on my own perspective, it’s just one among many. While I can sometimes get caught up in the “I’m right, I’m right, dammit I’M RIGHT!” cycle, I do realize in the end that I could just as well be wrong.
However, as I said, “right” and “wrong” are largely subjective. One thing that I have learned (at the tender? ripe old? depends on your perspective? age of 29) is that no matter what choice anyone makes, there will always be someone who disagrees. So I create my own neoshamanic path. No doubt there are people who will A) consider me a plastic shaman as bad as any, B) think that I should have just stuck to neopaganism, or C) think that I, and anyone else who doesn’t do things their way, is going straight to Hell. And those are just three potential criticisms I can come up with off the top of my head. If, say, I converted back to Christianity after over a decade as a pagan, there would be people who A) thought I was “betraying” paganism, B) figured I wasn’t serious in the first place and was just a trendy fluffbunny, or C) chose the wrong denomination to convert back to.
Does this mean I should ignore everyone who criticizes me? Of course not. Part of the reason I have this blog open is so that I can get feedback from other people. I am a “career solitary”. While I like being a part of the pagan community-at-large on a social level, I have no real interest in participating in any existing group or forming one of my own. IF (and that’s a big IF) I someday end up taking on students in this path, then it’s going to be under very specific conditions, one of which will probably be that a large portion of the curriculum, particularly in the beginning, will be self-directed. However, as a solitary, I do understand the need to have “reality checks” with other practitioners. Fortunately for me a large portion of my friends and acquaintances have been pagans and occultists of some flavor or another, so I have had a wide variety of people to bounce ideas off of. This is particularly important since my path has increasingly UPG-based as I’ve developed my own methods of working with totems and other spirits. While they work for me, it’s also nice to see what other people think, and how my methods may compare with how other people do similar things.
And sometimes people I respect have brought up things that I need to pay attention to. (By “people I respect” I’m not talking about internet troll-dom; people I respect may or may not be people I know personally, but who have voiced perspectives that are balanced, intelligent, and otherwise worth listening to, whether I agree with them or not.) In those cases I chew on what they’ve said a while, see if I agree with it, go back for more details when necessary, and *gasp* sometimes even change my opinion on things. While I may be stubborn, I do reserve the right to change my mind at any point. Sometimes people have some really good perspectives that I may not have thought of.
However, there comes a time when I have to say “Okay, this is my decision, and I stand by it”. As I said, just on the issue of cultural appropriation I can think of three different legitimate reasons people can give (legitimate to them, anyway) that I’m doing it wrong. And these are things I’ve considered in the course of what I’m doing. Maybe I would be less offensive if I didn’t use the dreaded “s” word, or if I converted to a more socially acceptable religion. However, I also have to factor in my spiritual needs and wants as well, and what I have found to be true for me. Where would we all be if we all stopped what we were doing any time anyone complained?
This is the balance I have struck on the issue of cultural appropriation: with the nature of the path I am following, it is inevitable that I will be influenced by cultures other than mine, given that the modern non-Native United States lacks a shamanic role outside of neopaganism and New Agers. I am aware of the controversy, and I choose to minimize my impact by being honest about my sources and my personal and cultural context, as well as trying to stay within my own cultural context as much as possible. And while I do sometimes get pretty vehement in trying to get others to be aware of the issue of cultural appropriation, I do in the end realize that each person has to make hir own decision on where s/he stands on it. So I’ve made my decisions, and while I may disagree with the decisions of others, in the end the choices that are most important for me to mind are my own.
YMMV. (Maybe I should just stick that at the end of every post )
(As opposed to opaque logistics.)
I’m deeper into Eliade’s Shamanism, currently reading about some of the Siberian shamanic ceremonies, including the detailed description of the shaman’s experiences during a horse sacrifice. What has struck me with this is the elaborate structures of the ceremonies, and how they’re very much community-oriented events. Even a “simple” healing may involve the participation of at least the family of the patient, if not the community at large. The horse sacrifice and other journeying ceremonies may take days to prepare for, and last several days for the ritual itself. And this goes not just for Siberian tribes, but shamanic systems from around the world–while there are exceptions, in almost every culture there are at least some elaborate rituals for the more “important” shamanic activities. The “solitary shaman” seems to be a minority; while the shaman may not always be completely trusted in hir community, more often than not s/he is at least a part of it, at least in cultures where the people are in a cohesive unit rather than scattered all around.
I compare this to most of what I see in neoshamanism. Neoshamanism is, by the very nature of the cultures it’s prevalent in, more of a solitary practice. In America, at least, few people (comparatively speaking) need a shaman to shamanize for them. And among the subcultures where neoshamans are found, such as the neopagan and New Age community, there’s a definite lack of emphasis on the need for a clergy-type person to intercede with the gods and spirits. Why hire someone else to do it when you can learn to do it yourself? And people outside of these communities may see no real purpose for shamans that they assume are superstitious, crazy, or even evil.
One thing that I have noticed for myself (and this may vary from practitioner to practitioner) is that it’s a lot easier for me to hit a trance in a group setting. Some of it is energy; however, there’s also the atmosphere of sanctity, of celebration, and of mystery that helps to trigger an altered state of consciousness. The power of belief in one person can be strong, but multiply it by many–and that’s part of why group religions and spiritual practices are so popular. We feed on each other’s enthusiasm and belief.
Additionally, the more time that I take in setting up a ritual and making it just right, the more deeply I get into it. The act of preparing a place, going through specific ritualized preparations, and making it very clear to myself that I am about to step into a different headspace, all help with the transition of consciousness from one level to the next.
However, being one lonely person, there’s really only so much I can do. It’s kind of hard to set up a ritual psychodrama all by yourself, even without an audience. So part of what I’m going to have to ruminate on over the coming months is how to make up for the lack of group participation. Right now my rituals and journeys tend to be rather on the short side (a half an hour is average for a full ritual) and I will admit that I simply don’t usually get as much intensity as I have the few times I’ve done work in a group setting, though not necessarily as a part of a group. For example, wolf dancing is a lot more intense when I have my full pelt and I’m at a drum circle, than when I’m simply dancing to a drumming CD in the ritual room in our home.
Shamanism isn’t one of those things that really works effectively in a group where everyone’s a shaman, at least not unless A) you take turns shamanizing, or B) you stick to relatively mild things such as the guided meditation that lasts through twenty minutes of drumming. But I want to get into the more intense altered states of consciousness, and given how my mind works, I know that more elaborate ceremony is one of the keys of doing so.
There’s also the option of asking people to aid with drumming, ritual setup, etc. However, while I think I could justify that for something like my eventual initiation into shamanhood (whenever I and the spirits agree I’m ready) I can’t be calling up folks once a week or more and saying “Hey, I need you to come over all day Saturday and drum and play this part in my awesome ritual where I’m the center of attention, etc.”. My friends love me, but not quite that much.
I can certainly set up elaborate rituals myself. Granted, I’d have to work on my short attention span, but that’s part of the point of this whole formalization process. However, again, unless I perfect at least quad-location (that bilocation is for wimps!), I’ll be limited as to how much I can reasonably do before worrying about the details distracts me too much from actual shamanizing. This seems to be my most realistic option at this point.
I know for a fact that bells and whistles, so to speak, make rituals more effective for me (plus the totems and other spirits seem to like the effort). And I know from experience that the more time I put into a ritual, the better results I’m likely to get. I’m just going to have to work around the fact that I don’t have a bunch of helpers or apprentices, and that my neighbors are more likely to complain about the noise than come help me drum in my back yard.
While my experiences with Chaos magic did a lot of good in that they really expanded my understanding of magic and how it works, one of the unfortunate side effects was that I absorbed the psychological model of magic a little too deeply. (If you’re unfamiliar with the models of magic, here’s their origin.) Essentially, much of the material I found on Chaos magic was slanted heavily towards a highly pragmatic, even solipsistic, psychological perspective of how magic worked. In this model, spirits, gods and other entities aren’t objective beings; rather, they are aspects of the psyche given form for our understanding.
It’s been about three years, maybe a bit more, since I hit the deepest point of immersion in the psychological model. I was still working with totems, but what I read rubbed off on me enough that I *talked* about them as if they were just internal. I don’t think I completely believed it; I’ve interacted with them for too long to ignore the signs that I interpret as proof of their objective existences. Still, this immersion in solipsism has clung to my personal cosmology since then, and it’s been damned hard to scrape off (kind of like hagfish slime). It primarily manifested as a doubt, “Am I really doing what I think I’m doing, or are the spirits I’m talking to all in my head? Are other people getting the real results, while I’m just talking to parts of myself?”
This has led to occasional issues with my magical and spiritual practices. Nothing kills the mood of a ritual quite like a nice big bag of doubt dumped into the middle of the room. However, I’ve been fortunate in that the spirits I’ve been working with have been good about tapping me on the shoulder and bringing my focus back to the ritual at hand. This has helped me to break the cycle of doubt-ritual fails-proof for doubt-etc.
It’s not even that I was ever 100% convinced by the psychological model. Rather, there was always a part of me that maintained, even at my most solipsistic point, that the spirits and gods are “real” in a literal, as well as mythological/metaphorical, sense. But that doubt would come in every so often and steal my confidence.
Some of my Air month work has served to finally kick that habit. I’ve been working on communication, which leads into being more open emotionally, energetically and spiritually. I have a tendency to be insular and introspective to the point where I sometimes get so wrapped up in my head and my concerns that I get a little too focused, and it’s not always easy for me to open up to others. Add in that I learned early on how mean people can be, and I’ve developed quite a defensive “shell”. But I’ve been making headway in the past couple of weeks in learning to open up more to people that I know I can trust–and also opening up to those who may not have physical bodies, but are no less present in my life. (And since they’re not limited by physics, they don’t have to wait for me to open the front door before visiting!)
I was talking to the Animal Father late last week on my commute home. We talked about my attitude towards spirits, and he pointed out that even sitting there talking to him I had that seed of doubt. He asked me if I was willing to open up that last little bit, to consciously choose the belief in spirits over the doubt in spirits. He emphasized that if I was going to journey into the spirit worlds more often, and if I was going to shamanize, that I was going to have to accept the cosmology I was creating entirely. This didn’t mean never questioning my perceptions, or being aware of potentially dangerous beliefs (such as, “God told me to shoot all the meter maids because God hates bureaucracy”). And it’s not even faith, per se, at least not in the stereotypical sense where you never question it, you just go with it.
But in order to do what I need to do in the future as I become more experienced and mature in my path, there comes a point where I have to unceremoniously toss the doubt out on its ear. It serves no purpose other than to trip me up, and any possible benefit it might have is covered, in a more healthy manner, by conscious appraisal of my progress, as well as trading notes with other magical practitioners to get some feedback on what I’m doing.
And so that’s what I’ve done. Belief is a choice. We may feel strongly obligated towards a particular beliefs, but in the end it’s still our decision as to whether we accept those beliefs in our lives or not (never mind the individual interpretation thereof). I choose to allow myself to believe that the Animal Father, the totems, the skin spirits, and all the rest, exist as objective beings, and the experiences I have are quite real. While there is a psychological level to my belief, and I can look at things from that perspective, I no longer feel that that is the only “true” level of spiritual reality. I’m still a big fan of the microcosm-macrocosm connection, but I’m much happier for having gotten rid of the doubt that has become more than useless.
…but the more I read about shamanism in general and the more I develop my own practices, the more I realize that I really don’t care for core shamanism.
There. I said it. Let the rotten-tomato-pelting commence!
Okay, in seriousness…first off, I don’t want to become one of those people. You know, the armchair scholars who are envious of the success of a particular author/academic/etc.’s successful theories, and who take any opportunity to tear them down. It’s one thing to disagree with someone; it’s another to discredit them altogether when you lack the sufficient background to do so. Now, I have a B.A. in English. Not particularly impressive. I love reading, and that includes academic texts; however, the context I’m coming from when it comes to academia is primarily a layperson’s at this point, especially when you get into psychology, anthropology, and the like. So if you were to put me head to head with, say, Michael Harner in an academic match of wits, I’d lose, trust me.
Also, I don’t discount core shamanism entirely. For some people, it’s the perfect thing. If you thought The Way of the Shaman was the best book ever written, more power to you. Therioshamanism, after all, is what I’m creating for myself. And Harner most obviously knows his stuff as both an academic and as a classically trained shaman. I may not always agree with the presentation of his material, but again–I don’t own anyone’s opinions but my own. (And you know what they say about opinions…)
But with that out of the way, let me elaborate a little more as to why I find core shamanism to be insufficient for my own needs.
One thing that particularly bothers me is the attempt in core shamanism (referred to as CS from here on) to remove all cultural context from shamanism. The exact definition taken from Shamanism.org is “Core Shamanism, the near universal methods of shamanism without a specific cultural perspective”. I understand what the point in CS is. CS admits that it is not traditional shamanism, and it tries to strip away the cultural trappings that such practices as sucking shamanism and the spirit canoe were originally derived from.
The problem I see with this is that shamanism, by its very nature, relies on culture for its cosmology. You can see certain practices and motifs that are common in many (though not all) shamanic systems. However, I’ve seen some CS practitioners who literally treat all shamanic systems as alike, except for names and a few other details. This bothers me. If you compare, say, Evenk shamans with Korean shamans, even though they’re on the same continent, you get a wide variety of practices. While Evenk shamans are the classic “soul flight” practitioners (and are largely male), Korean shamans are generally mediumistic in practice (and are overwhelmingly female). Of course, some purists would question whether the latter are shamans at all; however, you could say that for anyone who isn’t Evenk, the culture that the term “shaman” came from.
My point, though, is that while you can find some similarities, I think it’s a bad idea to ignore the differences among various shamanic systems. I’m in the process of reading Mircea Eliade’s classic Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, and between that and other anthropological works it’s apparent that “shamanism” covers a wide range of ideas, practices, observations and beliefs.
In studying the shamanisms of multiple cultures, I have come to believe that culture-specific material, rather than being unimportant enough to simply be brushed to the side, is actually crucial to the practice of shamanism. As I mentioned, culture provides the cosmology that shamanism is practiced within. Cosmology is the study of the Universe, and the understanding of how the Universe is set up and operates. CS basically takes a certain motif found in some, not all, shamanic systems, such as that of the upper world and the lower world (as something other than Heaven and Hell in the Christian paradigm), and tries to plug these ideas into modern post-industrial cultural contexts. It also raises the power animal to superior status among spirit helpers and all but ignores ancestral spirits, as well as spirits of dead shamans, both of whom may be exceptionally important in some shamanic systems.
I’m not saying that you absolutely must work with ancestors and dead shamans as well as power animals to be “correct”. However, this demonstrates the seemingly arbitrary selection of practices integrated into CS. One of my complaints about The Way of the Shaman (you can see my full review here) was that it seemed to present what Harner thought “Westerners” want as far as shamanism goes. Granted, as has been pointed out to me, Harner was writing this at a time when shamans were still considered to be crazy, and shamanism wasn’t a respectable practice for non-Native Americans–and it was the first book of its kind. Still, the motifs that he presented are still central to CS a few decades later. It presents a rather limited view of what shamanism is, or can be.
For example, healing is a big part of CS. Extraction of illnesses and soul retrieval are particularly popular. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course; I believe that the spiritual level of our health is sorely neglected in modern medicine, though the interconnection among multiple levels of being are becoming more recognized in Western medicine. However, healing is just one function of shamans, and given that Western medicine can be useful (particularly preventative medicine as opposed to “Let’s throw a pill at it!”) in my opinion it behooves the modern shaman to branch out somewhat.
Most people don’t hunt for their food. So the need to find game, to appease a certain deity or spirit enough to receive game the entity guards, is mostly obsolete. However, those deities and spirits still exist. My work with the food totems is an example of that. There are still spirits who are angry about the treatment of food animals, whether domestic or wild. I seek their aid in improving the situation, as well as attempting to placate them so they’ll hopefully be more willing to give me that aid.
Additionally, most people today would be appalled at the idea of using shamanism to harm others. Yet that’s exactly what happened/happens in indigenous shamanisms worldwide. Rival shamans would attack both each other and their rivals’ communities; magical warfare was/is an everyday occurrence in many of these cultures. While some may attempt to explain away the phenomenon in lieu of nicer, prettier practices, the fact remains that not every culture has the same morals as modern America and other postindustrial cultures where CS is most common.
And this brings me back to the concept of culture. CS is not devoid of culture. Rather, it is primarily mainstream American, with subcultural influences from the New Age community, and the neopagan community to a somewhat smaller extent. While CS acknowledges the existence of cultural appropriation, by implying that indigenous peoples have “culture” while modern Americans do not, not only does it degrade the inherent and vibrant spirituality that can be found in modern America and other postindustrial societies, but it also, very subtly, attaches the “exotic” label to indigenous cultures. It characterizes non-Americans as the “Other”, by implying that they have a certain quality that Americans do not. By denying that Americans have culture, “culture” becomes an exotic trait, something that disillusioned Americans (and others) may try to seek–and have sought, by stereotyping indigenous cultures as being more “spiritual”, closer to the Earth, etc. CS practitioners who separate themselves from American culture still ally themselves with the “Other”, even if they claim they aren’t appropriating any culture-specific trapping. Many people who are attracted to CS probably aren’t attracted to it because it came out of the head of a white guy with a doctorate. They’re more likely going after it because they seek something Other, something exotic, but without the guilt of blatant cultural appropriation. They may not necessarily be taking obvious pieces of cultures other than their own, but they’re still engaged in a form of appropriation by seeking the “wisdom” of other cultures while denying their own. This does, despite the claims of many, result in a lot of cultural appropriation among modern CS practitioners and those influenced by them–not all, of course, but enough to make CS disliked among many traditional cultures who classify it as “plastic shamanism”.
The idea that shamanism can have all cultural trappings erased is a lie. Cosmology is central to shamanism, and it is culture-specific. Without cosmology, the shaman doesn’t have any context for hir experiences or practices. In reading about motifs such as the Upper World/Lower World dichotomy, power animals, and other common things that are treated as “near-universal” by CS, I find it increasingly apparent that in order to truly understand the function and the importance of these motifs, one must be aware of the cultural contexts that birthed them, and why they are important to those peoples. CS, if left to its own devices, offers none of this context. On its own, it is insufficient to give proper context to the practices it has drawn from cultures other than the one that birthed it. In order to make up for this deficiency, CS must be coupled with study of indigenous forms of shamanism–and I don’t just mean the likes of Carlos Castaneda. Otherwise it’s like messing around with Gematria without having any understanding of the context (from several cultures) that Qabalah was developed within. It’s not enough to know that something is important; one must know why it is important and what makes it so.
Additionally, CS practitioners should, in my opinion, have a thorough understanding of the influences that their culture has on their shamanic practices. CS is not in a bubble. You don’t just step out of the everyday world and into a completely autonomous reality. Otherwise, everyone’s reports of the Otherworld would be the same. As my husband, Taylor, pointed out to me, the astral realms are envisioned as being seven-layered because people expect them to be. Yet this is something that is specific to Western spiritism and the systems it has influenced; it is not in any way universal. This goes for the attitudes CS has towards certain traditional shamanic practices, such as attacking rival shamans. CS often has a white-light approach, whereas in some cultures even your own residents shaman may be someone to be wary of.
To conclude, I don’t want this to be taken as an all-out attack on CS. I think it can be highly effective in its practices, and I know that it’s very fulfilling for a number of people. For myself, though, I find it to be deficient, partly because of its cultural assumptions. This is a big reason why I’m creating therioshamanism from scratch rather than building on core shamanism. Not only do I dislike the claims of cultural neutrality, but I think that if I am to have any real effect on modern mainstream America, particularly in the areas of environmental awareness and awareness of interconnection, I have to embrace that culture rather than pushing it away. I can’t truly engage it if I’m constantly rejecting it and distancing myself from it. When I look at the culture I’m in, I don’t just see the strip malls and the crazy politicians and the pollution; I also see a diversity of people, many of whom are seeking the same sorts of goals that I am, and who may benefit from what I bring back from the spirit world. If I am to make a difference in this culture, I can’t detach myself from it. And, as far as I’m concerned, if any culture could use a few (more) good shamans, it’s this one.
Finally, this is my opinion, formed of thoughts that I’ve only now really found the words to convey, form the perspective of someone who is not traditionally trained, or CS-trained for that matter. It may actually end up being the rough draft for my essay for Talking About the Elephant, so commentary either way is appreciated.
First off, I would like to thank all of you who have made constructive comments on this blog. It helps to get feedback, and some of the comments have given me some excellent alternate perspectives. Even those that give a bit of moral support or “Yeah, I’ve been there” are appreciated. So just wanted to say thank you
As for the potpourri, I’ve had a lot of random thoughts since my last post. Rather than bombarding you with a bunch of single paragraphs, I’ll condense and conserve.
I was thinking more about my earlier observation that healing has never been one of my fortes as far as magic goes. And I realized that maybe it doesn’t have to be. It’s not unprecedented for a shaman to be a specialist. While a lot of the traditional roles of shamans have been taken over by specialists in this culture–doctors, priests, psychologists, and grocers (the latter of which are involved in finding food)–that doesn’t mean that all shamans must be generalists. While I see healing as part of the “general curriculum” of shamans, this doesn’t mean that my primary focus has to be on healing arts. If I were to shove myself into a role, I’d say that what it seems like I’m getting nudged towards is a modern approximation of the hunting shaman–the one who contacts the Animal Master/totems/etc. about releasing a few animals for the tribe to eat. Now, granted, there are still people in the U.S. who hunt for food. However, I’m an urban kinda person at this point, so I deal more with grocery stores and farmer’s markets (stalking the wily Cherry Garcia!). So I see that role manifested as a person who deals with the “food totems” and asks them how I may help heal the damage done to them through abuse of their physical children. I also extend it to other species, wildlife that are extremely endangered, to see what I can do to help them. I may not be combing the wounded sea-goddess’ hair in the Arctic, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a task or three for me to do.
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I’ve been exploring the physical air some, observing its qualities. Now I realize even more why the element of Air is so associated with communication. It’s not just breath that counts, or wind–air is integral to our perception of light. While light can certainly pass through empty space with no problem, air often affects how we perceive it, whether through particles in the air, or air moving or otherwise affecting the objects that light bounces off of/illuminates to create our perception of colors. To give a negative view of this, it’s not just light pollution that makes it tougher to see the stars at night, but also air pollution.
Sound is also connected to Air. It travels upon the air, and once again the quality and temperature of that air can affect how we perceive it. The breath, of course, is the most easily observed example. However, humidity, temperature and speed of air can affect how quickly sound travels through it.
We swim through an ocean of air (I think Starhawk actually put it that way in The Earth Path). It is the medium, the matrix, through which we move. Maybe we can’t float (without help, anyway) but it carries so much to us. If I were to characterize just one of the elements as connecting us all, it would be air. The air I breathe as I write this has traveled through the lungs (or stomata, in the case of plants) of my ancestors and neighbors. It has traveled through numerous bodies, and will continue to do so (assuming, of course, that we don’t go and wipe out life on this planet thanks to our environmentally destructive foibles). Air truly is the element of communication for me, though I’d imagine if I were a fish, Water might be more important in that regard.
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One of the issues with being a self-taught neoshaman, as opposed to a traditionally trained shaman, is that there isn’t a previously crafted cosmology presented to me by someone else. This means that it’s up to me to figure all that out, which involves essentially learning both from my experiences and observations, and what the spirits tell me. In one way it’s good because it offers me a lot more flexibility. Part of the reason I’ve never been big on learning under someone else is that I’d have to take on their cosmology to some extent. While I respect that people have different understandings of The Way Things Work, I want to work within my own understanding thereof. However, this also means that along with learning shamanizing, I’m also building a cosomology from scratch, albeit scratch that I’ve collected for over a decade.
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One element of my cosmology that’s recently fallen into place involves the Animal Father. He’s been rather quiet lately; he even sent Stag as his representative for my Autumn Equinox ritual. The only time I spend any significant time with him is when I’m hiking. I finally figured out that he simply does not like “civilized” areas. He stems (if my UPG is accurate) from a time when humans were ensconced in Nature, and his occasional forays into more paved-over areas have not been good. So he prefers to meet with me when I hike, though a park is acceptable if there are no other alternatives. This would explain why I was told to try to get out to hike at least once a month, and why he was quiet for the five weeks when I didn’t go hiking in October and November.
Right now it’s too late in the year to go out to the mountains; the trails were already icy last weekend. But there’s a large park on the west side of Portland that may work well for my purposes until the weather improves again. I just can’t get him to show up for more than a brief moment, even in my ritual room. Therefore, he sends emissaries in the forms of certain totems that are his own; particularly those I celebrate at the solstices and equinoxes–Red Stag, Dire Wolf, Cave Bear, and European Lion.
I may see about seeking out that park this weekend, if the weather doesn’t get too bad. If I can take public transit out there, so much the better.
