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I’ve taken a break the past week from drumming and other shamanic practice, as a number of other things have hit me from a variety of directions. On one hand, the Animal Father has been persistently reminding me of my responsibilities, particularly my primary project right now with the drumming and dancing. However, Bear has been countering some of his demands, reminding him (and me) that I need to rest sometimes, and that it’s okay to take a break now and then. Bear has always been supportive of me taking care of my health, and not just physically. This isn’t surprising, as I’ve always associated hir with healing. However, s/he’s really stepped up as I’ve been on this path, which is more demanding than what I did in the past, to remind me of balance and burnout.
I was thinking the other night–what if Bear, and the Animal Father, and all the other spirits I work with, are just aspects of my psyche, figments of my imagination? What if there’s no objective reality in what I’m doing? And I thought about it for a while, and realized that even if that were the case, I’m still happy that the Animal Father and Bear are talking to each other. While I don’t believe, personally, that they’re all in my head, I do see their influences in my life, and the corresponding behavior patterns I have. I do tend to push myself pretty hard sometimes, and I need to remember that I don’t always have to stuff as much activity and achievement into one day that I possibly can. (Not surprisingly, one of the biggest advocates of me remembering this has been my husband, Taylor, who incidentally is one of Bear’s own.)
Back when I was more heavily practicing Chaos magic, I spent some time stuck pretty firmly in the psychological model of magic, the idea that it’s all a part of our minds, complex as they may be. I eventually gave up on that model, and also distanced myself from Chaos magic somewhat, because for me personally I found it to be an ultimately empty and disheartening perspective. While I value psychology quite a bit (as my current studies and entrance into graduate school should indicate), I see it as just one layer of reality. I see reality as being multilayered, and the layers are more a convenient form of description than a concrete structure–they aren’t exclusive of each other. So I can look at something from a psychological perspective, and then examine the same thing as an animist, and then combine the two together for a third viewpoint. And I don’t believe that the psychological perspective is superior to the animistic one, or vice versa. Each perspective is a set of tools and pictures that allows me to better understand whatever I encounter, and the more perspectives I have access to, the more thorough my understanding. This is why I draw from multiple wells–psychology, neuroscience, animism, both traditional and neo shamanisms, basic quantum physics, and so forth.
However, it is not my knowing these things that is important alone. Instead, what also must be taken into consideration is how I utilize them–and that’s something that doesn’t necessarily come out of a book. I can theorize all I want, but unless I actually use what I have learned, all it is is a bunch of words. It’s taken me a while to loosen my grip somewhat on my enamorment of academic understanding; I haven’t let go entirely, and I still find value in it, but I don’t place it on the high pedestal I once did.
And I look at my situation, and I consider what’s more valuable. Is it more important that I should scrape together whatever mythological, psychological, and historical evidence to support the eclectic, syncretic path that I am composing as I go along? Or should I value the experience and the lessons learned more than that? While I don’t believe that we should ignore the experiences of others as they’ve been recorded over time, I do think that subjective, personal experience has an edge in one’s personal practice. Even if it isn’t corroborated by any known, previously existing religious path, if it’s leading the person who follows it to become a better person and/or make the world a better place, then I don’t think that its novelty should be too weighted against it.
To be sure, I don’t support the deliberate misrepresentation of one’s path. However, I think sometimes people try to separate out the historical/factual/etc. correctness of a path while failing to consider the experiential value of it. And you can’t separate the experience from the facts when judging the path as a whole.
So I accept the distinct possibility that there’s no way to prove that what I’m doing is anything beyond my subjective perceptions, and that the connections to other shamanisms are ultimately tenuous at best. However, that possibility is only part of the story, and it surely isn’t enough to discourage me from having experiences that I find to be not only personally beneficial, but which encourage me to be more aware of the world around me and what I can do to improve it.
This past Saturday Taylor and I went with our friends innowen and Kender to Mt. Hood, where they showed us a couple of trails we hadn’t yet been introduced to. While one was still remarkably covered in about 5-6 feet of snow(!), the other was mostly clear, at least up the first half mile or so. If people and places can have relationships, then I think I seriously have a crush on Mt. Hood. There was some reciprocal interest, though that mountain strikes me as rather aloof at first encounter. S/he’d like me to get to know hir better, physically (rough terrain, more remote) and spiritually, before I try anything even remotely shamanic there. Which is fine by me; while I won’t go out there as often since it’s a decent drive out, an hour and change, I do want to spend more time getting to know Mt. Hood, who may end up being a good place to go when I want to get away from people and into more secluded areas.
The trip to Mt. Hood got me craving a solo hike, something that I’d been feeling a subtle pull towards for the past few weeks, ever since Taylor and I went out to the Multnomah/Wahkeena trails for the first time since last November. Now that’s a place that I have formed a good relationship with; we’ve adopted each other, as it were. Today was a great day for a visit–perfect weather, and though there were more people than I would have expected on a week day, once I hiked past Multnomah Falls themselves, it was pretty quiet traffic-wise. I saw all sorts of critters–ravens, shiny black millipedes with yellow spots down the sides, tons of butterflies, robins, and a hummingbird, among others. The plants are going crazy, too–it’s green as can be, and everything’s rebounding from winter just fine, other than a patch of conifers that seem to have been hit by some sort of disease.
I spent a good deal of the hike in an ongoing, mostly nonverbal conversation with the Land there at Multnomah/Wahkeena. While they feel like two separate places–I can tell a decided shift in energy on the trail connecting the two–they’re very close, so I usually just refer to them as one. I also spoke a good bit with the Water as s/he sang and danced down the mountainside; s/he gave me a blessing, telling me to cool myself off by splashing myself with cold icemelt on this warm day.
At first, I found myself getting cranky with the tourists there, especially since I’d been expecting fewer people. However, I remember the lessons I learned the last time I was there, with Taylor and worked on accepting that everyone else had as much right as I did to be there, and that they weren’t automatically going to go uprooting plants and stomping on bugs.
Then three things happened, all within the space of a mile:
–A group of four people, a few years younger than I, were coming down the trail above me on a set of switchbacks. One of them threw a rock down the mountainside and nearly hit me by accident, because they hadn’t seen me. They apologized when we met. Instead of getting angry, I just told them “Yeah, it’s a really bad idea to throw rocks here, because it’s really hard to see people on the trail”. They seemed to have learned their lesson pretty well, so I went on in good spirits, trusting that they wouldn’t do anything else foolish.
–Another guy, about the same age, had been following me for a ways. I let him pass me, and was a bit annoyed by him, particularly his shirt which said “Don’t like my attitude? Then stop talking to me”. (I tend to think that the trend in “cute and fashionable rudeness”, typified by such things as Happy Bunny and the aforementioned t-shirt is not something we really need to be encouraging in this culture. But maybe I’m just an old fogie or something–most of the people I see sporting such things are in their teens to early twenties, and I’m *gasp* pushing thirty…but I digress.) Not too much later, he came back down the trail as I was heading further on, and very politely asked me if I’d seen the party he’d been separated from. I told him everyone I’d seen matching their description had been going the way he was going, and asked him if he had their cell phone numbers. He didn’t, so I told him his best plan of action would be to head all the way back down to the parking lot and wait at the car. He thanked me, and also incidentally apologized for mistaking me for male, as I was wearing relatively gender-neutral clothing with my hair pulled back and my hat on, and I am not the most curvy XX-chromosome person in the world. I assured him that it was in no way an insult, and continued on my merry way.
–Maybe five minutes later, I rounded a bend and greeted a couple of middle-aged folks who were enjoying the day. They stopped me and asked if I had any food. Just their luck, I happened to have a couple of extra granola bars I wasn’t going to need. I tried to just give them to them, but they insisted on paying me, and the man pressed five ones into my hand despite my protestations. Normally I’d think $2.50 was pretty damned steep for a granola bar, but having been in a similar, very hungry situation, in their place I’d have been that grateful, too! I checked to make sure they knew where they were going, and that they had enough water, and we parted ways with a smile.
I didn’t really think about the first incident in any meaningful way. However, when the second one happened, I started to make the connection between my lessons of tolerance from that Land, and what had been happening. The third incident was just the clue-by-four whapping me in the head. so I asked the Land what was up. S/he told me that s/he wanted me to help her help the people. We’d already established that s/he didn’t mind people being there, and made it hir task to educate them as much as possible about the need to preserve wild places like hir. S/he told me that I wasn’t particularly special, and that she talked to everybody there–I just happened to be one of the folks who noticed it on a conscious level. However, as our relationship has deepened, there’s been a greater need for me to make more of a commitment to hir, and s/he finally was able to get through to me what s/he needs me to do.
Today was an object lesson in some of the basics of what I can do for Multnomah/Wahkeena–pick up trash along the trail as usual, bring along some extra food and water, give people directions, offer a cell phone in case of need, bring a first aid kit, etc. In addition, I think I’m going to go ahead and go through first aid and CPR training as I’ve been meaning to for a while. And I picked up some volunteering information for the Multnomah Falls trail system in general; they need some help with general maintenance as well as information, so I may add that into my volunteering (along with my unofficial guide/guardian/etc. work that has been initiated today).
To finish up my hike, I went down the western part of loop around Wahkeena, my favorite part of that trail. And I got a few more affirmations that I was on the right path, figuratively and literally! First, at the crossroads where the connecting trail meets the Wahkeena loop, where I always sit and take a break, the Animal Father poked me and told me that next time I came alone, he wanted me to hike up to the place further up the mountain where I’d met him back last fall and where I’d heard him speaking through the owl’s hoot last time I visited with Taylor, and that he wanted me to bring my drum.
Then the very next people I met as I came down the mountain had a very friendly German shepherd, my favorite kind of dog, who came right up and said “Hi!” with a big slurp across my face (I don’t mind dog “kisses” at all–cleaner mouths than people, and I can always go and wash my face afterwards). After that I gave a few more people directions, and also showed another couple of folks where a Stellar’s Jay was hopping through the tree branches.
So overall it was a really inspiring day. I feel like I’ve made a major step forward in my shamanic path, since one thing I’ve known I’ve needed to do is care for the Land and maintain a good relationship with hir. I feel like I’ve been given a certain amount of responsibility that I’ve never been given before by the spirits, and I want to honor and respect that. I know there’s room for me to be, well, me, with all my mistakes and so forth, but I’m very much honored by what happened today.
Sunday afternoon, my husband Taylor and I went for a seven mile hike out at Multnomah Falls. It was the first time I’d been out there since last November, and I really had missed it there (it missed me too, apparently!) We went on a trail I hadn’t walked before, though Taylor had been there on his own. The weather was perfect, and I felt rested and energized–I didn’t really feel tired at all until the last mile. Of course, such a long hike called for a post-hike trip to Burgerville, the Pacific Northwest’s regional chain of sustainably produced, not-full-of-ick-and-grease, burger joint.
But I digress.
It being the first really nice weather we’d had in a while, and being a Sunday, people were out in force; Multnomah Falls is a popular place, and you have to do some hiking to get past the touristy areas. It took longer than I expected, and I started to get grouchy. For me, hiking is a way to get away from most people, not hang out with them. I started getting snarly after a while.
At one point I complained “I wish these people weren’t here. The sad thing is, they’re probably mostly just going to go back home and keep living their usual lives, never thinking about the connection between the pristine condition of this place, and their environmentally unfriendly actions every day”. To which Taylor (who is used to my rantiness on the occasions where my temper still gets the best of me despite my efforts to the contrary) replied, “So how do you know that’s what they’re going to do?” I think I sputtered something about the litter on the ground, and other such things. I tend to be territorial about places I like, even when I have absolutely no claim to them whatsoever (yes, it’s silly of me).
Tay then said, “You don’t know what these people will do. Maybe they are learning and gaining an appreciation for this place. And after all, if your role as a shaman means teaching people to appreciate the wilderness, maybe you need to remember that people need to have this opportunity. Maybe, like me, they’ll get it figured out in time”, and he had a point. When I met him, he wasn’t all that interested in environmentalism, though he wasn’t against it, either. However, I’ve had a pretty solid impact on him in our relationship, and he’s adopted a lot of the same practices and mindfulness I have. We’ve had some good discussions about it, and that’s gotten us both to think.
Then I decided to talk to the Land. I went on a side trail down to the river we were walking along, and opened myself to the Land. What s/he said supported what Taylor had told me. S/he said that hir role at this point was to teach people to appreciate what was still relatively clean, though a bit of pollution had taken its toll in recent years. S/he told me to bring people to hir and to help teach them that appreciation and to make that connection with their everyday lives, that places just like hir had been destroyed or were in danger from our everyday practices.
S/he talked to me further about the concept of teaching, and basically explained that I did not (as I had been concerned in the past) have to take on full time students at this time. Instead, I mainly need to be teaching various lessons through various means as I learn and become comfortable with them. So, for example, my Three Seeds workshop that I held a couple of weeks ago, wherein I brought paganism, environmentalism, and community building all together in the process of gardening, counts as one way of fulfilling this need. Another is a proposed series of animal magic classes I may be teaching later this year in Portland. I can start with relatively short-term, low-commitment things like this, and then work up to more intensive things as I go along. This is a huge relief, believe me!
So that was a good reminder to me, that if I am going to help other people to understand that the Land and all hir denizens are sacred, then I have to accept that they all have equal access, and that some of them unfortunately will still do dumbass things like litter, and break down saplings for no reason, and so forth–but others won’t. It’s a good reminder of one teaching of Wolf’s that really rings true to my experience–Wolf connects with all to connect with a few. One would hope, though, that more than a few would “get it”!
It is good to also be reminded that lessons come in many ways and many forms. (Another one of this basic things that is good to remember no matter how long you’ve been practicing!) Just another good reason to keep one’s ears and eyes open (and, sometimes, one’s mouth shut as well).
Later on, as we stopped at our usual crosstrails to rest before descending the mountain, I heard an owl hooting slowly and quietly maybe 200 or so yards away in the woods. at the same time, I felt the presence of the Animal Father. No, I don’t think it was a disembodied voice–I’d lay money down that there was a physical owl there. However, I firmly believe that deities, spirits, and other such beings may use physical phenomena to make themselves known. I do not think it’s nearly as common as people might think–just because a squirrel runs across your path, it doesn’t automatically mean that Squirrel is your totem. What separated this event from any other encounter with critters that day (including a chipmunk, a hummingbird, and a bunch of white butterflies) was that I definitely felt the Animal Father’s presence. He was pleased that I was there, out in the wilderness again. He likes being in contact with me there more than other places, and he simply dropped by to say so.
Since I’ve started my new telecommuting job, I’ve started my day with meditation. Wolf has made it clear that s/he wants me to start working with hir more intensely, so tonight I’ll go up and start working on a drumbeat and song for hir. I’ve been taking it easy because of all the changes recently, but the spirits are letting me know it’s time to get back to business, as it were.
First off, happy Earth Day! Here are some of my thoughts on this day, care of my Livejournal.
I’ve been thinking more, since I got back from Arizona, about my thoughts on what is being asked of me as a shaman. In the past month, my understanding of just what it is I’m supposed to do has deepened quite a bit. “I serve the Land” has become a good bite-sized summary. However, a post in a friend’s Livejournal sparked some thoughts.
S/he was talking about hir discomfort with the concept of “service”; hir personal interpretation of the word involved things that I’m also not a huge fan of–mostly having to do with unwillingness and feeling forced into situations and giving in to power-over. Basically, the idea that just because a deity or other entity is bigger than you, that you must give in, and that it’s a drudgery rather than a gift.
I’m pleased to say that my understanding of service has become more thorough as I’ve continued to develop my path and my relationships with the Land and other entities that I’m involved with. And I’m finding that it’s something I’m not opposed to, nor have I run up against any indication that I’ll be dragged kicking and screaming into virtual torture just because some god or another says I must or else.
I think the best way to explain things is that the more I learn about what I need to be doing, the more Right-with-a-big-R it seems. Much of what I’ll be doing already coincides with things I’ve already been putting into place, or am not adverse to doing. And as I’ve grown in my path, the parts of me that are more attuned to what needs to be done–for myself and for others–are coming to the forefront more. I am becoming, more and more, the person I need to be.
This isn’t just about self-improvement; nor is it just about giving up everything for the Land. What I need and what the Land and others need from me–these needs are not contradictory. They parallel each other so neatly that at this point I may as well not distinguish between one and the other. I can simply say, “This is what I need to do”, and I can understand that this covers everything and everyone I am involved with, including myself.
Were I another sort of magician, I might say that I am following my True Will. And in fact someone dear to me once told me that if you follow your True Will, you will find that the Universe aligns to accomodate you. I don’t think it’s so much that, as it’s a matter of finding your True Place in the Universe. I recently finished reading Bill Plotkin’s Nature and the Human Soul (which I strongly recommend) and very much resonate with his argument that part of healthy human development involves finding your soul work–the place that is naturally yours in this reality. So it’s not so much the Universe remolding itself to accomodate me, as it is the Universe and I finding just the right combination for each other. After all, I am part of the Universe–I am the Universe. As are we all.
This doesn’t mean that the way ahead will be smooth sailing. You don’t just slide into your spot and sit on your laurels. Shamanism isn’t an easy path, and while I haven’t been through a bunch of horrible challenges that stretch me to my limits, I’m also still relatively new to all this. Seven months isn’t that long a time, relatively speaking, though I’ve done a lot in that time. But I don’t feel adverse about potential challenges ahead of me. Scared? Sure. But I’m not afraid of the Land, or the Animal Father, or anyone else deciding that I must suffer needlessly for their gain. Their agenda for me and my agenda for me are one and the same, or so it seems the more I understand it.
Essentially, I feel acceptance and peace with my path. I’ll still question things as necessary–who’s to say that I’ll never misinterpret what I hear/feel/etc. again? Better to be alert and aware than to blindly follow and potentially walk off a cliff because you lost the trail in your stumbling. But I am not a slave. I am not a toy. I am a part of the Universe, and on a more local level, I am a part of the Land I live on.
I think sometimes we humans get so wrapped up in power play–power-over, power-with–that we obsess over it and perhaps sometimes forget the possibility that there isn’t a power struggle going on, that it isn’t about hierarchy. Look at what assumptions people make about wolves–if you read some accounts of pack hierarchy, you can see the military-flavored overlay that has been applied to that social structure, and how lupine behaviors have too often been interpreted through human filters. Yet more enlightened, recent explorations of wolf behavior takes wolves as they are, without trying to push them into human pigeonholes. While there is hierarchy, it’s much more fluid than was originally assumed; the Omega, for example, isn’t just some poor beaten-up wolf that nobody likes, especially in the wild (captive wolves often show exaggerated hierarchical behavior due to being confined). Rather s/he has hir own place in the pack, and is accepted as such. Yet there’s still obsession over “Oooooh, the Alpha!!!!” when humans talk about wolves–no surprise that I’ve seen countless wolf therians and other wolf enthusiasts describing themselves as “alpha wolves”.
If we project our power play this much onto wolves, who are our fellow mammals (and from whom we may have legitimately learned some social skills way back when we were still getting used to not being tree dwellers, though chimps also offer valuable clues to our past), what’s to say we aren’t projecting similarly on our interpretation of noncorporeal beings such as deities?
For that matter, what’s to say that I’m not projecting my feelings of harmony and working-with onto my experiences? There’s no guarantee that I’m not also biased and that my path doesn’t reflect that. However, I also tend to believe that reality is a lot more subjective than many people are comfortable with. I’m not a solipsist–it’s not all in my head. However, I don’t believe in an objective reality that’s universal–our perception of reality will always add in a personal touch, so to speak. Even if what we’re being told is the same, our interpretation of it can vary widely from person to person, and even in the same person from time to time.
Given that possibility, do you really think I’d want to give up a relationship with the various deities and spirits I work with that’s based on mutual cooperation and willing service to each other, for one where I am a lowly being who does things because she must, where obligation is the name of the game? I’d rather make a difference and do what I need to do in a life where life doesn’t suck, than do the same in a life where I resent what I feel I’m forced to do. I know in the former case I’ll be a lot more productive and effective. And I think that suits everyone a lot more.
I have my niche–I serve the Land. The niche may change as time goes on, but I have it, and I’m happy in it. I’ll be making the most of it for the benefit of as many as possible.
When I first started my shamanic path six months ago, I had the idea of creating a more formal practice involving the totems, skin spirits, and other animal spirits I worked with and who had been herding me towards the idea of shamanism. Therefore, I used the term therioshamanism as a convenient label, since in my mind to name something is to give it more form. “Therio” means animal, and I figured that since I’ve focused largely on animal spirits over the past decade and change, my shamanic work would follow the same trend. This idea continued as I developed a relationship with the Animal Father, protector and embodiment of all animals.
However, as my experiences have deepened, and I have begun to incorporate more sustainable practices into my everyday life, spiritually and otherwise, I began to find that my awareness was expanding beyond the animal spirits, that I was finding more connection to plants and the land itself. I didn’t think much of it, since I was still mostly working with totems and skin spirits. And wouldn’t environmental activism contribute to helping animals in preserving their homes?
This weekend shook me out of my stubborn adherence to animal-centric practice. Over the past few days I have been introduced to the Land as a whole—not just the animals who populate it (most of whom were asleep or hiding while I made my diurnal sojourns into the desert) but also a wide variety of plants, stones, and the spirit of the Land itself. I have spoken with a cliff covered in petroglyphs left by the ancestors of the Hopi Snake Clan, and with ancient juniper trees. I have had prickly pears and crucifixion thorns as my companions, and I have conversed with caves as I sat in their depths. My encounters with animals were brief, though special—a circling vulture, a hummingbird following me down a path as I walked blindfolded, tiny lizards, a startled kit fox in a tree.
All of these came together to contribute to the Land, sustained by it and being a part of its very fabric. Yet I persisted in my single-minded focus. How could I, an animal shaman, divide my time among the animals, the plants, and the stones, never mind the spirits of Lands in numerous places? After all, hadn’t it been the Animal Father who called to me at the beginning of my path? Hadn’t the animals been the ones who kept me company and taught me over the years? Was I losing my focus?
But as I continued to walk the Land, and especially when I took my solo pilgrimage to a personal power spot on Friday, where I spent five and a half hours with no one but the Land to talk to, I found it harder and harder to ignore the draw that it had on me as a whole. And as I watched my instructor, James, calling on all manner of spirits who aided him, from mountains to totems to various plants, I finally began to open myself up to the possibility that perhaps I’d been a bit hasty in assuming that my shamanic path would just be a continuation of my previous animal-based practices.
Finally, I gave in. One of the main themes of the weekend for me was learning to open myself up more to the Land, not just the parts that I found most interesting; in fact I think it was intentional that my interaction with other animals was minimal compared to the plants and stones. And once I opened myself fully, allowing the Earth to embrace me, calling on the Fire and telling it my story, I became aware of a much, much bigger picture.
As I worked with the Sun, and the Wind, and the Fire, and Growth, and numerous other forces of nature, the Animal Father tossed me an idea that I’m amazed I totally missed before (and yet my lack of observation doesn’t surprise me). He explained that like the Sun and Moon and Earth and Wind, he himself is the embodiment of a force of nature, specifically the animal kingdom. This makes sense to me on so many levels, not the least of which being why he didn’t “read” like other deities to me, and why he struck me as more primal than deities I’ve worked with in the past. Not that deities can’t be primal; however, there’s not the amount of anthropomorphization that often accompanies many deities. He is to the various Horned gods what Father Sun is to Apollo or Lugh; while the deities may be associated with these natural phenomena, they have become somewhat removed from their roles as embodiments of the phenomena themselves, acquiring other traits along the way. While there may be myths and stories involving the Earth Mother, the Sky Father, and other such entities, their primary role is still within the natural processes themselves.
Or perhaps it’s just my perception, that I find my connection with them not so much in the myths and stories, as in the direct interaction with them on a daily basis. I’ve known of people who worship Odin, Zeus, and other sky gods, or deities associated with the wilderness, or fertility, or death, and then deny that their religion is even remotely nature-based. There’s no getting around that here; what I am discovering is less a worship of a pantheon of deities, and more a worldwide pantheistic animism in which the spirits may be much bigger than ancestors or plant spirits. Beings such as the Animal Father seem more to be like animal totems—archetypal embodiments of natural phenomena (or specific animal species in the case of totems) that have connection to all of their “type”, but are independent beings. It’s just that the Animal Father and others embody much larger, more widespread phenomena.
Either way the truth may be, this weekend has made my way much clearer. While I am going to continue my work with the animals, I’m also going to broaden my experiences to a great degree. And this feels right. Not easy, not a cakewalk—the desert made it clear to me, for example, that while it allowed my presence for a few days, it could also kill me if it wanted, or if I didn’t respect it. There’s a definite respect here that doesn’t allow me to just waltz on in without asking permission. I’m much more aware of my place in the natural cycles, civilization or no.
In my wanderings and readings I’ve run across numerous definitions of “shamanism”, ranging from “anyone who likes animal totems” to “you do whatever the gods tell you to whether you like it or not, and you have no choice”. What I have discovered here, or rather, what James taught me, is the definition that a shaman serves the community. In terms of ecoshamanism, this includes (but isn’t limited to) being a mediary between the natural world and humanity—which is pretty much what I’ve been trying for the whole time. He’s just done it more thoroughly and eloquently, and with a hell of a lot more experience! While I’m not going to give up my own “flavoring” and the useful things I’ve learned, I’m going to be incorporating a lot more ecoshamanic techniques in my practice, because they are exactly what I’ve been looking for.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of them before; I first read Ecoshamanism in 2006. However, there’s a difference between reading about something, and seeing it demonstrated. Having not only seen the ideas and practices in person, but actually being able to apply them practically for a few days, has made a huge difference, and made the impact that much greater. Now I understand more fully why you can’t just learn to be a shaman from a book; my own previous experiences showed me that to an extent, but this made a much more vivid point.
A good example of this is something quite simple—the titles Grandfather/Grandmother, Mother/Father, Sister/Brother as applied to the spirits of natural forces. I used to avoid using these terms like the plague, mainly because I thought that the neopagans using them were “just playing Indian” (especially since a lot of my exposure to them was through books that were steeped in mishmashes of practices presented as “genuine Native American”). However, I’ve spent the past few days working within a “nondenominational” shamanic path; James doesn’t claim that ecoshamanism is 100% genuine Huichol shamanism, though his training in the shamanisms of that tribe and shamanisms have influenced him to an extent.
What I found, as he referred to Brother Wind and Sister Water, Grandfather Fire and Grandmother Growth, and as I started to make my own connections with these great beings, was that these titles fit. The immense presence and power of these spirits didn’t require titles, but it seems almost inadequate to refer to them without the titles of respect and honor. I didn’t feel, as I used these titles myself, that I was “playing Indian”. Instead, I simply felt I was calling them by proper names; I felt humbled by them, and felt the need to give them respect—and this is one way of doing so. However, because they are familial terms, they also acknowledged my connection to the spirits, rather than distancing me even more. Some things are less about culture than they are about experience; as far as I’m concerned at this point, calling the wind my Brother is no more culturally-specific than being immensely grateful for a cool breeze on a hot day, or the power of the wind blowing on a mountaintop, or praying to a gale to spare you when you’re caught in a storm on the water. Being in awe of natural phenomena isn’t limited by culture; it is only limited by one’s perception which may or may not align with the perception of the majority of people in your culture.
So I have found a path that really fits, and I have found who and what I will commit to—the Land and all its denizens, whether that Land is the Sedona desert, or Multnomah Falls, or even a distant star. I think I can be comfortable saying “I serve the Land”, rather than “I am the slave of X deity and have no choice in the matter” or “Shamanism is all about fixing my psychological problems and all the spirits are there just to help me actualize my Higher Power”. Not that these can’t be valid paths, of course; YMMV. But this path, service to the Land, made a lot of things click into place for me this weekend. Of course, there will no doubt be more lessons to come, and more recalibration as I grow and experience more. This weekend offered me a lot of answers to what I’ve been seeking.
As to other aspects of shamanism, such as drumming, journeying, the Tree with Three Worlds, and other such practices that are common, I’ll wait and see what emphasis needs to be placed on each. While I will still most likely start spending more time getting to know the skin spirits and practicing journeying with drumming and other methods, my priority has become more about getting connected to the Land. I’ve learned some valuable skills that I’m taking home and applying in my own “territory” as it were; the Sedona desert was a good teacher, but that’s not my home. The mountains and forests and ferns, and the deserts on the east side of Oregon—those are my home, and those are the places that I will be trying to develop deeper relationships with.
Over the weekend I came into the possession of a marvelous set of eight-point red stag antlers, a vintage mount on a velvet-covered board. My original intent was to incorporate them into some sort of artwork. However, not long after I brought them home, the Animal Father started hinting that he’d like them as part of a personal shrine, since Artemis has one herself. (We’re still debating, since I had some ideas for these antlers, but I’m also not completely opposed to keeping them around–and the stag spirit wouldn’t mind, either.)
This whole business with the antlers brought up something that I’ve been aware of since I began working with the Animal Father–he is not the same deity as the Wiccan Horned God, or the various horned deities who get tossed under that aegis from time to time (Cernunnos, Herne, etc.). Yes, he’s depicted with antlers, but he has made it very clear to me that he is is own being, and that the Horned God motif doesn’t fit him.
One reason is because he has a much less “human” feel to him than the Horned God. He would never be found on horseback, with or without the Wild Hunt. He is only as anthropomorphized as is necessary for humans to interact with him, and to bring forth the melding of humanity with other animals. As he is a patron of shapeshifting, something that primarily concerns humans, having some human traits helps to connect him, in our minds, to that particular practice. However, he is no more (or less) human than he is any animal. Even in his anthropomorphic form, he is much less humanoid than many other deities. Most depictions of the Horned God and various associated deities show a rather normal looking man, maybe with a beard–and antlers. In fact, the antlers, and maybe a couple of dead pelts, are all that really show the Horned God as being an animal deity. One could easily see a humanoid Goddess lying in the grass with the humanoid-with-horns Horned God. However, rutting with the Animal Father might be just a little too close to less savory practices.
Additionally, while the Animal Father does have antlers in the most common depiction of him, he is not a “stag god” as the Horned God has more and more come to be in modern paganism. Nor is he limited to hoofed animals, or mammals, or vertebrates. He could actually show up as any animal or combination of animals; he is the Animal Father, and he could be anything from a worm to a whale. While he could show himself as entirely human, he generally does not, particularly in this day and age where humanity is so far removed from its animal self. It would be a most unpleasant experience for him, to my understanding–we’re talking about a deity who much prefer to meet with me out in the wilderness, rather than my ritual room or even the nearby park. The wilder, the better. To draw from the energy of modern humanity, even with the remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer and agrarian cultures, would be too alien an experience for him. So he chooses to appear only as part-human when necessary.
The antlers have become well-known, and he knows that they would be quite evocative for me, though he would want me to incorporate other animal parts to the shrine as well, if I give in to his wishes. The culture he came from and the pagans he has since worked with are most familiar with large mammals in their religions. These tend to evoke a lot of primal feelings in humans, moreso than, say, carp or June bugs. So he most often wears the guise of creatures that cause us to remember that we, too, are animals, and we can only distance ourselves from Nature so much.
And that’s something I came to realize this weekend as I was writing about the term “therioshamanism”. “Therio” already refers to the animal spirits I work with, and the spirit and physical animals that are part of my “community” as a shaman, and for whom I will be shamanizing once I’m trained. However, one thing I’ve noticed during my first six months is that my training has reminded me that I am an animal. I’m not just talking about my therianthropy and that which is wolf in me. I’m talking about myself as the human animal–maybe something I need to know about even more than me-as-wolf. My training has not only gotten me in more touch with my instincts, but has helped me to have a better awareness of my physical body, my needs and my health. The therianthropic aspects are there, but they aren’t necessary to this aspect of “therio”. I could be not a therianthrope, and it would still be the same.
Back on the main topic, those are the main reasons that the Animal Father is not the Horned God. I did a flocked post in my Livejournal about the antlers and the Animal Father, and had a couple people tell me that they’ve actually worked with him before, or are otherwise familiar with him other than through my work. This pleases me–perhaps I’ll have something besides my own UPG to go on as time goes on. Not that my UPG isn’t “good enough”, as it were, but it’s nice to get some external validation.
ETA: Another consideration: I’m not an expert on Indo-European mythology. However, a bit of research brings up potential links between the Hindu Pashupati, and later horned deities such as Cernunnos. Assuming that the Animal Father does stem from the painting at Les Trois Freres (if not earlier) then he would still predate the proto-Indo-European peoples (from whence both the Indians and the Celts sprang) by several thousand years. Thoughts?
Tonight I finally did my ritual to officially finish off my Water month and head into the final month of my six months. I know the full moon was a few nights ago; however, I caught yet another cold which developed into a sinus infection, and Bear told me to spend a few more days healing (she didn’t mind keeping me a bit longer). However, the transition has happened, and the last month has begun. Once again, as with my first month, I examine all four elements together, only with the experience of the previous months to use as well, and reflect on what I’ve learned so far. It’s definitely going to be a powerful experience.
The Animal Father called me into the ritual room and had me sit in the center where the four directions/etc. meet. Then he told me to start drumming. At first I got distracted by the drumbeat; I kept speeding up and slowing down, and I was a bit irritated with the tone because the drum head was just a little bit damp. But he reminded me to focus, and over time I felt myself at the center of all four of the directional totems–Wolf, Hawk, Fox and Bear. It was an incredibly powerful combination, the totems and the god, all there at once. And apparently, this is supposed to be my starting point for journeying in general! No wonder I’ll need practice.
The Animal Father had me recount, briefly, what I had learned from each of them. We distilled these into four basic values:
North - Wolf - Earth - Grounding
East - Hawk - Air - Communication
South - Fox - Fire - Love (Passion)
West - Bear - Water - Healing
These are very much shorthand for a lot of complex concept and multifaceted interpretations. It’s easier to say “Grounding” than “Finding the basis of what’s most important in your life; figure out where you stand and where you’re coming from; etc.” as well as extending concepts to other people, other beings, the world around me, and so forth. “Grounding” is therefore a convenient tag for something much bigger.
I felt very safe and very centered during this time; it was much stronger than the neopagan circle castings I gave up early on in my therioshamanic work. I had a very clear idea of my cosmology, and it imprinted itself more strongly on my brain. However, I’m still building up endurance in my rituals, so the Animal Father had me begin to drum down again, to say farewell to the totems and to get myself downstairs and fed. We’re going to work on lengthening my rituals over time, especially as I start doing more complex things, but for now I need to be focusing on consistency.
So I’ll be spending the time between now and the spring equinox not only preparing my everyday life for a schedule change to allow more time for shamanic work, but also reflecting on the cosmology I’ve helped to develop over the past five months. It still has a very neopagan feel to it, which is fine, because it’s built on the concepts that I’ve adhered to most strongly in the past twelve years. But we’re definitely taking it to a higher level here, as far as intensity of work goes. I’m excited, and nervous, but also confident in my ability to continue with this.
This evening as the eclipse hit, I was walking home from the bus stop. I asked the spirits if I should take advantage of the rare full lunar eclipse and do any magic. Their reply was a very loud “No”. When I asked them why, they simply said “Bad energy”.
Whether that holds for this eclipse or all of them will remain to be seen; they’re being a bit tight-lipped about it. However, I’m glad they told me to stay indoors. Not long after I got home, I heard a bunch of shouting and noise on the next street over, followed shortly thereafter by sirens. Normally this is a nice, quiet neighborhood, but the full moon brings out the crazies…and perhaps people took advantage of the darkness of the eclipse to do something nefarious? Though it got nowhere near as dark as in a blackout.
Meh. I’ll bother the spirits about it later when they’re more prone to talking. Tomorrow is the beginning of my final month of my first six months, so I’ll have plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime.
A while back, in this thread on the Wildspeak Forums, I wrote this in response to “What if it [magic/spirituality] isn’t real?”:
For myself, there are a couple of checks and balances I keep in place.
1. Is what I’m doing negatively affecting my mundane life? If so, I need to evaluate very seriously.
2. Am I hearing only things I agree with? If so, I need to question what I’m hearing.
However, there also comes a point where I have to stop questioning, and accept that yes, this is real. Yes, the spirits have an objective existence of their own, though they interface with my subjective perception of them. And when there is positive change being made in my life, that’s proof enough that regardless of what the “reality” is, this is a valuable thing to me.
This also ties into some continued thought-chewing from my post a few weeks ago where I asked some questions about shamanism and service to the gods/spirits. And having thought about it, I’m pretty happy with my two Golden Rules. Here’s why.
#1: Is what I’m doing negatively affecting my mundane life? If so, I need to evaluate very seriously.
This rule pretty much came into play early on; it’s one of the first things I figured out to keep myself sane and grounded amid mysticism, spirituality, and magic. It’s easy, especially when you’re just beginning to learn about magic and other such things, to get carried away by the perceived Otherworldliness of the whole thing. I remember how awesome it was to find out that magic wasn’t just in my head, that it existed, and that there were explanations for it besides “It’s just superstition” or “You’re going to hell”. It was also nice to know that I wasn’t the only person who talked to spirits as a kid, who didn’t just see it as imagination, and who thought Nature was more than just resources to be used and abused by “dominant” humans.
When I talk about negative affects, I’m not just talking about the grandiose self-delusion of Apocalyptic Destinies, wherein you are convinced you and your friends are at the center of a great war to save the Universe or something similarly ungrounded but otherwise harmless. Nor am I talking about things such as BDSM spirituality and kink magic where consensual kink is utilized for ritual purposes. I’m referring to using your spirituality/magic as a crutch to excuse harmful patterns in your life. For example, if you spend all your time holed up in a ritual chamber and isolate yourself from the rest of the world except to get food and (if employed) go to work, something’s probably going very wrong with you. Spirituality and magic should enhance and be balanced with the rest of your everyday life, not replace it.
Being interested in a subject or having a bizarre belief (by mainstream standards) isn’t a problem in and of itself. When I was writing A Field Guide to Otherkin, I interviewed a therapist about her thoughts on the concept of Otherkin (the interview may be found in one of the appendices of the book). One thing she said that really stuck out to me was that, as a therapist, it was not her job to determine the validity of my beliefs. What her concern was, was how my beliefs affected my life overall. Since I function just fine in modern society believing that on some spiritual/psychological level there’s part of me that registers as “wolf”, I take it as a clean bill of health. In fact, the concept of therianthropy gives me a good structure on which to examine and understand this part of myself, and therefore is a benefit. On the other hand, if I had clinical lycanthropy (which is an exceedingly rare disorder) I would be so convinced that I was literally, physically turning into a wolf that I would be crawling around on all fours, trying to bite people, and be quite unfit for public consumption. Still, I keep a sharp eye on where my beliefs intersect with all areas of my life, not just in the ritual room.
It’s especially crucial to question what you’re doing when it negatively affects someone else, not just (or instead of) yourself. In certain religions, for example, it’s perfectly acceptable to marry a spirit or deity. Voodoo is a good example; marriages to the loa aren’t for everyone, but they do occur. In healthy situations, this does not prevent the person from having relationships and marriages with other people. An unhealthy example, on the other hand, would be if the spirit or deity told the person they wanted to marry “You must leave your present significant other and spend all your time with me!” This is different from, say, a deity or spirit telling a person to get out of a patently abusive relationship and seek professional help. If you’re using your spirituality to excuse something you wouldn’t otherwise be doing to another person, there’s something very wrong, and you need to take a step back and evaluate the mundane, woo-free reality of what you’re doing. Look at the situation as if you had absolutely no belief in spirituality whatsoever. Be brutally honest. If it sounds crazy or toxic from that perspective, if it’s something you would tell other people not to do, then there’s a good chance you need to really seriously consider your choices.
Now, the concept of negative effect is open to interpretation. For example, a gay person who is out of the closet could be said to be negatively affecting family members who are embarrassed and scandalized by hir choice to come out. However, there’s also the consideration of what staying in the closet does to the gay person. Having been stuffed in a few closets myself, I know just how screwed up it can make a person, and how much healthier it is to have the room to come to terms with who and what you are rather than hiding it. Is the other person’s embarrassment worth my depression, stress, anxiety and ill health overall? Is it worth spending my life feeling like I’m a mistake? Sometimes it’s a delicate balance between being aware of the effect on others, and on yourself.
However, if the concrete, mundane, physical effects of what you’re doing are running counter to your spiritual justifications, either in regards to yourself or others, it’s time to take a time-out and have a realistic, detached look at what you’re up to.
Let’s look at the second Golden Rule:
#2: Am I hearing only things I agree with? If so, I need to question what I’m hearing.
This is a later refinement based on the first rule. Every person relies, to one extent or another, on Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG). Even in religions with a well-established set of dogma and rules, such as the various denominations of Christianity or the various types of Judaism, there are disagreements and individual interpretations. For example, one church may be fully in agreement with the idea that “God hates fags”. Another may say that God says to “Love the sinner and hate the sin”. A third insists that “God is love”, no matter who you are. Even so, individuals within each church may disagree to some extent on the details. Having a collective of people who back up your beliefs can be seductive–no matter how many people agree with you, it’s still important to have an amount of healthy skepticism.
And this is something that fundamentalists of all religions (yes, pagans have fundies, too) don’t want to hear–that our relationship to the Divine may be more subjective than we initially believed. I believe very strongly that deities and spirits are much “bigger” entities than we are, or at least live on a more multifaceted dimension. Therefore our understanding of them is the understanding a two dimensional world would have of a three dimensional being. Since we can’t comprehend them all at once, they show us each the face we most need to see. It’s like a more complex version of the faces we put on for different people; you probably act a bit differently around your boss than you do around someone you’re flirting with!
I also don’t believe that deities and spirits communicate to us in words. When I communicate with the totems, or the Animal Father, I don’t think they’re speaking English to me. Rather, whether they communicate through energy or emotions or some other force, the best way for me to interpret it, at least initially, is through words and, to a lesser extent, images. Sometimes, though, with an entity I have a good connection with, I can open myself temporarily to pure stream of consciousness that transcends the limitations of words–but still makes sense. However, even then, that information is filtered through my tunnel vision, my experiences and my headspace. In other words, as an anonymous person put it, “You know you have created God in your own image when your God hates the same people you do”.
And this is why we need to be wary when we’re only hearing what we want to hear. It’s very easy to misinterpret things, or to selectively use them to justify our position on something. Religious fundamentalism comes about when a person of any religion insists that the way they understand things is the most correct way to interact with that deity/spirit/etc. and anyone else is doing it wrong. While simple disagreement is more common, everything from murder to war has been justified by “God told me to….”. When your belief tells you it’s okay to negatively impact someone else’s life (especially if you think “It’s for their own good”), there’s a damned good chance that you’re actually using religion as an excuse to further your own personal agenda, even if you don’t consciously realize it. As numerous tyrants have learned over the years, religion is a great veneer for political and social agendas–it gets people emotionally riled up, and their rationality goes right out the window.
But remember the last part of my post?
However, there also comes a point where I have to stop questioning, and accept that yes, this is real. Yes, the spirits have an objective existence of their own, though they interface with my subjective perception of them. And when there is positive change being made in my life, that’s proof enough that regardless of what the “reality” is, this is a valuable thing to me.
Caution is good. Questioning is good. However, if what I am doing is overwhelmingly constructive, and if it isn’t being used as a justification for screwing someone (myself included) over in a way I would not normally do, then I’m more likely to move forward. One way that I know therioshamanism has been good for me is that I look back over the time since I started my initial training in September, and I see where what I have done and learned has provided me with very useful tools that I’ve been able to use to improve situations in my life overall. I have become a better, healthier person through it, and I feel more confident in my ability to help others do the same. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep a watchful eye on any negative “side effects”, but I can point to very concrete, physical ways in which my spirituality has had a positive effect on my life. If other people point out blind spots, then they can be dealt with.
However, overall I can say that the path I have walked for over a decade, and most recently therioshamanism, has contributed greatly to my overall health and happiness, and to making me a better person. It has also helped me to become more aware of the world around me and my impact on it, and while I haven’t yet achieved perfection, I have many tools at my disposal to help me get a little closer. My Golden Rules give me the focus and grounding I need to continue in this endeavor.
Last night I finally found time and energy to do the ritual I promised to Artemis, to say a temporary farewell to her so I could allow the Animal Father to have a more pronounced effect in my life. A little later than I thought, but better to do it when I’m actually feeling up to it.
I started by putting on the ritual gown I’ve worn for years, and which I’ll be retiring for the time being other than for one pre-scheduled exception. I then began to talk about the night we first “met”, so to speak. She asked me to dance, simply dance, as I had ten years before. So I started slowly pacing back and forth around the room in the moonlight–just like before–and let the energy slowly move me into a dance. Once I hit the rhythm, though, I let myself go once again, ecstatic. As I danced I spoke with her, telling her that there was no way I could ever repay her for everything she’s done to help me over the years, and that I appreciated everything.
Artemis then asked me to sit before my altar and simply listen. She told me she was proud of me, even with the rough spots over the years, and she seemed really pleased with how I turned out. Then she told me that at some point in the future, she would come back, and she would call me to her again, but for something more intense. She asked me to kiss her, and I saw her before me in my mind’s eye. I did, and I felt/saw an archer’s bow made of silver enter me when I inhaled, through my lips and down into the center of my body, shining like the crescent moon overhead. I could feel her essence in it, and felt it as her promise to return.
She told me that the shamanism was the Animal Father’s gift to me, and that later on she would return to give her own gift, but for now I should focus on my shamanic practice. She didn’t indicate when that would be, other than that it wouldn’t be a conflict with the shamanism. Nor did it seem she would replace the Animal Father, either. So it may be that, long after I gave up on the popular “I must have a God and a Goddess to be complete” newbie stage, it looks as though I may end up with just that!*
After that, we said our goodbyes, and the Animal Father came in. He greeted me, and sat down to talk to me a bit about what’s to come. Should I choose to continue to walk this path after my first six months are over, his tasks for the second six months are thus:
–Dedicate each week to a different one of my skin spirits, to get to know each one better, and to come up with a drum rhythm, dance and song for each.
–Practice journeying with the drum at least once a week.
–Use the prayer beads once a day (this one has a bit of flexibility since it can take a while, but daily is preferred).
If I do well with these, I may get even more asked of me (ack!) For the time being, though, in addition to my daily prayers/etc. this seems manageable for where I am now.
I’ll be curious to see where the next six weeks take me as the spiritual changeover happens. It’s not going to be huge, instant ka-blammo or anything like that, but change nonetheless. And while I can feel Artemis’ presence has diminished a lot, I’m okay with that now, I have a sense of closure, and I’m ready to move on. She’ll be back eventually, but for now, I have this path to walk.
* Though they’re not a “matched set” as some people feel a God and Goddess must be. Nor is this “shamanic Wicca”. Though (neo)Wicca seems to be the open-source neopagan religion of choice, I actually am trying to distance myself from more general neopagan practices and more towards something resembling traditional shamanism but tailored towards my own cultural context.
It is February 8, 2008 (just barely–53 minutes left).
Ten years ago tonight, I was nineteen and home after a date with my then-boyfriend. The relationship was just beginning to deteriorate; by September it would be over after two and a half years. I had been studying magic and paganism for a couple of years, but hadn’t really focused myself. I was a sophomore in college, and still living with my parents to try to get through college without student loans.
Little did I know that I was on the verge of a change. While I spent most of my teen years rather isolated since I didn’t have much in the way of friends until college, my twenties ended up being roaring, to say the very least! On the cusp of that incredible decade, I met Artemis for the first time. I think she had always been there, but hadn’t really had a good opportunity to introduce herself. I remember being vaguely dissatisfied with my relationship with my boyfriend, and so it shouldn’t have surprised me that what would happen that night would help me to break out of some bad patterns, including with relationships.
There I was in my room, with the moonlight streaming in (the moon was not quite full). And then I had the sudden urge–to dance. I had never danced before. I had always been that one at the school dances who sat on the sidelines, scared to go out there. I had been so out of touch with what was popular I didn’t even recognize the music. And I was terribly self-conscious, so the concept of dancing was alien to me. Yet there, alone in the moonlight, I danced, and I danced freeform. Back and forth around the bed I danced, exulting in the beauty of the light, the feeling of my graceful body, the sheer joy of not giving a damn what anyone thought. And in that moment Artemis made herself known to me, and told me I was hers.
I don’t remember what she told me, exactly. But from that moment on, I began to change. I became more independent and self-assertive. I became more bold in my relationships. I stopped hemming and hawing about paganism, and decided to just dive on in. And over the next decade I would do my best to emulate this goddess I admired so much, and who taught me a lot just through her example.
She never demanded strict worship from me; all she asked was that I come and talk to her every February 8 in remembrance of that first night. And so I have done so every year. Sometimes I did a formal ritual; other times we simply took a walk together. This year she came and chatted with me as I walked from work to the train station. She told me that the reason she never demanded a lot from me was that she wanted me to grow with my own mind and heart, that she wanted me to be wild, not domesticated. It left a lot to be desired in the discipline department, but she felt I honored her through my freedom and growth as an individual, something I needed a lot more than living by rank-and-file.
Today, though, was different. A year ago, when I spoke with her, she told me that a male god would be coming into my life soon–she didn’t tell me who, but she told me to prepare to work with him more closely. Not that she would go away entirely, but she would step back and let him take over for a while. And it turns out that that god was the Animal Father, with whom I’ll be working more closely for the time being. While I still haven’t made the final decision to take the shamanism route, I will be working with him one way or another. So this weekend the change will happen, and start a new phase.
The changes in me and my life won’t be immediately apparent, of course. Nothing like that really happens overnight, no matter how big the catalyst. But I am changing my life-role, so to speak. I’m going from the young maiden running wild through the woods, traveling hither and yon on her own, learning to be herself, but ultimately rootless, to the one who protects and sustains the tribe, maintaining good relations with the land we rely on for life. My need in the past year or so to start settling down, my marriage a year and a half ago, my growing interest in sustainable living–these are all things that are necessary to this new stage of life, and adhering to the archetype that is presented as a role model for me. It’s time to take the things learned in the past decade, and make something new of them. My most immediate “tribe” may consist of me, my husband, and our cats, but there are numerous people and other living beings that I can help.
I’ll admit, I am a little scared, and sad. I think I just got so used to Artemis’ constant presence that I never thought of being without her. It’s not that I can’t still talk to her; it’s just that her influence will be a lot less, and the Animal Father’s much more. While I’m exciting about continuing to grow, there’s still sadness that this phase of my life is ending, one that was really important to developing who I am. This November I’ll be turning thirty, but I’m less worried about that than about this marker of time.
But she’ll still be around; I’m not losing her. And I know she’ll let me know if I’m in need of her guidance (if I don’t think to ask!). I was going to do a ritual tonight, but I’m just too damned tired. So tomorrow will do. Believe it or not, this is pretty incredible for me. Before I started on the therioshamanism path, it was not at all uncommon for me to put off rituals for weeks or even months (a couple got postponed for years), or not done at all. So a delay of a day is pretty good. I still want to be more consistent, but this will do.
And I know she’s proud of me.
Wow! Between the comments here and LJ, I had about four dozen replies! I’ve done my best to reply in turn, though here I’m going to address some of the common themes I saw in people’s replies. But I do want to thank you all again; this has really helped to give me food for thought, and readjusted my perceptions of Intense Paths to something more realistic. (I also have about eight billion more books to look up 
Devious people, recommending even more books I can’t buy right this moment!)
So here are a few things I saw running through a lot of the responses:
–The big, bad changes are actually for mutual benefit (with a few exceptions).
This is actually in alignment with a lot of my experiences in the past. Let me give you a brief lesson in the history of Lupa. In 2002, I was living in Pittsburgh with my then-fiance with whom I had an increasingly unhealthy (for both of us) relationship. I quit a rather miserable job at a veterinary clinic and ended up working for Clean Water Action, an environmental nonprofit, as a field canvasser. I started in July, and in September I and three other people from that office got shipped out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to A) help Democrat Tim Johnson win the senatorial campaign and B) inform the people of Sioux Falls that the Big Sioux River, their main water supply, was so filthy that there were measurable amounts of pig waste and pesticides in their tap water.
I’ll spare you the details; needless to say, having three months away from Pittsburgh was a major catalyst and broke me out of a bunch of stagnation in my life at the time. Upon my return I broke up with my fiance, took over our apartment, and proceeded to live on my own for the next three and a half years, with a couple of relationships along the way, as well as a fling or three. I also overhauled my spiritual practices, completely rediscovered myself more than once, and in short did all the self-searching and streamlining I hadn’t been able to do when A) living with my parents, including all the way through college, and B) living with a significant other. This included some pretty disorganized times, such as the eight months in 2004-5 where just about everything in my life changed. Then, more recently, 2006 had me move across the country, get married, go into an entirely new profession, get published, and a few other more minor changes.
So pretty much the entire time since the Autumn of 2002 my life has been in a state of flux to one extent or another. Looking back, while there was no doubt some pointless flailing along the way, I also did a lot of learning and cleaning out of things I didn’t really need. In a lot of ways, the events of the past five+ years have prepared me for where I am now. I can’t say I liked every change that occurred, but I can see where a lot of the major ones were learning experiences, or ways of clearing things out of my life that I no longer needed, but was loathe to let go of.
I’ve had some recent shake-ups, too, that have helped me to realize what’s necessary in my life right now, and what I can stand to let go of for the time being. I suppose my anxiety with the prospect of having even more things taken away “for my own good” is that I wonder how much more I really need, and also that I’m finally finding some sense of stability in life. For example, while my marriage isn’t absolutely, totally perfect and without flaws (whose is?) and we’ve had some shake-ups, a lot of the recent occurrences have shown me the strength in it. I suppose what I really want is to have something in my life that won’t change to the point of being lost to me, and that while it may evolve, it’ll still be there. I know change is normal, and particularly normal for this sort of dedicated spirituality, but I’m ready for at least some settling down, too. Buying a house in the next few years would be nice, for example.
On the other hand, I’m open to constructive change, too. I wouldn’t mind being self-employed, and being able to do so in a way that still lets me have a comfortable life would definitely facilitate my path. (Working two jobs, on the other hand, would not so much.) And that’s a related theme I’ve seen a lot–that it is okay to come to the table with my own agenda. There are certain things that I want within reason, and certain things that are off-limits. It’s been very reassuring reading about others’ experiences with this sort of thing, being able to negotiate rather than just taking whatever’s handed to you.
Just for the record, I haven’t had any indication, for example, that I’ll lose everything. I think the main concern is that I’ll dedicate enough time to shamanizing, and that it’ll be less about my life collapsing again, and more about shifting around priorities. Given that I don’t have children (nor do I plan on them), my husband is quite supportive of my spirituality, and I’m getting better at time management and self-discipline, the only things that would need to be removed are those that have become irrevocably harmful. In retrospect, that’s what’s been removed in the past, anyway.
–The false dichotomy of mundane/spiritual
This is something I’ve struggled with some. In my experience growing up in the U.S., you keep your spirituality distanced enough from your everyday life that you form a dichotomy between spiritual and mundane. Otherwise you risk becoming that person who only does what the Bible says no matter what, or refuses goes out of the home without a fifteen card tarot reading every day. In other words, it’s not cool to be Ned Flanders.
Additionally, being pagan, there’s that whole mentality among some, not all, non-pagans, that if you let your paganism permeate your life, you must be in a cult and you’ve been brainwashed and therefore your religion is bad for you. Or, alternately, you must have been one of those weird kids in school who read books on Wicca and you just haven’t grown out of it (because everyone knows that Christianity is a more grown-up religion than believing in all those gods and goddesses!)
Finally, in “conventional” neopaganism, there’s the much-flogged idea that you do your mundane actions before your magic–you send out resumes to get a job, and then do the job spell.
This perpetuates that dualistic perspective that I still deal with. So I really need to find ways to marry the two without either A) becoming completely out of touch with “reality” (however you want to define it, and B) accommodate the increased amount of spiritual woo I’ll most likely be dealing with. So it looks like a paradigm shift is in order. I’m already somewhat in the process of doing that what with making changes to my life to be more eco-friendly, as well as increasing the amount of daily communication with the powers that be that I have. That’s still not quite the same as being “on call” 24-7, though, and being ready to have my routine disrupted as necessary.
–Shamanism isn’t necessarily a permanent condition
First, I agree with the concept that we do get a few chances to opt out before taking the big plunge. I know one of these will happen at the end of my six months, where I’ll get to decide whether to move forward or not (though whether, if I refused, I’d get called again later is another question entirely–depends on how badly I’m wanted, I suppose). But another thing that brought up is the idea that one’s path can evolve even past shamanism, such as into another form of spirit work (some folks consider shamanism to be a type of spirit work) or other calling. This seems to be different from just backing out entirely; instead, it’s finding that shamanism no longer “fits”, and finding what fits better for who you are at that point and what’s needed from you.
–Remember, it’s not all horrible and terrible!
I think this reminder comes because so much of the modern material on shamanism is…well…fluff. Things like claiming the Native Americans are actually from Atlantis and making everything about crystals, etc. Part of why I’ve been focusing so much on traditional forms of shamanism is because I haven’t had that much exposure to it, and I don’t feel that a lot of neoshamanism goes deep enough, just based on my previous experiences as a magician. However, I think I sometimes veer too far into the “shamanism is not fluffy–it’s scary and dangerous and it’ll eat you alive!” stuff, and forget that there are good parts to it, too. I have to remember that just because my relationship with the totems intensifies, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll become more distant or harsh all the time. And for all the Animal Father may scare the hell out of me at times, he’s also been quite supportive at times, too. And I have to remember that while my training does help me become a better “vessel” for shamanizing, there are also things that benefit me personally as well.
These are the main thoughts I’ve had from reading over peoples’ responses. Again, I really appreciate the brain food, and people setting me straight on what the things I brought up are actually about. Y’all are awesome 
Just to make it clear, I’m also, of course, going to be trusting my own experiences in this regard, as well as what the deities/spirits I work with tell me they want from me. However, I do very much appreciate other peoples’ perspectives speaking from their own experiences. I know in the end that I have to work out the relationships that I get, and that what works best for me may not be what works best for others. But I do appreciate the clarification; I’ve gotten some good food for thought so far. Again, being solitary on a path that’s I’m creating myself (with the aid of the Powers That Be), it’s incredibly helpful to toss ideas at other folks so as to add in an extra caution against walking off a cliff, so to speak.
I’ll reply to comments later; the Plague has knocked me out, and I’m home sick, staying (mostly) away from the computer. Cheers
Alright, I’m going to be asking for audience participation on this one. I’ve got a few questions about shamanism and the actual day to day effects thereof that I’d like some clarification on, if folks are willing to answer.
First off, I want to make it very clear that I’m not intending disrespect with any of these. There are some things that I’ve heard from people who have practiced shamanism that, quite frankly, I question. And although spirit work isn’t exactly the same, I hear similar things from spirit workers about the effects of their own relationships to the gods and spirits. Over the past half year or so–pretty much since I started heeding the pushing and shoving towards shamanism–I’ve run into more modern shamans and spirit workers who have the attitudes I’m going to discuss, and in the interest of trying to figure out what to expect, I’m asking for clarification on the whys of these perspectives. Additionally, it’s better than sitting here and making assumptions about thigs I haven’t yet experienced.
–Being a shaman will ruin your life.
I know some of this stems from the shaman sickness, the illness that comes of ignoring the call to be a shaman. I can’t say I’ve ever been deathly ill. I occasionally get asthma from acid reflux, but I do that entirely to myself through stress. The most impressive surgery I ever had was having a benign tumor removed from my hip when I was seventeen (it took all of ten minutes, or so I was told). I don’t have any immune disorders, and I outgrew my allergies once I became an adult (and even at their worst they just gave me sinus infections a couple times a year). Mentally, the most I deal with is depression from time to time, and nothing severe enough to warrant drugging myself.
As far as my personal life, it’s pretty good. I’m happily married; we’ve had our differences, to be sure, and there were times we really wondered what the hell we were doing, but we got through every situation and came out the better for it both as individuals and as a couple. I won’t say I’m the absolute bestest friend you’ll ever have in the whole wide world, but I do have a decent social life. I have a good job (though the schedule sucks right now) and I don’t have much trouble finding new contracts. Plus I have a good side career as a small-press author and editor, as well as artist.
So should I expect to lose all of that once I get into the meat of shamanism? Should I count on getting divorced, losing my job, going into debt, and having my health fall to pieces? Or do the trials I’ve been through count towards my total amount of suffering (like the eight month period in 2004 where I got dumped twice, moved three times, totalled my car, went into one of my worse cases of depression, and otherwise had my life explode?) Is it possible to be a shaman and still have a healthy mundane life? Or should I just give up on trying?
–The gods/spirits are bigger than we are, therefore we have to lie down and take whatever they give, whether we consent to it or not.
I see this a lot in classic mythology–the gods can be real bastards. However, this view of the Divine tends to be a minority in modern paganism. That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, but if the deities are living beings who are aware of the changes in the world, at least to the point that they understand that 21st Century United States culture is not the same as ancient Greece or paleolithic France, would they not also understand that how humans approach deities has changed as well?
My perspective on the Divine is very similar to this, written up by my husband. It’s a more egalitarian perspective, and it more accurately reflects the relationships I’ve had with both deities and spirits/totems over the years. Granted, I also haven’t been a practicing shaman over that time, so that probably affects my perspective.
Now, being involved in BDSM, I’m well aware that, for example, a Master/slave situation is more intense than a scene in a bedroom. However, both/all parties also consent to and want to be in that situation. So it would make sense to get into a similar role of sacrifice and devotion and giving up of free will to a deity–with one’s consent. However, I have to honestly ask, what happens when the deity-devotee relationship becomes abusive? Do we allow gods to do things to us that we would never allow another human being to do, just because they’re bigger? If a person is in a relationship with another person that makes hir miserable, hir friends tell hir to get the hell out. But do we do the same with deities or spirits?
And that leads me to my next topic:
–There’s no way out.
Shamanism has been described as something one MUST do, and if you refuse, the spirits make you sick. This isn’t just in modern shamanism, either, but in traditional shamanic societies worldwide. What if shamanism ruins your life? What if it makes you miserable? What if the deities and spirits leave you destitute in a hole somewhere, cursing the day they ever called you? Are you stuck? Or do we have room to negotiate? Again, in my experience, I’ve always had room to negotiate; however, again, I haven’t been a practicing shaman in that time.
–If you aren’t suffering, you aren’t doing it right.
Just like it says. How can something that a person complains about on a regular basis be worth it? If you aren’t complaining regularly, does it mean that you aren’t listening, or you aren’t really doing true shamanism? Should I look forward to being Our Lady of Intense Suffering?
Again, I’m not trying to be disrespectful; I’m exaggerating a bit, but I do want to know why these beliefs are in place. I won’t lie and say I don’t sometimes suspect dogma, but on the other hand the people I’ve met don’t strike me as blind fanatics, either, so I figure there are good reasons for these things. So I’m asking folks, if you will, to kindly fill me in however much you wish, so I have an idea A) of how accurate my perceptions above are, and B) what, realistically, I may or may not want to prepare for.
The thing is, I’ve got two months until I decide whether to continue to pursue this path or not, and whether I want to dedicate myself more fully to the Animal Father. The totems will stay