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Okay, okay–I know I’ve been damned quiet lately. I’ve actually been taking a temporary hiatus from “active” shamanic work (e.g., journeying) the past several weeks. Between returning to school, and a few other significant shakeups in my life that have required me to adjust my equilibrium, I’ve taken a break from active shamanizing. The spirits haven’t been particularly upset about this; considering it’s my belief that they’ve had their hands (paws? wings?) in on at least some of the changes, it’s not surprising that they’ve been patient while I’ve gotten my bearings. Shamanism is still on my mind, though, and once the time is right I have a whole slew of things I want to do. I was pretty active for an entire year, so a break isn’t such a bad idea anyway.
One thing I have been thinking about is my approach to magic. Many pagans think of magic as only something you do through a specific ritualized process, whether it’s a simple spell, or pulling out the stops for a high ceremonial explosion. Either way, it’s an action in which to some extent you step out of your everyday process of doing things, and do something you normally wouldn’t do–how many of us, for example, routinely stitch together little poppets of herbs, or utter intonations in various languages while walking down the street? (I fully expect some smartass answers to that particular question.)
While I do very much enjoy the process and art of ritual, I’ve found that the older I get, the less ritual work I do. However, I’m still working a good bit of magic. Let me see how I can explain this best–it’s hard to find words for something that more makes sense to me in visual images in my head, and quasi-tactile sensations. A metaphor that I use for explaining reality is currents. Basically, a movement/energy/recurring pattern of a particular, unique type. All currents weave together into what we know as reality. A decision may change the current one is in, even if only slightly.
Magic, for me, has become a process of trying to live my life with the greatest possible awareness of the current I am in, and the currents that intersect it to create possibilities. What ritual work has done is trained me to recognize these currents, to the point where I don’t need a full ritual to be able to work with them. Instead, it’s a process of “tasting” (if you’ll forgive the inaccurate sensory comparison) the currents to see which one will work best for my purposes. I then act–in my everyday life, not in a ritual format–according to what my observations tell me. It’s worked quite well–in fact, I’m often getting better results for less effort this way.
See, what I’m doing is instead of dictating how I think reality must be, regardless of what the extenuating circumstances are, I am getting a sense of the extenuating circumstances, and then acting based on the information I have. Instead of trying to bend reality to my will, I am learning to harmonize myself with it. This allows me to take into account not only my own needs, but the needs of other beings/intelligences/etc. that are potentially affected by my choices. That is the information that the currents carry; they are interconnection.
How does this come into play with shamanism? Well, for one thing, magic is not the primary focus of my practice. It’s still important, but the single most important element is the relationships that I am developing with the spirits. Apart from the everyday current-surfing I do, the ritual work that I do is dependent upon healthy relationships with the totems and other beings I work with. It’s not that I couldn’t do other forms of magic; if I wanted to, I could pull out some good old Chaos magic and work from a purely psychological perspective. However, because I have a specific aim with therioshamanism, it best behooves me to stick to the spiritual model of magic and to focus on the relationships with the spirits.
See, that’s the thing about shamanism. Core shamans have this tendency to elevate the techniques above all else–open most books on core shamanism, and you get a bunch of how-tos. You might get a few techniques for how to meet your power animal, and maybe a few other guides, but there’s precious little material on how to actually develop relationships with these beings–and why it’s so important. In my experience (such as it is), the techniques come out of the relationships with the spirits, not the other way around. If I work with a particular totem, for example, I want to get an idea of how s/he best operates. I don’t want to just come in with a bunch of preconceived notions and hope s/he’ll agree. (A well-rounded magician of any stripe has a wide array of techniques in hir arsenal to begin with, and this is one reason why–what if your one-trick pony doesn’t work?)
Current-surfing allows me to get a sense of when it would be a good idea to work ritual magic, take a journey, etc. It also helps me to keep tabs on the spirits I work with, since my relationship to them includes aligning my own current to theirs. (Hmmm–this sounds a little like an RSS feed 
) I then already have a good idea of what sort of context I’ll be working ritual in, as well as what I perceive to be the best way to focus said ritual. I also find that I don’t do rituals for things that simply require me to make everyday decisions in a conscious manner.
Less effort, better results. Works for me.
Recently I had cause to be part of a discussion as to whether anyone else had been feeling currents of change building up towards Something Bigger. I see this a lot in the various spiritual subcultures I’m a part of. Something Bigger is usually seen as a mystical/spiritual trend beyond our ken, sometimes with an apocalyptic bent that grows more common as we approach the legendary 2012. The general pattern is this:
–Something bad or otherwise significant happens to someone; or, someone starts to feel fluctuations in the energy around them.
–The person(s) then goes into hyperawareness mode, looking for any potential explanation for what’s going on beyond mundane explanations.
–This may then spiral into a huge self-reproducing cycle of worry, anxiety, and speculation that defies any more down-to-Earth theories of what happened.
Now, I know damned well that there’s more to reality than just what we can interpret with our (subjective) five physical senses. What I disagree with about the above cycle is that although such occurrences may indeed be linked to Something Bigger, that Something Bigger is often closer to home than we may suspect.
A good example is this past week. Last Tuesday, I took my GREs, having graduated from college seven years ago almost to the day–I did well, but it was a significant event for me, and it wiped me out quite a bit. Since last Thursday, I have developed and been recovering from a bad case of strep throat (I don’t recommend it, by the way). During my recovery, we had a squirrel get caught in our upstairs, and I had to do some fancy maneuvering to get it back outdoors. Needless to say, it’s not been a fun few days, but I managed.
It would be easy for me to blow this whole week out of proportion, given that most of it wasn’t so great. However, I’m really a fan of Occam’s Razor–the simplest answer is the most likely. Not the only answer, but the first one I look to. In the case of my week, there is a very simple set of explanations:
–I have a weak respiratory system to begin with; I was that kid who caught every single cold and other upper respiratory bug that came through (except, amazingly enough, chicken pox, unless I managed to get a “spotless” version thereof). Saturday night my husband and I went out to a club, where you have a whole bunch of people in close quarters, so that’s most likely where I picked it up, though I may even have gotten a quick-incubating version when I took the GREs. Needless to say, respiratory germs love me; I can’t say the feeling is mutual.
–Taking the GREs stressed me out some, and additionally my sleep schedule got a little wonky, which meant there were a couple of nights where I didn’t get as much sleep as I needed. Additionally, I began my period last week, which also can temporarily lower the immune system.
–As for the squirrels, we’ve been dealing with them since last year. It was only a matter of time before they actually got inside.
I did talk to Squirrel, just to be sure. At most, the situation with the squirrel in the attic was a good lesson in observing how I deal with stressful situations, but for the most part, it was just a matter of an urban squirrel finding a cozy spot to live (albeit an inconvenient one). That I managed to learn something from the situation is a good sign, but I can learn from just about any experience–life is a process of learning, something you’ll hear from everyone from shamans to neurobiologists.
I think there’s a lot to be said for one’s perception. Say you have a crappy day, where nothing seems to go right. You may actually have some good things occur, but you’re so focused on the things that have gone wrong that what’s gone right goes unnoticed. In this case, your perceptions may have much more to do with your luck than any outside force.
Do I think there’s Something Bigger? Absolutely. However, I don’t believe it has anything to do with me in specific, any more than anyone else. Too often the kind of cycle I mentioned in the beginning of this post is accompanied by a feeling of “Ooooh, I can sense something, what does it mean for me? What is it about me that makes me able to sense this, while no one else knows what’s going on?” People try to make a bigger deal out of the situation than they really need to.
When I think of Something Bigger, at least in regards to the human species, I think less of apocalyptic myths, and more about the concrete cumulative detrimental effect we’ve had on the environment, on each other, and on ourselves. Perhaps the energy, the soul, of the Earth is changing. Perhaps we are feeling large-scale shifts in what we’re perceiving. However, I figure it’s less about the potential for a whole slew of angels and demons pouring out of a rift in the sky for a huge battle, and more about the building damage we’re inflicting on this world and its inhabitants (ourselves included), physically and energetically.
And if we perceive more unhealthy patterns around us, shouldn’t that tell us to look at our own health? Remember what I said about how having a bad day can contribute to feeling like everything sucks? Given how many people just in the U.S. suffer from a host of bad experiences and resultant conditioning, and how psychologically damaged even healthier people can be, it’s not at all surprising when people project that outward onto the world around them. We aren’t raised to have healthy relationships with ourselves, or with others, or with the environment, and it’s hard to keep ignoring the result of this lack of social health. While some people have done a lot of healing in this regard, it’s tough to find someone who is completely untouched by some trauma or issue.
The obsession with a mystical, out of our hands Something Bigger is simultaneously self-centered and self-denying. It focuses on the perceptions of the self, and the idea that the self may be more special in hir unique perceptions, or even more special by virtue of the Universe caring enough about the individual to enmesh hir (and maybe a few friends) in some vast cosmic plot–or even that the plot has to do with humans in particular. However, it is self-denying in that it neatly removes responsibility for any major changes from the individual. Angry spirits? Explain them away as an impending apocalypse on the spiritual planes rather than pissy land spirits who aren’t happy about the pollution and being ignored by most people, and ba-boom! No more responsibility! Or, alternately, explain it as something that’s absolutely fated and inevitable and there’s not a damned thing we can do to change it–again, we’re left free and clear (relatively speaking).
This is not to say that there’s absolutely no truth or possibility to the idea of an apocalypse. However, when I think of Something Bigger, my first thoughts go to things that directly tie it to the simplest answers. Only after definitively ruling out these possibilities will I look further. The exception may be if I get a direct message from a spirit that gives more complexity, but even then I don’t automatically believe everything I hear, no matter who it is. And I still test what messages I get against Occam’s Razor.
In my experience, when something is decidedly not simple, there’s no doubt about it in my mind. I may have to ask around for specifics, but there’s a certain “feel” to something that’s More, and it’s different than something that’s important to just me, even something so important to me that it feels Earth-shattering. We are capable of feeling very deeply on our own, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is involved. Lose a partner through breakup, divorce or death, and you may feel that your life has no meaning–but the world goes on anyway. There doesn’t have to be any significant impact beyond the people immediately affected by a situation; while our actions have ripples, not every action ripples indefinitely. My getting sick and dealing with a wayward squirrel in the space of twenty-four hours doesn’t have to mean anything more than a few germs and a wild mammal converging on me at the same time.
I do think that the culture I am a part of puts too much emphasis on intellect and ignores a healthy approach to intuition most of the time. However, tossing intellect out the window with the bathwater is not the solution to salvaging intuition’s damaged reputation. You are not more spiritual the more wacky your stories get; healthy spirituality is that which can still interface with the rest of reality, rather than running at odds with “mundane” reality. Something Bigger does not have to be about the improbable–look to the very possible first, and then work your way out from there (if it’s even necessary). Even if Something Bigger ends up being more than meets the eye, at least you’ve made yourself aware of the more immediate issues and can work on them as well as the weirder ones.
Heh–I’m feeling just a little silly. Sleep dep’ll do that to me now and then.
Just as a side note, while it is my amazing and great intention to post here every single day at least once, if it doesn’t happen, it’s not because I don’t love you Mainly it’s going to be due to either A) too much stuff happening (e.g., work, taking a vacation from teh intarwebz) or B) not enough stuff happening (e.g., can’t think of anything to write about, ebb in spiritual/magical activity for a few days).
Now, to the post itself.
I’m nowhere near being the biggest fan of omens. I like Occam’s razor; it’s a good tool to have on hand when dissecting spiritual experiences. To put it very briefly, it states that the simplest answer is the most likely. Therefore I tend to look askance at the idea that because you see a crow outside your house every morning, that must mean that Crow is your totem. (Have you asked your neighbor where all that bird food is going?)
So when confronted with sightings of animals, I tend to look less at the esoteric meanings of said critters, and more at where their closest habitat might be, whether they’re known to be territorial, etc. A common example I like to use to illustrate this point is the hawk. Raptors in general have gained in numbers, especially in the past couple of decades, thanks to the ban on DDT. For those who aren’t aware, DDT was a pesticide in use until it was banned in the early 1970s. DDT would wash into the waterways where fish would absorb it. Certain species of raptor, including some hawks, which ate fish would absorb the DDT, which then caused thinning of egg shells, leading to fewer successful hatches. Hawks are territorial as well, and are somewhat adaptable to urban areas (or at least the suburbs, though I once saw a hawk down a pigeon near the baseball stadium in downtown Pittsburgh). So if you start seeing hawks regularly, chances are good you have a mated pair whose territory includes your home.
Ironically enough, it was a hawk that sparked this post. Since I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I’ve seen very few hawks–only one in Seattle, and until recently, none in Portland. I’ve actually seen more bald eagles than hawks. However, yesterday as I was walking from work to the train station, I saw what looked like a juvenile Northern harrier (marsh hawk) fly right overhead. Now, this isn’t surprising–though I work in a suburb of Portland, it still has a lot of greenspace, including some wetlands, perfect for more adaptable species. I’ve seen muskrats in the grass right next to the sidewalk, less than a yard away from me, and there’s a blue heron in the marsh near my building. So a hawk isn’t surprising.
However, the reason it made me take notice was that in my elemental totem ritual this past weekend, one thing that Hawk, my East/Air totem, specifically mentioned the fact that I hadn’t seen very many physical hawks here, compared to the Midwest, where I saw redtails all the time. It was a nice reminder that Hawk was still here, even though of all the directional totems, he’s the one I’ve worked with least on a magical level.
However, more importantly than that, it was a reminder of something from that ritual. I was told to spend some time this month (every day, preferably) observing the interplay of the elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) in my life in different environments. Now, while I mean well, I can be a procrastinator, and I also have a spotty memory–which means I don’t always do what I’m told, not because I’m being willfully argumentative, but because I either forget it or don’t get around to it. So the vivid vision of the first hawk I’ve seen in Portland was a good mnemonic for this.
Ordinarily, I would have just seen the hawk as a hawk, and considered it a cool thing. However, because of the temporal proximity to the ritual and the nature of Hawk’s conversation, and the fact that the sighting triggered a specific response (hello, Pavlov!) I considered it to be an extraordinary experience. Do I think that hawk materialized only to remind me of Hawk-like things? Nope. However, I do like the idea of synchronicity, and this was a vivid example.
It reminded me, reflecting on it at the bus stop this morning, of something I read in Lon Milo DuQuette’s The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed ben Clifford*. DuQuette, speaking through the fictional (though no less entertaining and educational) Rabbi Lamed ben Clifford, makes the point that everything in the world is a message to him from G-d. Now, there are several ways this could be interpreted. One way is the “Everything is an OMEN!!!!” (in an omen-ous voice, no less!) method, in which anything even remotely out of one’s usual routine is seen as important (and often negative). Then, of course, there’s the option of just ignoring everything (but where’s the use in that? You need to pick up the phone at some point.)
I tend to see things as variable in importance. Looking at the beauty of Nature, that’s the Divine saying “Hey, look at me–I’m gorgeous! And balanced! And you’re a part of this, too, remember!” And being with my mate is “Love is a wonderful thing, and it bestows blessings (even if there are occasional curses)”. These are important, but relatively everyday. Occasionally there’s something more specific, a “Wake up and pay attention!” kind of thing. And that’s how I saw the hawk yesterday–not as something that was manifested solely for my benefit, but as part of the interwoven complexity that is the Divine.
This doesn’t mean I never get premonitions, of course. I’ve had those times when my intuition went *ping*, and I knew something big was in the offing. But I don’t generally get them through as indirect a means as seeing a hawk fly by–usually the experience is anything but ambiguous, and there’s no doubt in my mind.
And sometimes it’s nice to just enjoy watching a hawk wing its way across the marsh–that’s magic in its own right, as far as I’m concerned.
*Hell yes! I’m a Chicken Qabalist!
