Mulling Things Over
Feb. 27th, 2008 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
Something has changed because I am seeing things again. Either that, or my Elavil has stopped working, one of the two. Or maybe some combination of the two because I've also been waking up in a raw sweaty panic every three hours. I hope that stops once I've gotten settled into the new job. Seeing things again is ok except they like it when I'm in the kitchen. Once last night my waking in a sweaty raw panic was because it sounded like something was standing over me barking in a harsh coughing way. It was a gruff lionlike noise, or maybe like a cheetah with a deep voice. But whatever it was it was standing over me like a tall wispy person. Honestly, no, it wasn't exactly wispy. It was sort of tall, thin, angular and jangled together. These are the moments when I wish I could draw. Maybe it was a tall smoky mummy-shape wearing a Thoth-head mask. Ah... here, Il Medico della Peste 
. That's what it looked like - a tall jangly smoky carcass wearing the plague-doctor's mask. And chuffing or barking at me in my sleep. I think I know what I'm going to be for Samhain. Thank you, bizarre barking ghost-beastie in my room last night, for waking me on a work night!
On my lunch breaks I've been exploring the internet (it's what I do when I should be reading my Net+ book & have no WoW to distract me from the finer pleasures of highly-censored internet browsing). My topics have been dolphins, Brigid and core shamanism.
When I first learned the term, I felt embarrassed because that's basically what I do. Michael Harner's Shamanism 101 methods have worked for me so I use them. It's hard not having ancestry. Most people have a sense of where they come from, but to be honest, I never invested much towards getting to know my relatives or the relatives who came before them. I have no honest sense of ancestry or family history. I have no past and no lineage, and therefore no spiritual traditions or religion to draw on. But I feel I have to justify why core shamanism is fine with me. It's a touchy subject for many people and I can respect their feelings because us generic white European folk have done so much damage to the world over the past 2000 years or so.
With my dad it was impossible - being little I got to hear stories about his family immigrating to the U.S. in the aftermath of the Prussian Empire, and I also got to hear all of Penny's and Jody/Terry's relatives tell stories about how my dad was the world's greatest liar and con artist. I honestly don't know his real name - we all only think it was Charles Wayne Smith, and as he put it, it was Americanized from Karal Dreisbeck von Schmidt. He himself told me two different stories about his own birth - one was on a boat crossing the Atlantic ocean, another was during a flood in Baton Rouge, LA... the hospital he was born in burned down shortly thereafter and all the records were lost. My mother's family (we originally thought we were Scot/Irish on her side) were French Canadien... but more French than native Canadien. They moved to the south probably 200 - 300 years ago, probably to take advantage of Napoleon's occupation of the Louisiana Territory. They later spread through Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. They were horse people, and at one point my great-grandparents were noted breeders of Tennessee Walking Horses. By the time my mother was born, her parents had literally 'lost the farm' and were dirt-poor & living in Murfreesboro. My mother came to California & took up residence w/a great aunt & her family. They were related to some of the guys at the Alamo and to some noted horse-thieves. But they aren't really my blood relatives. My mother's family never liked to talk about the great-grandparents or their own parents - my grandfather was an abusive drunk & my grandmother basically had a nervous breakdown sometime between her 7th kid & her 12fth kid and was in poor health & she just wanted to be left alone w/her cigarettes & soap operas.
Now, technically, if to be believed, my dad's parents were strict German Lutherans & went to church something like 5 times a week. My dad said he joined to army at 15 because he was tired of going to church all the time. He said he was born in 1935, so he joined up around 1950, the first stirrings of the Korean War. Anyway, by the time he was with my mother, he claimed 'atheist', but kept a prayer mat & always seemed to know where East was. My mother's parents were Southern Baptist, and some of my aunts & uncles were Southern Baptist. Some of them were Pentecostal (which was always a good time, I don't care what anyone says), and some of them were a little more folksy than that. They practiced root-craft in one way or another. No one would come out & say anything like 'witch' or 'Vodou' or even 'hoodoo', but there were always herbs and poppets and chicken feet found around their homes. One of my cousins lived on a Cheyenne reservation with his 'squaw' and followed the Native American Church. I think one of my uncles was a Buddhist. And my aunt Elizabeth had converted to Bahai'ism.
So this is my spiritual ancestry. German Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, back-country folk magic, Native American Church, Buddhism and Bahai'ism, with some literal in-the-closet Muslim practice and nervous superstition thrown in for good measure.
Like a good white middle-class American, I went to Christian churches. I went to Catholic churches. I went to Eastern Orthodox Churches. I went to the outer ceremonies of a Mormon Temple. I went to a synagogue. I've been to a woman's study meeting at a mosque. Hel's bells, I even went to a Scientology center because they were showing Rocky Horror Picture Show for free, dammit. But I just don't believe in the western JudeoChristian God. Well, okay, I believe in Him in that He's an ancient conqueror patriarchal monotheistic cult God that displaced the religions of subjugated Middle Eastern tribes, but He's not my God. I also believe that about 2000 years ago, some poor kid named Iosephus got caught up in some socio-political rabble-rousing and ended up dying a hideous death along with a bunch of other criminals. Now, in a way I could be a Christian, but not because I follow the Christian Bible or anything - just that Jesus is a dying God of the harvest, and I give Him due worship along with Attis, Dionysus and the Sun. There's no difference among them in my mind. (It's probably highly offensive, but my mind has also seriously connected David Koresh, Jesus and Charles Manson into this conglomerated religious charismatic whack-job - the Uber-Charismatic-Religious-Whack-Job or something (hey, new bracelet concept - 'WWTUCRWJD?'). White Jesus looks like DK and CM... it's not my fault, I know DK & CM were probably trying to look like JC & not the other way around - at least DK had the sense to die instead of becoming another crazy dude in prison for life sucking up tax payer dollars on cable t.v.).
I've tried out atheism and it doesn't really cut it for me. There is too much unknown, unseen, unexperienced, too many mysteries and hints and clues for there to be no thing out there. I've also tried out Wicca and ceremonial magic and found them both to be lacking and unsatisfying (not to mention rigid and expensive). I've thought about Satanism quite often, religiously speaking it's kind of a joke - socially speaking, I'm probably already there. Buddhism is compatible with everything - it's not so much a religion as it just is, but it's also not enough.
When I stopped drawing a protective circle around myself, stopped protecting myself from the elements I was summoning - that's when things started making sense. The African diasoporic religions feel right in the high amount of personal contact with various entities, but I've gone as far as I can go with the lwa and the orishas on my own. Eleggua is one of my house lares and we're comfortable in that relationship. I give him candy and candles and cigars and he keeps an eye on the place as best as a small cement head can. Even Rob gives him the proper respect. Eleggua's really the head of the household ;) But I digress...
Everywhere I live I tie myself to the spirits of the place. I talk to them and they, in some fashion, talk to me. Because of being in the southwest, surrounded by desert and sky, the spirits here are both raw and subtle. In Washington, and even in California and Louisiana it's very wet, and for some reason spirits are more 'real' in humidity. I never got a chance to go to a Salish potlatch, but if we ever get back to WA, it's on my to-do list. I have been to other southwestern Native American gatherings, gone to lectures, talked to local Natives... I've also read read and read some more. I've also read the myths and legends of other regions, and read the shamans' tales in their own words and the words of others about the shamans. Wade Davis is honestly one of my biggest heroes - he studies (wink wink nudge nudge) Vodou and is a shaman and an ethnobotanist, all in one.
There's even confusion over the word 'Pagan'. People I would normally consider 'Pagans' get offended when that word is used instead of 'earth-based spiritual practitioner'. I guess what I am is a Pagan who practices core shamanism. I am not here to usurp a native shaman's rightful place in the world. I know my skills and practices are haphazard and sporadic, and rusty - very very rusty. I cannot speak with great authority on any shamanstic practices - except for my own, haphazard and sporadic as they are. Generally I don't talk about what I do anyway because it's personal and because I am a lousy record-keeper. I definitely can't attempt to heal anyone from those inner worlds - wouldn't know what to look for and would probably end up stepping on something vital, or dropping it and breaking it... or Coyote would have found it first and pissed on it, or Bear might have decided to use it as a scratching tree & knocked it over. I can't call myself a Druid because I haven't done the work, I can't call myself a child of the lwa for the same reason... but with drum and herbs and time and patience, I can speak with the dead, I can speak with the land, and I can speak with the spirits of the land. Sometimes the dead are lonely, the land is lonely and the spirits are lonely and I can also listen.
Right now, for whatever reason, the house goms are loud and want to be seen and heard. I've done a lot of ignoring over the past few years, mainly out of animosity but Something has changed and I'll be damned if I know exactly what it is.
. That's what it looked like - a tall jangly smoky carcass wearing the plague-doctor's mask. And chuffing or barking at me in my sleep. I think I know what I'm going to be for Samhain. Thank you, bizarre barking ghost-beastie in my room last night, for waking me on a work night!On my lunch breaks I've been exploring the internet (it's what I do when I should be reading my Net+ book & have no WoW to distract me from the finer pleasures of highly-censored internet browsing). My topics have been dolphins, Brigid and core shamanism.
When I first learned the term, I felt embarrassed because that's basically what I do. Michael Harner's Shamanism 101 methods have worked for me so I use them. It's hard not having ancestry. Most people have a sense of where they come from, but to be honest, I never invested much towards getting to know my relatives or the relatives who came before them. I have no honest sense of ancestry or family history. I have no past and no lineage, and therefore no spiritual traditions or religion to draw on. But I feel I have to justify why core shamanism is fine with me. It's a touchy subject for many people and I can respect their feelings because us generic white European folk have done so much damage to the world over the past 2000 years or so.
With my dad it was impossible - being little I got to hear stories about his family immigrating to the U.S. in the aftermath of the Prussian Empire, and I also got to hear all of Penny's and Jody/Terry's relatives tell stories about how my dad was the world's greatest liar and con artist. I honestly don't know his real name - we all only think it was Charles Wayne Smith, and as he put it, it was Americanized from Karal Dreisbeck von Schmidt. He himself told me two different stories about his own birth - one was on a boat crossing the Atlantic ocean, another was during a flood in Baton Rouge, LA... the hospital he was born in burned down shortly thereafter and all the records were lost. My mother's family (we originally thought we were Scot/Irish on her side) were French Canadien... but more French than native Canadien. They moved to the south probably 200 - 300 years ago, probably to take advantage of Napoleon's occupation of the Louisiana Territory. They later spread through Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. They were horse people, and at one point my great-grandparents were noted breeders of Tennessee Walking Horses. By the time my mother was born, her parents had literally 'lost the farm' and were dirt-poor & living in Murfreesboro. My mother came to California & took up residence w/a great aunt & her family. They were related to some of the guys at the Alamo and to some noted horse-thieves. But they aren't really my blood relatives. My mother's family never liked to talk about the great-grandparents or their own parents - my grandfather was an abusive drunk & my grandmother basically had a nervous breakdown sometime between her 7th kid & her 12fth kid and was in poor health & she just wanted to be left alone w/her cigarettes & soap operas.
Now, technically, if to be believed, my dad's parents were strict German Lutherans & went to church something like 5 times a week. My dad said he joined to army at 15 because he was tired of going to church all the time. He said he was born in 1935, so he joined up around 1950, the first stirrings of the Korean War. Anyway, by the time he was with my mother, he claimed 'atheist', but kept a prayer mat & always seemed to know where East was. My mother's parents were Southern Baptist, and some of my aunts & uncles were Southern Baptist. Some of them were Pentecostal (which was always a good time, I don't care what anyone says), and some of them were a little more folksy than that. They practiced root-craft in one way or another. No one would come out & say anything like 'witch' or 'Vodou' or even 'hoodoo', but there were always herbs and poppets and chicken feet found around their homes. One of my cousins lived on a Cheyenne reservation with his 'squaw' and followed the Native American Church. I think one of my uncles was a Buddhist. And my aunt Elizabeth had converted to Bahai'ism.
So this is my spiritual ancestry. German Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, back-country folk magic, Native American Church, Buddhism and Bahai'ism, with some literal in-the-closet Muslim practice and nervous superstition thrown in for good measure.
Like a good white middle-class American, I went to Christian churches. I went to Catholic churches. I went to Eastern Orthodox Churches. I went to the outer ceremonies of a Mormon Temple. I went to a synagogue. I've been to a woman's study meeting at a mosque. Hel's bells, I even went to a Scientology center because they were showing Rocky Horror Picture Show for free, dammit. But I just don't believe in the western JudeoChristian God. Well, okay, I believe in Him in that He's an ancient conqueror patriarchal monotheistic cult God that displaced the religions of subjugated Middle Eastern tribes, but He's not my God. I also believe that about 2000 years ago, some poor kid named Iosephus got caught up in some socio-political rabble-rousing and ended up dying a hideous death along with a bunch of other criminals. Now, in a way I could be a Christian, but not because I follow the Christian Bible or anything - just that Jesus is a dying God of the harvest, and I give Him due worship along with Attis, Dionysus and the Sun. There's no difference among them in my mind. (It's probably highly offensive, but my mind has also seriously connected David Koresh, Jesus and Charles Manson into this conglomerated religious charismatic whack-job - the Uber-Charismatic-Religious-Whack-Job or something (hey, new bracelet concept - 'WWTUCRWJD?'). White Jesus looks like DK and CM... it's not my fault, I know DK & CM were probably trying to look like JC & not the other way around - at least DK had the sense to die instead of becoming another crazy dude in prison for life sucking up tax payer dollars on cable t.v.).
I've tried out atheism and it doesn't really cut it for me. There is too much unknown, unseen, unexperienced, too many mysteries and hints and clues for there to be no thing out there. I've also tried out Wicca and ceremonial magic and found them both to be lacking and unsatisfying (not to mention rigid and expensive). I've thought about Satanism quite often, religiously speaking it's kind of a joke - socially speaking, I'm probably already there. Buddhism is compatible with everything - it's not so much a religion as it just is, but it's also not enough.
When I stopped drawing a protective circle around myself, stopped protecting myself from the elements I was summoning - that's when things started making sense. The African diasoporic religions feel right in the high amount of personal contact with various entities, but I've gone as far as I can go with the lwa and the orishas on my own. Eleggua is one of my house lares and we're comfortable in that relationship. I give him candy and candles and cigars and he keeps an eye on the place as best as a small cement head can. Even Rob gives him the proper respect. Eleggua's really the head of the household ;) But I digress...
Everywhere I live I tie myself to the spirits of the place. I talk to them and they, in some fashion, talk to me. Because of being in the southwest, surrounded by desert and sky, the spirits here are both raw and subtle. In Washington, and even in California and Louisiana it's very wet, and for some reason spirits are more 'real' in humidity. I never got a chance to go to a Salish potlatch, but if we ever get back to WA, it's on my to-do list. I have been to other southwestern Native American gatherings, gone to lectures, talked to local Natives... I've also read read and read some more. I've also read the myths and legends of other regions, and read the shamans' tales in their own words and the words of others about the shamans. Wade Davis is honestly one of my biggest heroes - he studies (wink wink nudge nudge) Vodou and is a shaman and an ethnobotanist, all in one.
There's even confusion over the word 'Pagan'. People I would normally consider 'Pagans' get offended when that word is used instead of 'earth-based spiritual practitioner'. I guess what I am is a Pagan who practices core shamanism. I am not here to usurp a native shaman's rightful place in the world. I know my skills and practices are haphazard and sporadic, and rusty - very very rusty. I cannot speak with great authority on any shamanstic practices - except for my own, haphazard and sporadic as they are. Generally I don't talk about what I do anyway because it's personal and because I am a lousy record-keeper. I definitely can't attempt to heal anyone from those inner worlds - wouldn't know what to look for and would probably end up stepping on something vital, or dropping it and breaking it... or Coyote would have found it first and pissed on it, or Bear might have decided to use it as a scratching tree & knocked it over. I can't call myself a Druid because I haven't done the work, I can't call myself a child of the lwa for the same reason... but with drum and herbs and time and patience, I can speak with the dead, I can speak with the land, and I can speak with the spirits of the land. Sometimes the dead are lonely, the land is lonely and the spirits are lonely and I can also listen.
Right now, for whatever reason, the house goms are loud and want to be seen and heard. I've done a lot of ignoring over the past few years, mainly out of animosity but Something has changed and I'll be damned if I know exactly what it is.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 07:44 am (UTC)Up until now Ive always felt Ive drawn on past life heritage, stuff that comes to me but I have no idea where from and cant seen any modern link...
Parts of me doesnt want to know my 'current' heritage as I like my past stuff a lot and worry when I know it will change things.
But I guess its good to know :)
Heritage
Date: 2008-02-29 04:40 am (UTC)There's always been this undercurrent of privilege and smugness in Pagan groups surrounding people who can claim some kind of 'magickal' heritage, some connection to the ancient people who worshipped the olde gods or even just a pure cultural background - Nordic, Irish, Mediterranean strigas, indigenous tribes... It's one of those things that's always made me feel illegitimate. When I'm around people with proud family histories I feel like a poseur or faker, like I'm trying to cash in on something. Like if I really wanted to do what was 'right' I'd give up on Pagan paths altogether and just start going to Christian church - and not even a nice rowdy black Southern Baptist church with a rockin' choir, but a white quiet subdued Methodist church that smells like stale powdered non-dairy coffee creamer.