On Madness, Hallucinations, Being Wrong, Magic, and Belief

People frequently ask me, “How come I can’t perceive spirits/energy/Gods/ghosts?” Others want validation that what they sense – whether it be visual, audio, tactile, or even smell and touch – is “real” in some way. Some see the way I move in the world, where I take for granted that the things I perceive, including things that aren’t easily sensed by our everyday senses, and beg me to teach them how.

You (yes, you) are already seeing things that aren’t there. You’re already perceiving things that your intelligence can’t easily explain. The problem is, it’s happening without your conscious will for it to happen. The things I’m thinking of happen whether you want them to or not.

Let’s start with the most basic. Every person has a “blind spot”. This is a place where your optic nerve passes though the retina, which prevents visual processing. But it’s not like everywhere you look there’s a small void of nothing that follows you wherever you go (unless you’re Eeyore). Instead, your brain fills that space in with whatever else you’re looking at. This means that if you’re in a crowded city, like say Times Square in NYC, your mind is actively creating tourists and cars that don’t actually exist. Unfortunately, you’ll never know which of the annoying slow-walkers is imaginary, because the sense is fleeting and by the time you focus on that spot, you’ll no longer be perceiving an image your mind created so as to “fill in the blank”, but what’s actually in the spot you’re looking at.

When most people think about this, they truly start to wonder what is “real” and what is “imaginary”. They see the two categories as binary opposites, with no spectrum in between. But as any good optical illusion can teach you, there very much is a middle ground, for even when you already know how the optical illusion is created, your brain continues to perceive the illusion. It’s using adaptive technology that we evolved to interact with our world better, but in this limited instance that technology refuses to stop engaging.

Here’s another example: when you drive away from a building, it seems to get smaller and sink into the earth. That’s a literal translation of what your eye is signaling to your brain. However, we have learned in both intellectual and evolutionary ways that the building is exactly the same size and has not (tragically) collapsed into the earth. Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.

These sorts of perceptions are the very beginning to accepting the idea that not everything you see or sense exists in an objective “reality” that you share with everyone else. Tell me you’ve never had an argument with someone over the exact shade of a color – you demand that they see peach, but all they can see is pink. Does that mean that the shirt exists somewhere in the middle of pinky peachness? Or does it mean that in your reality, the shirt is obviously peach; but your friend is living in a different world that only has pink?

The crossroads of all of these odd human mind tricks is something I’ve done a lot of thinking about for quite a long time. It’s about the idea of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Humans (as we know) love boxes rather than Jackson Pollack paintings; they want easy categories that separate fact from fiction. But this is a lesson you can happily learn from your friendly neighborhood madman – that there is a world (or more than one world) that exists inbetween anything that we perceive as “real” and “imaginary”; and that just because something is “real” doesn’t mean that it’s “right”, and just because something is deemed “imaginary” doesn’t mean that it is wrong.

Have I completely lost you yet?

Madness can impart some pretty awesome life lessons if you only give it a chance. Stop fighting it for a moment and let it give you unique insights into the shapeshifting fog that surrounds us. Where perceptions feel so objectively real that to question them is to automatically be “wrong”. Yet we crazy folk know that sometimes what we perceive, either with our senses or with our emotions, can sure feel real to us in the same way a chair or a balloon is real.

Let’s start with the most obvious. You don’t have to be mad to hallucinate (but it sure helps, and it is sometimes cheaper!). Hallucinations can be brought on by extreme physical exertion, or fever, or from drugs like LSD or DXM, or even just from skipping a couple of meals. Heck, minor mirages (like seeing “black ice” on a highway or water in a desert) don’t require doing anything weird to your body or mind. And even if you’re fully aware that the thing you perceive is “not there”, your eyes and brain continue to do it’s damnedest to convince you. This also happens to people who hallucinate because of a mental illness or neurological problems – they see things that aren’t really there, and most of the time they know full well there isn’t a giant purple horse in their living room but yet they keep seeing it. It’s not like Tinkerbell, where if you don’t believe it will die.

Now here’s a thought: most of us think of some hallucinations as being fertile ground for ecstatic spiritual experiences. Many of my ordeal clients have pushed their bodies to a point where they have a breakthrough, and come to some grand spiritual conclusion about how we’re all connected or objectively feel something they couldn’t bring themselves to feel before. Other friends have had faith-altering experiences with entheogens (legal and not so legal), where they saw things and allowed themselves, for the moment, to believe in its realness because, well, that’s the point in taking them to begin with most of the time. And when people write or relate these experiences, we generally accept them as being “real” in the sense that they changed their friend’s mind, or revealed to them a spiritual truth they didn’t understand before.

For example, the first hook pull I ever experienced was not in a space one would think of as “conducive to spiritual breakthrough”. I was in a gymnasium at a summer camp, surrounded by people trying out different kinds of kinky play for the first time. To this day, I don’t know what lead me to ask my friend (and later mentor) Captain to pierce me then; it just seemed like the right time. So I had two eight gauge hooks put through my chest and was attached to some scaffolding by paracord.

I couldn’t honestly tell you anything else that happened in that gymnasium. Someone could have been crowned King Of All That Is and I wouldn’t have known a thing. I was lost in my own trip. During the actual pull, I kept feeling that if I leaned back, I would just fall to the ground lightly, as if in slow motion. There was a point of tension where no matter how hard I was pulling, I didn’t feel anything in my chest at all. It allowed me to have a wonderful experience of feeling like my body was not an immutable boundary between me and the rest of the world. I was the hooks, I was the person with the hooks, I was the hardwood floor, I was the trees outside and connected to all the people inside. What I took away from this was that my body was no longer a limitation, which for someone like me is a pretty big chunk of thinkydo that changed me forever.

When the pull was over, I went outside into a summer’s twilight. I looked up at the sky as stars began to appear, and I literally saw bands of bright blue light that pulsed between all the living things – the trees, the individual blades of grass, the people in the distance, the stars above. I posted a short recording to my journal that makes me sound like a blissed out hippie.

When I facilitate similar experiences for people, I tell them that whatever they eat or drink once the ride is over, will be the best XXXX they ever ate or drank. For me it was bread. I craved bread like a bread-craving bread craver. And even though the bread was slightly stale and unremarkable, to me it was like experiencing the manna that the Jews in exile were given by God. It was the King of All Bread-like Products. I ate slowly, mindfully, treasuring this odd experience of having the best bread I’ve ever eaten.

Objectively (whatever that word means), all of what I related about my experience is “wrong”. I was not literally a hardwood floor. There were no blue beams of light. The bread was pretty damn mediocre. But at the same time, every time I tell that story no one jumps up at me and demands to know if anyone else verified that I was a hardwood floor. No one feels cheated when I tell them it was the best bread ever (and that they’ll never taste it because, well, I ate it all). They can accept that since these things were perceptionally true for me at the time, and that I am not actively trying to deceive them by inventing experiences I did not actually have, that the story is not only true, but spiritually signficant.

Things change when we start talking about hallucinations brought on by means that don’t have the spiritual trappings to it, or if the hallucinations themselves aren’t of a spiritual nature. Once, when I had a very high fever, I was convinced I was not actually laying in my bed, but was hovering over it by such a small distance no one could see. I can still recall the sensation in both my mind and my body, and yet most of you are ready to dismiss this as being false, not true, not spiritually significant, because it was a) brought on by fever and b) isn’t inherently spiritual (at least to them).

Entheogens are a grey murky ground. Most, but not all, people can understand that some have spiritually significant experiences while ingesting certain herbs or chemicals. But I bet you’re already thinking to yourself that LSD can be spiritual, but DXM (sold over the counter in most cough syrups) cannot. Or, coming at it from another perspective, that if I tripped on acid and spent an hour looking at the tie-dyed head of one of my drums (I will not confirm or deny…), that was likely not spiritually significant. (It was.) But if I tell you that smoking a cigar made my skin feel the warmth and breath of a dead person who smoked cigars, you’d probably agree that it was “real”, or at least “significant”.

People who deal with deceptive perceptions – that is, crazy folks – get to live in a quagmire where it can be difficult or impossible to create such clear distinctions over what is “true” and what is “false”. When I am depressed, I feel like my life is made of all things sucky and no good at all. Even if, at the same time, my lovely boyfriend is over for a visit and is showering me with affection. I just can’t access the part of my mind or soul that sees that as a good and life-affirming thing, because depression tunes all our senses to “worst case senario”. Maybe I told myself, “He’s just doing that because he likes having sex with me”, or “He’s just being nice because he wants me to do something for him”. Let me tell you, even clothing that I usually love to wear can become scratchy and uncomfortable when I’m depressed.

Maybe that’s not as grand an example as a schizophrenic who hears voices, but I wanted to go for the lesser extreme and more relatable example.

Now, how does this all relate to seeing ghosts and talking to Gods?

I find that the most difficult two blocks most people face in this endeavor are things that most humans hold dear and aren’t ready to relinquish, even if it means having “super powers”. The first, and most fundamental, is the idea that they could be wrong. That at the moment of their death, completely convinced that they’re going to Valhalla, swept away by the Valkyrie, because they died from injuries in a streetfight over a woman’s honor (let’s say). But then the machine makes it’s long, unended beep, and then nothing. Nothing. No Christian Heaven and Hell, no wandering meadows of Summerland, no Longhall and hangouts with Odin or Freya, no River Styx or seventy-two virgins. You just cease to exist, the end, thank you very much.

I use that example because it’s one most people struggle with but rarely talk about. We all want there to be something more than this, either because we can’t handle the idea that our unique characteristics and funniest stories can disappear and the world keeps turning, the Universe doesn’t even notice. But at the same time, unless you’ve experienced something that you can accept as being a “ghost”, a remnant of someone who was once alive, it can be hard at times to hold onto the belief that there’s a world NASA can’t pilot to where all the dead people ever are hanging out and maybe boffer fighting or playing some damn good harps. (I think if I end up in Christian Heaven – like the Pope says I might – I am going to lead a rebellion to change harps to banjos. Or maybe Ukuleles.) Even some people who’ve had near death experiences eventually doubt what happened and contribute it to random synapse firing.

So having a belief – whether that belief is Valhalla or that you’ve been abducted by aliens – also means facing the feelings that come with being wrong. And our human society tells us that being wrong is a bad, terrible, awful thing. It makes you eat everything from your hat to your shoe, which doesn’t sound like the Best Bread Ever. It removes an illusion – disillusioned – that you had before. It makes you feel as though you want to die or vomit. It may turn out that there are no purple horses in your living room, and it may also turn out that although you lived your entire life as a Godspouse only to find out that the Mormons were right and all us crazy Pagans were making shit up.

Now, most Pagans (well, especially Pagans, but other people too) carry around the concept that I can believe with all my heart that Loki is my spiritual Dad and that when I die I will be welcomed by Hel into Niflheim; but if you believe that, upon death, your soul will go to the Summerlands and frolic with dryads and faires for all eternity, that’s totally cool. Even though the underlying language means one of us – probably you, because if all eternity is frolicking in a meadow I want to live forever, is wrong. But we consider it anything from impolite to downright heresy to declare your spiritual belief to be wrong or misguided, no matter how much personal experience we may have that says that you are. People who believe their religion is right and everyone else is wrong are either fundamentalist Christians or Islamic terrorists, right?

So if the first block is pushing forward with your spiritual beliefs and experiences with the full understanding that you could be 100% wrong, the second block is even harder. You will have to accept that nobody experiences the same reality as you. We could have a scientific debate about whether that statement is factually true, but since I’m totally okay with being 100% wrong (at least most of the time), we’d probably be wasting precious time we could be masturbating or something. When I teach magic (as opposed to spirituality, as I believe the two are fundamentally separate things), I tell people that the first step to doing magic is believing it exists and then going out and seeking proof of this. Whether it’s smoking a cigar with the intent of summoning your great-grandfather, or seeing the delight in a child’s eyes when you become the “dragon” that their little cardboard swords attempt to slay, it doesn’t matter how you approach magic or how you want to define it. But there’s no skipping the step of becoming totally invested in the belief.

And this is not some halfassed silly excuse why some people do “spells”, or even “curses”, and don’t get a result and others do. I’m not the kind of dude who’s going to judge your failed attempt by saying, “well, I guess you didn’t believe in Tinkerbell quite enough”. At the same time, we all know stories of mothers who have lifted cars off of their children, even when they’re elf-sized and need help carrying groceries. Because in their terror, they only saw one option to save their child, and in that moment the belief that maybe, just maybe, they can do something, excited the neuropathways of the mind and the body began pumping her full of adrenaline and other hormones, and before she can stop herself and say, “Waita minute, I am not the Hulk!”, her child is no longer trapped.

Another thing I frequently teach about magic is that, to me, it is only 50% metaphysics. Yes, there are some tried-and-true ways of doing magic that yield results, like the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about). I could blather on with different metaphysical theories, but I’ll save that for some night when we’re both drunk and want to talk about metaphysics. The other half of magic, the part that needs you to believe in purple horses and cigar-summoning rituals, is psychological. In the same way that if I tell you seeing Elephants means you’re going to win the lottery (yes, I’ve used that example before) you’ll start seeing Elephants where you didn’t – if you do a spell to help you find a job, you’re also going to notice more job-getting opportunities, listen to conversations and notice when someone mentions their business is hiring, and you’re more likely to peruse job sites on the Internet. Whereas if you just keep thinking to yourself, “I should do a spell to help me find a job”, you’re likely going to only notice how hard it is to find anything you might be qualified for, and your friend’s conversation about zir’s business will sound like ze’s droning on about how great the company ze works for is, again.

Here’s the point I’ve been frolicking around in my blog meadow, making long-ass paragraphs along the way. If you sincerely want to have psychic experiences, you need to simultaneously believe that whatever you may psychically perceive is 100% unprovable by any objective means, and that sometimes you’re going to be 100% wrong. Whether you try divining for the first time, or think that Anubis wants you to wear black lingerie on every other Saturday, you need to do your best to invest in the idea that you’re right about that, at least in the moment, and do whatever you need to do to bolster your belief in your rightness. But, with a bit of cognitive dissonance, you also need to accept that you might be totally bonkers, or just outright wrong, or that ghost you see of your dead business partner might be a blot of mustard.

When I hear Gods, I know that there’s a chance that it’s not actually a God at all. It might be my own inner voice, my intuition, sounding more removed than normal. It might be another spirit masquerading as the God I’m trying to reach. Or it might be a God, but not the one I thought it was. For example, I’ve had a few cases lately of people thinking that Loki wants to marry them, only for me to discover that it’s not Loki; however, because there are lots of Loki’s wives on the Internet, some of them are disappointed and don’t want to be the only Aegir’s wife or Angrboda’s husband on the web. They wanted to join a community of people having similar experiences, and so they were doing their damndest to believe that voice was Loki’s. On the other hand, who the fuck am I? I mean, I can talk about how long I’ve been doing this spirit work/shamanic thing, or give you references to many people for whom I’ve helped them with their relationships with Gods, or whatever, but in the end, you either have to invest your belief that I am actually talking to Gods and can tell which God is which, or there’s no fucking reason to ask me in the first place.

I tell people all the time, that for the first three years I was working with this mysterious spirit who showed up in the looney bin, I thought Loki was Talesin, a Celtic hero. I had an altar to Talesin, read stories and other research about Him, made offerings and prayed to Him. I have no idea what Talesin thinks of all of this, as I’ve never actually talked to Him (even after making the differentiation and wanting to apologize). All that time, Loki knew I was wrong, and He was okay with it. He didn’t punish me or abandon me or break me; He just waited for me to figure it out. I can’t promise all Gods will have the same reaction, but that’s not why I tell this story. I got it wrong, big time, for three years.

It happens. Part of spiritual evolution is figuring out when something you believe in doesn’t serve you any more, or isn’t as true as you thought it was, or is downright wrong. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, but I sure did when I was 18. After some reflection and thought and feeling myself out on the matter, it just didn’t make sense to me anymore.

I want to make sure I credit the book I’m currently reading, which lead to this diatribe. It’s called “Being Wrong; Adventures In the Margin of Error”, by Kathryn Schulz. I definitely relayed some of her ideas and examples, but did not actually quote the material. It’s an excellent book, and if this did anything for you, or if you want to understand how being wrong doesn’t have to be as bad as wanting to die, I highly suggest you take the time to read it.

Hundreds of Ways

“There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” – Rumi

“But not that way, that way makes you a poopiehead.” – Rumi’s younger cousin Boomi

As I mentioned briefly in my last entry, there’s been some controversy around certain portions of the Pagan blogosphere about the intersection of fandom and faith. Some talk of whether or not writing fanfic involving a God from older mythology is appropriate. Others want to know if making an altar to Superman is the same as making one to Osiris, or if its okay to use comic-book-derived images of certain Gods (most notably Thor and Loki) on altars to those Gods.

What I hear underneath it all, is a strong bias. No one would blink an eye if I wrote about how a modern song deepened my relationship to a God from an older mythology. Or if something considered “high art”, like a painting, a photograph, or abstract sculpture was an acceptable addition to an altar if the art somehow related to the God or concept the altar was for; that wouldn’t cause a stir at all. But if you venture into any sort of pop culture art (except music, as I see many respected bloggers use popular music in their Work) all of a sudden it is considered irreverent, inappropriate, and ridiculous.

I smell snobbery. Somehow, someone who thinks it’s okay to make a rough-hewn altar out of sticks, rocks, and leftover candle snubs if that’s all a person has access to, freaks out if instead of those things, they use images or representative art that was made post 1960. Graphic novels – you know, the fancy title for comic books – somehow do not receive the same level of artistic respect, even if the artist involved also dabbles in “higher” forms of art as well. In some way, a declaration is being made as to what kinds of art are acceptable to the Gods, and well, I’m not one to get in the way between a devotee and their relationship to a God, including what offerings are found acceptable or not.

These same snobs have no problem if someone writes a tome of modern poetry to a Holy One, or a creative retelling of stories that already exist in the lore; heck, some of them are even open to new stories based on UPG, as long as they’re written in a certain format. But the moment that creative writing impulse is used in a way that resembles some of the fan-fiction that exists on the Internet, it is a totally different story. (Ha, get it? Story?) As if writing new mythologies in the first person, that stem from a person’s interaction or conception of a God or other spirit, cannot be reverent. They must be told in the third person, in an objective a way as possible, and the only other characters must be other Gods and spirits from that pantheon – never a modern-day human being, recording their experiences or creating morality tales. If I chose to write a heretofore unrecorded story about Loki, it better meet mustre or I’m just a lonely fanfic writer who doesn’t know their ass from their elbow. I also see much of this derision placed on writers who may not be prolific at their craft – that is, a well-crafted and grammatically correct tale is acceptable, but if it relies on hackneyed tropes and could use a good spellchecker then it must be “fanfic”.

Again, there’s this retched stench of snobbery coming across from those who reject certain art forms as being introduced to a religious or spiritual construct that they seemingly share. I don’t understand how other people haven’t made the connection between those who feel their precious Gods would never deign to ask a follower to undergo or perform ordeals in that God’s name, and those who feel it is exactly what that God asked them to do. In that debate, we can usually come to the understanding that the Gods are bigger than we can ever understand, and in that bigness we include that one’s relationship with Them might be radically different from devotee to devotee; therefore if Loki loves the little green and gold outfits on Moonbeam’s altar, but Sophia thinks the Marvel rendition is atrocious and disrespectful, who’s to say that Loki told Moonbeam (who is also probably younger, but I’ll get to that in a minute) one thing, and Sophia another? When did it become our jobs to declare what was Holy and what is Profane?

I also believe the fact that most (but not all!) of those who engage in these forms of devotion happen to be younger, come from a different generation that had a vastly different relationship to fan fiction than their elders, is part of the problem. I don’t think most of us old farts understand that although fan fiction did get much of its start in the fevered fantasies of Star Trek fans who wanted to see Kirk and Spock get it on, the younger generation grew up in an age where you only wrote fan fic for the Works you loved the most. It is considered an act of devotion, in and of itself, to write a story using someone else’s world. Granted, not all authors feel that way, but many have come around to seeing it as the flattery it is. Also, that only a small portion of fiction created in a shared world has anything to do with slash (slash: fiction written where two characters from a shared world have sex with each other, usually written when the characters did not have romantic or sexual relations in the referential work). Writing fan fiction, especially first person or “Mary Sue” stories (Mary Sue stories: When an author creates a character based on themselves and inserts that character into a shared world story.) In fact, many of these authors write side stories, exploring characters who were not given much time or attention in the referential work, simply because something about that minor character caught the author’s eye and inspired them to create a story featuring that character.

I bring this up when thinking about Loki in specific. Although he is mentioned often in the referential work in question, He rarely gets stories that are specifically about Him. He’s usually playing second fiddle in some way, helping Thor get his hammer back, or assisting Odin in getting a wall built. Not much is told about what Loki does when He’s on his own, but only in relation to when He decides to be chummy with the other Aesir. Although I admit I have not read much of this “Loki fanfic”, it doesn’t surprise me that it exists. Devotees of a God naturally begin to have curiosity about what that God does when They’re not playing second fiddle or providing a needed plot twist – these followers want to hear stories in which their God is the main character. And since I have not been present when one of these works has been written, I can’t say (nor can I not say) that there was a subtle Guiding Hand – or screaming UPG, for that matter – that inspires the author to write. It also harkens back to the idea that people who were raised in the generation of fan fiction were taught, some in early childhood, that writing fan fiction was an act of devotion. That writing stories where you insert yourself into the referential work helps them feel as though they have a personal connection with the characters, the story, the world, or all three. How is this any different than doing guided meditation with the goal of trying to figure out how you, a mere mortal, fits into a Holy One’s plans? The only difference is that these authors are writing it down, and sharing it with others in hopes that maybe someone else will glean meaning from what the author learned in their process.

Now, when it comes to revering modern day superheros as Gods in their own right, I go back to looking at how the older mythologies came to be. For sake of this argument, we can probably agree that most mythologies started out as a set of oral tales and traditions that were considered sacred by the people who told them, heard them, and began to shape their lives based on them. These stories were shared over time, and eventually some of the characters seemed to “come to life”, and before long there were offerings left to them, and altars and temples built, and places named after them. Ceremonies re-creating parts of the stories were considered spiritual and necessary.

Who has the stick-of-knowing-it-all to say that modern stories are exempt from this process? I’m sure the people who first started cults to characters from the sacred stories were also met with derision and ridicule. I’m sure the first family to put their shoes outside so a magical saint could fill them with coins or candy looked pretty fucking stupid to all of their neighbors. In the same way, when people raised in a Christian tradition see a bunch of people wearing renaissance faire clothing (if they’re wearing clothing) doing a ribbon dance around a pole with a penis on the top, they think we’re an embarrassment to the human race. So what do I care if a person decides to draw their moral and spiritual inspiration from Superman, or Star Wars, or My Little Pony? Rumi never clarified that only the solemn ways were the right ways to kneel and kiss the ground – sometimes what seems outlandishly ridiculous to one can be life-alteringly sacred to another.

Take a moment and try to look at some of your spiritual practices from the view of an objective outsider – when I do this exercise, I like to pretend I’m Penn Jilette. Not only because I have a huge crush on him, but because he’s an very opinionated atheist and objectivist to whom many people listen because he’s a celebrity. Whenever I need to get a good headcheck about whose spiritual practices are “right action” or “reverent” or “appropriate”, I try very hard to have a Penn moment. I’m sure he’d take one tour of my house, filled with altars, with magical items above the doors, and with some of the odd habits I keep in order to maintain the wards and spiritual life of the home, and decide I was a loony. And not only would he dismiss me for being crazy, but he would feel I was actively hurting other people when I talk to them about my faith, because I might encourage them to work magic in hopes of attaining a goal, or pray for guidance, when they could be doing something more tangibly productive. But I rest my faith in the spiritual choices I make, and so I don’t let it get to me that Penn thinks I’m a harmful goofus.

I do the same thing when other Pagans come at me for some of my practices and beliefs. I frequently remind people that “serious doesn’t always mean solemn” – one of the public rituals I helped write that got the most acclaim from my Pagan community involved two giant pinatas (a cock and a cunt) that were rigged to slam into each other until they rained condoms and candy on the waiting crowd. It brought joy and laughter to a holiday that frequently challenges people who still have shame around sex, body image, and attractiveness. Too many Beltane rituals that I have attended do not take into consideration that those attending might not feel comfortable in a sexually-charged atmosphere, so those Pagans lose out on the sacred fertility (both reproductive and otherwise) that comes from a Beltane celebration. So I wanted to write one that included everyone, from the dirtiest pervert to the most body-conscious prude, in celebrating a holiday about love and joy and creativity.

And yes, some people thought it was overly silly, and not “reverent”. And you know what I say?

Fuck them. It was magical for those who were present. And that’s all that matters.

As for this debate, I come to much the same conclusion. I’ll do my own spiritual stuff over here, and that includes believing in a Goddess whose mythology was written by a living author. I have a tattoo that is fish puns and butterflies, and to me it is as sacred as any other mark I have taken on for a God I serve. I don’t care that Her lore was published in the 1980’s; what I care about is that by being Her devotee, I have done more for the mentally ill and the spiritually lost than I would have otherwise. I truly believe that although Loki removed the majority of my crazy, it was Delirium who taught me how to live with the crazy that was left behind. Once a year, I release a balloon into the sky for Her. And yes, I have written non-canonical stories about Her, using Her character to help others understand how to better live with their mental illness (rather than fight it).

Because one of the hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground is writing new mythologies. New stories with Old Gods, old stories with New Gods. Looking at oral, written, and recorded stories that stir something deep inside of me and make me feel whole as a sacred human being. As long as I’m right with the Gods I serve, whose judgment should I really be worried about, anyway?

PS. I’m open to be corrected on this, but I believe that the original spelling of the Goddess of Death/Daughter of Loki was H-E-L, and that H-E-L-A was adopted by Marvel because the comic book censors wouldn’t let them use H-E-L because it was too close to H-E-L-L, which was a banned word at the time. So although I believe that it just bled into the mainstream, anyone who uses the H-E-L-A spelling is dabbling in their own form of fanfic.

The Arrival of the Quilt

The story begins several years ago. A drum was borne, and in that drum lay a spirit. The spirit was neither “good” nor “evil”, it just posed a challenge few were ready to handle. Much less the one that borne the drum. So it was bound, and hidden, awaiting the right person to take ownership of such a thing.

Then there I was, unaware of all that had happened, and it was quickly decided that this drum was *mine*, or at least *my problem now*. I took it, not really knowing what it was for, only hearing stories of those who had interacted with it.

I removed the layers upon layers of binding it had been given, this poor little spirit inside the drum. And it roared to life in my hands, with a single thrum. It was starving, it told me, so hungry, and it feeds on the drippings of madness. It told me it was like a vampire, sucking the madness from the deep within where we humans tend to bury it, pulling through the layers of fat and arteries and veins until it’s sticky sweetness comes oozing through their pores, into the air like a contagion, and the drum revels in it, soaks it in, makes it stronger.

To me, the spirit seemed like a bratty bottom. Not unlike a brazen sort who demand to be tied to a post and whipped, but only in the ways that it likes, and only to the strength it can take, and only with the toys made of materials that feel good. They call it “topping from the bottom”, and this spirit had it in droves.

Except it had not met me. I am a top who likes to put bratty bottoms in their place. Deep inside of their loud demeanors and urgent demands is a submissive, waiting to be cowed, but they want you to earn it. They don’t want to bow their neck to your title, or to your collection of toys, or to your swagger. They want you to wrest it from their hard-clenched fists, their balled-up hearts, begging for release so desperately underneath their shield of bravado. I have met many of them in my day, and this drum was no different.

I knew the drum was only one of two tools needed for the purpose. But I had the drum in my hands, so I focused upon it. I fed it its fill of my own madness, knowing how and when to let it come to the surface and let it wash over my otherwise collected mind. I am one of the rare ones, a madness shaman, and it is within this energy I am strongest. It showed me many things, this drum – the secrets of my depression, the scars of my abuse, the tears of others shed for my insanity, my rapist going on with life like nothing had happened, all the things that brought me to that climactic moment, the moment I gave way and gave Will and gave reigns to the Lord of Madness Himself.

The other tool, He told me, would be a quilt. I sighed very, very deeply, many times. Of all the handicraft my parents tried to instill in me, sewing was one my clumsy hands could never tame. I can barely sew a button on a shirt, much less a hem on pants, even so much less create a quilt out of madness. But I tried, four times, collecting scraps and drawing ideas and reading websites and nothing. I have too many scraps of material half-sewn to show for my efforts.

I went back to my Lord and begged of Him; may I have another do this thing for me, so that I can move forward? He showed me then, what the quilt was for. It was a map, He said, of the Land of Crazy. The Drum will bring their madness to their skin, draw it out from its hiding place, and that essence will manifest, read the map, find its way back to the shattered part left behind. If the journeyer had enough strength, enough willpower, and a steadfast heart, they can wrest that shard from the Land, take it back with them, and claim a more clear-headed life.

So I needed a map. I don’t know many, if any, who understand the borders of the land of crazy the way I do. But then I get a warning, a strong one: I cannot ask this of someone who will lose their way. To some, the Land of Crazy feels comforting and warm, like a quilt, and if they begin to wind it’s paths with their mind, they will get lost, never to return. It was hard for me, to turn down offers of very skilled hands, because secretly I knew they would fall down the rabbit hole and never emerge.

Then, one night, a crone-like woman tells me she has been called to make this quilt. I have but barest explained to her what it is, what it is for, and I can feel the fervor in her eyes. She is the one, I have no doubt. I worry, as I do not know her well, that she may get lost; I am assured by her loved ones that her feet are strongly planted.

I see a few pictures, as she begins to sew. My heart tingles. She is the one.

And then, silence. I am going through my own journey, too much to see and do and focus on, but in the back of my mind I knew it is being built. I get word, time and again, that work progresses. I survive my journey, come back to the land of the living, where many had predicted that my time dancing with Madness would cease. But I knew, oh I knew, that what waited for me upon my return was this masterpiece.

Today, a large package arrived at my house, accompanied with a smaller one. I knew what it was immediately; the waves of the land of my heart slid over it like a waterfall. I opened the small package first, and I’m confused. Tiles of various sizes, different materials. I keep hoping for an explanation, but then the box is empty and I do not know what is for. There is, in an envelope, some of the craftswoman’s cards, and a single key.

I know then that I will only understand the tiles when I open the larger package. I take a moment and breathe, thinking to myself, this is like when I met the drum for the first time only stronger. I take out my grounding tools, to have them close at hand, as I hack away at the brown paper and duct tape that holds the package together.

With one deep sniff I can smell the flowers of Madness. I can feel the power of this magical item pulse the air around me. I begin to lay it out, so I can take in all of it’s wonderousness, and it is so. It is exactly as I had described: a path, but not a clear one, that leads from one kind of madness to another. There are secret pockets and hidden treasures. And then I remember the tiles.

I had told her that this quilt needs to have tie points, markers that help me guide the journeyer through a land maybe foreign to them, but home to me. They also need reminders of the here and now, should the journey pull them under, or make them lost, or send them in circles without finding a thing. The tiles fit neatly upon the various squares of the quilt, different points for different people. For the Land of Crazy is never static, even in our attempts to map it. But at least this is something, a guide if nothing else.

I debated if I should send you an image, as it is as much an awesome piece of art as it is a tool. But after spending only a few minutes in its full presence, I found myself warping and winding and grasping for my ground. I do not know if this effect can be had by proxy, but I’d rather not tempt it.

Needless to say, I am more than pleased; pleased at the art of it, at it’s completion; even though the night the deal was struck turned into one of difficulty for me, I would suffer gladly a ten-time repeat of it if it meant I would get such powerful beauty as a reward.

I guess this means I’m really open for business.

Truth or Dare: Tell Me A Story

I apologize if I haven’t been posting as often. As you may be aware, I have been offered a publishing deal to collect some of the essays from this blog, as well as Dying for a Diagnosis, into a series of books, the first being focused on spirit work and shamanism. I am in the process of writing new essays specifically for the book, so that’s been where a lot of my writing spoons have been going to. But I promise not to let this blog go fallow in the meantime; this essay is not likely to be included in the first book, but it leaped out of my fingers and onto the page – like most of my essays do – so here it is.

Many of us feel lost, alone, abandoned. We mope our way through life, doing what we think we’re supposed to, little more than children afraid if we step outside the box of expectation, that some Cosmic Hand will come down and deprive us of pleasure until we surrender back into what it is that we think we’re supposed to be doing. Day in, day out, the days blend together; without the invention of the weekend, we’d never know to stop working and get a little sleep.

Once in a great while, something will come along and afford us the opportunity to have an adventure. But how many times have you heard about something, felt a longing for it deep in your bones, but let the voices of scarcity convince you to stay home? I don’t have enough money. I should be cleaning my house. I need to get more sleep. My body won’t be comfortable traveling for that long. It’s scary and unknown, and I need more comfort in my life.

And then those who invited us on this adventure we’ve turned away from return, and their stories are filled with wonder and exploration, and they come away with some deeper connection (to people, to themselves, to a greater meaning, etc), and we do everything we can to comfort ourselves again, that it wasn’t meant to be, that it would have been different if we had gone with them, that we would have held them back, or in some other way been a weight on the buoy of their transformation.

Then it comes time for us to tell a story about who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going, and we can’t think of anything to tell. No one wants to hear about six months of going to work, coming home, eating dinner, watching some tv, and going to sleep, a diligent consumer doing what is expected of them. There is no excitement, no story, no moral, no journey. We shy into the background, feeling ashamed of our complacent life. We yearn for something more, but the yearning passes as soon as we go back to what is familiar.

Many people ask me about ordeal, and they’re surprised when I tell them about my own; we expect ordeal to be physically painful, to be about blood and sweat and tears, and we turn away from that and let it be the story of other people. I have enough pain in my life, we tell ourselves, and I don’t desire to be in any more of it. But my story, my ordeal experience, looked nothing like what someone would expect. Many people come to me for ordeals because in their mind, “ordeal ritual” and “hook suspension” have somehow become linked; in the same vein, more ordeal workers than I can count have asked (or sometimes demanded) that I teach them hook suspension, because they feel without that knowledge they are somehow lesser. But my ordeal, my most transformative experience, had nary a hook in sight.

People get angry when they ask me to facilitate an ordeal for them, and when I come back with my ideas there is no black leather, no floggers, no bondage, no masochism, no pain. This happens even more often when the potential ordeal dancer is involved in the world of kink; because we speak of kink scenes as being cathartic, as being “ordeal like”, they come to assume all ordeals have some sort of kink element involved. My ordeal happened at a family-friendly event, in front of children; in fact, there were aspects to my ordeal that attracted children to me while it was going on. And there was no black leather, no whips and chains, no sexy dominatrices forcing me to my knees. My ordeal did not happen in a darkened room fitted out to look like a torture chamber or dungeon; my ordeal happened in the middle of a green field, at the peak of summer, during the afternoon.

You’re probably yelling in your head, “Well, tell me about your ordeal, then, Del!” But the denial of that desire, that place of expectation, that desperateness to sate the uncomfortable feeling of unknowing, the fear of being the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on; that is the spark from which ordeal is made. We have to find a deeper truth to our lives, in the corners where we do not know all the answers, do not know what to expect, can not set our watches by how long it will take, and most importantly, be in a realm where success is not assured. In order to truly engage in the realm of ordeal, there must be the chance that you’ll never know the real answer. In most ordeals, we only learn that we are asking the wrong questions, over and over again, increasing in volume; if we’re lucky enough to get the answer, it is never a comfort. It only reminds us that we aren’t thinking big enough, wide enough; stuck once again in our boxes of expectation and instantaneous comfort.

Many times, in fact, someone will approach me and detail to me exactly what their ordeal should be. They’ve thought about it down to the last detail; they’ve cast all the characters and chosen the stage, they might have even purchased the tools ahead of time, so that they could feel them first hand. And it pains me, so deeply, as one experienced in facilitating ordeal, because my first and most plentiful order of business is to disavow them of their vision. They’ve created the false ordeal; the one they know they can succeed, the one where they control what happens, where they’ve played it out in their head until it’s lost all sense of potential loss of control, or potential to fail. Many ordeal dancers have gone on, decided to find an ordeal master who will do exactly what they say, exactly how they say it, and unfortunately there are a bevy of ordeal facilitators who, feeling unsure in their own ego, will take the job and execute it perfectly. And yet, somehow, the dancer is back at my door, begging me to explain why their ordeal meant nothing to them, why it didn’t sate the need they had.

My ordeal was completely unplanned. I didn’t have any time to create expectations, and I think it was sprung on me such because I’m the kind of person who likes to rehearse conversations in my head before I get to the party; if I had known I would be challenged in such a way, I would have spent weeks thinking over the hows and wheretos and in the end I would have learned nothing. I would be so caught up in the steps, I’d forget the dance altogether. I also had no facilitator other than myself (although I did ask a friend to spot me a bit, just in case), because honestly, if I could not be both master and dancer at the same time, I needed to get out of the business of providing ordeal.

Have you had enough discomfort yet?

To me, an ordeal is nothing if the story is never told. It doesn’t have to be shouted from the treetops, but even if you just send me an email a few days later, describing what happened to me from your own perspective, and I delete the email after reading it and it is never spoken of again, it is the story that brings the most healing. We need to feel like we have had a significant experience, one that is worthy of story telling, that brings us from faceless drone to Hollywood celebrity, even if it’s just in our own minds.

The other half of this truth or dare game, is that sometimes ordeal is not the right path for you. Even if you’re kinky. Even if you’re open to body modifications. And it could be that those things are why ordeal may not be what you need. Sometimes, we can’t figure out what it will take to move us forward, when the secret is that you just have to do it. The ordeal may be hearing the truth: you don’t need a ritual, you need to do something. The ritual may be fun and fill your desire to be the center of attention, and it may even help you enter into an altered state of consciousness, but if what’s really holding you back is you, nothing I or any other ordeal master can do will get you past that first step. You can’t go back to school if you don’t fill out an application. You can’t move on from your past relationship if you keep reading their Facebook statuses and blogs and sending them emails just to have them respond to you. You can’t heal from the death of a loved one if you keep doing things and saving things that remind you of that loss. If you need to dress up that first step through a ritual, that’s okay; but you also have to remember that it’s just a first step, and that the ritual won’t do the work for you. Nor will the ordeal master. Only you, pulling up your big kid pants and doing something proactive will get you where you want to go.

That was a key to my ordeal, too. I could have chosen to stop, sit, think about the fear I was about to face, and instead of just pushing forward and doing what needed to be done in order to achieve the result, I could have waited and written an elaborate ritual with lots of “smells and bells”, as we call them, and then scheduled it for six months hence, hoping that in that time somehow I would feel more comfortable with what I was about to do. But there it is again, the enemy of ordeal, comfort. So instead of waiting for all the trappings and orchestrations of a ritual to insulate my experience, I just took my damn clothes off.

That was my ordeal. I was at a Pagan event at a local summer camp, where nudity is common. I never walked around nude; I have too many body issues, ranging from gender dysphoria to fear about being fat. My body is shaped oddly. I have a humped back/neck (a genetic gift), a large torso with small limbs (chicken legs, as Rave is wont to say, or an egg on sticks), a belly that hangs low on my thighs, skin so pale I glow, and a lot of scars. I have no need to prance around with all of that in people’s faces; I’m better looking when I’m clothed. So the first step in my ordeal was just to take off my clothes.

In many ordeals, an integral part is stripping away our artifices. We have to stand metaphorically, if not literally, naked in the eyes of those who witness. Ordeal is about showing and facilitating parts of yourself that you’d rather keep hidden; your fear, your rage, your failures, your shortcomings. If you can’t be honest about what those are, the ordeal is meaningless. You must be willing, enthusiastic even, about standing in the fullness of that which you’d otherwise hide. If you’re not ready to bare it in front of witnesses, you’re not ready for an ordeal.

My fear? Thunderstorms. I know many of my friends revel in the power and might that can be felt in the air, on the skin, when the skies turn dark and the clouds rumble. I feel lost and alone, like I’m going to be swallowed up, blinded and deaf, and that everything I love will be destroyed. I have suffered much loss at the hands of weather, and it seems thunderstorms are the reminder of that pain. Admittedly, my fear of thunderstorms isn’t wholly rational, but few fears are. I had originally left the group of my friends who were settling in to watch the storm, with the intent of hiding in the cabin until the worst of it had passed.

But when I got inside, I heard over the staff radios that they were looking for people to patrol different parts of camp, making sure the attendees were making safe decisions. As Pagans are wont to do, many of them were stripped down and dancing in the storm, and however wonderful that may have felt, the storm was raging dangerously close to tornado, and even though the cabins would provide little safety if the winds really got going, it was safer to be inside than out under the trees. So the staff were looking for people to make sure the attendees were inside their cabins, and that they had some form of communication there should we need to move into the stronger shelters if a tornado touched down.

There’s a moment when you’re crafting an ordeal, that you get this inner sense of being on the right track. You just know you’ve found the heart of the challenge, whatever it may be. Often, it’s something that you stumble upon, rather than find or know; asking a dancer to take off their shoes, you learn he has never walked barefoot on dirt before, and PING. There’s the real challenge. This was my PING moment, that I knew my calling to service was stronger than my fear of the storm. And the best and most convenient way for me to discharge this duty was to take off my clothes; after all, who wants to walk around in sopping wet jeans for hours? Especially when there isn’t a dryer in sight?

So in the face of my fear of nudity, coupled with my extreme dislike of thunderstorms, I knew that the challenge being set before me was to get out there and do my job. Naked. In not just a storm, but one so bad it could become a tornado any minute. I stripped off my clothes (except for a pair of hiking sandals, so I could handle all the walking and have a little traction), and readied myself to go out into my fear. On the cubby-closet sat a large rubber duck, a gift from a friend, the duck as big as a 13” television. My intuition said to take it with me, so as I walked out of the cabin, my inventory was:

-one pair of hiking sandals
-one staff radio, encased in a ziplock bag to keep it as dry as possible
-one 13” rubber duck
-a lifetime of fears

My friends were baffled. Less than three minutes ago, I had declared that I was going into the cabin to hide from the storm, and now I was striding out, butt-naked, with my head held high and my left arm curled around a large rubber duck. They blinked in disbelief as they watched me go down to the place I had been dispatched to, the middle of a large hill, and start telling campers they had to go into their cabins. There was something about the rubber duck that made me seem more friendly, approachable, and less of a tyrant trying to end their Pagan-y fun, dancing around in the rain. A small boy came up to me and asked me what my duck’s name was.

“Well, what’s your name?”

“Max,” he replied, seeming very proud.

“Well, that’s funny. My duck is named Max, too. And this Max says that it’s safer for you to be in your cabin until the storm dies down a bit.”

And here’s the real moral of my story. I could have easily chosen to lay down in my bunk, reading a book until the storm passed. I could have done what I thought was expected of me, bowed to the comfort of what I would normally choose. I could have let my fear dictate my actions.

But then I wouldn’t have this awesome story to tell.

And when I die, I want the memories of my friends to be littered with stories like these. I want them to stay up, late into the evening, warmed by a campfire, as they trade stories of my life’s adventures, never being sure which parts I exaggerated or blatantly made up, and which ones were true stories of derring-do. Isn’t that what we all want? I can’t think of a single person who would be happy having their epitaph being “They always arrived to work on time, stayed late when asked, and their house was spotless.” We all want to be heroes of our own mythic journey, have stories to tell our children and grandchildren, making them proud to be related to someone with moxie.

So here’s my question for you: Truth or Dare: What’s your story?

Sometimes The Solution Isn’t the Solution

This was inspired by a number of things going on in my life, now and in the past. I’m not entirely sure it fits either this blog or my other one, but it came pouring out of me tonight and wouldn’t let me go until I finished it.

Everyone can empathize with this situation: a friend calls you on the phone, emotionally wrought over a situation in their life. It doesn’t matter what the cause or details of the situation are, it may be love, money, career, children, marriage, divorce, death, or anything else that cuts us to the quick. You listen, and your brain begins to formulate an answer, a plan, a course of action, a solution. You do this because you care about your friend, and you don’t want them to suffer these terrible emotions any longer than they have to. If all it would take is a change of perspective, or a willingness to take on a new or different plan of attack, to put them in better straits, why are they angry when you suggest this?

This is usually explained in terms of gender, but I don’t necessarily buy that. I think there are just as many men who have found themselves “caught” in a situation and call upon someone to listen in their time of need, as there are women who are frequently frustrated when their friend won’t just accept their quick and easy solution and shut up already. Sometimes it is also painted as a matter of age or maturity; that the young don’t want to be lead to the answer, but just want to know someone with more experience in life understands how they feel. But why is that important? Why do we prioritize empathy over answers?

The answer is enchantment, and not in the way you’d ordinarily think of it. The person lost in their crisis is drawing someone else into their maelstrom (and granted, that’s the price we sometimes pay for the intimacy and trust of someone we love) to feel less alone in the world, to know that someone out there is as invested in, if not the actual details, then the journey ahead that they will have to take in order to sort things out. In their own way, they don’t want to face the inevitable change alone. They want you to be as changed as they, even if your role is merely one of a sacred witness.

After an ordeal, I frequently find myself not only giving comfort and counsel to the ordeal dancer (the person for whom the ordeal is created), but to those the dancer asks to serve as witnesses. It may be their best friend or lover, a fellow spiritual seeker, or if the ritual deigns it, even a stranger. It’s important to note that a spectator is not the same as a witness; many people ask if they can watch a particularly powerful ordeal, if for no other reason than to quell their own curiosity about such things, but experience has taught me that spectators create a kind of awkward energy that does not contribute towards the goals the ritual is reaching for. You feel stared at, instead of held; judged, instead of understood (even if the judgment is positive, it still isn’t the same); you feel coldness, instead of warmth. And the spectator is also purposefully (if not willfully) creating a barrier between them and the ritual – this is something other people are doing, that I am staring at for my own purposes – rather than allowing themselves to become wrapped up in the energy, to let go of their fear and judgment not only of what’s happening in front of them, but of themselves. A person who spectates is afraid that they may become enchanted by the thing they’re watching, and that yanks away any sense of separateness that they may be clinging to. They become a part of what’s happening, rather than apart from it.

So when that friend calls you, they are asking for a witness instead of a spectator. A spectator at a ritual is the one who is going to pick up on any slight of hand being used to enhance the dancer’s experience; they’re going to notice when the bottle won’t open, or the candle takes four tries to light. Their separateness keeps their mind in the details, rather than the experience. So do we, when listening to a friend’s outpouring, look for the mistakes, the lapses in judgment, the obvious choices overlooked. When we present our solution, what we are communicating is “If you only removed yourself from the chaos, you’d notice this very obvious detail.”

But it’s not the detail that concerns them. In fact, they may feel so overwhelmed by the situation that no matter what hole you think you’ve found, they immediately strike you suggestions down – either because they’ve already thought about that and know why it won’t work, but frequently it’s because your observation forces them to abandon their enrapture in the emotional state, and they’re just not ready to do that.

It seems like it doesn’t make any sense, but it does. You’d think that everyone would want the easy solution, the instant answer, the immediate relief of knowing that their suffering can end, but you, dear reader, are overlooking a very important mythical piece of the puzzle. See, in any good myth, no matter how much good advice our hero gets along the way, it’s still their journey to take. We can choose to be a simple roadside attraction along the way – Macbeth’s witches – or we can choose to be a fellow journeyer.

Sometimes, it’s a practical decision. We all have busy lives, and our own crises and maelstroms to deal with, and we just don’t have the time or energy to walk someone elses path, especially when you realize they’re going to dictate whether you go right or left, and your job is to quietly follow along, like the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. We all want to believe we’re Dorothy, the one on a mission, the one who drives the bus, but doing that all of the time not only makes us incredibly self-centered, but very lonely in the process. People will tire of always being the Tin Man to your Dorothy, especially when their lives face their own upheaval. It’s a bit of tit for tat; if you want someone to be there for you in your time of need, you will have to make time to be there for them.

But it’s also okay to decide that you’re better off being a Glinda, a character who pops into the story, deposits their wisdom, and then retreats to let Dorothy go on her merry way. It may sound harsh, but sometimes it really boils down to whether or not you want to make an investment in your fellow human being. Making these kinds of decisions really help define who your inner circle is, because the more you decide to walk with people in their times of need, the more people will walk with you when you sound the clarion call. But there are hundreds if not thousands of people you will encounter in your life, especially if you find yourself in some sort of service position, from hairdresser to shaman.

I will admit that a big part of my role as a shaman is deciding whose journey I’m willing to go on. Because even if I think I know what the answer at the end of the yellow brick road is, I know from years of experience (including being a big brother), that no matter how well you know the Wizard is just an illusion, some things must be experienced first hand. I frequently tell people that I learned early on, watching my younger sister make mistakes I had made in my youth, that no amount of telling her she’d chosen a perilous path would deter her from doing it; all I could do was hold her hand, and quietly assemble the metaphorical first aid kit for when it all fell apart.

Many spirit workers see themselves as Glindas, and that can be the right choice most of the time. People come to us with a wide array of spiritual problems and decisions, and some times all we need to do is help them discern what choices are available to them, give them our personal opinion (and often the opinions of the spirits/Gods involved), and then stand back and fade away as the person progresses on in their spiritual journey. And it isn’t necessarily a selfish decision to make; frequently, that’s all a client expects of us.

But the way of folly is to start seeing oneself as the wise man on the mountain, removed from all human foibles and needs. If all you ever do is spit out spiritually motivated fortune cookies, who will be there for you when you face your own dark tea time of the soul? If you begin to confuse everyone who comes into your life with a spiritual need as merely being a client, who can you call when your lover leaves, or you Gods fall silent, or you fuck up in some spectacular fashion and have to pick up the pieces? Who will come to your aid when you are publicly humiliated or attacked? Or when your normally-tolerable austerity slowly slides into untenable poverty?

It’s not that you necessarily have to become friends with every client, but at the very least by allowing yourself to become enchanted by their plights and problems, you create a bond of trust and respect. You establish yourself as a real human being, instead of a Zoran-type fortune teller doling out spiritual pithiness. Maybe by doing so, you’ll meet someone who you’d like to take into your trust, develop a fondness for, a mutual appreciation society.

But if you look at each and every client as an irritation, someone who pulls you away from doing your Great Work (whatever that may be), they’ll know it. You’ll bark out some quick solution, like “Do the work!” or “Listen to your ancestors!” or “Not everyone is meant to be a spirit worker!”, and no one benefits. The client won’t do it, because it’s obvious they failed to enchant you, so they rightfully know that you don’t really understand what they’re going through on an empathetic level (even if you say that you do, even if you’ve had the exact same experience a hundred times, it doesn’t matter. Every person is a permutation of humanity, and every person’s challenges are colored by those permutations).

So how do you dance this line, either as a friend who wants to be there but doesn’t have hours to spend listening to another person’s woes, or as a spirit worker/shaman, who is trying to be of service to their communities without sacrificing their health and personal needs?

First, allow yourself to be a witness instead of a spectator. Purposefully shut off the internal voices that jump to judgment of what your friend is telling you, and don’t try to orchestrate solutions while the person is still speaking. Don’t look for the holes and mistakes, and remember that you, too, have holes and mistakes you’d rather not have your nose rubbed in. Instead, listen with intent. If you haven’t read something about active listening, that’s a good start. Really listen, instead of waiting for your turn to speak. Don’t jump to assumptions based on your own experiences, but instead interpret what you’re being told as if it were the first time you’ve heard of such a thing. It sounds easy, but it’s a real skill you have to develop.

Strive to be fully present for those who ask these things of you, and be honest when you can’t. It’s not easy to tell someone who is emotionally wrought that I’m having a bad pain day and want to reschedule our talk for some other time; or to suggest that maybe someone else is having less distractions that day and would be better suited to listen. We tend to let our ego get tied up in this sort of thing, and want to be the person people turn to – it feeds our desire to be needed, as well as to be nuturing to others. It may make you feel important that of all of their friends (or all of the spirit workers), this person is coming to you. Don’t let that overpower your own good sense of your availability, your ability to invest in this person’s journey, or your own sense of self-preservation. Of course, the other side of all of this is to learn to appreciate, instead of scorn, when someone you turn to in a time of need tells you they don’t have the time for it, or that they can’t do it until next Tuesday, or suggests someone else who might be better suited to talk. They’re not rejecting you, they’re being honest about their interest and ability to invest in what you’re going through, and the very last thing you want or need is to be dragging someone against their will as you face your dragons.

When the time is right to talk of solutions or advancements, ask before you dictate. Ask them what options they think they have, or what directions they want to go in. I fail at this sometimes, because although I can suppress my inner fix-it-man, sometimes this is when it comes bursting out of my chest like a tap-dancing alien. Now that it’s my turn to speak, I want to do everything within my power to remove their suffering; and I’ll readily admit, it’s as much about being altruistic as it is about being seen as someone with wisdom (and the prestige that goes with it). Many clients and friends come to me because my relentless self-examination, combined with my spiritual devotions, has made me wise to the ways of man, sometimes. I mean, my husband told me on our first date that his first marriage ended because he cheated, and every bone in my body told me to run because he’d cheat on me and that’s something I have a hard time with, but I still fell for it, thinking like many do that allowing him to develop open relationships with other people would satiate whatever his need for cheating was. But in the end, I was wrong (and had ignored my own as well as others wisdoms), because cheating isn’t about the sex or the love, but about the thrill of potentially getting caught. But hey, at least now that’s another wisdom I can tuck into my belt, right?

But yes, it can feel good to have a friend trust you with their insecurities, fears, weaknesses, and sadness; that’s not helpful if it turns into resentment over the time and energy they’ll need before they’ve found their way. Being selective goes against the social niceties we’re taught as children, but in this case it’s necessary. I usually explain to people (when it’s true, mind you) that my decision to be a Glinda and not a Tin Man is not about them or how I feel about them; it’s about me and not committing to more than I can handle. Sometimes, however, it’s best not to say such things, but just to know internally which approach you’re going to take, and to take it with no sense of guilt.

There are people out there, after all, when they learn that you’re willing to be enchanted by them, will begin to take advantage of this – some do it un- or sub-consciously, while others do it on purpose. It lights up our reward centers to know that someone we like, trust, or look up to, makes the decision to enter our lives in such an intimate way, and we humans like our rewards centers lit. More than once I’ve encountered people who invent or inflate personal drama in order to assure themselves that my energy is still there if they need it. In fact, I believe some psychic vampires (mostly unethical ones, or ones who don’t know what they are) use this as a primary way of feeding themselves; they find someone (likely someone without a big social network, so they’re flattered to be taken into confidence; or someone whose energy is big and tasty, which I struggled to rephrase in a more explanatory way but failed, so there it is) who is willing to be enchanted by a real story or situation of conflict, and once they realize that person will do this no matter how big or small the situation may be in reality, they will continue to have “emergencies” and “situations”. This is where the kinds of people who vaguely reference suicidal thoughts or relationship troubles fall into those kinds of feeding patterns; they watch to see who jumps to ask them what’s wrong or offer their love and support.

But just as there are those who abuse the good will of people willing to become enchanted, there are those who desire nothing more than to be there for people. We call them “White Knights”; they are attracted to people who seem to either have a long series of conflicts, or some life-long ones, and their ego and sense of self is inflated when they cast themselves in the role of the Rescuer. They create unhealthy relationships of dependency, where their target is slowly convinced to let Mr. Knight dictate the solution to all their ills. They never, ever paint it this way; they play 10,000 Maniacs’ song “Trouble Me” as a siren song. Without someone in their life who needs them so desperately, they feel adrift and purposeless; and yet they find themselves in a never ending cycle. They find someone who “needs” them, help build them up by allowing a dependency to form, and eventually the “needer” realizes that they are strong enough now to handle life on their own terms, and begin to resent the “rescuer” for dictating all of life’s solutions as though the “needed” can’t figure them out on their own. Or, monkey forbid, disagree with the “rescuers” answers.

That all being said, how do we engage in these sorts of exchange without going off the deep end?

–Decide if you are willing and able to invest in someone elses journey. It is just as unhealthy to say “no” all the time as it is to say “yes”. Evaluate your time, your ability, and your desire to create intimacy with the person doing the asking. If you have it, then:

–Allow yourself to become enchanted by their story. Don’t spectate, or look for the quick and easy solutions. Become an active participant in the storytelling by empathizing with the person’s feelings and experiences before you start dispensing advice.

–Ask the person what they want to do, what they think is right, what kinds of solutions or suggestions they’re looking for, before you jump in with whatever you have to say. Sometimes people just want to be heard and supported, and don’t actually want you to tell them what to do.

–Check in. Show the person you’re invested by taking an active role in their life during the crisis. Drop them an email, or a phone call, or a visit, to let them know that you care and feel just as influenced by what’s happening in their life as they do. Treat it like a novel you’re reading, and you’re dying to know what the next chapter holds.

–Step away when the solution shows itself. No matter if you agree or disagree with how the person chooses to handle whatever they’re facing, give them the space and autonomy to seal their own fate. Don’t offer to do the work for them; nothing is ever achieved via proxy. (Remember in high school, when you’d ask your best friend to tell your boy/girlfriend you were breaking up? The girl/boyfriend just came marching directly to you to ask you if it was for real. Don’t be the middle man; you’ll end up being cast as the busy-body in the end.)

–Celebrate the success, or mourn the failure, without judgment. Don’t nitpick what they did wrong, and no one likes a “I told you so”, even if it’s the truth. Just hold space for the person to have their experience, and validate their emotions because they’re worthwhile.

Del in Person! Appearances in 2013!

This past week has seen a lot of activity in my inbox from events that want to schedule a Del appearance, so I thought I’d keep you up to date on places where you can see me in person! Some of these are still in process of being sured up, but I thought I’d give you a heads up just in case!

Feburary

Feb 15-18: Dark Odyssey Winter Fire, Washington, DC. I’ll be teaching three great classes: Non-Parental Littles Play, Leather Traditions and Protocols You Can Use, and Sadoshamanism (with Michelle Belanger). I’ll also likely be helping out with some of the rituals.

March

Mar 15-17: CatalystCon, Washington, DC. I’ll be appearing on a panel titled “Sex and Sexuality from the Trans Perspective”. It has been promised to be a 201/301 level discussion about trans* identity as it relates to sex and sexuality, and I’m happy to contribute! There are some stellar classes there that I look forward to taking as well!

Mar 20: I have a possible gig teaching for the Baltimore Educational and Social Society. This is still in the works, so the date is tentative and obviously I don’t know what I”ll be speaking on.

April

Apr 5-7: Charm City Fetish Fair, Baltimore, MD. I will likely be in attendance, and may be appearing on a panel or giving a class depending on how things shake out. It is an awesome educational event!

Apr 23: I am teaching for Black Rose (Washington, DC) on one of their Tuesday educational evenings. They’ve asked for my class “Oh Bloody Hell, Wound Care in the Dungeon”, which is a great class on how to protect both your partners and your toys should you accidentally (or purposefully) break skin while playing. Great for those who are skittish about blood!

May

May 16-19: Northern Delaware D/s Boot Camp (no website, but you can find them on FetLife), Darlington, MD. I am in the process of securing a one-day appearance with them, so this is still in the “maybe” column, but it’s a great event at Ramblewood if you aren’t a fan of big crowds. Lots of great educators and a fun atmosphere.

June

Jun 12-16: Free Spirit Gathering, Darlington, MD. This is a family friendly Pagan event I attend every year. In addition to driving the “Short Bus” (a mobility aid for those who have a hard time traversing the campground), I will be teaching classes in the Teen/Young Adult track, as well as possibly some geared towards adults.

Jun 19-23: Dark Odyssey: Fusion, Darlington, MD. This is a big kinky festival with a focus on spiritual kink (although there is plenty else to do if that’s not your thing.) I will be working primarily with the brand new “Ordeal Track”, where it will have its own focused programming and rituals, including a culmination ritual that is designed to push your limits and show you what you really can achieve. It will be an extremely fun week, and one of my favorite events all year!

August

Aug 16-18: Etinmoot, Hubbardston, MA. This is a small gathering for people interested in celebrating the Jotuns of Norse tradition. I will be leading either a class or a ritual (or some combination thereof) for Hel, including possibly talking about my experience this past winter.

Well, that’s what I’ve got so far. I’m sure as the year progresses, I will be adding more dates onto this list. If you are a member of a Pagan, Northern Tradition, Shamanic, or other spiritual group; or a kink, fetish, power dynamic, or other BDSM group, and you’d like to have me come speak, teach a class, lead a ritual, or in some other way participate, you can contact me at awesome.del@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to send along a class list.

You can also follow me on various social media for updates as to when and where and what I’ll be teaching. I can be found as “Del Tashlin” on FB and G+, “Wylddelirium” on Twitter, and “Del” on FetLife.

Hope to see some of you soon!

That’s a Horse of a Different Color!

Sorry I have been away so long…things in my life have gotten a bit complicated with the upcoming surgery and all, so I haven’t had the spoons or the focus to do much writing. However, this post has been on my mind since late October; culminating in a dream last night that I was writing it, so I’m thinking it’s about time I sit down and bang it out.

I have done possessory work, both privately and publicly, for about ten years now. I can even say that I started before that, having done “drawing downs” for Wiccan covens as far back as 1996 or so. So let’s just take it as a given that I’ve done this sort of thing for a long time.

Not only that, but I am blessed to have many colleagues and friends that I can discuss possession with, including the authors of the book Drawing Down the Spirits, one of the only books I’m aware of dedicated to the subject of possession in Pagan religion. I’ve been on a few panels, and even a conference centered around possessory work.

Have I explained my bona fides to you enough, yet? 🙂

I found myself in an uncomfortable position in October. Without going into a lot of personal details, both mine and other people’s, the short description is that I found myself horsing a problematic spirit, one that I had voiced some concerns about with the leader of the ritual beforehand. And problematic spirits being what they are, it did some problematic things both to me, and to other people attending the ritual. This resulted in no small amount of dramatic aftermath, including one of the members of the group quitting and vowing never to return.

As I have said earlier, it is hardwired into my professional and personal ethics that I do not abdicate responsibility for something my body does, no matter who was in control at the time. It becomes a dangerous slippery slope that ends with people faking possessions in order to do and say things they don’t have the balls to do or say otherwise. Although I think it was pretty clear that the actions the spirit took were in no way things I would have chosen to do given my faculties, I did the best I could (which, admittedly, could have been better) to apologize to those who had been hurt or offended by what occurred; and made sure to make it abundantly clear that in no way was I excusing what happened under the guise of “well, wasn’t my fault”. If nothing else, it was my fault to make the initial decision to allow the spirit to take my body – although sometimes this can happen without any form of “allowance”, I admit that I did feel the beginnings of the possession and decided to allow it to continue. I also take responsibility that I had misgivings about inviting this particular spirit into our ritual space, and when it became clear that it was being invited, I should have or could have left the room and excused myself out of the area. It is difficult for me to “eject” a spirit once it takes hold of my body, but those present can attest that I did try to mitigate some of the damage by redirecting some of the harm it wanted to impart onto my girl, who considers doing such things a part of her own spiritual path.

But enough about this specific situation. I only share it with you because it made me do some deep soul searching about the nature of possession, the role of the horse in what happens during a possession, and the role of the other ritual participants who choose to attend rituals that include possession. Some of these conclusions are not the same ones that the group involved in the above incident agree with or support, but they are the ones that I came to on my own.

First and foremost: I feel that if someone has a desire to invite a spirit to physically appear at a ritual where others are present, it is their responsibility to know everything there is to know about said spirit. It might seem like a fun afternoon to invoke Loki into someone’s body in order to hear some dirty jokes and eat candy, but if Breaker of Worlds decides to show up instead of King of Fools, you better have a good idea what to do, what He will expect, and how to best protect the people at the ritual from being harmed. If you don’t know the culture from which the spirit emanates, something that looks like harm to a person might be a blessing from the spirit’s cultural expectations. You don’t want to offer the wrong drink, the wrong clothes, the wrong food, or say/do things that will insult or belittle the spirit. It’s not the ritual leader’s job, or the horse’s job, or the other ritual participant’s job – it’s yours. If you invite a spirit and things go sideways, you should be brave enough to stand forward and acknowledge that you were not fully prepared for what you asked for.

Now, this sort of thing happens more often than you’d expect. Even someone who has been working with Anpu for years may end up with a face of that Deity that they do not know or work with, and it might not occur to them that someone other than the face they know the best could show up. Another way I have seen this happen is when Neopagans call down spirits that emanate from the Hindu tradition in hopes of a possession; I’ve seen some that have worked out well, but since Hindus see possession as an evil, blasphemous thing, I’ve seen some that have done physical damage to the horse. Not what you were expecting when singing for the Monkey King, no? I bore witness to Hanuman trying to “heal” the horse He was using of the possession while the ritual participants did energy work to try to make it “stick” better. The horse ended up with wounds that required medical attention.

If a spirit has more than one “face”, different mythologies that present the same spirit in different fashions, it can be the difference between a successful possession and a terrible catastrophe if you can only state aloud, both to the people present as well as the spirits, your intent for asking a spirit to physically present. After years of being a horse for the darker face of Hades – the kidnapper and raper of Persephone – when the person who wished to invoke Him made it clear she was interested in the lover and partner of Persephone, who had accepted Her fate with aplomb, it culminated in the exact experience the person desired.

In that vein, my second point is that if you are calling a spirit that is unfamiliar to others present at the ritual, it is best practice to take a moment and explain who the spirit is, what your intent is for asking for that spirit’s presence, and inform people what they can do to assist in creating the right atmosphere for the spirit once it arrives. Few people, especially Pagans from traditions where possession isn’t a frequent element, know enough about every culture and background for spirits, and might do something with benevolent intent, only to screw up the entire ritual by offending the spirit. Offering alcohol to Obatala, for instance; if you’ve attended a Voudun fete, you might notice that when a spirit arrives, it is almost always offered rum or some other form of alcohol. So it would seem to follow that when Obatala is sung for, you might want to be prepared and pour a shot of rum. However, Obatala is very opposed to drinking, and would be angry if you shoved a drink towards Obatala’s horse. A little detail, a small devotional act, gone sideways because no one took a moment to explain the spirit’s idiosyncracies to you.

Thirdly, I believe spirits have agency, and this should always be taken into consideration when a spirit is invited into a ritual. I have seen people try to script a ritual that includes a possession, as though when Aphrodite shows up She’ll be happy to recite Her lines from the paper She finds in Her hand. This never works. In fact, I’ve seen attempts at drawing down fail because the priestess had specific expectations as to what a deity would do once it arrived, that it would somehow fit the structure of the rest of the ritual, and that said deity would depart right on time so the ritual ends at 11 o’clock as promised. When I say that spirits have agency, what I mean is that they can (and do) make their own decisions, have their own wants/needs/desires, and once they’re at your little party they will likely not take your rules or format into consideration. After all, they’re just a bit bigger than us meatsacks, and even if we shake our fingers at the sky and say “You can only come if you don’t harm anyone”, doesn’t make it so. There are techniques to trying to limit the possession to what the invoker intends, but most of that involves deep communication with said spirit weeks, months, or even years before the ritual itself.

For example, I was asked to provide my body for Cernnunos for an ordeal ritual last May. I don’t know Him very well, but I had some idea as to what He would want out of a body, and what He wanted to do. I spent two months researching Him and His lore, spent weeks clarifying with the client what her expectations were, and then two weeks doing devotional work in hopes of setting boundaries and understandings about what He could and could not do with my body while He had it. And even then, He did and said things that although didn’t break the letter of our agreement, came pretty close to breaking the spirit of it. But that’s because He’s much bigger and stronger than little ol’ Del-the-shaman, and once you surrender your body to a spirit, you have to lay your trust in that spirit to at least take your boundaries into consideration.

And that’s my fourth point. Lending your open head (ability to be possessed) to a ritual is a huge trust. Especially if you’re holding regular rituals and expect the person to provide this service on a regular basis. When I agree to be a potential horse for a ritual, I am not only trusting in the Spirits to make sure I don’t wake up in jail covered in petrol and feeling slightly singed, but I am trusting the group’s leader (if applicable) and the other attendees to watch out for my body’s wellbeing. Although there is a spectrum of potential possessory experiences, from hearing faint suggestions as to what to do, all the way to having no control over your body and no memory of the experience at all – and frequently, us horses aren’t the ones who choose what level the possession will be at. As many times as I have been expected to allow a spirit to take me fully (to the extent where I have no control over my body and have no memory of the experience, which we call “locked in the trunk” in the trade) and I have had to use a code phrase for “Sorry, guys, I tried for an hour but the spirit isn’t coming!”; I have had experiences where there was no expectation for a possession at all, but putting on a piece of jewelry or clothing that is dedicated to the spirit forced me “into the trunk”. For all the times I expected a God to whisper answers to their dedicant’s questions in my ear, only to wake up two hours later stinking drunk in the middle of the woods with them, no memory of the last two hours; I have have times where the possession was expected to last over an hour, and the spirit ducked out the back door five minutes in.

There is a lot humans can do to try to create the kind of experience they envision, but in the end, the spirits are going to choose what happens, and there isn’t a lot you can do to stop that from happening, short of not inviting that spirit back.

Point number five: I believe choosing the horse for a possessory ritual, if you are given that luxury, can be one of the most important choices you make. It has been my experience and the experience of those I have discussed it with, that most of the time a God will favor a horse that already knows how to do the things it needs the body for, rather than the person who resembles the God the way the dedicant envisions them. To go back to the Cernunnos example, one of the reasons He chose me for this particular ordeal was because it was to have a lot of heavy sadomasochistic elements, and I have a strong background in doing heavy play safely. On the other hand, if what He wanted was to knit a sweater, He’d be better off choosing a different horse. It is true that spirits can make a horse’s body do something the horse does not know how to do: I learned how to dance the banda after being possessed by Maman Brigitte several times and having Her do it with my body.

However, it is easier on both the spirit and the horse if the horse knows how to perform whatever the spirit needs the body for. So I strongly suggest that if you want a Deity to perform a certain task while they are embodied, to choose a horse who has some background in that activity. It also means that the horse can make sure, either beforehand/while inside/both, that the spirit is doing the activity safely. I have seen some cuttings and brandings go horribly awry because the Goddess was called down into a horse that had seen many cuttings and brandings, but didn’t have the training themselves. The Goddess knew what She was doing, but was having a difficult time getting the horse’s body to have the nuance and control that someone who had practice doing such things would come with automatically. Do you get my drift?

Along with this, I think it can go the other way, too. I believe that the choice of horse can color your experience with a spirit. It’s hard to put into words what happens inside of my head during a possession, but I do know that sometimes I get impulses to do something vague, and find my body starting to move towards doing *something* in that direction, but I’m left scrambling on the inside trying to figure out what the spirit wants my body to do. Obviously, this will then go through the filter of my own experience and intuition – for example, since I practice BDSM, if I get an impulse that a Goddess wants to hit someone, I may try to temper that impulse to focus on finding the right person, and doing my best to get the spirit to ask for consent; whereas someone who is fresh out of the Marines might just haul off and punch someone in the face as though they were an enemy. Same impulse, two vastly different outcomes.

It was said to me that there is a line, here; I don’t know if I agree with their opinion, but I offer it in case it is useful to others. It can be said that if every spirit a horse carries comes across as being angry, or grieving, or horny, or loving, regardless of the actual known nature and disposition of that spirit, it may be that the horse’s own issues are getting in the way of a real possession. I can sort of see that; going into the necessary trance states in order to achieve possession lowers one’s defenses to the world, and if you have a well of emotion hiding behind those defenses, you may take the opportunity of a dissociative state to express them. However, I think it can go both ways at the same time – someone may have a hardwired propensity to horse angrier spirits, so it makes them a good choice if you want to invite a spirit whose mythology describes them as being volatile and hostile, and it may be something to run an internal check on if you’re horsing a variety of spirits and they’re all coming across with the same baggage.

So where does that all leave us? Here is my summary list of things to consider when working with rituals focused around possession:

• Whomever is inviting the spirit to be embodied needs to fully understand both the spirit’s lore, as well as the culture they come from, and communicate that to all of the ritual participants so as to better prepare everyone for what to expect and how to act. They are also the ones who should take responsibility if the possession goes in an unpredictable path, and make reparations as necessary.
• No matter how much planning you do, how much negotiations you engage in, what kind of wards or rules or guidelines or boundaries you give the spirits before inviting them into your space, they have agency, and will make their own decisions based on their personal agendas and what They feel needs to happen in the moment. There are things you can do to try to mitigate this, but in the end, They are bigger than us.
• If you ask someone to carry a God for your ritual, understand that they are putting a great deal of trust in you, and the leader of the ritual. The horse cannot always predict or control what a spirit will do with their body, and may not be able to figure out what the spirit is doing with their body until it’s too late. Cultivate a culture around taking care of those who provide this service; it is taxing, grueling, and terrifying work, and it is frequently done for no other recompense than the experience of doing it.
• Choose your intended horse carefully; if you want Odin to come down and sing songs for you, choose a horse with a good voice. If you know beforehand what a spirit needs the body for, try to find someone who has that sort of task in their muscle memory already.

  Okay, maybe now I can sleep without dreaming of writing this post. Or am I still doing that?

I’m An Ordeal Master, And I’m Not Afraid To Say So

I am an ordeal master.

What this means is that I have been recognized by my community as someone who is skilled and talented at creating and facilitating rituals that challenge a person’s boundaries and fears in order to bring about spiritual breakthrough.

It means that I have performed rituals like this for many people, most or all of which have thanked me profusely and have had permanent, marked, beneficial change in their life due to the ceremonies I have facilitated for them.

It means I have studied various forms of challenging the human being. This does include BDSM, but that is not the only or even the most important tool in my box. People can have their boundaries pushed in a variety of manners. As I have said so many times I cannot count, my own most powerful ordeal contained nothing but myself, a thunderstorm, and a rubber duck. No leather pants, no physical assault, no whips and chains. I have created ordeals for people that sang with the simplicity of the human mind, and some that were so gear-heavy that it took longer than a year to get all the necessary tools together.

Sometimes, but only very rarely, do my ordeals involve sex. I would say of all the ordeals I have facilitated, two or three had sexual components, and none of them had any sort of sexual component that involved my genitals or any sort of pleasure on my part. I do not find ordeal sexually stimulating, and I do not perform ordeal to fulfill some personal fetish.

It is true that, in addition to being an ordeal master, I am a practitioner and educator in the world of BDSM. And yes, BDSM sometimes involves activities that are purely for my own pleasure. And some of the techniques and tools that I own and use in ordeal are also used in my own personal BDSM practices. But to say that I cannot use a tool for two very separate and disparate uses is to say that I can only use duct tape on actual ducts.

When I am asked to create an ordeal, I look at all the skills I have gathered in my almost 40 years on the planet. Some people come to me specifically for some skills I am known for being gifted with – I have a theater background, so I have an ability for the dramatic, for costumes, for creating a mood. I have a body modification background, so many people seek me out for ordeal because they’re interested in hook pulls or suspension, as well as many other skillsets from that arena as part of their ritual. I have a keen understanding of psychology, and sometimes I employ that as part of the ritual at the person’s request. I can be physically intimidating (at 5’10” and 400lbs), and that can be useful for pushing boundaries. I am genderfluid, able to present as either woman or man or something in between, and that definitely pushes buttons in people who struggle with their own gender issues. There are many facets of my life that I employ and integrate into the rituals I create.

Here’s the part that you’re probably skipping over: it’s all by request. I do not seek people out for ordeals. I do not advertise myself as an “ordeal master” – you’ll never find a classified ad on Craigslist or even in a Pagan magazine horking my talents in this arena. I do not troll the Internet looking for opportunities to mention my calling, in hopes that more people will become clients. Sometimes, if it seems appropriate, I have offered my services to someone who seems to be looking for an experience similar to what I create, or I mention my abilities when someone is openly seeking someone to facilitate an ordeal

I also happily refer people who ask me for ordeals I am not qualified to perform. For instance, I can’t tie a knot to save my life. (I can barely tie my shoes.) So if someone envisions an ordeal of being encased in rope and suspended from a tree, I know several other workers-of-ordeal whom I can recommend. If a client feels that they need a cisgendered male facilitator for whatever reason, I know plenty of those I can refer them to. Maybe they live far from me, and cannot afford the travel (and I can’t either). I put a lot of effort into keeping a “rolodex” of sorts, so I can hopefully help match them up with the right person. I have absolutely no ego tied up in how many ordeals I do a year, or how many clients I’ve worked with, or how showy and dramatically interesting my rituals are. All I care about is that the person who seeks out this sort of experience gets the experience they need. That, and nothing more.

This also means that sometimes I turn people down. I do not perform ordeals for people who have to keep their work a secret from every single person in their life. I need to know they have someone in their life who can provide emotional and physical aftercare, especially if they live far from me and I am incapable of doing so. I do not take on requests I feel are too dangerous, or life threatening, or illegal. And I have had such requests. Sometimes I turn people down for personal reasons – that I can’t interact with them cleanly due to interpersonal relationships, or because I don’t get that inner connection with them, or because they need something physical from me that I do not provide.

I do mention my work in places where I talk about myself in general. It is a part of my life, as much as my roles as devotee to my Gods, child to my parents, spirit worker for Those I Serve, lover to my romantic partners, owner to my slave, and any other role I have. I never called myself an ordeal master until people I had worked with in this capacity called me such. It is a title that has been bestowed upon me, not one that I invented or claimed for myself.

I have taken an Oath of Ordeal Mastery, in 2009, in which I begged the Universe and all the Gods that should I make a move, a decision, a word, anything that would cause unintentional harm to anyone, let my hand/mouth/words by stayed. I pray for quite some time before I begin crafting an ordeal for a client, and I am in communication with them throughout the process to make sure that they continue to consent to, and collude with, whatever I feel will work. If there are parts that are kept secret for dramatic or spiritual reasons, I make sure to gain consent by sending a list of actions that “may” take place, putting the secret one in the list, and making sure to gain consent that way.

I do not make money doing this work at all. Sometimes I am reimbursed for materials, sometimes I am not. Sometimes I am reimbursed for my time, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. I see this as sacred Work, and therefore money is not a barrier to entry. I would not call this a “career”, or even a vocation. It is a calling, yes, but not one that I expect will support me in my old age. In fact, doing this work ends up costing me hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, in training, disposable tools, phone calls, education, travel, time, hiring other professionals to help, etc. Let me be clear about this again: I almost always lose money on ordeals, rather than make money. Those who think I am out there scamming my way into people’s pants and rolling in the dollar bills it creates is lost in a masturbatory fantasy.

But it’s not my words that count. I encourage those reading this, who have benefited from, witnessed, helped facilitate, or in some other way worked with me in my role as ordeal master, to speak out. And yes, this means my critics too. I feel very strongly that this, like other sacred titles, is one that is given by the communities you serve. So let their voices tell you what I have done, what I do, and whether or not the title is an appropriate one.