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.

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.

Why “Shaman”? A Joint Post with Wintersong Tashlin

This is two essays in one. My partner and clansbrother Wintersong and I decided to take on this heady topic together, as we have similar and differing views on the subject. We have both been ridiculed, attacked, and disparaged because we use this title for ourselves, and it was one such letter Winter received that inspired this post. The first half is my thoughts, followed by Winter’s. Understand that any questions or comments you make to this version will be answered by me; if you wish to hear more from Winter on the subject, you’ll have to go to his version at Notes from a Barking Shaman to get his answers.

Del, from Sex, Gods, and Rock Stars, says:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
–James D. Nicoll

The word “shaman” is a hotly contested word in the Pagan and New Age communities. Honestly, when I first started getting the inkling that it was a word I was going to use someday, I avoided it heavily. Even now, it’s not usually the first word I use to describe the way my service to community manifests – I try to use the less controversial “spirit worker”, or “pastoral care counselor”, or “ritual facilitator” and sometimes “ordeal master”, although the last one isn’t without its own controversy. But use it I do, and I frequently get pushback from those who find it to be some form of cultural appropriation.

Raven Kaldera tends to sum up his use of the word by simply stating that the Gods told him to use it, so use it he does. I won’t take that tack – although in some sense it is true – because my thoughts on the matter are more nuanced and complicated than that. Like I said, I resisted the title for a long time, but then I came to a place of compromise on it.

First of all, I am aware that the word describes a very specific spiritual and cultural role in Northern Asia. Sources tend to attribute it as a Siberian word, but other cultures in the area had similar sounding words that described generally the same thing. There is some argument made that there is also a Sanskrit word, saman, which means “chant”, which could be part of its heritage.

Some people like to make the argument that “shaman” is a Native American word, but in a literal sense this is incorrect – there are no documented Tribal languages that use a word that sounds anything like “shaman” to describe medicine men or other spiritual leaders. The way the word became connected to Tribal spirituality is from English and American anthropologists, who lumped any person living in tribal culture whose primary role to their community was to work with spirits or as a spiritual healer. But it is not, at its core, a Tribal word at all.

And like the quote above states, lots of English words are taken from other languages and used in similar contexts as the original language used them. Words like kindergarden, pastrami, phoenix, and even batman come from other languages, but when people use them in everyday conversation we don’t accuse them of stealing from German, French, or Russian. The word shaman has a similar history – anthropologists learned of shamans and shamanic practice from the Northern Asian area, including the word for said, and began applying it to similar persons and techniques from other places.

But I know that doesn’t sate the detractors of the word. Just because a word has been subsumed by our motley tongue doesn’t mean that someone claiming it, no matter the context, is not a form of subtle cultural appropriation. I do feel there is an intrinsic difference in some English-speaking people who use the word, and this may be where the accusation of cultural appropriation comes from.

Where I agree with those who take umbrage with the use of the word are people who use it to describe practices that either mimic or directly descend from other cultures. There are a lot of (mostly white) people who offer “Native American Sweat Lodge experiences” or “Native healing ceremonies” who use the title “Shaman” to describe their role in these rituals. It can be practically impossible at this point to discern which ones have actually studied and learned not only the original rites, but the culture from which they come from; and those who’ve attended a few classes or rituals and decided there was money to made in creating similar experiences for (mostly white) people who don’t know any better.

I also agree that there are some people who claim the title “shaman” specifically to make money from hapless seekers who have a general sense of the English meaning of the word. As an active person in Pagan community, who sometimes rubs elbows with New Agers, I’ve met these sorts of folks. They live pretty average, middle class lives; but when it’s showtime, they put on Tribal looking clothing and bring out the drums. I’ve attended some of their “rituals.”

It’s usually the unintended association with those sorts of grifters that makes me reticent to use the word for myself. But a few things happened in my life that made me come to terms with the word as it relates to my personal practices and the services I offer my community.

First and foremost, I was not the first person to use the word in reference to myself. It’s hard for me to remember the specific timeline, but there was a time where people started either asking me if I was a shaman, or telling other people I was. Around the same time, I had clients who referred to me as “their shaman”. I will be honest – at first, I cringed. I associated the word with the ne’er do wells who put on their spiritual selves to make money, rather than those who lived and breathed a life focused on spiritual service, both to the Spirits/Gods and to the people. But sometimes a ball starts rolling down a hill, and you can either start the arduous journey of pushing it back up, or go for the ride.

Around the same time, I had become pretty active in the clique of East Coast spirit workers of which Raven Kaldera is a member; as he uses the word for himself, others started to assume that I did, too.

Finally, I underwent a spiritual journey to ask the Gods I serve if this was something I should actively try to change or accept. It was an odd experience, because I got several answers from different Gods and Spirits I have worked with or for. The first collective answer I felt strongly was that I had to use a word of the language of my people – English – so using a word like Gothi or Hougan would make little sense. Also, because I serve Gods from various parts of the world, choosing a word from one specific tradition would be confusing for those who sought me out to work outside of that paradigm. Although I sometimes identify as a “Northern Tradition Pagan”, I’ve made it abundantly clear through my writing that I work for many Gods who are not Norse in origin.

Secondly, They were clear that I had to use a word that the people I was here to serve would understand. Using a word I made up for myself, or something that wasn’t as easily comprehended, would end up alienating potential clients. One of my strengths is that I can move between different traditions and be of service to people who have relationships with a wide variety of Holy Ones. Along the same lines, if I chose a word like “priest”, it could be seen as misleading, since “priests” tend to be dedicated to a single cause – either serving a specific Deity, or a specific congregation/community.

The job description for “shaman” has, admittedly, become watered down over time, but the core of it still remains – I am a person who is attuned to the Spirit World, who has learned and cultivated ways to communicate and work with the residents therein, and who uses that ability to help those who seek me out because of those talents. There is also a delineation that has been made between “spirit workers”, who are people who do work for Spirits (on Earth and in the Beyond) – some of which serve clients, but some of which have very solitary practices – and “shamans”, who have undergone some traumatic life event (typically dying, but some recognize going completely mad and other traumas that radically change your life in a way you can’t change back) and have been rebuilt by the Spirits/Gods in some way that make them better suited for the Work.

The other differentiation I have seen between “spirit workers” and “shamans” is that spirit work can be a part-time endeavor – you can have a relatively normal life, a spouse and family, a career that isn’t rooted in spirituality – whereas most shamans I respect have lives that are controlled and dictated by their service. This doesn’t mean that shamans can’t have other sources of income, but the difference that I’ve witnessed is that whereas spirit workers can sometimes delay or ignore a request from Spirit or a client, shamans rarely can, especially if that client was sent by a God I have oathed to.

It would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that part of the reason I think Those I Serve chose that title for me is specifically because it’s controversial. It’s not like in every other aspect I’m an average Joe – almost every aspect of my life is seeped in some form of controversial identity. I’m queer, I’m trans* identified, I’m kinky and live in a 24/7 power dynamic, I have a radical appearance and lots of body modifications, etc. It’s part of my job to provoke, to make people think about their assumptions, to teach by example that people can choose to live their truth, even if they fear that truth might alienate people they care about.

Like I said in my essay about detractors, I’ve actually gained clients from people who have tried to besmirch me for my use of the word shaman; it’s piqued people’s curiosity about what terrible, awful things I do and they end up contacting me for something I do in my work as shaman. So in a way, I’m okay with open discussion about whether or not I’m a cultural appropriator or not. In fact, I enjoy that every so often when I read things that challenge the usage of that word by Americans or other English speakers, it makes me reassess my own usage of the word and make sure that I’m being true to myself, and not just being lazy by using some shorthand or convenient word rather than something that better describes what I do. As a person who also heavily identifies as a trickster, it would be antithetical to my nature to get angry when people question anything I do, even if they aren’t the politest when they do it.

In the end, my use of the word ‘shaman’ is like any other title in the Pagan community (like High Priestess, Elder, Magician, Spirit Worker, Occultist, Pantheist, etc); my usage will only continue if I live up to the qualifications to it over time. No one takes a self-appointed “Priestess” who does nothing for community and does not do actual service to a God/dess; if I ever shirk my Work (which I don’t think is an actual option for me, but that’s another post entirely) then people will stop calling me that, and eventually it will cause me more agita than it’s worth. But in the meantime, it’s the word on my Cosmic Shingle, and I have to do my best to live up to it.

Winter, from Notes From a Barking Shaman, says:

Del has already done a thorough job of breaking down the issue with the cultural appropriation argument against the word “shaman.” While I don’t feel compelled to expand on his analysis, I do want to make it clear that I agree with it. The argument can be made that the use of “shaman” is cultural appropriation from the Siberian peoples it is originally attributed to. But then you would have to take the issue up with the Native Americans and other now-English-speaking cultures who use it as well. I doubt many folk would be eager to explore that particular territory out of a drive for linguistic purity.

Moving on: I will be completely honest, as a self-descriptor “shaman” is a word that I’m deeply conflicted about.

I believe that for every person who hears the word “shaman” and thinks of one who serves as an intermediary with the spirit world, and perhaps helps guide others in their own search for knowledge and connection beyond the mundane, there’s going to be someone who hears “charlatan,” or “scam artist” or just thinks “but… you’re white.”

Why then would I use it?

Simple, it’s the word my Patron tells me to use, at least to refer to specific parts of my Work.

Which isn’t to say that’s the end of my relationship with the word. I’ve been a “shaman” for many years, and over time there are things I have learned about this word, at least in regards to how I relate to it.

When my Lady first informed me that I would be taking a prolonged break from my magical studies and Work, to undergo an extensive process of transformation in order to become a shaman, I was certainly not thrilled. Up to that point the study and practice of magic had been the primary focus of my work for Her, and one of two primary focuses in my life. Moreover, I knew that the process involved would seriously suck, if I survived it.

My own shamanic death/rebirth cycle was comprised of four major ordeals over the course of two years, each one of which could potentially have resulted in my physical death if it had gone less than perfectly. This was accompanied by a worsening of my physical and mental health over the course of that time. I came out the other side as one who is never fully in the mundane world or the Otherworld(s), not wholly alive, but certainly not a shade either.

Many years on I’m still exploring what it means to be a shaman in service of the Mistress of the Forest Fire, and discovering what my shamanic work fully entails, especially as I finally start the process of incorporating my magic and my shamanism.

Perhaps the first thing I learned about this word is that it’s very loaded, not only in interpersonal interactions, but in the eyes of the Universe and the gods. Declaring oneself a shaman can open doors and bring connections to the spirits that had not been there before. There are areas of spirit work where working under the title of “shaman” gives me different privileges and access than I have as a servant of the gods, or as a magician. This is especially true in my work the Dead.

Of course, simply declaring oneself a shaman doesn’t make you one (and like Del, I was not the first person to use that word to describe myself). Laying claim to a title that isn’t yours can have consequences, and perhaps the most destructive I’ve seen is the declaration that one is a shaman leading to one’s wyrd becoming tied to that path, even if that was not the desired outcome.

Personally, I believe that the connection to traumatic transformation, although not necessarily around death, is a big part of what makes one a shaman. I’ve met shamans of madness as well as of death, and there can be a third, far rarer path of shamanism as well.

The process of going deep into another state of being, so much so that it completely consumes you, and then coming as far back as possible, leaves a person changed. Existing not in this world, but not in another either, is to me a major factor that distinguishes a shaman from other forms of spirit workers. My beliefs differ from Del’s in that I feel strongly that one can be a spirit worker 24/7 without being a shaman. Although not all spirit workers are 24/7 and I’m not convinced all shamans are either.

I should also note, that I believe it’s possible to be a “full time” spirit worker or shaman while also having a “day” job, particularly if said day job dovetails into one’s spirit work. The definition of a “full time” shaman or spirit worker is by its nature rather subjective after all.

I realize it is a digression, but here are some forms of spirit workers I’ve known. It is certainly possible for one person to be more than one, and not everyone who fits these titles are spirit workers per say.

in no particular order

• Shaman (since we’re talking about it)
• Gods-slave
• Gods-spouse
• Purpose-bound
• Mystic
• Medium
• Monastic
• Scholar
• Bard
• Priest/ess

For me, “shaman” is a job, a sacred role, and one of several central facets of my identity. For all that, in some ways, I don’t consider being a shaman to be all that special. Within the framework I use to define “shaman,” it is rather rare, even among pagans, polytheists, and spirit workers. But in the end it is simply another way to serve the gods and the Universe, no better or worse than others.

I do believe that shamans do a particular form of important Work that few others can do. However, the same can be said of a mystic, bard, gods-spouse, or any other of a variety of spiritual roles and titles. It is also worth noting that many of those other roles and titles are in their unique way as controversial and emotionally loaded as “shaman” is.

As a demographic we are figuring all this stuff out as we go along. Together we are creating not only new ways to express faith and experience the divine, but on a more fundamental level exploring ways to conceptualize the nature of our individual and shared reality.

Words are one of the essential ways we define our existence, so it’s of no surprise that words like “shaman” become bound up in layers of intellectual and emotional meaning, with all the controversy that can entail.

In the end though it’s the word my patron deity says I use, so I use it. All my complex feelings and intellectual considerations around “shaman” will always come up short in the face of Her insistence. That’s the nature of our relationship, and I find myself surprisingly ok with that.

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.

Questions about Sacrifice

My post, Sacrifice seems to have gone viral among people of many different faith paths; I received more hits per 24 hour period on that piece than any other I’ve written to date (although it has a way to go for best all time hits, as God Sex and Hearing the Gods are currently the most popular.)

One person, identified as “C”, sent a comment full of well thought out and important questions, so I thought instead of answering them in the comments section, I would give them a post of their own.

1) Many, if not most, of us who are now polytheistic or polytheistically inclined have come from a Christian background. One of the reasons a lot of ppl leave that path is precisely because they do not feel heard, acknowledged, or cared for. Paganism, at large, has held out the image or idea that these other Deities are more tangible and responsive, more imminent in our daily affairs. However, it sounds like you, and many of your colleagues, are saying that the Gods are, or can be to most of us, just as remote and apparently non-responsive as the Christianity deities ever were. So how does Paganism/polytheism offer anything preferable, or as many assert, superior to the Christian paradigm?

There might be some conflation between the concept that the Gods are imminent, and the concept that Pagans can develop the abilities to see and hear them on a regular basis. One of the (debatable) theologies of most Pagans is the idea of imminence: the Gods are not living in some far off kingdom in the sky, looking down on us from a detached viewpoint, they are here on Earth, walking among us, interested and involved in our day to day existence. That’s how I view imminence, anyway. And as it is possible for a human to be interested in our daily existence and collect all kinds of information about us (as proven by how many times people google “Del Tashlin” to find this blog, for instance), and may even be an invisible hand guiding our decisions or the outcomes therein, it is all the more possible for the Gods to be at work in your life, and yet you might never actually get to have a two-way conversation with them.

The reason some people are given the gifts of understanding the Gods with their senses (hearing, seeing, etc) is specifically to live a life of service to those who do not. So even if you, personally, do not experience the Gods with your senses, it may only take a phone call or a coffee date with the right spirit worker in order to have personalized messages delivered to you (if the Gods have anything to communicate, anyway.) It may take the form of oracular work, or it may be divination. And that’s another equalizer in this; although you may not have the ability to hear with your ears, learning a divination system is available to most people, and I do believe that Gods communicate with us through divination, as long as you learn the basic energetic exercises that go with being a channel (grounding, centering, etc), rather than just interpreting the forces of randomness.

Another hurdle here is that few people take the time to really listen. We live in a society of constant distraction; music at the gas pumps, Ipods on the train, tv in the background; we have learned to think of silence as a terrible punishment. Even sitting in a car with another person, if the conversation dies, both people are likely frantically searching for a new topic of conversation, rather than just letting the silence pervade the experience. (I had the fortune to learn how to sit in conversational silence while dating a person who rarely spoke; at first, it drove me crazy, but over time I learned to love the feeling of release when I no longer pressured myself to fill the silence with random chatter.) You can’t hear the Gods if you’re constantly bathed in distraction, and that takes practice. It may take a meditative session of an hour or longer before you can allow your brain to silence the running commentary track, because even that may be too loud for the inspiration to come through. And like I’ve said in Hearing the Gods, it rarely manifests as actually hearing an external voice, even if most spirit workers shorthand the description that way (“Odin told me to buy whiskey” may actually mean “I was in the liquor store buying tequila for the upcoming party, when I felt an overwhelming desire to purchase a specific kind of whiskey. I followed my gut, and later I sat for two hours staring at the whiskey until I had an internal revelation that Odin likes whiskey, and it’s been a while since I’ve libated to him, so I should probably go do that”, followed by a sense of resolution when you finish the act.) It takes a lot of trial and error (and yes, error, as in “I really thought seeing two ravens for three days straight was an omen from Odin, but actually, it was just that there was some carrion outside my house and they kept coming until it was gone.”

The other half of the sacrifice, which I guess I didn’t make clear enough in the first piece, is that those who dedicate their lives to the service of their God’s people, have to learn and perfect a variety of skills in order to do their Job and do it well. (No one wants to go see the shaman who doesn’t know how to meditate, right?) And if you’ve got a great day job and a wonderful spouse and lovely children, you might not have the kind of time, patience, or dedication that these skills require. Most spirit workers I know do not have children; many of them do not have day jobs or if they do, they spend all of their free time working on their spiritual calling. It’s not something that a full time engineer can achieve unless they’re willing to make… you guessed it…a sacrifice. That’s part of the life I live as well. I live in a very small, suburban/rural city, in a very quiet neighborhood, and I spend about 70% of my time sequestered in my room, working on some spiritual thing or another. There are days that my girl (who lives with me) will only leave my food at the door, knowing not to interrupt, and that eventually I will peek my head out if I need sustenance. I don’t get to go out to the bar, or visit a friend, or have a game night. Sometimes I don’t leave my house for weeks, and then only to see a doctor. It’s a very solitary life, and although I have romantic partners, they all understand that the Work comes first, and that means I might disappear for a month, too busy to send a text message or schedule a visit.

In other words, for dramatic effect, I used the bigger life sacrifices that my colleagues make, but inside of that are millions of smaller ones, daily ones, choosing to answer someone’s well thought out questions rather than sleep, maybe? 🙂

2) Given that apparently only a limited number of ppl appear to be able to hear and communicate meaningfully with the Deities, how does someone, such as myself, who’s tried their entire lives to make contact, not come to the conclusion that ALL of this isn’t simply fantasy wish fulfillment?

Again, this ignites what my colleagues call an “on duty light”. It’s a small pull around my heart chakra (or sometimes the feeling of force pushing down on my head and shoulders) because these are the services I provide my tribes and communities. I am out there, ready and willing to verify that your prayers are heard, your offerings not in vain, and that your beliefs are not an addiction to Dungeons and Dragons gone awry. Loki rewired me and removed the obstacles in my life so I have the ability to offer my skills humbly, to anyone who might need them. And He did it to me, because honestly, I was wasting my life away and was ready to end it, and He decided there was a whole different track I could be on, if only I was willing to surrender my free will. That sounds easy, doesn’t it? Reading those words in no way can convey what it’s like when I was Told that after my most recent marriage failed, that having a spouse was too much of a distraction from the Work, so although I am allowed to have romantic liasons, I am now barred from taking a new spouse, or even having a relationship that resembles spousery (like living together, sharing finances, making decisions as a unit, etc). I’m a Libra, and we work best when part of a partnership. But it’s very true, what the Gods said; both of my spouses and the relationship I had that might as well have been spousal, dragged me away from my calling; and it wasn’t their fault. It was too easy for me to ignore the Work in deference to the work a long term relationship entails. In each of those relationships, if the Gods told me to do something that my spouses disapproved of (my Soon To Be Ex (STBX) was fond of saying, “Well, if the Gods want that, They can pay for it.”) I just didn’t do it. And it wasn’t outward denial to my Gods; I just let the Work pile up in the cosmic inbox and plugged my ears and la la la’d my way along. And each and every time, the circumstances were brought about that the spouse would be removed from my life – and oddly enough, not by my choice – which is why I tell would-be spirit workers and shamans never to tell the Gods that something like your children, or your job, or spouse, is keeping you from doing your Work, because They have ways of removing those obstacles, usually ways that aren’t fun or pretty.

But anyway, this isn’t about my sob story. What I’m trying to convey to you is that I can tell you, C, that your prayers are heard. That you are loved and noticed. I feel it coming through my body and spilling out of my pores. And in the future, should you have doubts, now you know how to find me, and I will happily serve you in any way that will strengthen your spiritual journey.

I know this may feel a little like going to a Catholic priest; as though you need an intercessory in order to communicate to God. But that’s not the case at all. Prayers are heard, even if the pray-er does not feel the revelation after doing so. You can always talk to your Gods, by yourself, in any way that feels right to you, without anyone’s help. It’s only when you seek confirmation – and it’s worth noting, that often when people ask me if their Gods hear their prayers, I can easily point out the omens and signs they were given, but did not notice or apply to their situation. So the answers are usually there, but it takes time and skill to see them.

3) If, as is taught by some, the Gods are our Elder Kin, why should they be so recalcitrant about speaking to us? Do any of you who do receive communication ever ask the Gods point blank why they deign to speak to so few or at the very least make their presence felt? To expect or desire or in any way accept the heart felt pleas, prayers, cries, devotions, adorations, etc. of untold multitudes of souls w/o so much as a breath of recognition and response of any sort sounds quite cruel and capricious!

I can’t speak for everyone, or for the Gods on this question. I can only speak to what it inspires within me. Many of my shamanic colleagues, mostly when we’re railing against our calling, wonder why there seems to be more spirit workers and shamans cropping up all over the place; in places where there were none before. Obviously, no scientific survey has been done to definitely state that there are more shamans, shamanic practitioners, spirit workers, God spouses, and the like, than there was 30 years ago. Before the Internet, it is very likely that many were called but failed to understand what they were being asked to do – no googling “spiritual crises” back then – or that they just went about doing their Work, quietly, taking clients as the encountered them on the street, or in their tribes, or perhaps even just their extended families. They may have used different words to describe what they did; I’m positive that during more oppressive times, there were many “special grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins” who knew about herbs spirits and energy work, but since the monotheistic paradigm made it difficult or impossible to discuss without being accused of Satanism/Witchcraft (in the bad sense of the word), it was just something like, “Every time I visit Sammy’s house, I always feel more focused, more clear headed, more connected.” and no one talked about how or why it happened.

In the age where we have better means of long distance travel, as well as the obvious ability to google various spiritual quandaries and find meaningful answers, when hospitals are hiring Reiki practitioners who are as well regarded as MDs, when Tantra is something an adventurous couple might try to spice up their sex life, and as the eon changes now into Aquarius and more and more people will be open to imminent spirituality, us wackjobs who have been studying, practicing, and quietly doing our daily devotions and research on our Gods will come forward. I can speak from experience how many clients I’ve had who approached me as atheists or anti-theists, and over time and exposure learn to open their heart to whatever calls to it…

The Gods are activating us. They are pushing us to be more public. For years I fought using the title “shaman”, and it really wasn’t until other people started using it in reference to me that I began to embrace it. (There’s a whole essay on that in storage, as I’m waiting for a co-conspirator to add their thoughts.) The main reason my Gods demanded I do so is because it’s a word that people understand, that they have at least some concept of what one is and what it does, whereas if I followed the emerging trend to choose a title that comes from the language of the Gods I serve (from godhi to seidkona to volupsa), many of my non-Norse-following clients, as well as those who are just starting out with this whole spiritual thing, will have no effing clue what that means or what skills I have because of that title.

I bet, right now, as of 3:15am EDT, there is someone in an ER somewhere dying, knowing each breath might be their last; when a God of some pantheon or another, probably unknown to hir, is appearing and offering the same deal I got – die now and give up, or let me the reigns and I will make your life meaningful again. And maybe that ER is three miles from your house. Who knows? But we are out there, and there are more of us out of the broom closet and mingling outside of the Pagan demographic, reaching out to communities and tribes we’ve been assigned to (or chosen, in some cases).

Which brings me to:

4) If They are indeed as capricious as what it sounds like you’re saying and as it appears, what makes Them worthy of our love and efforts at all!? If I’m going to get all the response I would from a bit of concrete, then why don’t I just call some random piece of concrete my deity and pray to it?

Well, speaking as an animist, I’d completely encourage you to find a bit of concrete and see if it has a spirit within it that you can help or learn from in some way. But I admit that’s also me being a bit of a saucebox.

For as much as my Gods have asked to sacrifice or surrender in order to live the life I do, I will emphatically exclaim that their presence in my life has brought such richness, has turned my life from black and white to technicolor, has given me the audacity to believe in things that science can’t, and may never, explain. I’ve seen glorious things, both in the realms of magic as well as in the transformation of the human soul when it opens itself to seeing the world as being encircled by Gods who are here, with us, encouraging us to be our best selves, to get over what holds us back and move forward boldly and with a surety they did not possess before.

I have those times, though. I won’t bullshit you. In long stretches of the darkened silence, I have pounded my fists and demanded to know why I was asked to give up so much if all I was going to get was “do this thing you don’t want to do, and don’t talk to me until it’s done”. Or worse yet; when my chronic illness first manifested, mostly in the form of severe chronic neurological and muscular pain, I actually wrote a letter to many of my colleagues, demanding to know why Loki would have punished me so, and what am I not doing that He feels this is a suitable punishment. Was it? No. Although now i see my illness as a blessing, I do not believe that any of my Gods thought that making me use a wheelchair or be hopped up on opiates was a grand idea. I believe in science as much as I believe in magic; my mother’s lineage is full of autoimmune and neurological disorders, and so it’s very likely whatever it is I have (if you’re interested, my other blog, Dying for a Diagnosis is all about that part of my life) is genetic, not divine. But have the Gods found a way to make it work with Their overall plan? Sure, in the same way that anyone deals with a monkeywrench. Or maybe They knew all along this was coming, and that was why They chose me and not the dude down the block. Who knows? To this day, I have no idea why I was picked. :shrug:

But yes, I empathize with the feeling that it’s all for naught, that the messages you receive (if any) are just wish fulfillment, that you’re merely using the Encyclopedia Mythica as your literary porn (in the case of Godspouses and consorts), and that in the end it doesn’t matter.

This is not a problem of the Gods. It is a problem of human faith. Faith is a difficult thing to nuture, because at its core it is holding a belief and acting upon that belief without the presence of proof. My Boyfriend is struggling with this as we speak; he once had a working God Radio (he could hear Them but had no way of knowing if They heard him) but his God purposefully broke it, mostly because he had to learn to trust in his own faith, rather than rely on the stream of information coming from Them. Once his faith is bulletproof, he’ll get a radio back (and maybe a phone, if he’s lucky), but right now, he needs to cultivate belief in the absence of proof. Without that absence, then what we believe in ceases to be spiritual, and becomes either science or fantasy.

There are days when I question if what I’m hearing is really Them, or if it’s just a fantasy game I like to play by myself. I wonder what would happen if I broke one of my taboos, or ate something They’ve told me to avoid, or even denied their existence. I just came through my own ordeal, where I underwent a surgery that I had been Told would have a life or death crisis (and it did, as I stopped breathing and was on a respirator for a short period of time) and that I had to pass my Underworld ordeal in order to return to the land of the living. How much did I want to reason it away, to look at what was going to happen as a simple surgery (the removal of a large abscess in my abdomen, as well as 40lbs of infected and necrotic tissue, as I was literally dying from the inside already), and not some big ass Spooky Foo Showcase. Friends came from all over the country to participate in the rituals both the night before, and the day of surgery; we sent out instructions for those who couldn’t be present so they could work from home.

When I woke up in ICU, one of the first revelations I had was that they had all made this giant deal out of it, and other than the whole not breathing thing, everything turned out all right. I mean, I have severe trauma in my mind from the ordeal I passed in the Underworld (which I am still in the process of remembering), but physically, so far everything is going well. I wonder – was it all the hoopla that upped my odds of success? Or were we just blowing the procedure out of proportion.

Lucky for me, I was able to verify my spiritual thoughts with people completely unaware and unaffected by what I thought was going to happen. Boy howdy, did I seek out verification – I believe I spoke to over ten different spirit workers about one aspect or another. Yes, I even contacted spirit workers I did not know personally, having no idea if their godphone was “real” or “memorex”. (Please be old enough to get that reference.)

But that’s faith. And I can’t give you it. No one can. It is something you create, from pieces of your soul, and that you nurture on a regular basis. It’s perfectly normal, and somewhat expected (as my Gods tell me) that we doubt from time to time. They know it’s a lot to take in, and I even have felt their frustration that They couldn’t just manifest or create some random miracle before your eyes in order to bolster your faith. It’s kinda the one rule Gods have to abide by; devotees must come based on their faith, not on verifiable proof of existence. It sucks, but I guess you can lodge your complaint with the Universe, or whomever makes up the rules for the Gods.

5) Not to in any way demean, belittle, or question the trauma of your sacrifices or any those of any of the ppl you’ve mentioned, but MANY of us out here have gone through horrific sacrifices as well. My own include job loses, poverty, deaths of many loved ones, debilitating health problems, having my life threatened, and more. But regardless, there’s still no response from the Spirit world or the Gods, no matter how I implore them. So to say that there’s some kind of dividing line – involving sacrifice – between who receives communication and who doesn’t, seems arbitrary and unwarranted. It also sounds suspiciously like that old gem that crops up in everything from diet to religion, “you’re just not doing it right!”

I did not feel belittled by your question at all; in fact, you’re not the first person to ask me this. Frequently, people will write me and tell me about some horrific experience they’ve survived, wondering if it was a shamanic crisis (usually in addition to asking that if it was, when would the cool spooky powerz show up?). Not every trauma has a spiritual aspect to it. I had a miscarriage in 2002, and although it was a terrible awful thing, if it had any spiritual meaning (other than I am not supposed to have children, which I’m still not entirely sure if that’s true or not) I have yet to find it. My father died in 2007, and although it brought up a very complex set of emotions and messed me up for almost a year, I don’t feel it had any spiritual relevance. I was raped in college, and oddly enough, I’ve been told by the Gods that it didn’t have any spiritual significance; I just invited the wrong person to spend the night in my dorm room.

Because I have her permission, I’m going to use Galina as an example. She was a dancer, who suffered an injury that she feels put her on the track of her Work with Odin. Here’s the difference between a random event and a spiritual crisis: many dancers, once injured, decide to become dance teachers, or find some other way to stay connected to the life that they love. Olympic gymnasts become coaches, mentors, judges, or even go into producing the events. Just because something bad happened to someone, doesn’t mean that their life has to change dramatically. But Galina had a revelation, of what quality and kind I do not know, but something in her gave her the unshakable conviction that dancing was over, and that she was to pursue her spiritual calling instead. For me, it was that at the moment of the crisis, I had an actual “hallucination” (or “visitation”, take your pick) of Loki, talking to me and telling me what was to happen.

I have worked with several clients who really, really wanted their trauma to have some deeper spiritual meaning, maybe to help them make sense of it, to feel like it had some sort of silver lining. And no amount of divination or communication with the Gods revealed any greater purpose. Sometimes we’re just the extras in someone else’s movie; we’re not always the star, even if it may feel that way. Maybe my rapist had a spiritual conversion when he was fired due to my accusation. Or maybe it was his boss, who upon hearing of the incident, came to understand his role as a Sacred Guardian, and that he had to make sure all of his security guards understood the sacredness of what they were doing. Or maybe it was the person I told the story to, who realized that their own trauma didn’t exist in a vacuum, and went on to create a non-profit for LGBT rape victims. I’ll never know if there was any spiritual meaning to it, or where in the pond the ripple found a stone to push.

Loki reminds me daily that although I can pretend to be a rock star (see the title?), that I am really just a vagabond, wandering into people’s lives and saying or doing the right thing at the right time, and then fading to black as that person moves on without me, who may not even remember my name a year later, or who runs into me at some event and can’t remember how we know each other (even when their tear stained face is burned into my memory). That’s what I mean when I talk about having humility as a prerequisite for these abilities; the Gods aren’t likely to give them to someone who only wants them to gain power, control, or fame/prestige; in fact, I’ve seen some of the effects that happen to those who walk that path, and it rarely ends well. Humility is as much a part of my spiritual practice as meditation or energy work. Without it, I’m an asshole on a power trip that only helps other assholes who don’t mind being a part of that power trip, who stroke my ego and tell me how awesome I am; meanwhile, so many wounded and hurting can’t break through the shielding of inflated ego, and go on ignored and untreated. Whereas if I walk among them, hurting and wounded myself, not only will they find me, but they will understand that I know what it’s like, because I’m a human too, having a human experience.

So that’s the end of C’s questions. I hope my answers help in some way, not just C but everyone who stops by.

Just as a warning to my regular readers; my next essay is going to be about racism in the Leather and kink communities. It contains some information and images that might be offensive (and should be, but you’ll see). I’m working hard on it, because it addresses a complex issue that has many points of view at play. I hope you’ll read it and take part in a town hall that’s based on it on Sunday (check this post for more information. There is a chance I won’t be able to finish my post before Sunday, but Leatherati already has many posts on the subject.

Work

So often, when someone wants something spiritual to happen to them, us grumpy kids tell them they’ve got to do ‘the Work’ in order to achieve it. Yet, how often do we really stop and define what that means? What ‘Work’ have you done to get to where you are in your spiritual journey?

I know many people are waiting with baited breath to hear about what happened to me on Dec 28th, but I’ve been busy, you see. Busy doing all sorts of things that fall under that category of ‘Work’, whether or not it looks like it.

First and foremost, doing the ‘Work’ means taking care of yourself. Making sure you’re eating foods that do good things for your body, whatever you’ve found that makes your body, mind, and soul operate at peak performance. If you’ve trying to make (or maybe force) a spiritual evolution to happen, but you’re eating crap food all the time and not getting enough sleep/exercise/rest/meditation/healing, it’s just not going to happen. I’m sorry if I’m the first person to be telling you this, but I find there are certain things that make my body, and therefore my abilities (or whatever you want to call them) like hearing the Gods, or being able to decifer what They might want from me, easier to accomplish. For me, it’s about eating foods with actual nutritional value – meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts – staying away from things that slow me down, like stuff with too much sugar (I’m diabetic), or foods that make my brain feel sluggish (high carb foods like breads, pasta, potatoes, etc). But you’ll find that there are just as many diet suggestions for spirit workers as there are spirit workers; some must refrain from gluten, soy, MSG, preservatives, meat, alcohol, certain drugs (prescription or not), etc. Ask my girl about trying to plan a series of meals for a group of spirit workers, trying to take everyone’s dietary needs into consideration and still find choices that everyone can eat – it can be an uphill battle sometimes. But we all choose to eat these peculiar ways because it helps us be at the top of our game, keeps our bodies and spirits functioning at maximum, and giving us enough energetic ‘spoons’ for those marathon days of doing very focused Work.

Sleep/rest is also important, both making sure you don’t get too much as well as not enough. It is true that sometimes that can be the most difficult obstacle to overcome – our society is evermore pushing us towards this unobtainable ideal of being productive at all hours of the day and night, only sleeping when it feels absolutely necessary, but you can’t do this sort of stuff if you’re exhausted, or suffering the symptoms of too much sleep, either. And rest isn’t only naps; it also means taking time off, doing things that are purely for enjoyment, rather than something goal-driven. It means finding some friends to play a board game, or going to the movies to see something fun, or spending an afternoon in an art gallery allowing yourself to be inspired. Many shamans I know engage in some sort of handicraft, and although the products themselves may have spiritual significance, it’s also just nice to spend a quiet afternoon knitting or working in the forge or playing with clay.

Spending time with people who are not your clients or co-workers can sometimes be important. I’m very much an introvert, needing lots of alone time to feel human, but even I need to get out sometimes and not be forced to talk about whatever Work I’m doing. I need to feel community, to be around family-of-choice, to feel loved and supported and jovial ties of friendship and adoration. Yes, sometimes being around people of any sort might accidentally trigger an “on duty light”, but it’s totally acceptable in most cases to gently let someone know that although you see and acknowledge their need, you’re presently relaxing, and will talk to them about their spiritual crises another day. If they can’t accept that, then find other people to be with. It’s of critical importance when you socialize in the circles you also Work for, that people recognize and respect those boundaries between “Del the shaman” and “Del the dude who wants to hear some dirty jokes, please”.

Once your body is tended to, doing the ‘Work’ also means tending to the mind. You can find spiritual inspiration in a lot of places; reading helps me tremendously. Sometimes it’s the more obvious books on Loki or spirit work or the spiritual philosophies or this or that religion; but I’ve found just as much food for thought in works of fiction, poetry, art, and science. Whatever ignites your curiosity, what makes you think and introduces new and different ideas or ways of seeing the world, can be considered ‘Work’. I also watch a lot of documentaries, especially when reading seems like too much focus for my mind (like when I am feeling ill), because they show me sides of life that I may not have been exposed to, or concepts/philosophies that make me question my own dearly held beliefs. You need to stimulate your mind, give yourself permission to question what you believe to be true, and usually that only happens when you’re faced with someone else’s beliefs and experiences that differ greatly from your own.

Prayer and contemplation are also very ‘Work’ oriented. It’s nice to have a beautiful table laid out with all your pretty spiritual tools and other offerings, but what makes it an altar, and not just a display cabinet, is taking the time to actual sit in front of it and use it as a focus for worship, contemplation, offering, prayer, and meditation. Your altars should be a gateway of connection with that which you hold dear (and yes, you can have altars to ideas as well as Gods; I have seen some gorgeous altars to the concepts of sanity/mental health, family, harmony, peace, musicianship, and love; these were not dedicated to any specific Deity per se, but just the archetypical concepts themselves). Building and maintaining your altars can also be seen as ‘Work’; if your altar is covered with dust and neglect, it can be an obvious sign that you’ve lost your focus. You need a strong foundation before you go on adding al the shiny additions to your spiritual life, and if you can’t find the ten minutes it takes to dust off your statuary and replenish your perishable offerings, you probably shouldn’t be trying to take on much else. Granted, sometimes the Gods keep you hopping, and the altar maintenance gets away from you, but then please go back to “rest and relaxation”, and maybe combine the two – stopping all the furious blogging and answering email; turn off the computer and go make sure your altar is in order.

Also, ‘Work’ means listening, and if you’re not turning down the volume on you life, you’re not going to hear anything. If you’re running from one distraction to the next, you’ll never hear the quiet voices inside. It can be easy in our American culture to feel odd or disjointed when you’re not actively distracted – look at how many people feel the need to have the tv on while doing something else entirely, like studying or cooking – and I’m totally not immune to this. Every so often, I will catch myself in the middle of running from one distraction to the next, and have a hard time recalling the last moment of real silence I experienced. People frequently complain, when I am starting to teach them about meditation, that their brain won’t shut up. They rarely understand that is a side effect of never listening to it; it feels like a good friend who has been dying to talk to you for weeks, and so as soon as the opportunity arises, words come spilling out in rapid succession for hours on end. It’s as much about paying attention to all the odd things your brain wants you to know, as it is about reaching the silence beyond that. If all you can manage today is to spend one minute in complete silence, even if that minute is eaten by the brain telling you all the other things you could be doing with that one minute, it’s better than not doing it.

It also means taking time for others. I have a terrible reputation for being busy; almost every email I get from friend or client alike starts with “I know you’re a really busy person, but I really need/want…” Don’t make this mistake. Even if you are really busy, if you’re serious about having a stronger connection to the Gods, you have to make time in your life for Their ‘Work’ to manifest, and if you keep up this aura of never ending toil, neither the Gods nor the people in need will come to you out of fear of adding more to your plate than you can handle. This goes the other way, too, that sometimes when my life is legitimately busy – oh, say after a major surgery combined with a move – that you just accept that mundane life is going to have to take some precedence for a while, and your spiritual pursuits will just have to wait until things slow down a bit. But we humans, we are masters of filling up time with all kinds of commitments, distractions, and other obligations that keep us from the uncomfortable feeling of being at loose ends, of not having anything to do today; but if you don’t cultivate that sense of openness, you’ll miss all the spontaneous opportunities that come from just being available.

This does mean, however, that part of the ‘Work’ is also learning to say “no” to things. Although that online class looks mighty tempting, I need to seriously think about the commitment it will take to finish it, and weigh the time sacrifice against all the other things I could be doing with that time. I used to do a lot of community theater, and when I read about my friend’s shows I get this sadness in my heart; I start to wonder to myself if I could actually audition for something one of these days, but then I remember how much time and energy goes into rehearsals, learning your lines, getting your costume together, run-throughs, productions, cast get-togethers, parties, etc; it’s just not feasible for me. It’s very hard for me to hear that “no”, even though it’s coming from me, but it’s a “no” I have to say to myself over and over again.

The other side of learning when to say “no” is learning when to say “later” to spiritual pursuits. After reading a passage in a book, a blog post, or a magazine article about something spiritual, we frequently want to figure out how to make that manifest in our lives RIGHT NOW. We forget for the moment that we’re going to school full time, or working 80 hour weeks, or trying to raise a child, and we just want that ecstasy that we feel rolling off the page when we read about it. It’s hard to hear, but sometimes mundane life wins. If you need that 80 hours in order to pay your bills; if your child needs you full time until kindergarten; if getting your degree means having more free time later to pursue such things; then you have to radically accept that although it would be nice to have the time to work on spiritual things, now is not the time to do it.

This happens to us spiritual-type people, too. We try to force the obligations of our spiritual Work, in addition to the mundane realities of rent/bills, family, other jobs/commitments, relationships, into one schedule, and it becomes clear that maybe we need to take a break from one or the other in order to get what we want out of life. Although opportunities to run away from the mundane side do occur, they come much fewer and further between than the other way around. Maybe you’re the kind of lucky that can find someone to pay all your bills while you spend a year in spiritual retreat, or maybe if you focus on working in a monetarily-satisfying way for a certain amount of time, you know the payoff will be the ability to spend days in meditation. But more often than not, it’s the other way around; where sometimes even us crotchety shamans have to turn away from the communities we serve and do whatever it takes to pay the bills for a while.

Another part of the ‘Work’ is developing solid relationships with the communities you intend to serve. It’s impossible to be a shaman without a community. I know it goes against a lot of the dramatic idealism of many spiritual-types who like the archetype of shamanism, but one of the big differences between being a spirit worker and being a shaman is that we absolutely, positively, need a community to serve. And no, your immediate family does not count. A community must be big enough to support its shaman, if not financially, at least with a legitimate amount of need. These communities sometimes don’t even know they need a shaman until one (or many) arrives. I’m sure no one in the kinky community was standing around thinking, “Man, we need us some shamans”, but as soon as Winter and I appeared to our local kink communities, we found ourselves with more Work than we could handle. But this means that we both have to do things to strengthen that bond, to let the community know that we belong as well. We have to go to events, and spend time at parties, and teach classes, and move within our people so they know we are there, that we have reputations of being not only spiritually-upright, but also upright in our knowledge and understanding of that community. It would be difficult at best to serve a community that you didn’t understand the culture of, and the only real way you get that sort of understanding is by being a part of it.

These are just some examples of ways of doing the ‘Work’ that will lead you towards whatever next evolution you desire. It’s just a jumping off point, for you to make your own. What do you think you need to do to make room in your life for the kind of changes you want? How do you let your inner self know that it’s time for growth? Are you taking care of yourself, of your responsibilities and needs, so that you have the freedom of thought to tackle these tough issues? Do you have a solid enough structure that when you come through your evolution and need time and space to rest, that it’s already set up for you? What ‘Work’ are you doing?

“The Witching Hour” and Psychic Quiet

This is still a raw thought, something I’ve been tossing around in my head for a few days (well, nights really, as you’ll see) and I’m curious to see if others experience something similar.

My partner Winter has always been a night owl, at least since I’ve known him. If my phone rings at 1a, chances are pretty high it’s him. And most nights, chances are I’m still wide awake and happy to have someone to talk to.

Likewise, my sister has always been a night owl. So much so that she ended up dropping out of high school and getting her GED because the rigors of having to be functional at 7am and throughout the day were too hard for her. And ever since, she’s favored jobs that let her work the graveyard shift; in fact, that’s how she manages to both work full time and go to school full time as well. When I talk about this to other people, I posit that in our frequently frantic and busy house, if she waited to get up until late in the evening, it assured that she could roam the house without anyone to bother her – she could be the lord of the remote, eat whatever she pleased, and basically avoid having to interact with the rest of us.

I was reading a novel the other night that takes place in a world similar to our own but where magic is a known quantity. (I had originally written “…a reality”, but upon re-reading it, I realized that magic is a reality in our world, duh.) It mentions that magic is easier during “The Witching Hour” because so many people are asleep that it creates less psychic friction for their willworking and gives them more potency and power. It goes on to say that although originally, the hour was considered to be between midnight and 1a, but ever since our society has been pushing our lives later and later, it was now more like 3:30a. (It’s worth mentioning that a paranormal television reality show I like, Paranormal State, also considers 3a the best time to witness ghostly phenomena.)

I know that one of the reasons I highly prefer living in suburban or rural areas to cities is because I find being surrounded by so many people (and non-people or post-people) psychically assaultive. I find it harder to concentrate, to follow conversations, and especially to do anything related to magic or Sight. It makes me sad, because cities tend to be havens for artists, mystics, and other generally odd people (and have more resources and networking for said), and being able to live in them would make some parts of my life a lot easier. However, even smaller-scale cities can sometimes be too difficult for me; forget meccas like New York or Chicago. Nice to visit, but longer than a day or two and I am overrun with fatigue and anxiety.

I wonder (aloud) if the same can be said to how many spirit workers and other magicians tend to keep later hours. Not just for doing magic, but for any activity that requires focus and intuition. I know not everyone has the luxury of keeping whatever hours they may feel drawn to, since most of us have to interface with the waking world from time to time, but I seem to function better when I can be unfettered by the baggage that comes with that. Even on days where I am alone in the house with no pressing plans, I always seem to be struck with the impetus to write a blog post, or work on a project, or send prayers of healing in the wee hours of the morning. Even when I was in college, I loved to take late night walks, because I felt I could better parse whatever was running through my brain at night.

I love the absolute stillness that comes with moving through the night. There are just less responsibilities, too – I can’t call the doctor to make an appointment or randomly check in with my Mom to see how things are going for her. It can sometimes be a little frustrating when your circadian rhythm is set to the nocturnal, as minor errands and the like are much more difficult when most places of business are closed. (And again, most urban areas have greater resources for us night folk, but again with the too much static.)

So I put this out there to those who dabble or are dedicated to anything mystical – do you find that the night serves you better? If you work during the day, do you find things to be more difficult or meet more psychic resistance? Do you tend to schedule willworkings late at night? Is this why so many Pagan sects worship the moon rather than the sun? Inquiring Del-shaped minds want to know.

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?

Book Review: Dion Fortune’s Book of the Dead (Crossposted)

I am crossposting this on both of my blogs, since the subject matter is germane to both of them in different ways; I have different subscribers on both blogs, so I wanted to make sure no one missed it.

Dion Fortune’s “Book of the Dead”
published by Weiser Books
Amazon link: Book of the Dead

This book, which is probably better called a “pamphlet” at it’s very short 77 pages, was originally published in 1930 under the title, “Though The Gates of Death”. It’s not usually listed among her works due to its brevity, but I was lucky enough to stumble upon it while searching for new books to read on my Nook. This version was originally published in 1995 by the occult group she founded near the end of her life, “The Society of Inner Light”.

You’ve maybe heard of her before, because she was a strong influence on authors and occultists who created the Pagan traditions and thea/ology that we take for granted today. Diana Paxton and Doreen Valiente both credit her writings as a go-to when they were beginning what we now call Wicca. She’s also written one of the best books ever on the subject of psychic self-defense, titled “Psychic Self-Defense”. That is a book I frequently make students read and digest.

She was very active in the burgeoning occult underworld in the 1920’s and 30’s. Interesting to me, she had a nervous breakdown and went into a psychiatric institution right before she began having psychic and other magical experiences (madness path, anyone?). She studied various occult systems, including Crowely’s Golden Dawn, the Freemasons, and the hottest parlor religion, Spiritualism – a form of Christianity that held strong beliefs about being able to contact and interact with spirits of the dead and astral travel. She was also a “lay psychotherapist” (not far from what I do, sometimes) who had taken classes on the roles of psychology and psychic phenomenon from the Theosophists. And if that isn’t cool enough, there is scuttlebutt that she was one of the occultists the British government employed during WWII.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to find an E book version of her Book of the Dead. Working with spirits of the dead, and traveling to various other planes of existence, is something Ms. Fortune was very well known for. I was eager to hear what her thoughts were on the process of dying, and what the living can do to assist the dying in their crossing over.

These are the two things that the book focuses on the most – what the body and soul go through when one begins to die/what the soul can expect upon severing itself from the body, and what the living can do to assist the dying in making a gentle transition from life to death.

The first place that felt like a slap in the face (there were a few) is that she very strongly felt that there was no way that “natural death” could occur before “three score and ten years” (70). She explicitly states that dying from disease was not a “natural death”, because it meant that you were less than vigilant with your body. I believe this, like some of the other things I strongly disagree with her on, is a product of her era. This was before cancer was really known or understood, and although there still lingers some attitudes that some cancers are the patient’s “fault” (lung cancer, I’m looking at you!), I think our society’s view on those who contract terminal illnesses has radically changed since the 1930’s.

She describes three stages that a soul goes through after the last breath is released. The first is the disentanglement from both the “clay body” (your physical form) and the “etheric double” (how you envision yourself when you’re not looking at your body, basically). This can be assisted by those present at this stage by attempting to connect telepathically with the dying and give them permission and encouragement to move on. Also, having a source of prana (energy) present is useful – thus, the tradition of lighting candles and spreading flowers for the dead. Otherwise, the dying may use the prana from someone present, which she says explains why loved ones who suddenly feel tired shortly after the last breath have no explanation for it. I don’t know if I buy that entirely, since I know there’s a release of stress and energy when you know someone you’ve been sitting with is finally dead, and that might be confused for “stolen prana”. But it can’t hurt to have a good source handy if you’re sitting vigil for someone.

The second phase she calls “Purgatory” (remember, she was still seeped in Christian framework, even though she was an occultist). Supposedly, the soul is shown visions of their unrealized or unsuccessful desires. She talks about Karma a lot in this section, but I wonder if she only uses this term because it was the one accessible. The soul either has to overcome its attachment to these desires and failures (and thus move on to become a Master on the Higher Planes) or be reincarnated in order to live out another life to learn how to overcome them. Interestingly, Fortune states that while souls are in this phase, which starts “a few months after death”, they are not contactable, and cannot hear the summons of their loved ones on earth.

The third phase, “Heaven World” depends on what the disposition of the soul is – it can either ascend and become a “higher being” – a soul that assists in God’s work, or works with other freshly dead souls, or some other purpose – or you prepare to be reborn into a new incarnation. There is a time between phase 2 and 3 where a soul may be communicated with again, but Fortune warns that if you continually contact a soul in this phase, or bring them to mind/heart on a regular basis (like on their birthday, or an anniversary), you may be inadvertently keeping them from moving forward. If the departed does not feel like their old life is sorted, and their loved ones can move on and live their own lives apart from them, they cannot either ascend or be reincarnated. This meshes with some of my experiences working with dead who have been trapped due to similar circumstances.

I found many of her insights incredibly interesting, especially her thoughts that those who are psychically or magically aware have a much different death experience from those who are unused to fairing forth from their earthly bodies. She gives very veiled references on some exercises one can do to make that transition easier, and to retain consciousness during these processes. She attributes that most people cannot remember past lives, or what the after life is like, because their souls were “asleep” during them, and they attribute the experiences to a dream. She points to those who have a good handle on who they were in past lives as being more magically gifted in one way or another, because they are closer to becoming “masters”.

However, there was some stuff in there that I just found wacknutty. As I posted on Facebook, she states forthrightly that if a soul is severed from their body traumatically, like in a car accident, that soul will find itself inside the body of a baby about to be born. She claims that it is old midwives wisdom that if a baby is born with “old eyes”, it will die prematurely. Yes, she says that the traumatically severed soul jumps into a baby’s body so it can die properly, shortly after birth. I really wonder if she had a friend/friends who had lost children and were looking for some occult reason for it, and this was what Fortune came up with. Otherwise, it just seems too cruel, even for me.

I found this to be a really great read to get me in the mood for Samhain, which I will celebrate this weekend. It made me think very hard about what it must be like for a soul to leave a body and find out that it is more than the flesh, and gave me much to think about not just about where we go when we’re dead, but how we get there. It also gave me some incredible insights on things I can do should I find myself sitting vigil next to someone who is terminal. Some of it is definitely a product of the era it was written in, and there’s a lot of Christianity to translate to your own belief system, but the translation isn’t that hard. (She might have even been using it because it made it easier to publish in that time.) I suggest giving it a read, and it’s super short (77 pages). If you are a Nook user and wish to borrow my copy, complete with my own notes and thoughts, drop me an email and I’d be happy to lend it out.

What is “Spirit Work”?

In the theme of writing Spirit Work 101 essays, I figured I should probably back the truck up a bit and do my level best to explain what spirit work is, exactly.

The issue I face is that people use the term in a variety of ways, and there really isn’t a good definition out there that sums up the vast experiences, relationships, and devotional work that one might define as such. The first time I heard it applied to the kind of spiritual stuff I had been doing was by Raven Kaldera, a controversial person in his own right. The term sometimes gets sullied or maligned by his association with it – as though if you define your spiritual vocational work as “spirit work”, somehow you are in lockstep with him on his beliefs and practices. This is not the case.

Again, as always, I want to clarify that I am only going on my own experiences and discussions with others who call themselves spirit workers or who use the term spirit work to define their devotional practices. I invite those with alternate points of view or experiences to leave comments so as to expose readers to an array of ideas on the subject.

In the vaguest of ways, spirit work is a kind of spiritual practice that deals mainly with interactions between humankind and the world of spirits and Gods. It is different from other kinds of devotional work in that there is some form of communication between spirit workers and the spirits/Gods they work with or for. Usually, it also incorporates actions and practices that Spirits/Gods ask the spirit worker to do – as mundane as “carry this brick for two blocks and then put it down again” (an actual example), or as metaphysical as “spend nine days in a trance state exploring a specific place on the astral realm” (another actual example).

It does seem to require the ability to have, at least, one-way communication between the Holy Ones and the practitioner. One must be able to discern what the spirits may want, or want us to do. For more information about hearing the Gods and other spirits, I point you towards a different post of mine that addresses that subject. It is possible to do spirit work without this, but it usually requires having someone else in your life who has this ability, so they can help you figure out what the Gods want you to do. It is not uncommon for spirit workers to go through periods of feeling blocked, or having bad signal clarity, or in some other way find their “Godphone” or “Godradio” broken in some fashion. I’ve been there from time to time, and it didn’t stop me from being a spirit worker or doing the work of my Gods – it just made me rely harder on my own faith and the work that had been outlined in the past. I have another post on the way that addresses this subject in more depth.

The way that spirit work manifests in a person’s spiritual practices varies, depending on several factors. Usually, a person is chosen to do this sort of work based on the skills and talents they already possess – a spirit might choose a seamstress to create sacred costumes, or choose an artist to create devotional works of art for a spirit’s followers/devotees. It also happens that sometimes a God or spirit will embue a person with the ability to do the work they require; many people gifted with oracular or possessory abilities tell tales of being “rewired” so they can do these things reliably and with more ease.

Spouses or consorts of Gods sometimes consider their relationship a form of spirit work, since it usually comes with some sort of public devotional work. Some find themselves writing publicly about their spouse (books, blogs, essays, etc), while others become priests and help others who have a devotional relationship with their Consort. Some relay messages to those who cannot hear the voice of Gods, and others do social justice or other charity work in the name of their Deity. However, some Godspouses/consorts keep their relationship private, and this may play into whether or not they identify as a spirit worker.

At the core of the defintion is work. Although praying, writing, keeping shrines/altars, and other spiritual pursuits can be a part of a spirit worker’s life, the filter between “devotee” and “spirit worker” is when you take on tasks specifically at the request of the Holy Ones. It may be hard to discern whether you erected that altar to Kali Ma because you felt a deep connection with Her and Her mysteries/mythology, or because She herself asked you to. I know that when I began, I knew I had crossed over from devotional work to spirit work when the things the Gods asked me to do were things I would not have done of my own choosing, or things that changed my every day life and routine.

Some spirit workers work solely with the spirits, which can muddy the definition I gave above. These people find themselves in deep communication with the Holy Ones, and even though their work may not be in the public eye, it may still be defined as spirit work. I usually link this to those who work as a bridge because sometimes their private work benefits others in an indirect way. For example, a spirit may ask you to erect an altar in the middle of the woods, far off the beaten path. The person does it in solitude, not telling anyone about the altar or its location. However, two years later, that spirit leads another person to the altar, to give them some assurance that what they’re feeling and hearing isn’t madness.

Others find themselves working primarily with people, but for a spiritual cause. Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes the spirits ask their devotees to work in social justice or other charitable places in order to help the spirit’s “people”. A devotee of Baphomet, for example, might volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen because Baphomet has a warm heart for “the forgotten”. Dishing out stew may not look all spooky-foo, but the fact that Baphomet requested the person do it makes it so.

One of the struggles of some spirit workers is that Gods ask different things of different devotees. This can create everything from jealousy to downright derision. There are those who state that the Odin they know would never ask someone to do Ordeal Work in His name, while there are others who do exactly that. Once again, Gods are bigger than our brainmeats can comprehend, and the reason They take vastly different kinds of “workers” is because They are in need of a wide array of services offered in their name. Personally, when I “came out” as a child of Loki, many of his spouses derided me for not being chosen for that sort of relationship, and I felt discouraged and jealous. However, as time as gone on and I have gone deeper into the work that He and the Others I work for, I know securely that it is the right place for me to be, and to be anything else would distract me from my Purpose.

Now, for me, the differentiation between a “shaman” (essay forthcoming, co-authored by Wintersong Tashlin) and a “spirit worker” is that “shamans” have undergone some form of traumatic transformation in which they surrender their wyrd, or destiny, to the control of the Gods. In exchange for this surrender, the Gods bring the person back from their traumatic experience a radically different person, now focused on making the Work their primary focus. So although there may be full-time spirit workers, unless they’ve physically died, gone completely insane, or in some other way lost touch with our consensual reality, and as their solution accepted a Spirit’s dominion over the rest of their days, they’re not a “shaman”. Some people confuse the taking of clients as being a difference between spirit workers and shamans, but that’s not the distinction for me or those I know who identify as either shamans and spirit workers. Now, like me, there are some that identify as both; there are others who shy away from the word “shaman” because it has a complicated history (I promise, essay soon!) and so they use the less contentious “spirit worker”.

In a similar way, the word “priest”, in my lexicon, is someone who leads others in the worship of a Deity or Deities. If someone identifies themselves as a “priestess of Aphrodite”, then I expect them to be working directly with other seekers and devotees of Aphrodite in creating and participating in worship and work for that Deity. One need not be a spirit worker to be a priest, but one may be both a priest and a spirit worker. Have I lost you yet?

The word “devotee” is what I use for someone who has taken to worshipping a particular Spirit or Deity. They may have cultivated a feeling of close relationship, with or without the ability to discern the voice of that Spirit for themselves. They may have a shrine or altar to said Deity, do good works in their name, and witness to others about their particular Spirit. However, usually the word undertaken by a devotee is of their own volition, or a product of researching what devotees of a certain Deity did when the culture of that Deity was more alive/active, instead of being at the direct behest of that Deity. It could be that a devotee was told via a third party as to how to go about doing said devotional work, but unless the devotee is offering that sort of counsel/communication to others, I would not call them a spirit worker, per se.

But then, I am not one to go around investigating people’s claims to whatever word they feel defines their Work. I may ask questions if I am planning on doing work for them or with them, but in the end, I believe that if you take on the label of “spirit worker”, at the very least you should be able to speak to, and understand in some way, the Holy Ones. You should also be doing some form of actual Work on their behalf, in whatever way that particular spirit or God asks of you. You may work for one specific Deity, or a pantheon, or for any inhabitant of the Other Words, as your personal practice and relationships develop.

I hope I’ve given you some insight into how I define “spirit work”, and what a “spirit worker” does. Again, I encourage those who disagree, or who define these terms in another way, to add their conversation to the comments. Please be respectful and engage in polite discourse; I know this can be a touchy subject for some.