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.

Del, You Big Meanie! Why are you picking on cis gender women?

I’ve kicked up a lot of dust with my post about Loki’s wives, and regardless if it was singing my praises or cursing my name for all eternity, I’m happy about it. I’m a shit stirrer, and being the speaker of hard truths has taught me that any response is better than the whistlin’ of the wind.

But there seems to be one part of the entry that people are scratchin’ their heads over, one point that doesn’t seem like something I would ordinarily say, something that doesn’t fit with the overall point(s) I was trying to make.

Namely, “Hey Del, why did you single out cis gender women in your Ranty McRanterson post? Aren’t you, like, a gender activist?”

Let me start by quoting an email I got about six weeks ago. I have the permission of the author, as long as I don’t reveal their identity.

“Dear Del,

I’m very confused and as you’re a trans* man who works with Loki, I’m hoping you can help me figure something out.

I know, down to the marrow of my bones, that Loki and I are in love. He approached me, for reasons I’m still trying to figure out. And I was excited, and scared out of my wits. So I went online to find out what other people have done about these things, because you’ve mentioned God spouses and consorts before, so I figured I would find some.

And not one of them were anything other than female.

I know that Loki emanates from a traditional human culture, one in which homosexuality was seen as either all about severe power dynamics, or about men being lesser for choosing to have sex with other men. And there were likely very few, if any, same sex unions in Norse culture. So am I crazy? Do male Gods ever take male or otherly gendered followers? Even the few non-cis-gender women I found were all born female, or identify that way now, and I’m just a gay guy living in (somewhere in middle America), sure of my sexual orientation and my gender.

I feel very alone, and I’m really afraid if I tell anyone about my love for Loki, I will be in more danger than I already am for being out as gay *and* Pagan.”

I’d love to say that was the only email I’ve ever received of that nature, but I’d be breaking my oath as a truth teller. It isn’t always Loki, or even a Norse God; and it isn’t always a cis gender man asking the question, but the theme remains.

The overarching point of the post was that we needed to take a critical look at the current trend among spirit workers, and especially the subsect of Loki’s spouses online, and see what we can learn from it, both the positives and negatives. I am aware my tone made it hard for many to see where I was saying good things about these people, so let me try again without being quite so grumpy.

One of the really inspiring thing about the Tumblr and WordPress conclaves of Loki’s wives is that they have created a strong and findable community where spiritual paths that are considered in the very minority of Pagans and polytheists are accepted and supported without having to do a lot of “proving” that what they are experiencing is real and meaningful. If you read the stories of some of the early God spouses (Freya Aswyn was brought up in one of these discussions), you’ll see that God spouses were unilaterally treated as people who had jumped the shark when it came to spirit devotion. But they paved the way for these communities to thrive and flourish, maybe to such a place where non-spouses are seen as the odd men out.

For a while, I asked about non cis female spouses. I asked to be linked to blogs, books, and other reference material where I could send people like the dude above to let them know they’re not alone. I know they exist; I’ve met and interacted with a few of them but few of them blog about their experiences. Because they are so few, a Google search on God Spouses or the like don’t usually highlight these references. But many, many of the online safe havens for Loki’s wives show up.

Another commenter called me on belittling the teenager-crush-like behavior that many of these blogs and bulletin boards sport in droves. Although I admit, part of my derision makes me an asshole; I have been in more than one serious conversation about why Lokeans are excluded from some Heathen, Asatru, and other Norse-derived groups, and this “I had prawns at an adorable dark tavern in Jotunheim with Loki, and He was wearing the sexiest leather pants” attitude comes up. I agree, it’s not nice, fair, or right to have that held against us as somehow less serious or reverent than how others relate to their Gods; but they aren’t completely wrong either. Few other Gods, from any pantheon, have groups of followers who treat their Gods like that hot transfer student in English class with the leather jacket and the distressed jeans. I know they exist, but not in such numbers.

I don’t think this means that the Loki mooners need to shut up and go away, although I think using more discernment as to what they share about their devotional work and how it reflects on the greater community they represent, whether they like it or not, or whether they choose to be representatives or not, could be helpful to those who actually care about Loki being hailed at places like Trothmoot. I don’t belong to any of those sorts of organizations, as I do not identify as a Heathen, nor are all of the Gods I worship from the Norse pantheon. I do sometimes use the term “Northern Tradition Pagan”, but they’re specifically not only Loki-accepting, but dual-trad accepting as well.

I expect that many of the people I’m describing will happily go on doing exactly as they’ve been doing, or even start fake Tumblr accounts specific to spoof on my and others grumptastic views of them. Good. Part of what I want from all this dust-upping is for people to speak authentically about their experience, and if it’s all movie date nights and co-writing erotica, please for the love of Sleipnir don’t let some cranky redheaded old fart (me, not Loki) stop you. Running away because some asshole criticized you on the Internet is about as ludicrous as lying about shamanic abilities in order to make people think you’re awesome.

What I would like, if I may be so bold as to ask, is to take a moment to think about how you, the ones with the safe havens and popular Tumbrs, can help the guy who wrote me. Ways to be inclusive in you FAQs and advise columns to other God spouses and consorts to make sure you’re not setting a standard or assumption that one must be a certain age, sex, level of ability (in whatever), or sexual orientation in order to join your Fun Brigade. Use inclusive language when you write about your own experiences, so that people who have different plumbing can still relate. Link to people who are writing about God sex and/or relationships that aren’t heterocentric or assumptive. Remember that Loki Himself is a liminal God, and therefore isn’t always the lanky, elf-looking redhead I’ve seen way too many fan art pictures of. Heck, he fucked a male horse once, as a female horse, so who’s to say he doesn’t come in a female form to a male mortal, or has heterosexual sex with men as a woman, or homosexual sex with either men or women? Or maybe he manifests intersex genitalia and interacts with a slew of differently gendered people that way?

What makes this odd and a little uncomfortable for me, is that I am neither a Loki’s spouse or even a consort. I’ve had sex with Gods, but not Loki. Elizabeth Vongvisith used to tag posts that described sex with Loki as “Not Safe For Dels”, because as my Father I have some of the same hang ups as mortal children have about thinking about or seeing their parents engaging in long hot sessions of fuck. As a sex educator, I can at least accept that all parents, including my own (God or mortal), have sex lives – or none of us would be here – but like many offspring, I have no desire to see or hear about it, thank you very much.

But I don’t go around to the blogs and journals of Loki’s chosen and chastise them for describing the monkeyhumping that they do with Dad; in fact, specifically because of my love and service to the greater Lokean community, I suffer through quite a lot of it with grace.

One last thing, as I have to go to bed early tonight.

I’m an asshole. Just some dude who eats, and shits, and watches too much reality tv. (In fact, I’ll probably watch me some Celebrity Apprentice when I’m done writing this. Judge me!) Maybe you see me as some sort of “elder”, but please take note that I call myself a lot of things, like a grandpa and a cranky bastard and an old fart, but, like “shaman”, I really believe that a title like “elder” is one that is bestowed on you by those who recognize your work and contributions to community. So whether you invest any real meaning in my ranty pants, or dismiss me outright, is your choice. I am not now, nor will I ever, profess that I have it all figured out, that I am the sole arbiter on what spirit workers and shamans ought to be and not to be doing. Furthermore, I’m not a God spouse at all, but only know what I know from having the luck and blessing to know some really wonderful, intelligent, and well spoken ones who have deigned me as someone they can share the nitty-gritty of what it’s all about for them. I haven’t met every single God spouse, nor have I read every single entry on every single webpage written by all of them. I can only comment on trends that are remarked upon by people I trust, and what I experience in my own life. I am always, always open to be told how very wrong I am, and those who have commented on that post, or any other I’ve written or commented on will attest that I do not come out, fists ablazin’, unless you start attacking me or people I love by name or by insinuation. Otherwise, I wholeheartedly enjoy learning about the breadth and depth of spiritual expression that exists, and if that learning comes with a “Hey Doofus, read this!” as its invitation, then I accept.

There is at least one, if not more, repostes I will be writing in reaction to the crankyjock one, so don’t think this is the last you’ll hear of it. And if you read this blog for the kink stuff, there will be some good posts about that coming very soon too.

Thank you, each and every one of you, for reading, responding,debating, berating, and commenting on what I write.

“I aspire to inspire before I expire.” Unknown, possibly Manali Jan

We Can Learn A Lot From Things That Annoy Us, Or What I Figured Out About The Proliferation Of Loki’s Wives Online

I can’t lie: some of us old, crotchety spirit workers and godspouses find a lot of the blogs from new Loki’s wives kind of annoying.

It’s not a nice or kind thing to say, but it’s true. I find myself in at least three or four conversations a week where someone – a Lokean, a Godspouse, a Spirit Worker, or just some random person with too much time on their hands, reading Tumblr – comes to me to gripe, ask mean questions about, or even just to point and laugh at some Loki’s Spouses’ blog.

For starters, it gets under many craws (including my own) that so many of these starry-eyed lovers are young, cisgender women. It has been pointed out in many different ways how this is potentially damaging to the efforts to see Lokeans taken more seriously by the greater Heathen/Asatru, and even the larger Pagan demographic. When it’s all titters about hot Loki sex and dinner dates on the astral plane, we kinda look like a bunch of Twilight fans. It makes me nauseous, and I’m not alone. As one of my Jobs from Loki is to be the speaker of hard truths, I’m stepping out into the potential (who am I kidding?) line of fire by stating this plainly. But it’s true.

I’m involved in a few online Lokean haunts, and the issues manifest there, too. I’ve seen more than one discussion group dissolve when it’s descended upon by this new wave of Loki’s wives, who rave about getting a God’s affection and attention, but bemoan that they don’t seem to be manifesting the Kewl Powerz that some of us grouchy spirit workers write about, like “Godphones” and “Possession”. They seem to have come to some conclusion that we got some sort of “welcome to Spirit Work” package by UPGPS (The Unverified Personal Gnosis Postal System) that included our very own Godphone and User’s Guide. If you read this blog, or any of the others written by us grumpy old timers, we’ve been collectively holding forth for the last few months on the many, many ways that this is just not so. But somehow, it’s not getting through, as we’re still feeling grouchy and still getting emails and reading empassioned journals about how unfair it all is.

More frightening than that, is the amount of Loki’s wives who claim to have this abilities, and offer them as services to others (sometimes for a price), who have only been “doing this” for six months, a year, a few years. To be fair, sometimes that’s how it really happens, someone developing a new shamanic ability in a very short amount of time. But just because one can do something, often doesn’t mean that they should, and in the considered opinion of the grampas and grannies out there, this is one of those times. Speaking from my own experience, I was hearing the voices of Gods since I was a teenager, but I never even spoke about it, much less offered to do it on someone else’s behalf (God or mortal alike), until my late 20’s, a good ten years later.

Some of this annoyance is directly related to that. I’m sure you can think of something you do well – knitting, playing an instrument, throwing a flogger – that you consider yourself pretty damn good at. This did not immediately translate into the idea that you should teach others how to, nor did it create some sort of cosmic obligation to educate, either. Not all oboe players have what it takes to teach someone else to oboe, and not all of them are playing in professional symphonies. They just play because they’re good at it.

Unsurprisingly, with the uptick of people offering these services online, there has been a directly related uptick in clients running to us crones and crags because they got horked, or lead astray, or even more depressing, made big giant life decisions (like oathing themselves to Loki) because it was easier (and maybe cheaper) to ask one of these newly minted possessory workers or channelers for their services. I know that when I got started, I was eager to do shamanic stuff, for cheap or free, merely because it was a huge ego stroke for people to know I could, and being afforded opportunities to do it in a way where others would know about it. Since many of these newbies are interfacing with each other online, they get the immediate social cache of channeling a God for a fellow blogger and having that blogger share that newbie’s name/URL along with the message they received. It’s a scary Ouroboros, a cycle hard to break from, because one the recipient sees how the channeler is treated, they’re only going to feel even more inclined to offer services they may still be coming to understanding, much less good at.

We, as humans and as spirit workers, also have to remember that we have biases, filters, lenses through which we interpret the information we glean. I have a colleague who is *wonderful* if you’re working with Odin, but if you’re still unsure who is Knocking on your head, they interpret every male Deity as being Odin, and if it’s female, it must be Freyja (as if there were no other pantheons, much less Norse Gods and Goddesses)! I don’t know where this deluge of Loki’s wives started, but I have a strong suspicion (that is slowly becoming a theory, based on my own client work) that this is part of this Ouroboros I mentioned earlier – since Jan is married to Loki, and is new at this whole Godphone thing, when someone approaches her who may or may not also be trying to understand their own relationship with Loki, she will necessarily filter whatever information she gets through her own experience, and announce that Loki wants to marry this other person, too. Why not? Jan is still in a honeymoon phase where being married to Loki is a wonderful, inspiring thing, and she wants to share that feeling with as many people as possible, so they will all feel this bliss.

This also applies in another direction – because Godspousery is most being discussed in relation to the Norse pantheon, many people assume that if a God/dess is pursuing a mortal for marriage, it must be a Norse one. In addition, since so many Norse Godspouses are married to either Loki or Odin, it’s practically a safe bet to assume that this pursuer is one of them. And conversely, if someone is feeling that they are being pursued, because searching for “God Spouses” brings up all these blogs of Loki’s wives, that it must be Loki. Meanwhile, people who are sure it is not Loki, or who are not cisgender women, or who are being pursued for some sort of Relationship by a same-sex Deity, find these blogs and convince themselves that they’re deluded, and stop exploring this potentiality.

So I’ve explained in (great) detail how this proliferation of Loki’s wives online is causes ill to many; how, then, did I come to the conclusion that there is something to be learned from this, and turned towards the betterment of Pagans and Spirit Workers everywhere?

Tell your story. Tell your story even if you’re still figuring it all out. Admit you don’t have a God phone. Write a blog that’s all about how hard it is for you to meditate. Write about how it makes you feel when you feel chosen by some other path, especially if that path makes you feel lonely, different, radioactive, frustrated, depressed. Talk openly about how all this talk of spirit work makes you feel lesser because you weren’t chosen for that. Create a Tumblr for people who don’t hear the Gods, and encourage each other to create and stick to devotional work in spite of that. If we, us non-Loki’s-wives, can learn anything from this new development, it’s that sharing our honest personal experiences will draw like to like.

It’s not easy, being a homesteader. At first, you’ll feel like no one is reading your words, and your stat count makes you cry. You’ll feel isolated and alone. But two things will be happening at the same time:

1. You’ll get better at describing and detailing your own story and experiences. Many of the Big Name Bloggers out there were doodlin’ away for years before they wrote that one post that went viral. I was writing Dying For A Diagnosis for over a year before I started writing this blog, and it still took me six months before Hearing the Gods and God Sex went viral, and many of you first learned about me from those posts, (or maybe one of the Month for Loki posts); I needed that year of blogging experience to fully grasp how to write a viral post, as well as to hone my writing to a place where people would enjoy reading it. I frequently hear the compliment, “I don’t generally read blogs, but I love what you write!”, which is probably why I got the book deal.

It was the same thing, becoming a sex/kink educator. I’ve been teaching adults about sex for over a decade, and I’m just now starting to gain some recognition (and money) for doing it. There were plenty of times I was incensed that educators that knew less than me, or weren’t as engaging, or had a narrower range of classes were getting more gigs (and money) than I was – because they had a book, or used to do porn, or had a podcast – until I realized how much grunt work they had to do to be where they are. It was different grunt work, but it was still unglamorous and difficult (and financially crappy).

But the way I got here, is by being unafraid to find my truth, and sometimes that process was and is very public. I’m really an introvert, so sometimes sharing the dirt and shit of my life (on my blogs, on Facebook, whatever) is hard for me. I feel alone, or worse, like I’m highlighting what a stupid fuckup I really am. But the more I did these things, the more people found it resonated with them, and the more attention (and money) I got. And I know even I’m not where I want to be yet – I have a lot of plans this year to start moving forward with more financially lucrative ways of doing what I’m already doing (like the books), and I’m going to be writing and sharing the sausage making of that process, too.

The reason you feel alone, or worse, are willing to accept a more popular answer to your own spiritual questions – is because you’re waiting for your braver twin to come forward and start doing this stuff. You’re the answer you’re waiting for, to borrow a hackneyed hippy philosophy.

2. By having the courage to stand up and talk about some stuff publicly, you’ll also learn what to keep to your damn self. The more I teach classes on sexuality, the more I treasure what parts of it are personal. Same with my spiritual shite; I write about a lot of it, but in the same vein, I write about very little of it. The P in UPG is there for a reason – my relationship with my Gods is Personal, and I learned (sometimes the hard way) that the Internet hordes are only going to mock and belittle you for putting it all out there; I tell people often the difference between blogging and journalling is that blogs are written for a greater audience than just you. Granted, your personal life might just be salacious enough to gain some readers, but if it’s at all wacky like mine, you’ll gain twice as many spectators as witnesses. Spectators just sit back and watch, and look for the mistakes and holes and other places where they can feel superior; they’re disengaged from the real emotions and experiences that lie beneath the words. My old livejournal (no link, Google fiends) had a lot of followers/readers, but people really only commented on shit they felt superior about. You want witnesses, people who are engaged and moved by what you say (so much so that they reblog or share it on social media, thus relieving your angst about your stats); the best way I’ve found to finding witnesses is to look for the underlying universal (or widely relatable) truths in your story. People may not fully understand my specific issues with having an undiagnosed chronic condition, but they can totally relate to chronic pain, insomnia, and what it’s like to be in the hospital. They may not share the same spiritual path as you, but they might be in desperate need of the wisdom you’ve gleaned from an ordeal or other devotional work. Even if your words are about a specific Deity, there may be others who worship or work with the same or even a similar God that will inspire them in their own interactions with Them.

Instead of advising that everyone’s spiritual path should look the same, we should all be out there having deeply meaningful spiritual lives that are also intensely personal; but sharing both the means by which you develop that personal path, and the enlightenment you receive from it, will speak much more universally to people-at-large. Jan (you remember Jan from before, right?) can be doing much more important and moving spirit work if she is showing others how she is developing her own channeling abilities, rather than just trying to gain fame and fortune by using a skill that’s only a few months old (and she also avoids the angry mobs whom she steers in the wrong direction, using a skill she doesn’t fully comprehend yet.)

I do hook suspension; it makes me a fairly sought after ordeal master, since hooks-as-ordeal was 2009’s version of being a Loki’s wife (sorta, but follow me here). Everyone thought that the best and most meaningful ordeals involved hooks. So I had a bunch of ordeal masters chasing me around, demanding that I share my skill with them, as clients were supposedly (and I highly doubt it to be true) as lesser, or “not real” ordeal masters because they didn’t do hooks.

The frank truth is, I can teach someone how to put a hook in someone else in about six hours. But my apprenticeship was three years long. This is not because it took me longer to learn how to put a hook in someone else; it was because my mentor knew that it wasn’t knowing how to hook someone that would make me a hook suspension artist good enough to claim his lineage: it was the thousands of little (and big) idiosyncratic experiences I had while working as his apprentice. I know what to do if someone bends their hooks and falls to the floor (Which, by the way, is much more likely to happen than the hooks tearing through your flesh!). I can act calmly if someone goes into shock from getting the piercings. I know, instinctually, when the issue is something I can handle, and when I need to call 911. I know, because I’ve been there and been in it when these things all happened, and now, even if I face a situation I didn’t see in my apprenticeship, I have the confidence that I can figure it out. That took more than six hours to learn.

The same obviously goes for shamanic services like channeling and possession. Not only do I know and understand the mechanics of how my body becomes possessed, but I know what to do when I realized that the Spirit is doing things with my body that I’m not okay with, or what to do if I need to eject that Spirit or face going to prison. I know these things well enough that I can articulate them to lesser-experienced “handlers”, so I can know that everyone, including me, will be safe while I am doing this. I know what my filters are, and so when I get messages from Gods that seem eerily connected to my spiritual experience, instead of assuming that my client is having the same experience, I can take a step back and say to them, “This feels like it’s coming through a personal filter, so I’m going to speak in generalities and need your help in figuring out how this applies to you.

One last note: this is for many of the newer spirit workers out there. You’re making us old grouchy spirit workers nervous. Many have shared with me that they don’t share parts of their personal stories online, lest someone else decide that you can’t be a “real” or “true” whatever-they-are unless they have the same abilities or experiences. A friend (I won’t out them) has even shared that they posted something wildly false, just to see if other spirit workers who share their particular calling would echo it – fuck it, I’ll even say it was a God Spouse – and they did. Not only was there a rush of, “OMG yes, that happened to me too!”, but it became something they judged others by: “If you haven’t experienced (this completely made up thing), then you’re not a real (role)!”

We want the freedom to write about what we do, but we’re terrified of these trends. Just the onslaught of people talking about “Godphoning” (because yes, a joke slang we made up when you were in high school is now being used as a verb) or their lack of ability to “Godphone”, makes us wary. If you were to stop contrasting and comparing yourself to what we do, we could speak more freely about it, and sharing that might actually be useful to you or people like you.

So in a nutshell (TL;DR?), just be your authentic self, as much in person as online. Share your authentic spiritual journey, and don’t spend so much time keeping up with the Raven Kalderas and Elizabeth Vongvisiths of the world. Spirituality, like sex, should be personally fulfilling and full of meaning, not a contest to see who gets the most reblogs or who has all the Kewl Powerz. We crotchety old timers (as well as the rest of the Internet) will take you much more seriously when you do.

What is a “Godphone”?

A discussion on Facebook inspired this post. Someone felt that the term “godphone” was misleading, and a little disrespectful, and called for people to stop using it. I can see what their point is, but I want to write a bit about where the term came from, what it originally meant, and why I don’t think I’ll stop using it (although I may temper how often I use it, and with whom).

I can’t say for certain that I was there when the word was first coined, but I can say that I know from whence it came. A certain clique of spirit workers, shamans, and other spiritually minded folk were trying to explain the different ways divine communication can occur with humans. We were not at an academic conference or high-brow conference call, trying to codify something meant for Merriam Webster; we were a bunch of goofball spooky-foo folk having a very casual conversation about what it is that we do.

The term itself was a slang, a shorthand, for “the ability to speak to the Gods, and to hear the Gods in return”. It was not meant to imply that one could just “pick up the phone” and have immediate, pin-drop-chrystal-clear communication with any Deity one would choose to speak to/with; in fact, most people who have this ability protest often that no one has 100% signal clarity (again, “signal clarity” being a term that came out of these discussions) and often we reach out and get no answer, or are Told something but our questions/protestations were unheard (or possibly ignored). In this age, we see phones as something ubiquitous; everyone but the very poor or the very eccentric has one, they carry it around with them wherever they go, and they serve many functions. When this slang was thrown around, cell phones were in their infancy; it was back when having one meant that you were at least middle class, if not more well off. Mostly, we were thinking of much older technology, back when “busy signals” were a thing (and something we discussed), and “call waiting” was not exactly new, but something you had to pay extra for. So part of trying to explain where it came from means understanding what “phone” meant in, say, 1998. (I think it was coined after that, but the point I’m trying to make is that we were thinking more like a basic land-line, not Iphone.)

In the same vein, we had coined “god radio” as a slang for those who could hear the Gods when they chose to speak, but the communication was one way – that is, that the person did not feel they could communicate in real-time with the Gods. It’s not that they were *never* heard, but that they had to rely on the same “technology” that most people have when it comes to speaking to Gods – prayer, ritual, sacrifice, devotional work, meditation, etc. Again, this term could be seen as problematic, as a radio is something you can switch on and off at will, and that sends a continuous stream of information while it’s on. This was not what we meant to imply with the term at all; it was really just the idea that no matter how much you talk to a radio, the dee jay on the other end can’t hear you unless you pick up a phone, send an email, or drive to the station. And even then, how many times in your teenage years did you call a radio station, trying to request a song or win something or share your opinion, and you actually got through? Most urban radio stations are so overwhelmed with calls that you considered yourself really lucky if you got through.

To illustrate how facetious we were when we had these discussions, some people started talking about having a “God tin-can-on-a-string”. This was meant to imply that the person could faintly make out small bits of communication, or their sense of interaction was more in the way of emotions and intuitions; they could “feel” that a God wanted to say “X”, but they weren’t hearing the words directly and clearly. As for sending messages, they felt that they were even less able to do that than those who had radios – no phone line to call, no email address to write to, just a can they can shout into hoping that the God on the other end would get the same sort of intuitive answer from the human. Of course, they too had access to the kinds of communications that everyone else does, like the ones I listed above.

And then there were the “block heads”, or “brick heads”, or “ears plugged with cotton”; as this was all facetious in meaning, we never really came up with a similar technological metaphor for people who feel like they have absolutely no sense of the presence of Gods at all. Now, before you think I have some sort of disdain or condescension towards these people, I have found these sorts of people to be some of the most important to have around when it comes to signal clarity; without them, I think some of us would get so lost, unable to discern between sock-puppets, wish fulfillment, make believe; and actual, meaningful messages, omens, signs and signals from the Gods. I have many such people in my life, some of whom are even more spiritually active than I am; and I rely upon their more practical judgement when it comes to determining if my UPG makes sense, sounds like something a certain God would say, do, or want, or was a case of misreading the message. They play just as important a role in the greater task of facilitating communication between the Spirits and the people. Really. In some ways, I envy them; their “faith muscles” are so much stronger for having to rely on their own 5 senses, their heart, and their head when it comes to spiritual matters. They are also somewhat naturally gifted grounders, who keep us woo-woo folks from completely disconnecting from the material world. They can help when a possession goes awry, or when someone is completely deluded by the voices in their head (whether or not those voices are divine in origin or not), and as a valuable head-check when someone gets a message that seems out of character for the Divinity in question, or asks something of us that seems random, or dangerous, or worrisome. These are the kind of people I would go running to if a God proposed marriage to me, let me tell you. I would want to know that I wasn’t falling into a rabbit hole of a completely imaginary world made up of whatever thoughts came into my head.

I know I’ve said it, and others have as well, but I really hope you can see how none of these is inherently better or more desirable than any other. It may seem like having a two-way pipeline of communication with the Gods would be preferable, but let me just list a few reasons why I find it to be as much of a curse as a blessing:

• Frequently, we don’t get to control when the “phone rings”. I was talking to a colleague recently about a message they received while driving, that was so overwhelming they were afraid of driving off the road. Not only do I mean, “They call at inconvenient times”, but also that sometimes they don’t “pick up the phone”. I have tried to communicate that even we sit in darkened silence, and I think it’s fair to say that it can sometimes be harder for us, because once you’re used to being able to feel their presence and have their counsel, when that goes away the lack is so much more keenly felt. In a very odd way, it’s like being addicted to a drug – yes, drugs make you happy and relaxed and whatever other emotional reason you take them, but when you can’t find any, or when you have to abstain, or when you can’t afford them, or one of the many reasons why you might not have some, the lows that come are so terrible you frequently end up in the hospital. So yes, it can be reassuring to have an inner sense of peace that you know what the Gods want from, and of, you; but that peace is shot to shit when They decide They want you to figure this particular situation out on your own.
• With this gift, comes the responsibility and awkwardness that when a message comes for someone else, you are frequently forced to relay it. Even though I have struck a loose deal with Loki that I don’t have to be my lover’s shaman (so I can be off the clock when I’m being all cutesy with them), that deal doesn’t seem to include the godphone; when it rings, it rings, and They get louder and more insistent that I deliver the message. Strangers. Doctors. Therapists (and you can imagine the reception there). Atheists. Christians. Children. Parents and other family members. Police officers. Employers/Bosses. Some of us have learned how to deliver the messages without being all “I am the metatron” about it; I will say things like, “I know you’re worried about your son; I have this strong feeling that he’s going to be okay, as long as you continue to pray for him and maybe read the story about (some God or spirit or saint or whatever); there might be wisdom to glean from it.” I remember once, upon meeting a friend’s friend for the first time, I had this one sentence message that was burning on my tongue; it was a literal pain to speak anything other than the message. But I had just met this person, and I had no idea how they would react to this, and I didn’t want to come across as some high fallutin’ gypsy fortune teller in a horror novel. Finally, when there was a pause in the conversation, I just said, “Does the sentence ‘Cut down the tree so the flowers can grow’ mean anything to you? Is it lyrics from a song or something? It’s just been running through my head all night.” And of course, it turned out to be this very serious message about their recent breakup, where she and her partner had painted a tree mural on the bedroom wall; every night she would crawl into bed alone and cry because of what this tree represented; she had been considering painting over it and putting something cheery (oh, like flowers) over it, as one of those cathartic steps you take after a breakup. She was completely freaked out that I knew about it, and I said, “Well, when you hang around me, these things kinda happen sometimes.” I never used the words “God” “Spirit” “Godphone” or “Divine Message”. And to this day, I don’t think she knows exactly where the message came from; but that’s not the point. See, that’s a nice story of having to tell a stranger something. I have lots of ones where I’ve been punched in the face, or had nasty rumors spread about me, or had people post to the Internet that I am a fraud who rips people off, or that I use cold reading to do “divination”, or whatever. People are (rightfully) a little scared when you just pop off some piece of personal information about them without any way of knowing it. It makes you look like a cyber stalker, or worse. So although it might seem like a cool thing to have, you don’t get to dictate how it gets used, or in what situations.
• There are times that I attribute mundane things to spiritual causes. It’s an unfortunately side effect of being a shaman. When so much of my time and energy is spent in spiritual pursuits, it’s very easy to lose touch with reality. Like this post from Dying for a Diagnosis, where one of my more grounded friends asked me if I chose not to undertake the requests of my Gods, since I believe that my chronic illness is part of my spiritual journey, would that mean that I would get well if I gave it all up? And it did make me think about how I, and others I know, try very hard to make everything in their life feel spiritually significant. In a way, it’s not that different from hypochondriacs seeing every physical change as a possible symptom of a terrible disease; we want to be immersed in the spiritual as bad as they want to be diagnosed with a rare illness. That’s not sane, and it can do very bad things to your life. You can decide that since you haven’t been able to find a job for six weeks, it must mean that the Gods want you to be unemployed so you can spend more time doing spiritual stuff; but you still have to pay your rent and bills in order to not be homeless, and it’s not uncommon for people who fall into this to thusly demand that people should financially support your existence because you’re off being all spiritual and shit. That’s not healthy, or fair. It can also lead to using spiritual excuses for bad behavior, or to support your fears. There are some Godspouses and consorts out there who are definitely terrified of human relationships (either that no one would love them, or that they’ve suffered trauma and can’t re-engage, or just that they’re terribly shy and don’t approach people). Having friendships and relationships with Gods can become a replacement for the real human need for connection; and without someone in your life to give you head-checks (which, honestly, people in this situation would likely avoid, afraid that they’d be told the truth) you can easily lose yourself in your invented fortress of solitude, content to spend time only with the spirits in your head. Again, not healthy.

If I had one wish these days, I’d surely ponder whether the right choice would be to wish that all people would find peace in their own spirituality, and not be jealous or envious of others. I would wish that they would find joy and fulfillment in whatever calls to their heart, and that they would explore the depths of their own spiritual calling, rather than trying to pattern their experiences after other people’s. I wish people would understand that we all have important roles to play, and we all have skills and talents that we can cultivate with a spiritual mindset; it’s so much easier to build up on a talent you already have, than try to force yourself to develop something you’re just not gifted with.

As many have said in the past few months, it’s not dissimilar from learning an instrument: you have to choose the right instrument for your disposition, anatomy, and talent; you have to find a mentor or teacher to guide you through the first fumbling steps (or, alternately, spend focused time on your own reading how-to books and watching 101 videos on YouTube); you have to take those fundamentals and work them over and over again until they slip from your fingers without thought; you have to strengthen the muscles and embouchure and postures and calluses so you can play for long periods of time without pain or struggle; and then you have to break out and start tackling pieces of various difficulty, starting with “Happy Birthday” and moving on to concertos or jazz improvisation. It’s not like you can walk into a music shop, pick out an instrument because you like the way it looks (or are envious of someone elses skill), and immediately become a virtuoso – much less teach others. It’s good to have heroes to look up to, but at the same time, you need to respect the years of practice, agony, mistakes, and strain that they’ve put in to get where they are, rather than declare that the universe (or the Gods) are unfair not to immediately reward you with the exact same level of skill and devotion.

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.

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?

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.