Hrafn's Reflections

[Admin] Moving Forward

2010-10-01T00:19:00.003-06:00

A while back I realized that I was a much better essayist than I was a true blogger, and that my ability to build categories and such on this site were not really conducive to what I wanted for the future. I also realized that I knew several people in similar positions who I shared a significant portion of my readership with: none of us posted all that often, yet we maintained three separate sites. Rather than continuing to maintain those sites, we decided to consolidate in one place where we can post more often and that gives us better features for managing and organizing the different kinds of posts we want to make.

So this marks the start of a transition over to a new site. I am going to be focusing my blogging and essay efforts at Weaving Wyrd. Please update your bookmarks accordingly and I hope to see you all there!

[Admin] Comment Moderation

2010-07-05T08:00:00.000-06:00

Due to a rush of Chinese link spammers, I am moving comments to "moderated" for a while. So if your comment doesn't show up immediately, don't fear, I received an email about it and should approve it shortly.

Prayer Beads, Week 9: Baldr, Nanna, Iduna

2010-07-04T08:00:00.002-06:00

In the name of Balder, Bright One who must fall, may I learn to offer
sacrifice with grace.
In the name of Nanna, Bright One's Shadow, may I learn loyalty in love.
In the name of Iduna, Giver of Immortality, may I have health and
purity of body.

This has been a hard trio for me to cover, in part because I have virtually no connection to these three deities.

Baldr/Balder

In the name of Balder, Bright One who must fall, may I learn to offer
sacrifice with grace.

Baldr is a god of light, beauty, love, happiness, and other such positive things. Described as being beautiful without measure, his hall Breiðablik (Broad-gleaming) is described in Snorri's Gylfaginning as there is not in heaven a fairer dwelling. It was this god that the lady Skaði sought out when choosing the god with the most beautiful feet for her marriage parter (and ending up with Njörðr). His death also has had a profound impact on modern heathen practices, and a lot of the enmity regarding Loki can be traced to the story of Baldr.

Unfortunately, the precise factors in his death is one of the points of contention between Saxo and Snorri, and how that encounter is interpreted plays a critical role in Loki's culpability, at least on the surface.

The Snorri interpretation is the one that we are most familiar with. In it Frigg asks everything in the world not to harm her son, but overlooks the mistletoe. Loki takes advantage of the blind god Höðr and gets him to fire the arrow that kills Baldr.

The traditional interpretation here has Loki as the bad guy, but makes Baldr seem, really, like a braggart. Standing in front of the gods and saying "Look what my mom did for me! Now I cannot be hurt!" Unlike than a somewhat heroic death fighting another king (Saxo's interpretation), we get him dying through hubris combined with the (potentially malevolent) actions of a trickster.

One of the more interesting interpretations of the events leading up to Baldr's demise is that his death was necessary so that he may survive the destruction of Ragnarok. Knowing that Helheim was the only place he could preserve his son, he had Loki work as his hatchet-man. In this interpretation the attitude of Baldr has a little more leeway. Instead of mere bravado, his action of inviting attack becomes an open door to allow Loki to do his work and ensure Baldr's availability after Ragnarok. In this interpretation, we see Baldr as sacrificing himself for the good of the world--not just this world, but for the world that exists after Ragnarok has passed and the gods are destroyed.

The implication here is clear: it makes Baldr into a Christ-figure, who's death was necessary that the world might live. There is also some thought that this entire storyline has been corrupted from Christian influences, which is entirely possible.

Regardless of one's particular interpretation of the events or what they might mean, Baldr's death makes for an excellent opportunity to meditate on impermanence. We will pass on, as it says in Hávamál:

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
the doom on each one dead

Whether Baldr went willingly to his death or if his death was an unwelcome shock, it was certainly assured and if nothing else we can take his death as a lesson in death and on being ready for it when the time comes.

Nanna

In the name of Nanna, Bright One's Shadow, may I learn loyalty in love.

Nanna Nepsdöttir is the wife (according to Snorri) or love interest (according to Saxo) of Baldr. Very little is known about her individually, as most of her written accounts seem to describe her mostly in terms of her relationship to the men in her life. In Snorri's Gylfaginning she dies of grief for her lost husband.

So what does it mean to "learn loyalty in love." Does being loyal to someone require following them in death?

I generally like to think of the matter as entirely unrelated, actually, though it does make for a common story theme. I don't tend to think that loyalty requires being slavishly devoted to someone, nor does it require monogamous commitment. Loyalty doesn't even require a sexual or romantic relationship.

Loyalty means being true to your commitments. Not the ones that you speak, necessarily (thank you, Loki) but something far deeper. It means showing support for that person, even if they may not recognize the form that support comes in. It means not betraying that individual to others out of a sense of personal gain (beyond how your own personal gain is benefitted by your loyalty).

When we have loyalty in love it implies to me something much deeper than either word by itself would. Love can be a fleeting and whimsical thing when it doesn't have loyalty associated with it. Loyalty without love, on the other hand, starts to look very militant and can come across as hollow: loyalty to a cause you don't really believe in.

So when I say "may I learn loyalty in love" I read it multiple ways. Both may I learn loyalty in my love, and my I learn loyalty in love.

Iduna/Iðunn

In the name of Iduna, Giver of Immortality, may I have health and
purity of body.

Iðunn is the guardian of the Apples of Immortality and a goddess of youth. John Lindow lists her name as meaning "ever young," while Rudolf Simek thinks of it as "the rejuvenating one." She seems to be a peacemaker, stepping in to ask her husband Bragi to not fight with Loki in Lokasenna. When Loki turns on her, she has the distinction of quietly asserting her boundaries without turning to attack him:

I'm not saying words of blame to Loki,
in Ægir's hall
I quietened Bragi, made talkative with beer;
and all living things love him

In this specific prayer we contemplate health and purity of body. For us there are no apples, no silver-bullet magic cures, and "purity of body" is something that we have to maintain for ourselves. We have to bear the responsibility for caring for our own selves, which means things such as eating right, not drinking to excess, and taking care to acknowledge the risks we take. Too often we neglect this to our own detriment.

[Admin] More Posts!

2010-06-28T17:50:00.002-06:00

As you may have noticed, I will be posting here again. I had some personal things in my life that I had to work through over the last six months that I am working through, but the time has come for me start reestablishing connections with the outside world.

So I am back again ^_^ I cannot promise I will be posting regularly, but it will happen significantly more frequently. I am also going to start up my Prayer Beads analysis again, so watch for that on Sundays!

Meditation

2010-06-28T16:20:00.001-06:00

I've started meditating every day when I am on the bus. Just for short, well-defined, periods of time when I am on the bus or on the train.

There is an account in the book Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg that made it easier to start doing this on a more regular basis. It talked about going to a 45 day retreat meant for monks. The person going and those he was with were the only laypeople in attendance. Each day involved getting up early in the morning and then meditating for 50 minutes out of every hour until it was time to go to sleep. There were two meals of rice and vegetables provided through the day, along with one bowl of miso before going to bed. It is a grueling period, and most of the monks will drop out before the end of the retreat.

After they got there, the laypeople found out that in the middle of the retreat there was an unadvertised "week of no sleep." Here they meditated in this pattern around the clock, with a monk walking around with a "stick of compassion" to keep your from dozing off in the middle of meditating. After a day of this the author was ready to go home and didn't see how one could do an entire week without sleeping.

He asked for a consultation with a very old and respected monk who lived at the monastery. The monk was infirm, in his nineties, and had to be moved around on a stretcher. He was not participating, but had participated many times before. The monk assured the author that yes, it was possible to do the week of no sleep, but that he was carrying two burdens.

The first burden was staying awake, the second burden was the thought of staying awake for the entire week. If he wanted to make it through, he needed to only be carrying the burden of staying awake--for each individual moment. Entirely in the present, without worrying about the remainder of the week. He made it through the week of no sleep--though he was hallucinating by the end of it--by just living in each individual moment.

Similarly, if you sit to meditate for 10 minutes--or an hour--it helps not to think of it wondering how much time is left, or worrying about whether you can make it. It also helps to have an audible (or visual, if you are using the Zen-like meditations where your eyes stay open) cue in your environment so that you don't feel the need to check the clock or worry the amount of time remaining.

This has further ramifications in our lives. When practicing kaizen this is essentially the ultimate goal, but one of the ways we practice kaizen is counterproductive to this goal. We set a goal for the week, or the month, and that is the thing we are going to work on. But unless we add the qualifier just for today or even just for this moment it is easy to fall under the trap of "do I have to keep up all of these other things I have done and then this as well for another week?" It becomes an extra burden, rather than a continual process.

Focus on the moment. The moment--that moment--is all that matters.

So it is with our relationship to ourselves and the world around us. You cannot change everything, but maybe you can change one thing, for just this moment.

"Always mindful, the meditator breathes in; mindful, the meditator breathes out."

Relief Organizations: Helping in Haiti

2010-01-14T18:13:00.005-07:00

These organizations are well rated and will let you earmark donations for what is going on in Haiti.

Direct Relief International
Episcopal Relief and Development
Heifer International (they will follow the first responders in to help rebuild)
Doctors Without Borders

While I am not fond of their privacy policy or method for earmarks, you can also text 'Haiti' to 90999 to donate $10 off your phone bill to the Red Cross.

[Admin] Still Alive

2010-01-07T12:20:00.001-07:00

I have been having some personal difficulties lately that have made it difficult to post regularly to this blog for the last few months. I am hoping to get those resolved and get more essays up soon ^_^

Groupthink

2009-11-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

In his paper, Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences Dr. Paul Meehl, psychotherapist and former APA president, pointed out that:

In one respect the clinical case conference is no different from other academic group phenomena such as committee meetings, in that many intelligent, educated, sane, rational persons seem to undergo a kind of intellectual deterioration when they gather around a table in one room.

He identified a groupthink process by which [t]he most inane remark is received with joy and open arms. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, this phenomena is not limited to psychiatric case conferences and appears to extend to any time a group of people get together, including in mailing lists, social functions, and professional get togethers. In many such groups a form of reinforcement occurs, negative opinions are not tolerated, and if the group leaned a certain way before getting together, they will lean more strongly in that direction after leaving the group.

According to Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling, based on Janis and Mann's A psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment: Groups where groupthink is taking place have a tendency to pressure group members who dissent or challenge the groups collective beliefs; they will deny or dismiss or rationalize away evidence that is contrary to the way they already lean; and they will tend to develop a firm belief in their own ethical standing. Some members of the group may also take the role of mindguard--members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

Application

Evidence of these and other problems is not difficult to find in Neopagan circles. In larger groups, statements such as don't rock the boat are very common and tolerance can--ironically--become a buzzword for putting down dissent or enforcing the group's own ethical standards to the exclusion of others. It is not uncommon to see groups cast out, shun, or ridicule those who make statements that might be perfectly acceptable--if perhaps disagreed with--by any individual member independent of the group dynamic.

This group reinforcement mechanism is one of the ways in which group mythology can come about. Where people organically grow a set of beliefs about themselves and their group, simply as a function of people reinforcing each other without any form of an outside sanity check. Combine with a little UPG which may or may not be valid, and some interesting consequences can fall out of this.

This can also lead to individuals developing very particular views about the nature of what they do that may not extend to others doing similar work, but who are not a member of that group. Even if none of the issues of groupthink exist, there is a strong possibility of selection bias.

As spirit workers who deal extensively with UPG and spirits on the behalf of others this poses a particular problem for us, since it affects our ability to validate our experiences. The concept of Peer Corroborated Personal Gnosis (PCPG) is particularly susceptible to this, since it is affected not only by cultural biases but by group dynamics of that particular group of spirit workers. A message from a deity or a spirit to an individual can take an entirely different timbre if there is a form of group reinforcement going on, and the potential for boundary violations goes up tremendously.

Guards

Combatting this is not easy, as groups serve numerous useful purposes. They form support networks, resources for ideas, and can provide sanity checks of their own. In a small community as Pagans or Spirit Workers, groups provide a great means of socialization, finding romantic partners, and finding clients.

How can one work with and exist within groups, while at the same time avoiding succumbing to groupthink? I do not have any solid answers here, but here are some possible things that can help, (adapted and influenced by Janis's work, but not taken directly from that):

Encourage dissent and actively solicit people's objections and doubts. Allow them to air such thoughts without censure. Let people finish their thoughts before objecting to them.
Keep conversation civil. People who disagree are not the enemy, they simply have a disagreement and may be operating from different, and still valid, premise.
Engage in critical thinking and analysis of your own ethical structures. The specific ethics that you follow tend not to be as important as that you are actively considering them.
Avoid generalizing statements such as "all" or even "most" without empirical evidence when talking about people (or spirits, for that matter).
Don't assume you are right about anything.
If asking for confirmation, don't tell the individual what you concluded.

The last point, in particular, is especially important. It is easy to introduce confirmation bias into a situation without intending to, simply by telling someone what you found before asking them to confirm it.

None of this can cure it, and the problem of groupthink is notoriously tricky in governments, businesses, and organizations all over the world. At the same time, it is something we need to be talking about, so that we can be better aware of it when it does come up.

Stigmas on Mental Disorders

2009-11-12T11:35:00.004-07:00

There is a huge stigma on mental illness and on mental health professionals in much of the western world, which gets in the way of honest discourse and helping people who are suffering from mental disorders. There is the attitude that psychology is an attempt to justify, rather than understand, and that mental disorders are a sign of an underlying character flaw, as opposed to a disorder or disease.

As Darryl Cunningham indicates: If someone gets diagnosed with cancer, their friends and family rally around them to support them. If they get diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, they tend to lose those support networks just as they are starting to need them most.

In the military you can get passed up for promotion or lose your security clearance if you get diagnosed with a mental illness. Doctors are also pressured by the military not to diagnose PTSD. Many mental illnesses are treated as something you just have to "man up" about, "get over," or are treated as "not real illnesses." Recently the JAG Tom Kenniff called vicarious traumatization psychobabble.

You can tell your friends you are going to the doctor to get treated for heart disease, or in most crowds a chiropractor for back pain. The response is dramatically different if you tell them you are going for treatment of your bipolar disorder, let alone paranoid schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder. There are taboos around these things, and these taboos make it significantly more difficult to get treatment.

This is further not helped by certain individuals, even (especially?) doctors who should know better, seeming to classify everything and the kitchen sink as being treatable exclusively or predominantly with chemicals, many of which have ugly side effects (my own personal definition of hell includes anterograde amnesia, which is a potential side effect of many anti-anxiety medications). Many others who seem to be of the opinion that everything is actually depression, even if it is, in fact, fibromyalgia or a thyroid condition.

Then we get into problems that therapists themselves run into thanks to malpractice, professional codes, and legal systems. Where we can look in retrospect and say "they misdiagnosed/misevaluated" or any number of other statements, but therapists who evaluate the situation will also say "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Treating real humans is enormously complex, and the legal framework surround it is almost as complex. The situation puts tremendous strain on therapists, who may find themselves in a position of being unable to predict the future, and then being blamed for not being able to at a later point.

So what we get is a situation where a lot of people in this country have undiagnosed PTSD, major depression, anxiety disorders, paranoid schizophrenia, and a thousand other things. At a minimum, these impact their quality of life and some of them may get more serious without treatment (or, depending on the nature of the treatment, with treatment) They are unable (quite possibly because of insurance) or unwilling (possibly quite rationally so, depending on their situation) to visit mental health professionals and get an actual diagnosis. If they have dissociative identity disorder they may have amnesia blanks over periods of time where they self-sabotage, and they may have a fight with a lover only to not remember even having a conversation with them later. They may spend years blaming themselves or burning out, may try self-help which may or may not make the situation better (or worse), and spend a lot of energy hiding these illnesses and differences from others.

These things are so heavily stigmatized in our society, that the stigmas themselves make it more difficult to function independent of that the disorder itself makes it more difficult to function. This can and does make the situation significantly worse. This is something to pay attention to, because it isn't something you can prevent by pretending it is "all in your head": it really could be you or a loved one who starts to suffer in silence, do poorly in relationships at school, or their job, and feel there is no way out as a result.

[Admin Note] Sick

2009-10-12T12:21:00.002-06:00

I've been sick for the past few weeks (word of advice: don't get the flu), but have several essays in the works for when I get better.

Dual Relationships: Romantic Relationships with Clients

2009-09-13T10:51:00.004-06:00

Paying attention to other ethics codes and looking at the reasons why, the answer to the sex/romantic dual relationship with clients issue can be summarized with a single word: Don't.

The problems with this are not abstract or theoretical. After studying the subject relatively extensively in the late 60's and early 70's, William Masters and Virginia Johnson put forth the statement that:

We feel that when sexual seduction of patients can be firmly established by due legal process, regardless of whether the seduction was initiated by the patient or the therapist, the therapist should be sued for rape rather than malpractice, i.e., the legal process should be criminal rather than civil.

Kenneth Pope and Valerie Vetter conducted research on the subject and found some tragic--and sadly unsurprising--results. Around 90% of patients who have had sex with a previous therapist have been harmed by it, and around 80% are harmed even when the relationship doesn't begin until after the therapeutic relationship ended.

Of course, reality is more interesting and nuanced than can be summarized in a single word, and as spirit workers we are faced with some unique challenges in this department. However, even if everything else I say about professionalism for spirit workers is ignored, this is the one thing I adamantly believe should not be. The risk for harm, unintentional abuse, and boundary violations are simply too great.

What Others Say

This is one of the older creeds among healing professions going back to the Nigerian Healing Arts. It is also found, though indirectly, among numerous shamanic cultures. Here are some general statements from other helping professions throughout the centuries:

Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with current therapy clients/patients. -- APA 2002 Ethics Code

Sexual or romantic counselor–client interactions or relationships with current clients, their romantic partners, or their family members are prohibited. -- ACA 2005 Ethics Code

Sexual intimacy with patients/clients is unethical. -- AGPA (American Group Psychotherapy Association) and NRCGP (National Registry of Certified Group Psychotherapists) Guidelines for Ethics

Massage therapists shall [...] Refrain from engaging in any sexual conduct or sexual activities involving their clients.-- AMTA (American Massage Therapy Association) Code of Ethics

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves. -- Hippocratic Oath

You should not tell what you have learned from the time you enter a woman's room, and, moreover, you should not have obscene or immoral feelings when examining a woman. -- Seventeen Rules of Enjuin

The details, of course, vary. The ACA bans romantic or sexual counselor-client relationships for a period of five years following the end of the counseling relationship. The APA puts the number at two years. Both state that the therapist/counselor should document whether the relationship could then be viewed as exploitive or whether there is a potential of harm to the client.

I personally feel that two years makes a good absolute minimum, and that five years is a safer number.

Doing Work For Significant Others

While the statement don't sleep with your clients is relatively uncontroversial, one of the subtle ways this can be come a problem is in doing work for someone who you already have a preexisting romantic relationship with. Because surely there's no problem with helping them ward their home, right?

Of course there is. Just because the romantic relationship started first, doesn't mean that the situation won't compromise your ability to heal and cause long-term trust issues in the romantic relationship.

This is where we get into what constitutes a low powered relationship. It is one thing for me to offer friendly advice, to help ward someone's house, to have them help me ward my house, to receive help from the spirits on the behalf of someone else in an emergency situation, and another for me to enter into a professional, deeper or longer term relationship with a client who I am seeing romantically. The former are lower-power and usually single shot and do not require an intimate, healing relationship with the individual. It is also best even if these lower power relationships are kept professional in attitude and demeanor while they are taking place, just to establish that sense of space while the work is taking place.

It is also a good idea to document when such things happen, and to talk about it with a Teacher or another spirit worker, just to make sure that everything stays above board. Do not be afraid to refer them to another individual if the situation starts to get too high powered or if the boundary lines start to blur.

To do otherwise, to make them your client, creates an unstable situation where the position of trust you share in one domain will cause conflicts in the other. It can make a relationship unintentionally abusive, and your focus cannot be entirely on healing them as your client.

To illustrate, consider what happens if there are problems in the relationship, or even if you break up? Will they lose their spirit worker while simultaneously losing their significant other, should they? What if during a journey on their behalf you find out that you caused the problem that you are trying to help them with. What if it turns out that, as described in Sandra Ingerman's Soul Retrieval, you--entirely accidentally--steal part of their soul.

While all of these are manageable situations overall if the spirit worker and the romantic partner are different people, they can and do cause endless problems and are rife with potential unintentional abuses--let alone if either parties intentions are not entirely honorable.

In short, you can be their lover, you can be their spirit worker, but you cannot be both.

Conclusion

Although the prohibition against sex with patients reaches back beyond Freud, beyond the Hippocratic Oath, and at least as far as the code of the Nigerian Healing Arts, it was only with systematic research that began in the 1950s that the profession began to understand the depth, pervasiveness, and persistence of the harm that can result when therapists abuse their license, role, power, and trust. -- Kenneth S. Pope

The more we learn about shamanic practice and its links with psychology, especially now that our techniques are being used in psychological healing, the more it looks like the boundaries set by these other healing organizations--especially groups like the APA and ACA--are appropriate for us as spirit workers as well. We are members of a healing profession and our role as spirit workers is to help others, it only makes sense that we build our code of ethics off of others who are trying to do similar things.

Romantic relationships with clients are one of the most clear-cut areas in the domain of dual relationships. Fortunately, where professional and social relationships can be unavoidable in the communities we frequent, romantic entanglements are almost always entirely avoidable with existent clients, as is becoming the spirit worker for your current romantic partner.

Dual Relationships and Ethics

2009-09-10T18:51:00.002-06:00

As members of a healing profession we frequently run into one of the pitfalls of other healing professions: having more than one kind of relationship concurrent with, prior to, or subsequent to our professional relationship as spirit workers, occultists, or clergy. This relationship may be professional (e.g., someone comes to you for a soul retrieval who also happens to be your dentist), social, or financial in nature.

Many helping professions--from counselors and psychotherapists to clergy to doctors--have struggled with professional and emotional boundaries as they relate to dual relationships. As spirit workers our difficulties are not that different from counselors or psychotherapists, as we deal with many of the same forces in our client's lives.

Even so, we are faced with a variety of problems that make certain classes of dual relationships nearly unavoidable, and as spirit workers we operate in a realm with relatively undeveloped codes of professional ethics. Ellen C. Friedman, writing on the topic of the ethics of dual relationships and Wiccan clergy, states:

The lack of professional training for Wiccan clergy and the adolescent development of Wiccan ethics is a considerable problem. Wicca is a young religion and has yet to develop in these areas to the extent found in older religions.

In truth these problems are not unique to Wicca, and we could substitute Neopagan for Wiccan and be very accurate for most of the available trads and clergy out there. This is not to demean those who are out there and who are operating relatively in the dark, and there are some great programs, such as Cherry Hill Seminary out there, but there are very few good, comprehensive analysis of dual relationships in a pastoral setting.

I personally believe that it would serve us well to follow a similar code of ethics to that employed by counselors, psychotherapists, and pastoral counselors, or at least to use their practice as a starting point.

Dual Relationships Defined

The American Counseling Association's (ACA) 2005 Code of Ethics gives a great deal of guidance around relationships with clients, but--in a departure from previous versions of the guide--does not actually use the term dual relationships. This wasn't because the concept is no longer important, but rather because the term itself was problematic. To quote Dr. Rocco Cottone, who was on the ACA Ethical Code Revision Task Force:

When you sit down and analyze the concept of dual relationships, you will find that it relates to three different types of relationships: sexual/romantic relationships, nonprofessional relationships and professional role change. The first category, sexual and romantic relationships with current clients, is banned by the code of ethics because we have evidence of the damage that results. The second type of relationship, nonprofessional relationships, encompasses those activities where you might have contact or active involvement with a client outside of the counseling context. The third type of relationship that the old dual relationship term encompassed is a professional role change. An example is when you shift from individual counseling to couples counseling. Moving from one type of counseling to another with one client can be really confusing and ethically compromising.

So, in the end, moving away from the concept of dual relationships was really about the analysis of what the dual relationship term meant and the confusion it caused because of multiple meanings. The new ethics code addresses all three types of roles and relationships with clients.

Despite the split into three separate categories, there lacks an effective term--other than dual relationship--that covers all three under some other heading, and the term is still in common use among other therapeutic organizations. For example, the American Association of Pastoral Counselor's Code of Ethics echoes previous versions of the ACA's ethics codes, and states outright:

We recognize the trust placed in and unique power of the therapeutic relationship. While acknowledging the complexity of some pastoral relationships, we avoid exploiting the trust and dependency of clients. We avoid those dual relationships with clients (e.g., business or close personal relationships) which could impair our professional judgement, compromise the integrity of the treatment, and/or use the relationship for our own gain.

Due to the widespread nature and lack of a better term, I will continue to use the term in this blog to refer to all three categories mentioned by Rocco Cottone, without attaching any specific stigma to properly conducted dual relationships. These may, in fact, be beneficial or even necessary and this should be recognized where appropriate to do so. I will also break them down into separate categories where appropriate, so that each may be better addressed separately.

Separation and Boundaries in Pagan Society

One of the challenges that face modern day spirit workers is that it is difficult--if not impossible--to maintain strict separation from our clients. First, it is not uncommon for our client-base to come from within our chosen families, and for the groups that we teach or work for to be our close friends as well.

Some shamans live on the outskirts of the society they are part of for various spiritual or practical reasons, which can help provide this separation. For those of us who are not in that position, however, this poses quite a problem.

Friedman, speaking of Wiccan psychotherapists, says that:

Wiccan clergy psychotherapists appear particularly vulnerable to ethical dilemmas caused by dual relationships. Complications unique to Wicca include the intimacy required of its clergy within the ritual context and within their covens. Covens serve not only as congregation, but also as seminaries and in some instances as family of choice.

She then goes on to offer four alternatives: Avoid clients within the community, practice low-power relationships, negotiate each relationship on a case-by-case basis, and use established best-practices that involve consultations with others.

For spirit workers the first two options are clearly untenable since we tend to serve the communities that we are part of, and while we can occasionally do low-powered work for clients some of what we do (e.g., soul retrieval, serving as a medium to the gods) is much deeper and requires relations that are closer to that of a therapist.

What I suggest is that we approach things with a hybrid of the last two. This means:

Adopting our own ethics guidelines and best practices from those of other helping organizations, such as the ACA.
Document our agreements and the dual relationships that we have.
Consider how our dual relationships might be unintentionally exploitive or otherwise harmful to our clients.
Openly discuss--and negotiate--our boundaries with our clients, both from their perspective and ours, documenting the results.
Use lower powered but still professional relationships where appropriate--keeping with all of the above points--and not being afraid to refer people to others when we feel that our position compromises our relationship in some way.

Conclusion

This is merely scratching the surface. I am going to go more into each of the three types of dual relationship (social, sexual/romantic, and professional) and the challenges and guidelines for each of them in the upcoming posts. Feedback or suggestions, as always, are welcome.

On Language and Civil Discourse

2009-09-08T17:46:00.002-06:00

This week, President Obama is going to address the nation on the matter of healthcare reform. This is, in part, a response to a great deal of mudslinging that has taken place over the last few weeks, where labels such as "communist" and "Nazi" have been used both widely and incorrectly by opponents of this bill.

There are a huge number of legitimate discussions that we can--should be--having around the health care legislation, but we can't because we are overwhelmed by words such as death panels, rationing, and socialist.

My goal here is not to address the health care debate, but rather to talk about the uses and abuses of language. It occurred to me, while watching the debate, that this is something that comes up in religious debates (and any talk about BDSM, for that matter) all of the time. We see words bandied about that, even if they are true, are getting in the way of the important parts of the debate.

As the quote (attributed to Gautama Buddha, but disputed) goes, Words have the power to both destroy and heal.

These terms may--or may not--be honest expressions of feeling, but they are not honest, factual evaluations that others can or should use to make decisions. When emotive terms get used in these ways they tend to distort the debate and interfere with the process of rational decision making which, I tend to think, is precisely the point.

This is especially true when those words have meaning and are being used out of context (e.g., Nazi) but it also applies to more straightforward emotional judgements, such as vile. Not that these words do not have use in public discourse, but it frequently seems that they are substituted for actual judgement, or to sway or convince people who might otherwise be undecided.

It is one thing to conclude that certain behavior is contemptible and to start out by calling another person contemptible. I've seen some statements that were so ridden with such statements that, while the author's vitriol was plain, I learned nothing of use about the group or individuals of whom they were speaking.

This seems to be particularly true in both religious and political discussions, where people seem to be quick to judge, quick to say UR DOIN IT WRONG, quick to dismiss, and slow to understand. Such tactics, however, get in the way of actual discussion about the important differences and can actually hurt the accusers argument.

This is, in essence, a plea for civility in public discourse on these matters. Please, by all means, continue to call others out when you see something amiss or to bring things to the light that need to be discussed, both in the political and religious arena. These are good and valuable things, but they need to be done with an eye toward civil discourse and an understanding that not everyone in the room necessarily is starting from the same premises.

Book Review: Soul Retrieval, Mending the Fragmented Self

2009-09-04T02:00:00.000-06:00

Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman (✭✭✭✭✬, 4.5/5)

I decided to read this book after reading Lupa's book review where she gave it "Five pawprints out of five" and concluded:

While there are occasional things I personally disagree with, overall I think this is a great text. Once I’m ready to do soul retrieval in practice, this will be an invaluable guide.

This piqued my interest enormously. I had seen this book on Amazon before, but given that it is from a Core Shaman perspective and I don't currently do soul retrievals I didn't pay much attention to it one way or the other. After some recent events have lead me to think that I have some soul fragments I will need to retrieve and after reading Lupa's review, however, I decided to go ahead and read the book.

I am extremely glad that I did. The content is well laid out and excellent. Safety and ethics are both discussed, and at no point does the author treat this as safer than dreaming, conflate it with guided meditation, or treat it as something that can be learned in a weekend workshop. She also addresses topics such as soul theft, rape, and incest and how soul retrieval works/can help with these.

She goes on to say that:

Learning to do shamanic healing takes time, lots of practice, and experience. I will share the details of my work to demystify it for you as you read on. I do not intend to teach you how to do soul retrieval in this chapter--that, I believe, is unethical. And I feel it is just as unethical for one to try soul retrieval after just reading this book.

If we truly want to honor the spirits and use the ancient ways in a powerful way, we must maintain integrity in the work at all times. Please do not dishonor yourselves, the people who are important to you, or the spirits by trying soul retrieval without the appropriate training.

Suffice it to say, after growing a little fed up with one of the most difficult techniques in shamanism getting relegated to being trained in weekend seminars, it was extremely refreshing to see this in front of the chapter on technique.

The book is spread into 11 chapters split into three parts:

Part I: The Soul and Soul Loss
- Chapter 1: Soul Loss
- Chapter 2: Soul Retrieval
- Chapter 3: Tracking Lost Souls
Part II: The Search
- Chapter 4: A Question of Technique
- Chapter 5: Classic Examples of Soul Retrieval
- Chapter 6: Community
- Chapter 7: When Souls Have Been Stolen
Part III: Welcome Home, Healing Through Wholeness
- Chapter 8: Effects of Soul Retrieval
- Chapter 9: Relationships and Sexual Issues
- Chapter 10: Life After Soul Retrieval
- Chapter 11: Preparing for Your Own Soul's Return

The first part deals with the nature of soul loss, what soul retrieval can look like, the nature of the worlds, and the tools that a spirit worker might use in their practice. It provides an effective demonstration of the concept of soul retrieval, without requiring a detailed knowledge of existent jargon. I believe this book can be effectively read by someone who has just heard of it and is considering it as an option, as well as someone who is considering performing it in the future. There is something of value in this book for both groups, despite that soul retrieval is one of the more difficult areas of shamanism.

The second part goes into more details about the process of looking for souls, and goes into more depth with the mechanics of Ingerman's practice in this field. She also gets into examples of things that cause people to lose parts of their soul, including soul theft and the loss of community.

Part three talks about the repercussions, positive and negative, of soul retrieval and gives advice on what to expect from soul retrieval. She emphasizes the need for people to do this in their own time when they are truly ready for change in their own life.

Spread throughout the book are exercises designed to help with your own healing and understanding of shamanic practice, along with copious case studies derived from her own practice. In a sense, I feel like this was the book I was looking for when I read Gagan's Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet. Something filled with case studies that focuses on how this helps along with some psychological theory, rather than focusing on where the issues come from that shamanic practices might be able to help with.

On the issue of reality in this practice, Ingerman states that:

As you read this book and wonder whether or not what I am talking about is real, I ask you not to enter into a battle between the right brain and left brain. Simply read the material and experience it. After eleven years of working with the shamanic journey I know nonordinary reality is real. But I don't intend to convince you of that. For me, the big questions are these: Does the information that comes from a shamanic journey work? Does this information make positive changes in a person's life? If so, who cares if we are making it up?

Suffice it to say, given my own perspectives on the subject, this does it work attitude is something I am thrilled to see in well-regarded books on the subject, especially those published in 1991.

Conclusion

In aggregate, I felt that this book is excellent. I have some disagreements with the author, but they don't really detract from the usefulness or power of the book. She doesn't flinch for describing things as real, including interactions with power animals and the goddess Isis. My only real issues with the book are a lack of an effective index and that, while it discusses illness from a shamanic perspective, shows a lack of analysis on when soul retrieval might be counter-indicated despite a client's insistence of wanting to continue (admittedly, this latter is a difficult and somewhat fuzzy category, and likely beyond the scope of the book).

These, however, are functionally minor points. Highly recommended.

Understanding, Skill, and Martial Arts

2009-09-02T11:03:00.005-06:00

Since at least as long as people have been writing about martial arts, we see discussions of the form my martial art is better than your martial art. This ranges from feelings of philosophical superiority, to a belief that a single cage match ala UFC actually proves anything about the arts being practiced.

In the old fencing schools secret techniques abounded, which were entirely focused on keeping the individual alive by holding that the opponent had not seen the technique before and thus could not be ready for it. To quote Egerton Castle's Schools and Masters of Fence:

Each individual master taught merely a collection of tricks that he had found, in the course of an eventful life, to be generally successful in personal encounters, and had practiced until the ease and quickness acquired in their execution made them very dangerous to an unscientific opponent.

In truth secret techniques only get you so far and the artist matters more than the art. This doesn't mean that all martial arts are equal or that they take equivalent paths, nor does it mean that they don't have different focuses or aren't better suited to different types of people, just that what makes or breaks a school tends to be the teacher, and what makes a practitioner good tends to be that individual and the training they have received and not the style that they practice or any number of secret techniques that they might know.

One style and school might be more conducive to self defense, another might be more suitable to fighting in a cage, a third might be better fit for finding inner harmony. All three, given enough time and enough dedication, are probably useful for all three purposes, but their focuses are going to be different and they might be better for different types of people. They also will each achieve the pieces in a different order, and at a different pace.

What I tend to look for, on walking into a martial arts school to gauge the quality of the teaching, is to look at how faithful they are to the fundamentals. If I see sloppy stances, sloppy weight control, or poor attitude I am more likely to hold that against the practitioner or--if it is endemic--the school than I am the style, even if that style has a different set of assumptions or focuses from my own, and even if the students can kick everyone else around easily. Taekwon Do isn't inferior to Hapkido because the latter is more real world, it simply has different areas of focus.

Then there are the paths that harm or are actively dangerous. Recently I saw some people stretching in such a way that they are likely to destroy their knees, I've seen martial arts schools which are basically just excuses to beat up on the younger students, and I've seen more than a few black belt mills where the people graduating have paid a lot of money, but have not received a lot of quality training. I've seen other martial artists who sleep with their students, consensually, but this still tends to mean that either the relationship or the training--or both--will get compromised.

In a sense, we have run into an analogous situation in the Neopagan world. There is a lot of fighting back-and-forth between those who want to treat every path as equally valid, and those who view there as being One True Path, with many gradations in between. We see those who grudgingly acknowledge that other paths might be valid, but theirs is clearly the best. Some who will acknowledge and allow for any sort of variance in Neopagan paths, while simultaneously snubbing Abrahamic religions. We see others who think that Occultism--or worse, Shamanism--is something that everyone should do no matter what their background. There is also plenty of ur doin' it wrong for people who don't practice in a sanctioned way.

There are also cults, toxic relationships, bad boundaries, and dysfunctional group dynamics ranging from mild to dangerous spread throughout the Neopagan world. There are people who think that burning slips of paper will make everything better, and well-recognized authors spreading outright falsehoods, dangerous information, or encouraging destructive behavior in children. There are those who seem to think that the gods are there for you without ever yourself being there for them, and those who think that it is acceptable to take without giving anything in return.

There are also amazingly positive paths that engender healing, others that help focus discipline, and others which help us in touching Mystery.

The trick is that it is not always easy to tell, from the surface, what is going on. Years ago I was working at a university, and the guy who worked next to me doing data entry tried on a regular basis to get me to go to his church and attend his church events. He was mostly respectful of the boundaries I set: he wouldn't push if I said no, wouldn't try and actively convert me beyond trying to get me out to his church events, but he would regularly ask and we'd talk casually about religion and he'd talk about the salvation he found on this path. He was in a fundamentalist branch of Christianity and on a very straight and very narrow path, and believed that everyone would be better off on this same path and would find salvation through it.

Suffice it to say, such is pretty much the exact opposite of what I was looking for or what I needed.

As we talked, I found out more about history. He had been in a gang and had scars running down his face from being assaulted outside of his home with a glass bottle. He showed me pictures of his pets: a dog, a cock, and a Siamese fighting fish all of which he used to have fight other gang members animals for sport and cash. We only scratched the surface, but it was clear that his history was dark and brutal. For him, he needed the straight-and-narrow path, at least for the foreseeable future, and he needed the salvation and forgiveness he had found through Jesus the Christ of Nazareth. He accepted responsibility for his past, but had found a brighter future thanks to Christianity.

I would have preferred if he realized that I didn't need that same salvation and that my path could be different and I could still be happy with it, but I can't really fault him too seriously for--having found this happiness and this salvation--wanting to share it with others. I also can't criticize his having found this brighter future through Christianity, even though I feel that for me that such a path would destroy me, just as my path would probably destroy him.

The important thing is that there are things that we can learn from one another if we are willing to listen, and that neither path is invalid despite that both look very different. While I can sometimes look at something and say that is ineffective or that looks destructive, I can't always be sure that I am right so long as we are mostly staying within certain fuzzily-defined bounds.

I have no good answer on how we can tell which is which, because what is functional and healing for one person may seem like the epitome of Evil™ to another, especially if neither side takes the time to understand the other. What I would like to see is an opening of dialogues between disparate and disagreeing groups, done with understanding and compassion and without the need to prove one is better (or worse) than the other, done for the sake of sharing information and improving ourselves and our service to the gods and society. Done without distortions and with a great deal of self-honesty.

Then, perhaps, we can find our way forward.

Not Dead Yet

2009-09-02T09:28:00.003-06:00

Just been very busy for the last few months. Things should be clearing up in a bit and I'll get back to posting essays ^_^

Professionalism

2009-08-13T17:37:00.002-06:00

One thing that I believe we as Spirit Workers need to be discussing in more depth is the nature of working with clients in a modern world. We are not the only form of spiritual or psychological healing out there, and this changes the nature of how we interact with our clients, how our clients interact with us, and how our clients find us. People who are troubled do not necessarily know who or what we are, what services we offer, and whether those services can work with their other options or are strictly antagonistic in nature. We are not the new kid on the block, but as more and more psychotherapists are drawn to shamanic techniques for their clients it is likely our skills are going to be in higher demand and our visibility is going to increase.

Further, as Spirit Workers, we struggle regularly with clients on issues of the Mind and Soul. We should be developing and discussing what our professional, ethical boundaries are with our clients and students and what our standards of care are when working with others. We are also going to be dealing with people who have serious problems--both psychological and physical--and we need to understand both where we can help and what our limits are.

Dealing with such issues, we are also going to start seeing the same issues in our group that psychotherapists deal with regularly: Burnout, Countertransference, Vicarious Traumatization, and Compassion Fatigue. We need to be having conversations about what these are and how we, as helpers, can deal with them in ourselves and others when they arise.

These are not an area to be treaded lightly into, because we are dealing with people's very souls (both ourselves and that of others), but it is something that we need to be having a conversation about. Part of my purpose in this blog is to start that conversation, and my Boundaries series has been part of that. I am going extend the concept and start writing a series of Professionalism essays, and encourage others to do the same. Under this heading I will discuss issues with being a Spirit Worker in modern society and the issues that come up in the course of acting in a helping profession.

Some possible topics that I want to eventually address with this series:

Professional Ethics/Boundaries
Limitations of Practice
Advertising
Shamanic Countertransference
Burnout

Essentially all of the aspects of being a modern helping profession that we must deal with moving forward.

Link: Bringing the Outsider In, Religious Tolerance

2009-07-27T15:19:00.004-06:00

Bringing the Outsider in: Thoughts on the god Seth and religious tolerance within Greco-Egyptian polytheism is an excellent essay that is well worth reading. Hat tip nicanthiel.

Mythos and Logos

2009-07-20T14:46:00.002-06:00

There is a story about a German explorer and naturalist named Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769 – May 6, 1859) and his investigation of the village of Atures. He was exploring through South America and found out about a tribe called the Atures who had been hunted to extinction by a people called the Caribs.

All that remained of these people were tombs in a mountain cave and a parrot that spoke forty words of their language. Humboldt is supposed to have wrote that:

It is to be supposed that the last family of Atures did not die out until a long time afterwards: since at Maypures - bizarrely - there still survives an old parrot that nobody, say the natives, can understand, because it speaks only the language of the Atures.

This is a potent image that raises a number of interesting and difficult questions. It can touch on a deeply emotional level, captured by Michelle Dockrey and Tony Fabris in their song Strange Messenger (full lyrics):

To those who study history, it seems a bitter curse
The loss of language terrible, the lost potential worse
Past and future stories multiplied a thousandfold,
Vanished out of history and never to be told

Were they beautiful and gentle? Would they call us friend or foe?
What wisdom did they live by? What secrets did they know?
It's a symphony reduced to what a single bird can sing
The forest lost their language, and they lost everything

So tell me, bold explorer, as you wandered through the leaves,
Did you ponder unknown losses that the very Cosmos grieves?
Was it halting? Was it flowing? Was it lilting and divine?
Was it fearless as your native tongue, mercurial as mine?
Would it pique a linguist's interest? Would it hold a poet's thrall?
Do the words of one strange messenger tell us anything at all?

There is haunting power here, and a very compelling story. It speaks to the very essence of humanity and conveys a thousand things with one image, that of a culture who was hunted to extinction and who's last remaining trace was found in forty words mimicked by a parrot.

The problem is that I can't actually confirm the veracity of the story of Humboldt's Parrot. Despite the citation, I've found some who say that--while the phonetic transcriptions of the language are there--that there is no mention of having found them out from a parrot. I can't even confirm this because I lack access to a good translated copy of his Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent and my German isn't nearly good enough to read the original. Even if I could overcome this, I have no way of knowing is Humboldt embellished that one point (though prevailing evidence would seem to indicate that he didn't do such in general, how can I be absolutely sure?)

Really though, it doesn't matter.

Sure, there are areas where it does matter, as does the authenticity of those forty words. There are entire domains for which the veracity of such things matters. But as a symbol and as a legend for discussion of endangered languages or the human condition, it holds its power regardless of the veracity of the claims.

This echoes of Worf's statement in the Deep Space Nine episode "Once More Into the Breach" (season 7, episode 7), talking to Bashir and O'Brien who were discussing whether the story of Davy Crockett's death at the Alamo is real. O'Brien argued that it is absolutely true, Bashir argues that it is implausible at the extreme. Worf tells them:

You are both wrong. The only real question is whether you believe in the legend of Davy Crockett or not. If you do, then there should be no doubt in your mind he died a hero's death. If you do not believe in the legend, then he was just a man and it does not matter how he died.

If you believe in the legend of Humboldt's Parrot--as a legend--then it is a powerful and captivating image of loss. If you don't, if that symbol holds no power for you, then it is just a story, and how Humboldt got his forty words is only important from a linguistics and historical research perspective. It then doesn't matter overly much if he got them from a parrot so long as they are accurate.

In truth, one could even argue that it isn't important even then. Forty words of a tongue that no longer exists, with no written text, and only questionable translations (and possibly transcribed through a parrot) is of questionable use as anything but a symbol.

Today many people want to dismiss old stories--and those who follow them--because some people are inclined to take them literally and believe in their literal interpretation. Both the people who take them literally and those who dismiss them out of hand make the same error: Confusing mythos and logos. They treat myths, which are about deeper truths (see my essay on Crude Superstition for further comments on this) as if they were facts, and treat facts as if they were interchangeable with myths. This insults both science and spirituality, as it holds neither of them to their proper function. To quote Plato's Republic, Book II:

Neither must we have mothers under the influence of the poets scaring their children with a bad version of these myths--telling how certain gods, as they say, 'Go about by night in the likeness of so many strangers and in diverse forms'; but let them take heed lest they make cowards of their children, and at the same time speak blasphemy against the gods.

In most situations, the literal truth is relevant in one context, and the mythological, spiritual, or poetic truth is relevant in another context. Both are useful, but to confuse them weakens them both. It dilutes scientific inquiry by giving it things to accept regardless of the evidence to the contrary, as we see with the Young Earth Creationists. It dilutes spiritual pursuit by trying to find an objective truth in a symbol that may take subtlety different meanings for different people, and may help different people in different ways, as we see with the evangelical atheists who insist on trying to talk about the impossibility of Virgin Births.

A danger among spirit workers is to take stories that have been crafted--possibly a thousand years ago--and treat them as having truly taken place. If we accept the gods and spirits as real (which many, myself included, do) then some of them may (or must) have, but how do we know which ones? Do we favor Saxo's interpretations or Snorri's? What if they are both wrong? What if it was a story made up by a god to convey a certain message, but the original message has been garbled?

In truth, the question I like to put forward is what do you gain from this legend. If what you gain is positive and leads toward spiritual growth and healing, if that legend has meaning for you, then you can believe that it is true without necessarily accepting that it is real. If it doesn't, but it does for other people, then so long as they aren't trying to present it as a verified fact that you should accept as well there is no sense in trying to take away that healing image from them based on your own conception of how it should be used.

Mundane vs. Occult

2009-07-10T12:38:00.001-06:00

When reading Bear Heart's memoir, The Wind is My Mother one of the things that gets repeatedly emphasized is the importance of what most people would call "mundane" skills. He talks about the importance of noticing your environment, learning to move your eyes first to look at something rather than your head, and other things along those lines. While it is clear that he is capable of both sensing and manipulating energy (and medicine men doing such things as moving feathers with their mind).

What struck me is that just about everything he talks about "energetically" is, at its core, an extension of skills that--on the surface--have nothing to do with energy. It seems that most modern books on occultism reverse this: they start by talking about sensing and manipulating energy, rather than sensing and manipulating the environment around you and your own mind.

It was noted by Dion Fortune and has long been recognized by occultists that astral/energy constructs degrade in this plane unless they are anchored to something relatively tangible. Similarly, there are a lot of things that energy may facilitate, but you should start learning how to do it energetically by learning how to do it physically.

If you want to lose weight go ahead and say the appropriate incants, visualize yourself as thinner in a mirror, but combine it with diet and exercise. If you want to get a job you might be able to help by lighting a green candle and channeling energy to it, but that won't mean much if your resume is poor, you aren't a good fit for the job, or you don't look presentable.

Virtually everything we do with energy can be enhanced by studying related things that, ostensibly, don't involve it. Not that energy work and shamanism cannot help or augment the work, but frequently one should start learning the energy work components by learning the non energy work components.

Too often in the modern occult community, however, I see people who neglect the physical to learn the energy. They want to burn little slips of paper or purchase spells of ebay instead of working out, going through a Dialectic Behavior Therapy workbook, or seeing a doctor.

Want to learn how to use glamours to project an image? Work on your posture, mastery of facial expressions, confidence, and emotional control. Work on posture mirroring and study communication. Get your clothes tailored, hair cut, nails trimmed, etc.

Want to learn how to heal? Study trigger point therapy, shiatsu, and deep tissue massage. Study medicine or psychology, or learn herbalism. Study how the body feels to the touch when it is suffering certain ailments and when it is healthy, and how different people's bodies feel. Study how the body works, how it fits together, and what happens when various things go wrong.

Want to learn how to perceive energy around you? Start with perception of the world around you. Learn to not just passively observe the world and let it pass unnoticed, but to truly see the world and to remember what you see. Extend it beyond your sight: What do you hear, what do you feel? Can you separate out your perceptions from your feelings?

Are you sick? See a doctor (or psychotherapist, depending on the form of the illness). Don't just pray, burn slips of paper, and hope everything gets better: go see a specialist, ensure you are getting proper nutrition, etc.

On the flip side: There is nothing wrong with studying energy work to get better at a craft you are already practicing. The point is the need for understanding of the balance, and how one leads to the other. One can learn to perceive energy by learning to pay attention, and can learn to pay attention as part of learning to perceive energy.

You can also see a doctor while visiting an energy worker or shaman--it is like receiving two different forms of treatment, and those forms can be complimentary--though it is generally best if one knows about the other. This is especially true with things that affect your own mental health or which involve your own mind. It doesn't have to be one or the other, and frequently things in one area can be made stronger by work on the other.

To summarize, as the saying goes: Pray to God and row for shore.

Prayer Beads 9: Brief Delay

2009-07-05T20:47:00.001-06:00

Due to a variety of factors in my life and some poor time management, prayer bead analysis will be delayed this week.

Boundaries IV: What is a Boundary?

2009-07-02T11:26:00.002-06:00

Previously I talked about having healthy emotional boundaries and then I went on to give some application in relationships through humans to the gods (both when they are talking to you and when you are talking to them).

This essay is going to try and abstract the concept of a Boundary and talk about it in a little more depth, and discuss the consequences of weak personal boundaries.

In short, a boundary is the identifying line between you and that which is not you. These may be between two concrete individuals (such as that I am not the same person as my girlfriend), or between two roles in a person's life (e.g., professional boundaries), it can also be between you and something you've worked on (such as a piece of artwork). So far I have focused on personal boundaries and not professional boundaries, and I will approach the issue of professional spirit worker boundaries in a future essay. For the moment, let's talk a little more about the nature of personal boundaries.

Personal boundaries essentially indicate where you end and the other person starts. It comes down to understanding some things are yours to own, some things belong to others, and everyone is basically responsible for their own choices in life.

It requires recognizing that not only can reasonable minds differ, but that they frequently come from a radically different set of premises. Sometimes these beliefs can be harmful or beneficial, but having good boundaries involves recognizing that--good or bad--they are not you.

Examples of Poor Boundaries

People who have poor boundaries find it manifesting in a variety of different ways, depending on the severity and origin, and may not even realize that the problem boils down to their view of themselves as a distinct individual.

Examples of consequences of poor boundaries include:

Reacting strongly because someone has a different view than you, even if that opinion may be justified.
Not asserting/respecting/enforcing limits with a stranger, friend, coworker, or partner.
Placing your self worth in the opinions of other individuals.
Projecting your emotional state in to others (aka, projective identification).

There are many others, depending on the nature of the poor boundaries, but these four form a good starting point. Going in to more depth:

Separate Beliefs

One silly example gives us a good example of a mild, everyday situation in which poor boundaries might show themselves:

Even a situation such as your saying I thought the end of Harry Potter was ideal and appropriate, and someone else’s responding with How can you possibly think that?! The ending was totally contrived, is a small boundaries violation.

It isn't in having a different opinion from the individual, it is in the level and nature of the response: How could you possibly think that?! A more appropriate response might be Really? I thought the ending was totally contrived. They may agree or think that such doesn't matter and that it is ideal and appropriate for other reasons, they may disagree, but either way what each individual believes doesn't reflect on the other.

In relationships this comes up in the form of taking offense when it turns out that your partner's preferences are different than your own (True story: I had a girlfriend at one point who didn't like pizza and who declared--she never asked--that I didn't like pizza either and took semi-mortal offense when she found out that I did).

We also encounter this all of the time in the religious world. People who don't just disagree or who will state that some beliefs are wrong, but take extreme offense that others might see the world any differently and react emotionally to those differences. In general, so long as Safe, Sane, and Consensual boundaries are respected, I tend to take an attitude of Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is Okay (YKINMYBYKIO).

Setting, Respecting, and Asserting Appropriate Limits

One example of something someone with healthy boundaries might say is:

Yes, I do care for you. And, I also have a need to be out of the house to see my friends at least one night a week.

This is asserting a self identity and protecting the core being of the self. Someone who has to check with their husband to see if it is okay (barring a pre-negotiated relationship in this regard, of course), or who says if me going out will make you lonely, I won't go is not asserting proper boundaries. No matter how much I may care for an individual, I cannot drop everything on a continuing basis for them and retain my own self.

Similarly, I cannot expect others to drop everything for me simply because I am upset or having trouble. Nor can I expect people to respect boundaries I have not informed them of. People who are not me cannot be expected to know what is on my mind and to know how I feel about things.

The dangerous other form of poor boundaries here is respecting limits that have not--and would never be--set or asserting unreasonable, overly restrictive, or counterproductive boundaries. It is easy to fall into the trap of saying I don't want to bother her when in truth both her boundaries and yours not only allow, but encourage, contact. It is also easy to feel like your boundaries are being violated by someone who isn't really encroaching (e.g., someone who can't stand having anyone over, even when the request is reasonable) or who has not received adequate communication.

Tying Self-Worth To Others' Opinions

We are what we are, and the words of others do not change that. Sure, praise may make us feel better and insults make us feel worse, but we are what we are. To go back to my first essay on boundaries where I quote Fuensanta Arismendi in Root, Stone, and Bone:

That voice told me that maybe I was indeed stupid and insane. If so, this was not because my father screamed so, nor was it my fault. Maybe I was intelligent and perfectly sane; if so, my father's screams did not change this, and it was not my merit. My father was unkind and uncontrolled and that was his behavior to own--not mine to own for him. So I took back what was mine: my self-worth--and gave him back what was his: his ranting. From that moment on, insults had no hold over me any more.

Insults lose their sting if we can take them in perspective and recognize ourselves as distinct individuals. Criticism of our work can be taken in beneficial way if we define good boundaries between ourselves and our work, since no matter how much of ourselves we put into that work it is not us. Praise doesn't go to our heads if we take it as a positive indicator of direction and not a validation of our own self-worth.

Projective Identification

One example of how poor boundaries can manifest is called projective identification, whereby an individual takes emotions that they do not want and puts them into another individual. To quote Babette Rothschild's book Help for the Helper:

When an infant's distress cannot be alleviated by his mother, he may feel himself to be bad--I'm inconsolable, so I must be a bad baby. Since feeling bad about onself is not a comfortable feeling, the infant may project that perception of badness onto his mother, believing her to be bad because she cannot calm him. When the infant is calmed, he then perceives himself to be a good baby, and also projects that perception onto his, now, good mother--She is able to care for me.

Similarly, if the mother has poor boundaries she may believe that her baby being inconsolable or in some other way a bad baby must make her a bad mother. A more confident mother with good boundaries will recognize that the child will eventually calm down, and how long it takes doesn't really impact significantly on whether she is a good or a bad mother.

Most people have done this to a greater or lesser degree, at least when we were growing up if not when we were adults. The child of a friend of mine when he was around 4 or so would say scare you when he was scared, indicating that you were the one who was actually scared. Many people know someone who, as an adult, will accuse someone else of the behavior they are showing (e.g., "stop shouting at me!" said in the loudest possible voice).

As we grow up we get better at discernment, at telling what is ours and what is someone else's and understanding it is okay that these are not the same thing.

Conclusion

These are just some of the many areas that poor boundaries can manifest themselves. Most people in society could stand, at a minimum, to tweak their boundaries.

As occultists, a strong sense of self is vitally important. We have to be able to discern what is us and not us not just with people or objects, but with who we want to be and everything from gods and wights to thought-forms that we deal with on regular basis. The place to start working on it, however, is in our relationships with other people and understanding our own, separate, identity as it exists independent from others.

Link: On Shaman Sickness

2009-06-29T02:00:00.000-06:00

Moonvoice has written an amazing piece on Shaman Sickness titled Shamanic Pathways 07 - A wounded shaman(ist)?.

I have some of my own thoughts to add to this, but I haven't been able to get the essay written, so I'll just provide the link that inspired such for now and write more on it later.

Prayer Beads, Week 8: Sif, Heimdall, Tyr

2009-06-28T02:00:00.002-06:00

In the name of Sif, Lady Gold-Tressed, may I take pride in my own skill.
In the name of Heimdall, Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge, may I be able
to defend my own boundaries.
In the name of Tyr, Lord of Swords, may I walk with true honor in the world.

Sif

In the name of Sif, Lady Gold-Tressed, may I take pride in my own skill.

Sif is best known for the story of how she got her hair. In the story of Skáldskaparmál, Loki cut it off, then made nice by going on a quest to get the dwarves to make her new hair of gold and many of the treasures of the gods in the process.

One wonders how Loki got into a position to steal her hair in the first place, and there is a significant implication that she has taken at least one lover outside of Thor (in both Hárbarðsljóð and in Lokasenna). This, however, is a discussion for another time.

Almost nothing is known of her personally in existent lore, though a few people have taken stabs at it (some of it based on UPG, for example, there is a theory that Thor guards the perimeter and Sif makes the center clear and sacred). It may also be that she had an association to marriage: Her name is a cognate of the Old English word sib, which means affinity, connection, by marriage. The compound word byggja sifjar means to marry.

Pride is a much maligned feeling in modern society. The phrase pride cometh before the fall is almost totally ingrained in our society, and many if not most children have received--from some authority figure in their life--lectures about this villain called pride. Greek legends about the dangers of hubris are frequently required reading in school, and it is considered the root sin of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins.

Yet as the character of Mark Twain indicates in Disney's American Adventure in Epcot: Pride is a national passion and even those who overcome it are proud of their humility.

Yet pride doesn't necessarily have to be excessive, nor does it have to be combined with conceit, nor does it mean that your pride needs to be unjustified. To quote the usage notes from the New Oxford American Dictionary:

If you take pride in yourself or your accomplishments, it means that you believe in your own worth, merit, or superiority—whether or not that belief is justified (: she took pride in her accomplishments).

[...]

While no one wants to be accused of arrogance or egotism, there's a lot to be said for self-esteem, which may suggest undue pride but is more often used to describe a healthy belief in oneself and respect for one's worth as a person (: she suffered from low self-esteem).

So while excessive pride may be a problem, some pride in your accomplishments is a necessary component of self-esteem.

Heimdall/Heimdallr

In the name of Heimdall, Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge, may I be able
to defend my own boundaries.

The guardian of the Bifrost Bridge which forms the link between Asgard and Midgard. He is known by many names, and is noted as the father of mankind (in a somewhat literal sense) according to some of the myths. He is a watcher and a guardian, and it is his job to sound the horn when Ragnarok comes.

Defending your boundaries in today's society means more than just keeping an eye on the door or installing an alarm system. It means being proactive with watching your own emotional boundaries and sense of self. It means not having boundaries that are blurred with those around you, and enforcing those boundaries within yourself and too others before it becomes a problem.

The danger here is of keeping too close an eye on one's boundaries. On keeping out even those things that are good, or seeing the world in black-and-white terms. Defense takes on this meaning as well, since it does you no good to keep things out if you starve while on the inside. Thus we can say that defending your boundaries means letting in what you need to be in and keeping out what you need to be out, whatever forms these things may take.

Tyr/Týr

In the name of Tyr, Lord of Swords, may I walk with true honor in the world.

Týr is a lord of justice and a very old god of war. His name derives from the Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz, and is also the name of the rune ᛏ.

Týr er einhendr áss
ok ulfs leifar
ok hofa hilmir.
Mars tiggi.

Tyr is a one-handed god,
and leavings of the wolf
and prince of temples

It is Týr who offered his hand in payment for binding the Wolf Fenris with the cord Gleipnir (open one).

Honor is an interesting concept among Heathens. We don't really have a Code of Honor such as bushido (武士道), but it is clear that there was a sense of honor nonetheless. This shows up, for example, when Egil says to his band that they should go back and acquit themselves as true warriors that is based off of a code of honor.

This code appears to be centered, not on a sense of self, but on how one would be perceived by society. Swain Wodening wrote that:

Honor or ár therefore is as much about how one behaves as it is about how one is perceived. There are many ancient Germanic figures that achieve fame through victories in battle. The hero Starkaðr, while very well known, and spoken of in the ancient literature, did not know honor in his life. Indeed, he was often subject to shame. He definitely was well known, and had success in battle, but as he was often the antithesis of Germanic ideals on what a hero should be, he did not know honor. Starkaðr lacked certain qualities that the ancient Germanic Heathens deemed needed to fulfill the Germanic heroic ideal. In essence, he did not do the good deeds needed to win public approval, and did do deeds that won him the scorn of many. It is safe to say therefore, that ár cannot be simply translated as fame or renown. Starkaðr, after all was very well known, but not necessarily liked. A better translation would be “well known for a good name.” This concept is seen repeatedly in maxims in Béowulf and the Hávamál. One's good name was thought to be everything to the ancient Germanic Heathen.

Kaldera puts forth that there is another form of honor that is not dependent on the views of others called (in Old English) mægen, which literally translates to Strength. He defines it as follows:

While showing oneself to be a keeper of one's word is good for building public trust, the concept of maegen stresses that this is a power to be built even in isolation, and that it is not dependent on the opinions of others. The idea is that every time you give your word and keep it, you build up a fund of power behind your word that gives it more cosmic impact. In this way, the maegen supports the vili. One's maegen can often be sensed by others, and those with strong maegen will be instinctively trusted more by those who sense it. It's more than just reputation, it's an actual force attached to the soul that can be felt and used.

We see here something that is worth cultivating, both for oneself and for others and for which Týr, a god of justice, is ideally suited.

Values

2009-06-26T10:58:00.000-06:00

Coming in a little late to this, but a lot of people who I follow have posted something for International Pagan Values Blogging Month, so I figured that I would add my contribution.

Part of the problem with talking about values is that it can quickly get overly specific. One virtue frequently depends on another, and to quote Michael Murphy (as quoted by Walsh in The World of Shamanism), Every virtue requires other virtues to complete it. While we all agree in living ethically we don't all agree what those ethics entail.

Recently in a job interview I was asked what core values I clung to: what values that were deeply personal to me. What were, in essence, my core values by which I lived my life. It is one of the more unusual questions I've been asked, and my answer really ahd more to do with meta-values. Values from which everything else is subordinate to. The three I gave were:

All Knowledge is Worth Having

Self-Honesty

Kaizen

All Knowledge is Worth Having

This is the famous quote of Anafiel Delaunay in Jacqueline Carey's excellent Kushiel's Legacy series. Basically it comes down to this: There is no piece of knowledge that is so obscure and so arcane that it is not worth knowing. This isn't to say that there aren't opportunity costs involved, but what turns out to be of interest and of use later on is never clear when the knowledge becomes available.

This goes beyond the base memorization of facts. Facts are but one form of knowledge: there is also knowledge of the self and knowledge of skills. As the character of Russell learns in the movie Up: The wilderness, no matter how much you think you know about it, can be rather wild and will exceed your expectations. Yet this counts as knowledge as well.

It is also true that the important thing is knowing how to think, how to analyze, and how--ultimately--to learn. This is also part of knowledge and part of the process of acquiring it.

Every few months I see comments about how some group of engineering students (frequently Software Engineering) take "too much math" in school, when in truth those math classes are some of the most valuable they will ever take. They say that they will never use those classes in the real world and--in a very narrow view--they are right. The trick is that--as the saying goes--I advise my students to listen carefully when they take their last mathematics class, they may be able to hear the sound of closing doors. Not because knowing how to take a line integral in a complex plane comes up so frequently in my day-to-day job, but because the thought process and skill set that were acquired by taking such classes goes well beyond the base subject matter that was covered.

The same is true of Philosophy and is found in many other fields of study: the thought process and skills you gain while learning is more important than the material you cover.

This isn't to say that the material can't also be important: my first professional job out of college involved some of those areas of knowledge that people said I would never have a use for.

So we can say with some certainty that knowledge is a lifelong process and not a set of concise products that can be memorized and regurgitated. It doesn't come down to the classes you take, or the field you are in, or a table of numbers (though all of these can be useful and help you on the way), but in how you seek and gather and what you learn while on the path.

It is important to seek, it is important to learn, and it is important not to dismiss some tidbit of information or some skill just because you cannot presently see the use for it.

Self-Honesty

Loki is one of many teachers that tell us that if there is one person in all of the Nine Worlds that you cannot afford to lie to, it is yourself.

Honesty is a funny concept. On the one hand, when you lie to others, the question is why do you feel that it is necessary to lie to them? This is part of what Ayn Rand was saying when she commented that:

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked... The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on... There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

The so-called white lie is told to keep the peace but serves instead to distort reality, because reality is not palatable a false, illusory reality is set up instead. In telling this white lie you are saying that peace of mind is more important than what has actually true.

Besides, it is a pain to keep it all straight.

On the other hand, it is easy to pretend to being honest while in truth infringing on the boundaries of others. It is easy to fall into the trap of saying that one is just being honest when in truth it is simply a mechanism for making the other person uncomfortable (e.g., by sharing too much information), or talking instead of listening.

It can also, when poorly phrased or when not combined with mindfulness, be used as an inadvertent (or worse, deliberate) weapon in the worst possible ways. It can lead to what are called you statements instead of I statements, said in the name of being honest.

There is also power in deliberately lying. A lie--told mindfully--can be used to illustrate the truth or protect oneself from harm. A lie by omission (especially of the form of simply stopping short or not bringing something up) can be used to give yourself time to work things out within yourself before telling the truth, to play nice in a social setting for the benefit of a third party, or temporarily avoid hitting people's triggers. Lying can be used as a tool by spies in order to gain information which is vital to saving lives, and denial and deception techniques have a long history in warfare.

The sagas are similarly filled with examples of people or gods being dishonest or--at a minimum--deflecting the truth slightly for a greater gain. These range from Odin lying about his identity when traveling to Egil pretending to be more drunk than he was, presumably in part to flush out an enemy. We also see in history everything from women lying about their sex in order to serve on the battlefield, or lying about their marital status to help avoid being raped, to being used to protect innocent lives in the Underground Railroad.

The difference here is in what the lie is used for, and whether it is told mindfully. While having a greater end is frequently important, we don't want to get in to a question of ends justifying means and what really matters here is whether the lie is mindfully said, or whether it is said unconsciously. Whether it is said because I am denying reality, or while fully cognizant of the actuality of the situation.

Thus while honesty may be a virtue, it isn't an absolute one and is one that must be balanced with other virtues when dealing with others. But self-honesty, being mindful of yourself and refusing to tell even the slightest lie to yourself to make yourself feel better, is another matter entirely. This is one area that I believe we cannot afford to skimp in, and one area whether the word radical is not merely warranted, but something to encourage.

There are reasons that might justify lying to others, but lies to yourself will always come back to haunt you in the end.

Kaizen

Kaizen (改善, literally "improvement") is something I have talked about before. It means continuous improvement in all areas of your life. In Walsh's The World of Shamanism he comments that in Western Philosophy we frequently make the mistake of believing that attention cannot be continuously sustained and he points out how in contemplative disciplines attention must be sustained.

Even if we cannot achieve the ultimate goal of perfectly sustained concentration, we can work toward it. We can build skills and slowly improve ourselves, so that even if we don't--or even can't--get there, we can improve ourselves and our abilities dramatically while working toward that as a goal.

This is part of the point of kaizen: It isn't in being something great, it is in the process of continually improving ourselves in small ways. So I can't be the person I want to be tomorrow, but can I be a better person tomorrow than I am today? That is, in the end, what matters and--after thousands of days--maybe I will become that person, or the person I wanted to be turns out not to be that great after all, but regardless of what happened to my goal, I will be a much better person for the journey.

Prayer Beads, Week 7: Odin, Frigg, Thor

2009-06-21T10:34:00.001-06:00

In the name of Odin, the All-Father, One-Eyed Master of the Runes, may I be opened to ecstasy and inspiration.
In the name of Frigga, Mistress of Fensalir, spinner of clouds, may my home be a frithstead where all are welcome.
In the name of Thor, Lord of Thunder, Master of the Winds of the Western World, may my strength never fail me.

Odin/Óðinn

In the name of Odin, the All-Father, One-Eyed Master of the Runes, may I be opened to ecstasy and inspiration.

Óðinn is an extremely multifaceted deity. He, along with his brothers Ve and Vili, created the earth from the body of the giant Ymir. He is the Allfather (Alföðr) and leader of the Æsir, he is the terrible one (Yggr), the Raven God (Hrafnaguð), and the Grey Bearded (Hárbarðr) wanderer, he is Beloved (Uðr) and the Hanged One (Hangi), and many many other things besides.

As such an eclectic god, there are numerous perceptions of him and--more than virtually any other deity--two people who follow the same god can come away with dramatically different impressions of him and relationships with him. As with any god, some may follow one aspect and others may follow another, but even then Odin has a stunning array of aspects.

I follow Óðinn in his trickster, magician, and wanderer aspects. Mine is the Óðinn who hanged for nine days and nine nights in a quest for knowledge, mine is the Óðinn who wandered the world in search of knowledge, who spent time in a skirt with Freyja to learn seiðr, and mine is the Óðinn who stood across from Thor (Þōrr) on the opposite riverbank and refused to ferry him across. I do not interface with him as a death god or a god of war, I don't talk to him as a Shaman-King or as the Allfather, and only rarely as a god of victory. I never see him in Asgard (Ásgarðr), and will generally either meet him while out and about or go to him at the Chair/High Seat (Hliðskjálf/Hlidskjalf) which exists outside of Asgard and overlooks the Nine Worlds.

One thing that is widely recognized is that he is a god of ecstasy. Not in the modern sense of feeling "overwhelming happiness," but in terms of "involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence." It comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning "trance, distraction" which comes from existanai, meaning to "displace" or "drive out of one's mind" (as in existanai phrenon).

Ecstasy has long been recognized as a potent force for Shamans. William Fairchild, in his work on Shamanism in Japan says of ecstasy that:

Ecstasy is absolutely necessary for shamanism. It is a special kind of ecstasy-a transformation into another personality. By ecstasy the shaman contacts transcendental beings. This ecstasy may be migratory-contact outside of the body. or possessive-transcendental beings enter the body.

Inspiration, on the other hand, is a fundamental force behind human achievement. It is what comes in a flash of insight, allowing us to connect the dots in intuitive ways. One of the meanings of the word is "the drawing of breath." As we say in Hapkido: If you aren't breathing, you are dead. Breath also has a long history in Northern religious thought.

Frigga/Frigg

In the name of Frigga, Mistress of Fensalir, spinner of clouds, may my home be a frithstead where all are welcome.

Frigg is the wife of Odin and described by Snorri as the "foremost among the goddesses." She is said to have a remarkable gift of insight, but while she may teach the technique of it does not share what she sees.

Her hall in Asgard, Fensalir, stands for Marsh Halls and she is known for the goddess of hearth and home. I have now heard from several sources (including someone who was tapped by Frigg) that the people who are hers first feel like they need to clean house. Not just pick up, but a good deep, thorough cleaning.

The book Zen and the Art of Housekeeping talks about something called CHAOS: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. This is something that I struggle with daily. By having a clean place, we can be more comfortable with ourselves in entertaining guests, in having people over, and in performing those activities that encourage Frith within our group.

Frith, meaning "peace; freedom from molestation, protection; safety, security" is a very important concept to the Northern Tradition religions. Svartesol points out that the word has somewhat subtle connotations and is often confused with a similar term, but it basically comes down to the peaceful bonds you build within a group. She says of it that:

[I]n a frithstead you can have a violent disagreement with someone and still know at the end you will not have a knife in your back, whether literally or figuratively. Frith does not mean everyone agrees on every issue and completely loses their individuality to be absorbed by the greater whole. But it does mean working together for the greater good, and keeping good will within the process, including not betraying or otherwise deliberately harming someone within the innangeard.

Thor/Þōrr

In the name of Thor, Lord of Thunder, Master of the Winds of the Western World, may my strength never fail me.

Thor, a red-headed god, is widely known as a friend of mankind. He is the one who protects Asgard and Midgard from the Jotuns--the forces of the wilds, of nature, and of chaos.

He was an extremely popular deity historically, though in modern times Odin frequently gets more attention among many heathen groups. Part of this may be ahistorical, but it may also be that Odin's domains--ciphers, knowledge, and problem solving--have more relevance for many of us in the modern world. Still, Thor plays an important part in protecting a space and--along with his wife Sif--helping make a place sacred.

Protecting others requires that our strengths--no matter what those may be--be there when we need them. My strengths that I use to defend others do not come down to brawn, but are bound up in my mind, my observational skills, and things along those lines. While it would be bad if my physical strength were to fail me, most of the time physical strength is the least important thing and vastly overrated.

One of the most frequent comments I make to lower belts in Hapkido is "you are using too much force."

Yet in all of these things--whether the strength is physical or mental, whether it is from bashing things with a hammer, building fortifications, getting others out of danger, or volunteering at a safe house--Thor's presence is still there.

Boundaries, Part III: Speaking for the Gods

2009-06-18T02:00:00.002-06:00

In my first essay on Boundaries I talked about the emotional boundaries between people. My second essay on Boundaries talked about how to react when someone comes up to you claiming to have a message from a deity, or even your personal deity.

I had intended, in the third essay, to talk about the boundaries between you and the gods, as touched on by Piper in her essay on Service, but realized that first I needed to write about the boundary between you and another individual when delivering a message.

It has happened to numerous people I know on several occasions: they will be journeying, or talking to a god or spirit of some form about a (potentially unrelated) topic, and a message will come up intended for a particular individual (or group of individuals) who weren't originally the topic of discussion.

These messages may range from benign to severe in their implications, and there may be a variety of reasons a third party may be chosen to deliver the message. Sometimes, that third party may not even be aware that they delivered a message or what its contents were. The reasons and forces involved may not always be clear, but there are always reasons for it.

On the other hand, it is very easy when doing this to allow one's own perceptions to interfere, to cast individual desires inadvertently as messages from the gods, or to otherwise allow the filter of your mind to interfere with your own signal on this matter. No matter how certain one is, there is always a chance--no matter how small--that they are wrong.

There are also problems in interpretation. Several people I work with have received messages either directly or through an intermediary where the giving of the message was more important than that they follow the message's contents. Further, the message may take a meaning to the listener that the speaker is not aware of.

It is also very easy to take a message to the effect of "If you feel that X should do Y, why don't you tell them that yourself?" and translate it to "Odin said to tell you that you should do Y."

Knowing exactly what is going on with such a message is nontrivial even if you are 100% certain of it's origins and content. Let alone if you can't be.

Telling the difference between a message from the gods and your own subconscious is nontrivial, and while mindfulness is tremendously helpful in this discernment, it is not completely perfect. Even if the gods are completely objective entities, their representation within my own mind will never be. This means that while I may transmit a message believing it is from the gods, it cannot be my responsibility to ensure that the contents of the message are followed.

These are healthy boundaries. After having delivered the message, they get to check on it. Their conversation with the deities may go any one of a number of directions that you are not privy to and not responsible for. If they choose not to check or not to follow the advice, or choose not to tell you what they discovered, it is not your responsibility to make sure that they do or to remind them in any way.

Besides, if the deity in question really wants the message delivered, most are capable of delivering through some other channel if confirmation is needed.

I will talk more about this topic when I discuss boundaries between Spirit Workers and gods.

Book Review: Journeying, Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet

2009-06-16T02:00:00.000-06:00

Journeying : Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet by Jeannette M. Gagan (✭✭✭✬✩, 3.5/5, 13 June 2009)

One of the key areas of interest to a lot of spirit workers, myself included, is the link between shamanism and psychology. The role of a shaman, be it core or traditional, is service to the surrounding community, frequently in the capacity of a healer. Raven Kaldera states that, since putting out his shingle as a "Shaman," "health" has become the #1 issue that people ask about (as opposed to love or work, the other two frequent topics for readers). Harner states that the purpose of Shamanism is healing.

Given this association, it is natural that psychotherapists are starting to take an interest in Shamanism, and specifically in journeying, as a mechanism to encourage healing in their clients. Outside of some of the resources provided by the Institute of Shamanic Studies, there simply aren't all that many good, published resources on the relationship between Shamanism and Psychology. Especially not from the psychotherapist side.

Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet is an initial attempt to bridge this gap. After reading the effusive praise of the book Amazon, most of it from the point of view of a psychotherapist approaching shamanic practice, that I was eager to read it from the perspective of a spirit worker.

This book is not--and does not claim to be--an introduction to how to incorporate journeying in a psychotherapeutic context, nor is it in any way a "how to." Really, there are many books out there on that already, and so this book is attempting to enter a much-needed void: discussion of the actual link between them, and discussion of how one can facilitate and help the other.

The chapters of the book are as follows:

Chapter 1: The Apple and the Orange
Chapter 2: Shared Slices
Chapter 3: How the Cradle is Rocked
Chapter 4: Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Wolf
Chapter 5: The Alchemical Connection
Chapter 6: The Meeting Place

The sequence starts by showing some of the history of Shamanism and Psychotherapy, and then slowly working their way together over the following chapters. The final chapter, The Meeting Place, attempts to draw a synthesis between the two.

History

From the standpoint of introducing people with a psychotherapeutic background to journeying, this book is reasonably good. It attempts to present the argument that there is a missing core of a "Soul" from Psychology, and establishes through some discussion what role this concept of a "Soul" has had in the history of Psychology and Psychotherapy. It describes Psychology as a navel orange, with no clear center and with a vestigial second "fruit" inside--representing the role of the soul--and a variety of clearly delineating slices representing different schools of thoughts.

Shamanism, on the other hand, is compared to an Apple--with a central set of core techniques, concepts, and practices. Very different on the one hand, and the author is attempting to establish that they are basically both forms of fruit.

To do this, it launches into a discussion of third and fourth force psychology, transpersonal psychology, and covers the history of psychological thought including some notes for Aristotle, Freud, Descartes. She goes on to discuss Jung's Collective Unconscious, the role of visualization in both physical and mental health, and how Altered States of Conscious (ASCs) can be used as part of the healing process.

While generally interesting, during this discussion the author's inherent biases come out. I expected a Core-Shamanist Perspective with an emphasis on psychological healing via journeying (as the title suggests, and as opposed to other things that Shamanism can and has been used for over the years), what I didn't expect would be that the author would be unable to separate her own cultural biases, which appear to be based on her Christian background. These show up in several places throughout the book, but nowhere more clearly than when she discusses maladaptive ASCs, where she states that:

The emergence of unconscious conflicts may also be acted out in insidious rituals of possession, witchcraft, or other power-laden altered state ordeals; in life, as in fairy tales, such activities hint at evildoings and can elicit a sense of foreboding.

While it is easy enough to filter out the author's own biases in these situations, it makes me want to say "Really? You could shift your mind far enough to accept journeying, even as practiced by tribal shamans, did you really have to throw out other things practiced by traditional shamans in the process?"

How Journeying Can Heal

Later chapters the author starts to talk about the origin of psychological distress and how journeying can help. This, which to me should represent the core of the book, instead ends up as the weakest part. The author spends an inordinate amount of time talking about childhood sources for these problems, which I feel is less important for the purposes of journeying and shamanic healing than that the problems exist.

My own bias in these things is that I tend to be relatively pragmatic: understanding the source of the problems can help tremendously in finding a cure, but the source of such problems can be (and is already represented as) numerous other books, and the solution frequently works independent of the precise source. We don't really need a discussion of all of the various ways that these problems can and do form in childhood, we need a discussion of how journeying and shamanism tie into the therapy of the conditions regardless of their source.

Here, I feel it would have been better if it had taken Emotional Alchemy's approach and acknowledged the source, but then moved on to how journeying has been used to treat it, or a Shamanic view on the treatment of the problem.

To this end, I really wish the author had included more case studies and talking about specific circumstances where journeying has helped someone, rather than front-loading with the potential origin of psychological conditions, and then a couple of illustrative case studies on the topic.

Containment

The final chapters present a synthesis between shamanism and psychology and represents the strongest--and most useful--part of the book. Here we see the author talk about how journeying helps clients, how it offers a contained, safe, and non-judgmental space in which to work. Here we see the benefit of how journeying helps keeps the transference from happening on to the therapist, and situations for which the author says journeying is counter-indicated. This is all excellent stuff, and forms the start of where I want to see research in this field start to lead.

Conclusion

The unfortunate problem with this book for spirit workers and psychotherapists is that most of us are not in the target audience. For psychotherapists who are already using journeying, this book won't give them anything new to work with. For those who are skeptical of journeying, the book doesn't really give anything that might sway them or convince them otherwise even if they have a relatively open mind to the process. For the spirit worker, it might be an interesting read, but there isn't much here that we don't already know and use.

This leads me to think that there are two groups who would benefit the most from this book:

Psychotherapists and Psychologists who are curious about journeying and its application for healing, along with some context on it.
People who have a "TV Shamanism" view of what a Shaman is, and could use a little context.

For people in these situations, I can see how it would be a really useful book, and I will keep it on my shelf to loan out for just these purposes. Otherwise it is an interesting read, but I really wish the author had taken it just that one extra step farther and removed some of the less-useful bits about how childhood and other circumstances contribute to our current psychological state.

Prayer Beads, Week 6: Norns, Æsir/Aesir

2009-06-14T02:00:00.001-06:00

This week we again encounter the three primary Norns who weave the fates of men:

By the name of Urd, I seek the spinning thread of my true path.
By the name of Verdandi, I weave my life with the threads of those I love.
By the name of Skuld, I make peace with the blade of my final Wyrd.

After this we will be getting into the Æsir/Aesir. The Æsir are the most widely followed deities in the Northern Pantheon today. Like most beings in the Northern Tradition, they are highly varied and all of them fill multiple roles. Odin is a god of magic, journeying, knowledge, power, war, victory, terror, wisdom, and sacrifice: to name a few.

The singular form of the word Æsir is the word áss. It is believed to have the the proto-Germanic *ansuz, which implies a direct connection with the rune Ansuz (ᚨ). We normally think of this as being Odin's rune in connection with a Icelandic rune poem, but it could also be called the rune of the Æsir.

References to the Æsir are found throughout Anglo-Saxon as Os-, Scandinavian names as As-, and other germanic cultures as Ans-.

The Æsir are frequently viewed as gods of civilization and order, as opposed to the wild forces of nature that are the Jötnar. One theory on why we have seen a rise of Jötnar-worship in recent years is because we are needing the pendulum to swing the other direction, toward acknowledging and embracing the natural forces of our planet. This does not, however, reduce or diminish the value of the Æsir in our lives, particularly for those of us who live in the city

I am still debating the format for the next section of beads. I may do a god a week and go more in depth, or go more shallow and keep covering 3 at a time.

Updates for this week

2009-06-10T02:00:00.000-06:00

This week is going to be a slow week for essays, I am trying to get one or two out the door but have a lot of things on my plate. The new essays are another Boundaries essay and another book review, and possibly one other essay that's still brewing in the back of my head. More on these things later!

Prayer Beads, Week 5: Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Helheim

2009-06-07T05:00:00.005-06:00

The last three of the Nine Worlds, these are often represented as the "lower" of the Nine Worlds. Some workers, such as the Galdr practitioner Kaedrich Olsen, view these three as the "dark" or "negative" worlds.

I tend to think of them as realms like the others. They each have their own characteristics, but none of them are "evil."

I honor the shadowed world of Svartalfheim, for the dark elves gift of song and mystery, and the deep kingdom of Nidavellir, for the duergar's skill and craft.
I honor the misty world of Niflheim, and the frost-etins who teach tenacity and survival.
I honor the dark world of Helheim, and all the ancestors who gave me life, learning, and hope.

Svartalfheim/Svartálfaheimr

I honor the shadowed world of Svartalfheim, for the dark elves gift of song and mystery,

Kaldera makes a distinction between Svartálfaheimr--the land of the dark elves on the surface--and Niðavellir--the land of the dwarves. I'm going to keep that distinction here.

Svartálfaheimr is the land of the døkkálfar, or the "Dark Elves" (or Svartálfar, "black elves") as distinct from the Ljósálfar in Ljossalfheim. There is a lot of confusion on whether the Svartálfar are actually the same as the duergar, and they seem to be frequently confused in available sources. Kevin Crossley-Holland stated that "No valid distinction though can be drawn between the dwarfs and the dark elves; they appear to have been interchangeable."

If they were mixed up at some point it certainly wouldn't be the first set of races to get confused by later authors (Frigg and Freyja seem to get regularly confused even during period, and Jotuns later got conflated together with trolls).

There is one thing, however, that I consider noteworthy in etymology that may indicate a distinction. The duergar are renowned craftsman who one never gets the particular impression of being malicious (at least from what I've seen of them in the available sources). Meanwhile, the German word for "nightmare" is albtraum or, literally, elf dream. Nightmares were the domain of the døkkálfar, and they were also blamed for night hag syndrome.

Whatever the case may have been a thousand years ago, spirit workers today report very different things living in the forests of svartálfaheimr and in the tunnels of niðavellir. The døkkálfar are described as a group that split off after a great war with the ljósálfar. My own experience agrees with this. I have also, despite the general reputation, generally had a more positive reception among the døkkálfar than among the ljósálfar.

Appearance is less certain, with varying reports. The gylfaginning refers to them as "blacker than pitch," though the word svartr appears to refer to hair color rather than skin color. An african from Nigeria is referred to at one point as blámaðr--blue man--in reference to his dark skin.

They also exist in multiple other cultures, as one would expect for a fey race.

The døkkálfar in the nine worlds live mostly in a coniferous forest on the surface world. Their "domain" in my experience is a smaller portion of the forest itself and not every forested area, though they may be found there. Their language and their magic are frequently musical in nature and they delight in song and dance. They have a capacity for "malevolent illusion" which they turn on intruders and from what I could gather a substantial portion of their magic is on protecting an area and all within it, rather than on a specific individual or group of individuals (UPG 2008). They can also feed on the dreams and emotions in others.

Kaldera mentions a spider goddess, but my experience indicated they didn't follow one.

In my journeys, I probably spend more time in svartálfaheimr than anywhere else. My recent string of dreams that I've described as a "fey catalog" seem to have all taken place in various parts around there.

The second part, "song and mystery" is also important. Song is one of our key ways of connecting with the Divine. Vibrations created by music can help us entered altered states of conscious, from chanting to drumming to singing. The Taizé Community uses song as a mechanism to further the participants individual spirituality both individually and as a group. it brings to mind "breath," since it is with breath that we produce song.

Breath is extremely important in the Norse Tradition, from the concept of "Ond"--meaning breath, or soul--to YHVH Elohim. It is the root of spirituality and the root of psychology.

Mystery is similarly important. While today the word brings to mind spooky attics and errant adventures, the word derives from the word "mystic," which in turn derives from either mustēs (an initiated person) or muein (close the eyes or lips). Either way, we get the impression of things that are not spoken to just anyone, secrets of the universe and our place in it. Things that either were not or perhaps could not be shared.

This, functionally, is what mystery is about: touching that which is beyond us, that which we cannot put into words.

Nidavellir/Niðavellir

and the deep kingdom of Nidavellir, for the duergar's skill and craft

The "underworld" of Svartálfaheimr, it is mentioned in Völuspá:

Stóð fyr norðan,
á Niðavöllom
salr úr gulli
Sindra ættar North,
on the Niðavellir,
stands the dwelling place of Sindri's kin,
Covered with gold

Niðavellir is comprised of an intricate series of tunnels and is the home of the Duergar, who are sensitive to light.

The duergar themselves appear throughout the sagas and eddas. They had bush black beards and hair and it is noted in Alvíssmál that they have pale skin, presumably from being underground. They were renowned craftsmen, well known for their great works and they created the treasures of the æsir.

Among them is the duergar Andvari, who teaches the value of things. There is an excellent book out titled Root, Stone, and Bone which is about honoring Andvari and the vaettir of money.

There is a lot of power in so-called honest work: in putting your knowledge, skill, and craftsmanship into creation. This does not--as the stereotype might imply--need to be something physical. Software is crafted just as surely as ships are, novels and poems are crafted the same as hammers. There is power in putting your honest effort--even unskilled--into an act of creation, and there is more power in working to become skilled at it and honing your craft through effort.

Niflheim/Niflheimr

I honor the misty world of Niflheim, and the frost-etins who teach tenacity and survival.

Niflheimr is the "land of mists." Nifl is a cognate of Nifol (dark) and nebel ("cloud" or "fog"). The name appears in only two places: Gylfaginning and Hrafnagaldr Óðins. The latter reference is extremely brief, just referring it to being in the north. The former, however, describes it as being one of the primordial worlds.

Niflheimr is home to the Hrímþursar (Frost Giants). Given their environment, it is fairly clear where "tenacity and survival" come from. An interesting coincidence is the names of the giants from the Book of Enoch are the Nephilim (נפלים).

Frequently we in the US tend to think of things in terms of "talent," and believe that this "talent" is something intrinsic to that individual. If you cannot draw, it is because you "aren't talented at drawing." If you aren't doing well, it is because you "aren't talented in academics." Meanwhile, if you succeed with a piano, you must be "talented" with it. Though a full discussion on this will have to wait for another time, I believe this concept is toxic to success. That it dismisses accomplishments and encourages people not to try if things are difficult. I believe what matters most--above and beyond any form of innate skill--is your tenacity. That you keep at it and not give up. As Kageyama says in Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go: Habit is a frightening thing.

In Hapkido we like to say that if you had to practice it a hundred times and someone else only had to practice it ten, what does it matter so long as you both got it by the end of the day? You might have to work more or less than someone else in one area, and they might have to work more or less than you in another, but you both are looking to get to the same location.

Helheim

I honor the dark world of Helheim, and all the ancestors who gave me life, learning, and hope.

The land of the goddess Hel. Frequently referred to as Her Ladyship, she is the goddess of the death and the Lady of the Underworld. The word "Hel" derives from the word *khalija, meaning "one who covers up or hides something." Helheim is known as a fortress and is widely considered to be more secure than even Asgard.

Helheim is not a place of suffering, and most spirit workers who have been there describe it as peaceful. Snorri's description of it, where he declares it to be a place that "evil men go," was commented to be "chiefly his own work" by H. R. Ellis-Davidson. Instead it is the abode of the ancestors and the place most of us go to when we die. We close the journey through the nine worlds by honoring those that came before us.

The concepts of "life, learning, and hope" are three of the most important aspects that we ever deal with. My ancestors--physical, spiritual, and intellectual--have helped make me what I am today, and to paraphrase: if I see far, it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants. Those giants are my ancestors, my friends, my coworkers, my spirit guides, my teachers, etc--the people who have taught me, and the ones who have taught them, going back to the wheel and the discovery of fire. Acknowledging this is not a weakness, but a strength.

Suspending Disbelief

2009-06-02T02:00:00.002-06:00

Back in High School we had an English teacher talk to us about the necessity of something called suspension of disbelief in fiction. He said that, in order to truly get in to a story, the reader had to be willing to turn off their disbelief about the events in the story, thus allowing for everything from lunar princesses to White Whales that hunt ships to dark dystopian futures and everything in between. Recently I have been pondering its relation--if any--to occultism in general and spirit work in specific.

What Does It Mean?

I didn't like the term in High School, and I argued against it, because we expect (and to a certain degree demand) that stories operate on their own internal consistency, based on their own internal logic. We don't uncritically suspend our disbelief when we find that the internal consistency of the world has been violated, and consistency editors are frequently needed for this reason. We may be able to ignore (or not, depending on its severity), but we don't merely suspend our disbelief and accept whatever it is without criticism.

So when an author can't figure out the mechanics of werecritters in her own world we take notice, and while we may still enjoy the books, we will still mark it when we see it.

Sometimes stories deliberately throw out internal consistency on any rational basis, but are still basically consistent to the (loose) laws of their own universe (e.g., the Discworld concept of a million to one odds being a sure thing).

I think I didn't really understand what suspending your disbelief entails, and I am not completely convinced my teacher did either. What I have now come to think suspending your disbelief actually means is being willing to accept the premises on which the story is based, rather than once you are involved in the story itself. Once you have accepted those premises and whatever form of internal logic the story uses, you can maintain your disbelief, simply using a somewhat altered way of looking at the universe.

Thus I can accept the reality of Carl Fredricksen being able to lift his house using balloons and not feel that it detracts from the story, and accept that there are dogs running around that can talk and fly planes, but still have to wonder about how old Muntz must have been and how he managed to live that long. The previous points were explained in the context of the show or part of the premise, the last was harder for me to swallow.

So I can suspend my disbelief for certain premises, including how they build the internal logic of their universe, but I still have certain standards and expectations for what they do with those premises and that internal logic. Recently I finished reading Santa Olivia. It uses a set of premises I normally wouldn't like books drawn from. It has genetically engineered lesbian werewolves (sort of), boxing, and the US has declared a large number of people living in Texas to not exist. Somewhat difficult premises to swallow, and I don't normally see authors handle these issues well when they declare them as premises, but Jacqueline Carey wove an utterly magnificent story from them.

In Occultism

In occultism we have a similar concept, found in Chaos Magic: Nothing is true, everything is permitted. I have commented before that I prefer All models are wrong, but some are useful: The relative truth of different approaches to occultism aren't all that important--they can serve different purposes and can be learned in the same way one learns martial arts. We must accept certain premises as true in order to use a given system, but the objective reality of that truth is rarely important so long as we get the results we are after.

I cannot question my skills, or the reality of the system I am using, if I expect it to work effectively. Thus it is useful for me to be able to believe--absolutely and completely--the reality of a system while I am working with it. When I talk to Coyote while Journeying, it is not useful for me to sit there and wonder if I am talking to an aspect of myself, a spirit that I am casting in the role of Coyote, or an actual entity that has existed for thousands of years called Coyote.

On the other hand, this can lead to a certain brand of arrogance, or to an insistence that we are right and others are wrong. To try and invalidate others experiences or UPG simply because they do not mesh with our own, even those that are diametrically opposed and incompatible with our own. It can lead to us taking offense because someone else's practice is radically different from ours, or even if they take away something different.

Different people have different approaches to this problem. Some people treat the gods as being psychological manifestations, aspects of their individual psyche. Others treat the gods as absolutely 100% real, and everyone else's gods are real too. Some say the gods are completely real, but our understanding of them is aspected, or that we summon into being different facets by using different names. There are almost as many approaches to the problem of the reality of magic and to the reality of spirits as there are occultists and spirit workers.

My approach is that I accept the premise: that this somehow works, and that by accepting certain premises and following certain techniques, I can bring about effects in both myself and the world around me. I believe, for all intents and purposes completely, in the existence of the deities I interact with, understanding that no matter how firm my UPG, it must still be filtered through the lens of my own perception.

This is part of why I say that while I believe--having had experiences that convinced me--in the reality of the gods and spirits I talk with, I am not ultimately too fussed about it or about whether others who approach the path do it in the same way I do. I have suspended my disbelief on the premises, and focus instead on where the individual occultist takes it. To quote Lupa in her article on Shamanism and Subjectivity:

Really, how can I prove any of them are wrong, that they haven’t had the very experiences they claim to have had? How can I necessarily say that my experiences with shamanism are more objectively valid when in the end I really don’t have more proof of being right than anyone else? Sure, there’s looking at the shamanisms of other cultures–but that’s other cultures. To an extent, cultural context is crucial. And if a large portion of shamanic practitioners in this culture are reporting a certain way of doing things, then I should not dismiss that simply because it doesn’t corroborate entirely with the ways other cultures have described their practices. There’s something going on there, and beyond a certain point I cannot judge the veracity of what’s happening.

Similarly, when talking with others, my first step is to suspend my disbelief surrounding the premises of their disbelief and talk instead about the effects and experiences. Some things I will look at more suspiciously than others because the premises seem so far out there to me, but really, I can't invalidate their experiences based on just this. Sometimes, even if it never was true in any objective sense in years past, to quote The Matrix, "The mind makes it real." To those individuals, it is sufficiently real that they can produce meaningful results from it, and that is what matters first and foremost. So what I must do is suspend my disbelief for their premises, and look instead at other markers to gauge the subjective reality of their experiences.

To do this, I want to validate that their practices are what they say they are, see the effects of those practices, the internal consistency of their beliefs, and see that their focus is on internal development and helping others rather than on external validation, attention seeking, escapism, or wish fulfillment. That their approach is zetetic to the degree that is possible and is rooted in a sense of humility.

That even when they have 40 years experience, they still recognize the need to continue to improve, to learn, and to grow. That they show maturity and consideration, and have done a lot of self-work to help them understanding themselves. As I like to quote Dion Fortune: Above the gates of the inner mysteries are written the words know thyself. First, foremost, and always.

These things matter more to me than any claims about their premises or supposed accomplishments. It matters more to me than what books they have written or how many followers they have. It matters more to me than the severity of their practice, or how tightly bound they seem to be to the gods.

I can suspend my disbelief for their premises for the purpose of understanding their worldview, but I still have certain expectations for where they take it from there. I can also be clear that I am not necessarily accepting their premises or practices into my own framework, along with the reasons why.

Lupa wrote a brilliant piece that is worth reading in its entirety, but says in part that:

I'm not accepting things without consideration, but I am going to say that beyond a certain point my authority to criticize only goes so far because of subjectivity and the inability to climb into someone else’s head. I think a better criterion would be Does it work? There’s also the argument over semantics and who’s a real shaman, but for the practices themselves, I’m going to be less liable to dismiss something because it involves things I personally disagree with.

Prayer Beads, Week 4: Jotunheim, Midgard, Muspellheim

2009-05-31T05:00:00.004-06:00

Moving to the next three of the nine worlds:

I honor the thunderous world of Jotunheim, and the mountain-thurses who grant focus and passion.
I honor our sister realm of Midgard, door to the Nine Worlds, by which I journey forth.
I honor the fiery world of Muspellheim, and the fire-etins who grant strength and loyalty.

Jotunheim/Jötunheimr

I honor the thunderous world of Jotunheim, and the mountain-thurses who grant focus and passion.

Possibly deriving from the Jotunheimen mountain range in Norway. One of the interesting things in studying the Nine Worlds is that they have locations in this world that both resemble them and have related names.

Jötunheimr is the land of the Jötunn/Jotuns, powerful nature spirits and shape changers. In the Lumsk song Trolltind refers to them. They are representative of chaos and the forces of nature.

After the coming of Christianity, they would get referred to by other names and became part of the array of local landspirits. Their powers and functions were, for example, absorbed into the group of creatures called trolls. In Skáldskaparmál we see the following passage, spoken by a troll:

Troll kalla mik
tungl sjötrungnis,
auðsug jötuns,
élsólar böl,
vilsinn völu,
vörð náfjarðar,
hvélsvelg himins –
hvat's troll nema þat? They call me Troll;
Gnawer of the Moon,
Giant of the Gale-blasts,
Curse of the rain-hall,
Companion of the Sibyl,
Nightroaming hag,
Swallower of the loaf of heaven.
What is a Troll but that?

Many of the later stories and folklore refer to the power of Christianity driving them away, or good Christians being scared away from the wild places by the booming voices of giants.

The land of Jötunheimr itself is separated by the river Ífingr from the walls of Ásgarðr and is commonly seen as a wild place. This is where the (in)famous forest Járnviðr (the Iron Wood) is found.

Midgard/Miðgarðr

I honor our sister realm of Midgard, door to the Nine Worlds, by which I journey forth.

Literally meaning "middle enclosure," it generally refers to as our world, Earth, but spirit workers tend to think of it as an astral equivalent to our world. Set some time around the Iron Age, this world seems lost in time but has more tangible connections to the world around it. Because of this, and because of its closeness to our world, many spirit workers use it as a "launching off point" to visit the other realms.

The realm of Miðgarðr itself is often visualized as small continent, surrounded by a large body of water and surrounded by the great serpent Jörmungandr, who is also known as Midgårdsormen (Midgard's Serpent).

In some models of the Nine Worlds Miðgarðr is portrayed as being in the center of things, though one wonders if this is the same kind of perceptive flaw that lead to theories of geocentricism. Spirit workers who follow Kaldera's model of the Nine Worlds--laid out as a spiral--don't hold to this. Regardless of whether it actually is the center, however, it being the closest realm to ours means that it might as well be from a spirit workers perspective.

Muspellheim/Múspellsheimr

I honor the fiery world of Muspellheim, and the fire-etins who grant strength and loyalty.

Meaning "Muspel land," Múspellsheimr land of fire, one of the two primal worlds from which everything else came. Between this land and Niflheim lies the void of Ginnungagap ("magical (and creative) power-filled space"). This is one of the primordial worlds from which the universe came forth, and while also being a force of creation it is Muspel's children who will break the bifrost bridge come Ragnarök.

The land is ruled by Surtr (Old Norse for "The Black One"). He is remarked to be the oldest being in the Nine Worlds, and regardless of whether this is true of the entity, the stories about him are undoubtedly very very old.

Link: Map of the Fallen

2009-05-25T02:00:00.001-06:00

In honor of memorial day, there is a Map of the Fallen for use with Google Earth. It shows the individuals who have died, where they came from, and the circumstances of their death.

Prayer Beads, Week 3: Asgard, Ljossalfheim, Vanaheim

2009-05-24T13:00:00.000-06:00

The beads now continue the journey into the Nine Worlds. Raven Kaldera imagines those worlds to be a spiral around Yggdrasil, which stands in the center. In this model the worlds go in the order: Asgard, Ljossalfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, Midgard, Muspelheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Helheim. My navigation skills are non-stellar, and so I generally navigate by landmarks in the Nine Worlds and think in terms of Okay, I follow this river from Midgard, past Yggdrasil, through Svartalfheim, and then I'll be in Niflheim... but its kind of nice to have some conception of how the worlds are situated.

My analysis of these is going to be somewhat shorter. In this part of the journey I am basically just making a note of each of the worlds and its denizens. The passages themselves are fairly generic, and I haven't gleaned much from them in meditation or in reading lore (or Lore™, for that matter). For example, when we say "the high world of Asgard" we are calling it such because it is traditionally represented... on top. When we say "the Aesir who offer knowledge and power" that tends to be their traditional domain.

A good exercise would be to go through the modern lore and find stories that are associated with these concepts, and I may return at a later date to do such, but for the moment will keep these brief.

I honor the high world of Asgard, and the Aesir who offer knowledge and power.
I honor the glittering world of Alfheim, and the Alfar who give inspiration to a mortal heart.
I honor the green world of Vanaheim and the Vanir who bring wisdom and joy.

Asgard/Ásgarðr

I honor the high world of Asgard, and the Aesir who offer knowledge and power.

Asgard itself is a fortress that is not easily entered without the Æsir's permission, and many of the Æsir are war deities of one form or another. It is guarded vigilantly by the likes of Thor and Heimdall. Short of Helheim, it is probably the single most difficult place to enter uninvited.

Asgard means the ""Enclosure of the Æsir," who are the principle deities of Ásatrú and the group of northern deities we know the most about from lore. They are the forces of order and civilization, and all of the trappings that come with those.

Alfheim/Álfheimr

I honor the glittering world of Alfheim, and the Alfar who give inspiration to a mortal heart.

Alfheim is one of the only places in the Nine Worlds that I have found a direct connection to other realms--the faerielands are adjacent and easily reachable from there. It is the ancient name of a place in Sweden. A place of legend, many many tales of spun off about this place in one form or another.

Vanaheim

I honor the green world of Vanaheim and the Vanir who bring wisdom and joy.

Vanaheim is a land shrouded by mists and hedge mazes. The deities are primarily focused around agriculture and fertility, but it pays to remember that this is the race that fought the Æsir to a standstill. These are also gods of blood and the cycle of life and death.

Book Review: Emotional Alchemy, How the Mind can Heal the Heart

2009-05-23T10:50:00.006-06:00

The troubles you now are facing
They are not greater than your will
For there is nothing under heaven
You cannot overcome

See the door that lies before you
And know this too shall pass
The confrontation of your fears
And strength drawn from the past

Where the silent voices whisper
Find the course that is your own
And however great the obstacle
You will never be alone -- The Eye of the Storm, by The Cruxshadows

In the name of Mordgud, Guardian of the Gate, may my barriers of darkness open to my hand. -- Raven Kaldera's Bead Prayer, from Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner

Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman (✭✭✭✭✭, 5/5, 2 May 2009)

Just as a note, this book has had a profound impact on me and came at a time in my life when I desperately needed it. First I am going to talk a bit about that experience so that you'll understand the context from which I found this book, and some of why I am one of the cheerleaders of Mindfulness for occultists.

In Need of Alchemy

Some time ago I dated a young woman who had a condition called Complex PTSD. C-PTSD has a few different meanings and manifestations, but the long and short of it is that past traumatic stress--severe and ongoing over years as she was growing up--shattered her mind. This can then manifest in several different ways. In her case, she had lost all sense of self, all sense of boundaries or borders between herself and others, and lived in constant fear of abandonment. It manifested as extremely severe Borderline Personality Disorder, characterized by the expression I hate you, don't leave me.

Part of the characteristic of this condition is that she had an iron certainty of her view of reality and any deviation from this in someone else's view was wrong. Most individuals have an internal set of filters that accept that someone else may perceive a situation differently from themselves, may remember things differently, or may simply be working off of a different set of facts or assumptions.

She lacked this capability. She didn't have the boundaries to understand--fundamentally--the difference between herself and others. She would transfer her own feelings, behaviors, or perceived traits on to me. She thinks she has something wrong with her, so she would accuse me of having something wrong with me.

Her view of reality was so certain, so inflexible, and so black-and-white that it could make one question their own sense of self and their own sense of reality. Especially if they were immersed in it, as I was.

It is not an exaggeration to say that, in the process of knowing her, I was destroyed. My carefully laid network of boundaries, my assumptions about reality, my sense of self, my self-esteem, even the foundations of my own sanity were not merely torn away: they were obliterated. My teacher described it on a metaphysical level as like seeing a smoking crater in me.

After I managed--thanks to spirits and friends--to break away, I had to do a great deal of self work. Walking on Eggshells is the best book out there for people in my situation, and helped me understand what had happened, and to take responsibility for 100% of my 50% of the relationship, and not take any responsibility for her 50%. To not cast blame, but to understand it from her perspective while at the same time understanding and validating my own experience. That wasn't enough, by itself, however: I needed a way to rebuild myself and to understand what had happened--not just within the relationship--but within me. I needed a way--internal to myself--to keep it from happening again.

Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman helped me do exactly this. Emotional Alchemy is about a form of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MBCBT). It combines a form of Western psychotherapy, called Schema Therapy, with Buddhist theories on Mindfulness: the art of paying attention. In this synthesis it creates something truly powerful.

The Book Itself

A schema is an emotional trigger reflex. Past experience builds a set of pathways in our brain so that we can get triggered by events or other parts of our psyche. To quote Emotional Alchemy:

These emotional habits are learned so thoroughly that they operate outside our awareness, and much of their power over our lives comesf rom the fact that they are largely unconscious. Just as we are unaware that they are being formed as they take shape, and we don't remember most of the specifics about how they became our preferred habits, we remain unaware of how they control us.

The premise of the book is to use Mindfulness to identify, understand, and move past the maladaptive schemata. It talks about the uses of Compassion, Equanimity, Mindfulness, and Schema Therapy, and while the goal of the book is geared toward synthesis it is emphasized that many of these things are beneficial in isolation as well.

Throughout the book examples are given from her own life and from clients on schemata and the effects of Mindfulness. The tone is conversational, and it frequently feels like the author is gently guiding you through the topic.

Each chapter ends with a small set of exercises or processes to go through as part of the process of Emotional Alchemy.

Outline

The book itself is divided into four primary sections, each with its own chapters:

Emotional Alchemy
1. An Inner Alchemy
2. A Wise Compassion
3. The Healing Qualities of Mindfulness
4. A Model of the Mind
Things as They Seem
1. Emotional Habit
2. Schemas in the Larger World
3. How Schemas Work
A Mindful Therapy
1. The Many Uses of Mindfulness
2. Breaking the Chain
3. Changing Habits
4. Working with Emotions
5. You Don't Have to Believe Your Thoughts
6. Relationships
7. The Circle of Life
8. Stages of Healing
Spiritual Alchemy
1. Perceptual Shifts
2. Investigating the Mind
3. Reframing Suffering
4. May Confusion Dawn As Wisdom

Section I: Emotional Alchemy

The first section on Emotional Alchemy involves a basic set of definitions and talks about the need for the synthesis of Eastern and Western approaches. It goes on to build a foundation on topics such as Mindfulness, Equanimity, Loving-Kindness, and Compassion and gives basic meditative techniques for building on these. It talks about the need for Mindfulness in our day-to-day lives, defining Mindfulness as: seeing things as they are, without trying to change them. The point is to dissolve our reactions to disturbing emotions, being careful not to reject the emotion itself.

The section gives multiple mindfulness exercises which, while fairly standard, are excellent. It then closes with a chapter about how the mind works, how it avoids topics that it finds uncomfortable, and the nature of schemata.

Section II: Things as They Seem

The second section turns its attention to maladaptive habits, modes of perception, and we get a more thorough introduction to the concept of a schema. The author lays out ten different maladaptive schemata, going into their origins and a few possible manifestations, along with how they can be triggered. It talks about the neurological basis for these schemata, and how to start understanding and finding our own schemata.

It concludes that:

Once schemas are recognized and empathized with, we can begin the work of changing them.

Exactly how to do this we get in to in the next section.

Section III: A Mindful Therapy

Whereas the first part of the book focused on Mindfulness and the second part focused on Schema Therapy, the third section of the book talks about building a synthesis. It discusses techniques for noticing that your schemata have been primed and what to do about it when in a schema attack. It also goes into how schemata come into play in relationships, both romantic and with your family.

Section IV: Spiritual Alchemy

The final section of the book takes the techniques in Section III and moves them one step farther, integrating them more heavily with Buddhist perceptions and modes of thought. This section is almost entirely about the Buddhist model of the mind, the nature of suffering, and how mindfulness and schemata fit into this.

This section is mostly unnecessary after you have gotten through the rest of the book, if you were reading it for the purpose of learning the basic techniques and are uninterested in Buddhism or the philosophy underlying these techniques. That said, the material is still interesting and it is nice to see some of the origins of these techniques, along with a perspective on where the theories themselves come from. It is also good at showing some of the potential next steps as an individual continues to use these techniques.

Conclusion

Recently I commented to a friend that it felt like Elizabeth Vongvisith and I were becoming the cheerleaders for Mindfulness in the Heathen community (M - I - N - D - F - U - L - N - E - S - S what's that spell!? Mindfulness! Ra!). I have worked with several books on the subject, and I have found none that are better at working with it from a western context than this one.

I do have some minor quibbles with the content of this book. First, the descriptions of the schemata all seem somewhat limiting, and I wish there had been a more in-depth discussion of manifestations. The author also often chooses to give examples for the schemata by starting with the circumstances that lead to the schemata for an individual, followed by it's consequences. This lead me to reject a schema because my circumstances were different and the manifestation wasn't the same, when in truth I definitely had a different form of the same schema.

We also see that a lot of the book focuses on the nature of Mindfulness and how it has helped people dealing with everything from anxiety disorders to mild schemata, rather than focusing on the actual practice of Mindfulness. This is a fairly indirect approach, which suites my own preferences well for this sort of book, but may frustrate some readers. Especially since this is more of a process than a product.

These are, in truth, fairly minor issues and do not really detract from the power of the book.

To close with a quote from the Dalai Lama, writing the foreword to this book:

I offer my prayers that readers of the book may indeed be able to transform their minds, overcome their disturbing emotions, and achieve a sense of inner peace.

Godaþegn and Godatheow

2009-05-18T01:00:00.004-06:00

Editor's Note: This essay was later chosen for inclusion as part of Gods' Mouths.

In my first post on Boundaries I talked about the emotional boundaries between individuals. My second post on Boundaries went into more detail about the boundary between you and the person delivering a divine message to you, and how to receive that divine message.

In a future installment--still being written--I am going to get into a much more controversial area, and talk about the boundaries between you and the gods themselves, but before we get into that I want to touch on the topic of terminology and "god slaves."

One of the larger--and more uncomfortable--areas of discussion right now among Spirit Workers is the nature of our relationships with the gods. Some of the terms that get used, such as "god slave," carry a great deal of baggage with them. Many of the more prominent members and authors of our community claim the title godatheow (godslave).

I will go into significantly more depth on this topic later, but for the moment I would like to talk about impressions. One of my concerns is that newbies will get the wrong idea and believe that godatheow is somehow a "higher" form of relationship with the gods or a natural state that spirit workers tend to migrate to as they become more advanced. They may also conclude that these individuals have become "closer" to the gods than they can get without going through the same process.

While the current group of authors and godatheow generally disavow this, it doesn't help that so many of our highly visible members are godatheow, and many of them interact with one another enough that it can give both them and others a skewed impression of our community, leading Galina Krasskova to say in her essay Terms of Service:

I am a godatheow, a godslave. Most of the spiritworkers and shamans that I know are also godslaves - outright owned by their Deities. It goes with the territory.

While later on she states that One does not need to be a godslave to serve -- I want to make that abundantly clear -- no more than one needs to be a priest, or healer, or ordeal worker to serve and be of use to their Gods one still walks away--in general--with the feeling that if you are a Spirit Worker in the Northern Tradition and not a godatheow then, on some level, UR DOIN IT WRONG.

My teacher has over 20 years of experience and is in the service of Freyja. While I am working on three years in my Spirit Work training, I have around 11 years work as an occultist and have been service of Odin for over 4 years. Most of the members of my group have similar--or more--experience in a variety of different occult communities. I have friends who have undergone a full shamanic initiation, others who are shamanic practitioners of varying degrees of "immersion," and many who are members of initiatory magical traditions. Very few of these individuals--spirit workers, shamans, and occultists--could be referred to as godatheow. Not that there is a problem with being a godatheow, but I have to believe that it is fully possible to serve the gods--even as a spirit worker--without being a full slave to those deities.

In short, I would like to challenge the assumption that it goes with the territory, and say that there are a growing number of us that are not god slaves--are for one reason or another not suited or required to be god slaves--but are still dedicated, Northern Tradition spirit workers. I also want to emphasize that I am approaching this with an attitude of this also rather than this instead.

The Vanic-oriented practitioner Nicanthiel commented on this as well, stating that:

As such, there has been a lot of talk in spiritworker circles, especially those connected to Cauldron Farm, of god-slavery as the default spiritworker paradigm; the assumption seems to be, either you are completely en-thralled by your Boss(es), or you're not really a spiritworker.

I challenge that assumption, because not everyone is suited for slavery, and indeed, not every God wants a slave, Frey being the most obvious example. Are people called by such Gods, or lack the nature required for full slavery to be denied the right to serve their Gods? Even Odin doesn’t always want slaves; sometimes, all He wants is just a warrior, or just a magician, or just a tool.

Nicanthiel presents the term godaþegn/godathegn as an alternative, where "þegn" would be a noble servant of a higher noble. Raven Kaldera summarizes this term nicely and gives it his stamp of approval, saying that a godaþegn would be someone who had a strong (perhaps oathbound) bond with their deity, but had full agency except in some limited areas, and could leave if worst came to worst. I feel that this accurately encompasses my path as a spirit worker, it correlates with my own UPG of my relationship with Odin, and am going to start using it in my own practice.

I firmly believe that one does not need to be a godatheow to serve the gods, even as a devoted spirit worker or shamanic practitioner, and that a god may find one person well suited to be a godatheow, and find a completely different use for another individual that doesn't require that kind of relationship. These paths are mostly just different, and come with their own risks and characteristics, and some come with their own unique safety considerations. Like with relationships: Internal Enslavement isn't "higher" than Total Power Exchange isn't higher than M/s isn't higher than D/s isn't higher than vanilla and polyamory is not higher than monogamy or vice versa: they are different models and suitable to different people, to negotiate with each other. This will be dealt with in a lot more detain in some of my future essays on boundaries.

Prayer Beads, Week 2: The Norns

2009-05-17T05:00:00.004-06:00

The Norns appear repeatedly throughout the prayer beads, forming spacers between each of the major groups.

By the name of Urd, I seek the spinning thread of my true path.
By the name of Verdandi, I weave my life with the threads of those I love.
By the name of Skuld, I make peace with the blade of my final wyrd.

All three make an appearance in Völuspá:

Þaðan koma meyjar
margs vitandi
þrjár, ór þeim sal
er und þolli stendr;
Urð hétu eina,
aðra Verðandi,
skáru á skíði,
Skuld ina þriðju;
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja. Thence come maidens
much knowing
three from the hall
which under that tree stands;
Urd hight the one,
the second Verdandi,
on a tablet they graved,
Skuld the third;
Laws they established,
life allotted
to the sons of men,
destinies pronounced.

They are said to weave the faits of men, the easiest visualization for which is as a large, multi-dimensional tapestry that incorporates many threads.

Urd/Urðr

By the name of Urd, I seek the spinning thread of my true path.

Her name means "Fate" and she is one of the three Norns in charge of weaving the fates of men. A bit of a digression: In Gylfaginning we see that the three most famous Norns named here are not the only ones:

Sundurbornar mjög
hygg eg að nornir sé,
eigut þær ætt saman;
sumar eru áskunnar,
sumar eru álfkunnar,
sumar dætur Dvalins. Far asunder, I think,
The norns are born,
They are not of the same race.
Some are of the asas,
Some are of the elves,
Somea are daughters of Dvalin.

The "spinning thread of my true path" deliberately invokes the image of a spindle: spinning many fibers into a single strand. Our wyrd is active--constantly spinning, forever tied in with others at the level of other dimensions. This serves as a reminder of that: Wyrd can change.

By saying that you seek your true path, you are committing yourself to finding your Purpose, whatever that may be. This is a large commitment, but one that humans are preoccupied with. Quoting Nathaniel Branden in his essay The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

We humans have a need to feel we understand the world in which we live. We have a need to make sense out of our experience. We have a need for some intelligible portrait of who we are as human beings and what our lives are or should be about. In short, we have a need for a philosophical vision of reality.

But twentieth-century philosophy has almost totally backed off from the responsibility of offering such a vision or addressing itself to the kind of questions human beings struggle with in the course of their existence. Twentieth-century philosophy typically scorns system building. The problems to which it addresses itself grow smaller and smaller and more and more remote from human experience. At their philosophical conferences and conventions, philosophers explicitly acknowledge that they have nothing of practical value to offer anyone. This is not my accusation; they announce it themselves.

During the same period of history, the twentieth century, orthodox religion has lost more and more of its hold over people’s minds and lives. It is perceived as more and more irrelevant. Its demise as a cultural force really began with the Renaissance and has been declining ever since.

But the need for answers persists. The need for values by which to guide our lives remains unabated. The hunger for intelligibility is as strong as it ever was. The world around us is more and more confusing, more and more frightening; the need to understand it cries out in anguish.

We long for purpose in our lives, to find our "True Path" but the challenge isn't in finding it: It is in committing yourself to seek it. This is not a trivial promise, and it is not one to be made lightly.

Verdandi/Verðandi

By the name of Verdandi, I weave my life with the threads of those I love.

Verðandi, second of the Norns, has a name that means something to the effect of "happening" or "present." The word is the present tense of verða: To Become. This brings mind the image of the "Eternal Now." By saying that I "weave my life with the threads of those I love," I am recognizing the importance of others in my life. It is a reminder that I cannot make it alone. A single thread is always very weak, but a tapestry is always much stronger.

I saw a quote by Jane Howard recently in The Tattered Cover which said:

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

This to me is the essence of this prayer: a reminder that the tapestry of my life cannot be woven alone.

Skuld

By the name of Skuld, I make peace with the blade of my final wyrd.

Often portrayed as "future," she is the youngest of the three and her name means "debt." Interestingly, she is portrayed as a Valkyrie in Völuspá (where she is seen holding a shield), Gylfaginning, and Nafnaþulur.

Gylfaginning states:

These are called Valkyrs: them Odin sends to every battle; they determine men's feyness and award victory. Gudr and Róta and the youngest Norn, she who is called Skuld, ride ever to take the slain and decide fights.

How appropriate that it is in her name that we "make peace with the blade of our final wyrd." At the end of it all, "make peace" we must. It says in Hávamál:

Veit-a hinn
er vettki veit,
margr verðr af aurum api;
maður er auðigr,
annar óauðigr,
skyli-t þann vítka váar.

Deyr fé,
deyja frændr,
deyr sjalfr it sama,
en orðstírr
deyr aldregi
hveim er sér góðan getr. Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
fair fame of one who has earned.

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
the doom on each one dead.

(On a side note, where I don't have the Old Norse I use Icelandic).

So we must, at the end, recognize that as mutable as fate is in the Norse compared to other systems, over a long enough timeline the probability of survival drops to zero.

OT, PSA: Do Not Talk To The Police

2009-05-15T10:00:00.001-06:00

This is somewhat off-topic from my standard posting, but the message should be spread far and wide to anyone who reads this in the US: Do Not Talk To The Police. It cannot help you, and can very seriously hurt you. If you are innocent it can lead to you being convicted, and even if you are guilty you still have the right to proper legal counsel.

Don't Talk to the Cops, Part 1 by a law professor and former criminal defense attorney.
Don't Talk to the Cops, Part 2 by a police officer and 3rd year law student.
BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters from the Flex Your Rights Foundation.

Hat tip to Star Simpson (yes, that Star Simpson).

Boundaries, Part II: "I have a message from God..."

2009-05-13T13:21:00.003-06:00

In my last essay on Boundaries I discussed emotional boundaries between people. In Part II, I plan to take this concept one step farther and discuss Spiritual Boundaries between people and how to deal with it when you hear a medium convey a message from a god, or even your god.

Religions have long struggled with the question of how to handle people who say "I have a message from the Divine..." Kaldera states of such a position that:

This is the voice of the mystic, and it is secretly or not-so-secretly hated by both the other sides. One reason for that hatred is that it seems dangerous to trust the word of someone who has no credentials except a claim to talk to God, or the Gods, or the spirits, or whatever. [...] Who are you, anyway, that they should believe what you say? You could be delusional, or lying in order to manipulate people, or just earnestly mistranslating the puppets in your head. And, to be fair, those are rational fears; any of those things could be true.

The other reason is that in order to believe in the slim chance that you're telling the truth, they must confront their feelings about the fact that Jesus or Freyja or the ghost of the dead guy is not talking to them.

The question for most of us--including those of us who are spirit workers ourselves--is what to do when someone else conveys a message on the behalf of some entity supposedly outside of ourselves. Should we believe them? Should we automatically reject what they say? Should we go to that deity ourselves and ask? If our own UPG or established Lore™ contradicts what we are being told, does that mean they are wrong or that we are? How should we respond if that's the case?

I will talk about proper boundaries when delivering these messages in a future essay, but for the moment the focus will be on receiving that information.

No matter what the status of your UPG is or the state of the message, you should probably respond to the deliverer the same way and then performing the same sanity check, as Danielle Higgins puts it:

I think the best way to respond to this is with a “Thank you for your concern, I’ll think on that,” and then check with your gods yourself.

Telling them "no, you are wrong!" even if you have radically differing gnosis is generally not a good tactic: it won't go over well with them, and they may earnestly believe what they are conveying to you. They may even be right, no matter how strongly you think "that can't be right" or respond negatively to it. On the other hand: Blindly following the advice, no matter what it is, also is a good way to get badly burned, even if you are 100% confident in the deliverer and that the message is itself genuine.

Thus, regardless of what the message is or who it is coming from--a well respected Shaman of your path, a newbie spirit worker, or a crazy man on the street--the first response should always be the same: Thank your for concern, I'll think on that, Thank you, I’ll ask Him further about that, or some other variation on the theme. Even if the information was delivered via someone acting as a medium or a Horse, the best response is to courteously say Thank you for your concern, I'll think on that.

The next step is to check with the gods/spirits/universe yourself. Even if you have poor signal clarity or are not a spirit worker, performing this check is essential. Even if "all" you do is sit down and meditate or pray for a while and never receive a definitive "answer," this process allows you some space to let your mind process the message properly, and to help separate yourself from it and understand it. It will give you a gut reaction, and--more importantly--give you a chance to understand where that gut reaction is coming from. It gives you a chance to run through a sanity checklist on your own, asking questions along these lines:

What is my gut reaction to what was said and to who delivered it?

Your gut reaction is very important, because it is part of one of your judgement processes. To quote Nathaniel Branden: A clash between mind and emotions is a clash between two assessments, one of which is conscious, the other might not be. It is not invariably the case that the conscious assessment is superior to the subconscious one; that needs to be checked out. So, first question, what is your gut, emotional reaction to the message and to who delivered it.

It is also important to distinguish between these two reactions. To quote Raven Kaldera, in his essay Defining the Conundrum of Academic Research Into Spirit-Work: I know from experience that the Gods and spirits do not choose their targets on the basis of intelligence, competence, sanity, morals, life history, or general goodness. Actually, most spirit-workers (including myself) are completely bewildered as to what criteria the Gods and spirits do base their choices on.

You may love or not be able to stand the person delivering the message. You may find their behaviors vile and revolting, or you may find them to be a paragon of virtue. Either way, you will need to separate out your response to the message from your response to the messenger.

Why is my gut reaction what it is?

Having established what your reaction is to both the message and to who delivered it, the next question becomes why. Why do you react that way?

This is where Mindfulness becomes extremely important. We need to dispassionately exam our emotions and our reactions to and determine what is causing them. Is a past bad experience, a schema, some latent doubt coloring my reaction, or just my subconscious putting together something I can't quite put into words? Regardless, I need to think about it and analyze that subconscious assessment.

No one's gut reaction is perfect. Frequently that reaction is colored by schemata, past experiences which may-or-may-not apply, and current circumstances which may have nothing to do with the advice given.

On the other hand, no one's conscious rational process is perfect. Frequently the rational process--which is conscious--ignores subconscious data that may be lingering just beyond our conscious perception. It may also factor in data that is relevant, but not directly enough so to be included in our conscious process. Either way, they both can be strengthened by applying one to the other.

Regardless of the quality of your own UPG, those are the first things to ask.

Next, you can check out the message itself: check on your own and/or (preferably and) check with someone else to get a "second opinion." If it is really important, the gods have ways of making sure you get the message even if your signal clarity is down, and certainly won't mind you asking. You don't have to follow it--especially without checking it out on your own first--but you also shouldn't dismiss it out of hand simply because it came from an outside source.

There are three basic cases that need to be addressed:

You have no UPG on the matter and cannot get any
You have agreeing UPG on the matter
You have contradictory UPG on the matter

Some thoughts on this topic and all three of these cases will be part of a future essay on boundaries. For the moment, the key questions are: What is my reaction, why am I having that reaction?

Tag/Label Update

2009-05-12T11:04:00.003-06:00

I have updated a few of the tags/labels I've used for a few of the posts here, most notably adding the label essays to refer to original essays (prayer exegesis, book reviews, links, etc are treated separately).

Prayer Beads, Week 1: Moon, Yggdrasil, Sun

2009-05-10T13:11:00.007-06:00

I am going to start an exercise of walking through the Northern Tradition Pagan Prayer Beads, going through three at a time, starting with the set that makes up the Moon, Yggdrasil, and the Sun. This will involve my musings and some sources on the entities mentioned, any contemplations I feel worth making at the time. This is just going to cover a surface layer of meaning, but it is a good way to get started.

My plan is to release a new set on each Sunday. This is based on a previous exercise I was working on with my personal blog, but I stopped since I started this blog. My plan is to now finish that work, now that this blog is better established.

Week 1

In the eye of the Moon, I walk willingly into darkness.
In the circle of Yggdrasil, the Great Tree, I find my place within eternity.
In the eye of the Sun, I celebrate that which gives life.

The beads technically start and end with Yggdrasil, but this set of three makes a convenient place to start for analysis, since they come in a set of three.

Moon

The Moon is masculine in the Norse tradition, represented by the god Máni. In Vafþrúðnismál we see the jotun Vafþrúðnir answer Odin (in the guise of Gagnráðr) on the question of the origins of the sun and the moon.

Óðinn/Gagnráðr:
Segðu þat annat,
ef þítt æði dugir
ok þú, Vafþrúðnir, vitir,
hvaðan máni um kom,
svá at ferr menn yfir,
eða sól it sama.

Vafþrúðnir:
Mundilfæri heitir,
hann er mána faðir
ok svá Sólar it sama;
himin hverfa
þau skolo hverian dag
öldom at ártali. Odin/Gagnrad:
Tell me secondly,
if thy wit suffices,
and thou, Vafþrúðnir! knowest,
whence came the moon,
which over mankind passes,
and the sun likewise?

Vafþrúðnir:
Mundilfoeri hight he,
who the moon’s father is,
and eke the sun’s:
round heaven journey
each day they must,
to count years for men.

These passages indicate, on the roughest level, that they both provide measures of time but not much else is mentioned or known (beyond that they are pursued by wolves in Grímnismál). It seems fairly fanciful stuff, and I tend to think that it should be taken as an allegory rather than interpreted literally. The question is, to what? In this I am currently uncertain, and so I do not have the key to unlock this particular story. Thus, there isn't much in the Lore for me to work with. So perhaps in this case we should simply associate the "Eye of the Moon" with "Night" and focus instead on the later half of the prayer.

Darkness is a recurring theme in the prayer beads. It occurs for three different beads:

In the name of Hermod, Traveler on Hel's Road, may I never fear to
walk in darkness.
In the name of Mordgud, Guardian of the Gate, may my barriers of
darkness open to my hand.
In the Eye of the Moon I walk willingly into darkness.

The fact that the Moon is the last of these seems significant, as taken together they tell a story: I do not fear to walk in darkness, may my barriers of darkness open as I approach them, and "I take that step into darkness." I find the use of the word "my" in the second part to be particularly meaningful: the hardest challenges we face are seldom external to ourselves. Dion Fortune wrote in The Mystical Qabalah that:

Whosoever is thus inhibited is unfit for the Mysteries, over whose portal was
written the words, "Know thyself."

Coming at the end of the beads, as it does, we see that the cycle never ends. "Having completed my journey, I begin again, walking into darkness." Walking into the unknown or perhaps into the unknowable, walking into the depths of our own soul, the parts that we scarcely acknowledge even to ourselves. Doing this takes more courage--and I, at least, approach it with more trepidation--than staring down any tangible enemy ever will. No matter how far we travel, it is still there, waiting for us.

Yggdrasil

Yggdrasil has a bit of a disputed etymology, but the most commonly accepted one is to interpret askr Yggdrasils as "horse on which the highest god is bound," viewing the gallows as the "horse of the hanged." Interpreting the first part "Yggr" to not refer to Odin but rather to its root meaning of "Terror," we could also see Yggdrasil as the "Tree of Terror."

It is said to form the center of the the nine worlds. Raven Kaldera describes visions as part of his Shaman Sickness where he "kept seeing a Great Tree that turned and rotated as I watched; worlds lay in its branches like ripe fruit."

Suffice it to say, Yggdrasil is an amazing sight.

So what does it mean, "In the Circle of Yggdrasil, the Great Tree, I find my place within eternity." For me an interpretation would be "this is where I have chosen to start, from here I will find my wyrd." The beads themselves represent a journey through the nine worlds, and keeping with our theme from the moon: From here it starts, here it ends, and here the journey begins anew.

Sun

Like the moon, the extant lore on Sunna, the sun, is fairly minimal. We see that the deity is clearly represented as Female, which helps contribute to a double-meaning for the prayer:

In the eye of the Sun I celebrate that which gives life.

I celebrate all of the life-bringing forces of the world. Where the previous two prayers focus on the self and one's personal journey, this one is a pure celebration of the world around us. In it we can almost smell the slow coming of spring and feel the chill of the longest night. It is also a celebration of pregnancy, sex, and everything else that goes into the process of life for animals.

What a wonderful way to start the journey.

Link: Fame

2009-05-07T16:09:00.002-06:00

I want the respect of my peers--Quaker or Pagan. I want to be taken seriously--seriously enough to be heard and disagreed with when I'm wrong, or guided deeper into an idea when I'm right. This kind of discernment is something Quakers are at least seeking to give to all members of the Religious Society of Friends, however often we may fail.

Pagans don't even recognize the need, yet.

Fame by Cat Chapin-Bishop is an outstanding read on the desire to be famous in the Neopagan community. It touched on something very Pagan, very human, and is a very good essay.

Link from The Wild Hunt.

ETA:

The author wrote a followup--The Son of Fame--that is also worth reading.

Humility

2009-05-06T01:38:00.005-06:00

One of the expressions we use in my martial art is that "No matter how long you have trained, if you begin to think of yourself as knowledgeable, you commit an error." No matter how much I know, no matter how much I learn, there is always more out there. Knowing something only means that I have laid a little more of the groundwork required to learn more, and eventually I may find that what I thought I "knew" was in error, requiring me to constantly reevaluate my foundations in the light of new understanding.

In the Japanese mindset there are certain errors that are required for understanding. There is no judgement attached to the making of those errors, because if you do not make them at some point then you cannot eventually master the subject at hand. In martial arts we run into much the same phenomena: I have to understand on a visceral level how to move my body, and to do that I have to train my body and make a huge number of mistakes.

No matter how well I think I understand something, it is best to show humility on the subject in the presence of both those with less experience and with more. Those who I think have less experience may still surprise me with a new insight, those who I think have more experience--even if I disagree with them in some fundamental ways--may be able to point out things that will lead me to new realizations, or help me improve myself. If I believe that I am knowledgeable about a subject, chances are good that I am very very wrong.

This means more than not "comparing dick sizes with Odin" (though that is also important). It means laying ourselves before our gods, before the universe, before others, and before ourselves and recognizing the fundamental truth that we know very little. The more that we learn, it should be the more we realize we don't know not just about the universe, but about the very assumptions that led us to this point.

Magical practices--especially shamanic practices--are often difficult to keep in perspective. The force of Will needed often requires an extremely firm belief, because doubt makes it very difficult to get anything to work, much less work safely. It also becomes a challenge, when we believe we talk to the gods and spirits, to remember that we are--at best--an imperfect receiver for Their messages, and that in many respects even They are not perfect. My instructor in martial arts is an 8 dan in Tae Kwon Do and an 8 dan in Hapkido, but if something doesn't look or feel right it is my responsibility to recognize it and try to understand why (this doesn't mean "contradict the instructor in class," but it can mean "be sure to ask for reasoning, even if the answer is going to be of the form 'because the fence needs to be painted'").

Yet for us, as Occultists and Spirit Workers, this is even more important than it would be otherwise simply because it is so difficult. If we pretend to authority, capability, or powers we do not have, then we serve no one: not our clients, not the gods, and not ourselves. If we believe we know more than we do--if we believe ourselves as knowledgeable--then we approach the world with preconceptions. These preconceptions then block further development. As we say in my martial arts class: "Disregarding criticism because of pride in knowledge is a sign of ignorance."

Of course, I can hear the complaint now "Humility is not a Norse virtue." This is basically true, but as it is said: If there is one person in all of the Nine Worlds you cannot afford to lie to, it is yourself (Loki's lesson). You cannot--as an occultist--tell yourself that you know more than you do, for as Dion Fortune indicates in the Mystical Qabalah, above the gates of the Mysteries are written the words "Know thyself." What you show others isn't nearly as important as what you tell yourself.

I can be justifiably proud in my progress while at the same time recognizing that my progress amounts to less than a single grain of sand's worth of knowledge on a vast shore. Showing humility doesn't mean that I must grovel and debase myself for the sake of debasing myself, but it does mean that I should not flatter myself as being stronger than I actually I am.

This is, after all, about my own personal development and growing both as a person and as an occultist. Not about showing off.

Book Review: Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner

2009-05-02T17:00:00.001-06:00

✭✭✭✬✩ (3.5/5, to quote Daven's rating system: "Good, there should be more books like this")

Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner: A Book of Prayer, Devotional Practice, and the Nine Worlds of Spirit by Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera is a difficult book to review. One the one hand, the book has excellent content and the author's aims in writing the book were laudable: we really do need more books like this. However, I feel that what it claims to accomplish (and what my expectations might have been, though they aren't precisely fair), what it feels like it is aiming to accomplish, and what it actually accomplishes are three different things.

Claims and Expectations

The title, reminiscent of Cunningham's famous Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, evokes an image that this book is about practicing the Northern Tradition alone, and that this is a very basic book for beginners. Containing things, perhaps, along the lines of ritual outlines, ceremonies throughout the year, solid groundings in the cosmology, or a discussion on topics such as Heathen ethics.

This position is encouraged by the back of the book, which says that the book "features an in-depth exploration of altar work, prayer, prayer beads, ritual work, sacred images, and lore, and a thorough examination of the common cosmology that forms the foundation of belief of Northern Tradition communities." Reading that, one expects a that all of these areas will be covered in enough depth that a beginner could easily find what they are looking for in this book. It also looks like there should be an emphasis on practicing strictly as an individual, which raises its own set of issues independent of group practice.

The back of the book also claims that it is a "look at devotional work in religions from Theodism to Asatru to Norse Paganism, all of which encompass the umbrella of the Northern Tradition." This leads one to expect that these religions will be given more than a superficial treatment, and to see information on a variety of different branches of Germanic Neo/Mesopaganism.

What the Book Aims To Accomplish

The book is divided into nine chapters, plus an introduction and a set of appendices:

Introduction: Solitary Spirit
Chapter 1: Tribe and Tradition
Chapter 2: Defining Devotion: The Evolution of Practice
Chapter 3: Nine Worlds of Spirit: Core Cosmology
Chapter 4: In Reverence: Meditation and Prayer
Chapter 5: Counting on Faith: Prayer Beads
Chapter 6: Footsteps to the Gods: Solitary Rites
Chatper 7: Sacred Images: Altar Work and God-Posts
Chapter 8: Right Action: Doing the Work
Chapter 9: Sacred Inquiry: The Conundrum of Words

The appendices contain an Epilogue, a table of deity altars, offerings, and associations, footnotes, a bibliography, further reading, an index, and a section touching very briefly on the authors. From an initial glance, the topics seem reasonable and hit the major points for a book on spiritual development in a Northern Tradition.

The Introduction helps to clarify the purpose of this book a great deal: this is a book about devotional practice. It talks about how in some branches of Neopaganism books of this nature focus "partly on opersonal ritual, and partly on magic and spellwork." It explains that they will be avoiding the latter topic, not because it isn't valuable, but because they want to "stress that this is a religion, and devotional work is a good place to start in any theistic faith." Excellent, we get a clear picture that this is a work of devotion, not of magic and that this book is talking about devotional practice in the context of that religion. This doesn't contradict the claims and expectations, and reinforces what this is all about.

It further explains some of what is addressed in each of the chapters, mapping some of them loosely to Dale Cannon's Six Ways of Being Religious.

Despite the title of the introduction being "Solitary Spirit" and the title "Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner," the issue of being a solitary Heathen is not really addressed. We get the impression that this is not a book for the solitary practitioner, but for developing one's own spirituality, which is a very different thing from what is implied by the phrase "solitary practitioner." The latter conjures the image of the individual working alone without any firm connections to the surrounding Heathen communities; the former would seem to imply that it is a book about growing oneself and one's relationship with the gods independent of whether you are in a true group.

This impression is reinforced when we look at the chapter on Solitary Rites, where we see devotional rites and rites honoring various deities, but nothing about seasonal rituals, "holidays," celebrations, or things of that nature. At no point that I could find do we really see a discussion on finding or starting a group. This is fine, but it emphasizes that this is a book about developing one's own spirituality, and not about being a "Solitary Practitioner" who has no real tribe, kindred, coven, or similar structure (what "solitary practitioner" meant in Cunningham's work).

This makes the book slightly more advanced than the initial impression would indicate, and a careful reading of the back of the book doesn't give any indication that it is for a "Solitary" beyond the title.

It seems that this was an intentional design decision, and we as Heathens (or just Neopagans in general) definitely need books on developing our spirituality. Books on the practice of centering prayer and developing our own spirituality are an extremely welcome addition, even if it isn't quite the same thing--in my mind--as what the title or some of the chapter headings would indicate.

What the Book Accomplishes, A Review on Content

Having established that this is a book about spiritual development, the rest of this review will be on how it accomplishes that goal. Overall it does well and the content is well laid out and informative, and all of the basics are covered. Getting into more detail by chapter:

Chapter 1: Tribe and Tradition, The Northern Tradition Landscape

This chapter is the only place in the book that we get a glimpse of the various traditions that form what can be loosely described as the "Northern Tradition Religions." They get into the difference between Reconstructionist and Reconstructionist-derived religions and describe a few of the major paths:

Asatru, with a brief reference to Vanatru, Odinism, and Rokkatru.
Theodism
Culturally-based denominations, such as the Urglaawe
Norse Wicca
Northern Tradition Paganism

They get heavily into terminology here, and use the definition of "Heathen" to be "Reconstructionist" but include quotes indicating that not everyone sees it this way. Beyond that, the coverage of the various religions is fairly superficial. Forn Siðr--which forms the largest Danish pagan society--gets a single mention inside of a quote which doesn't reveal much about it. Most of the others receive between one sentence and one paragraph describing them, with a lot more text discussing terminology about the difference between Reconstructionist and Reconstructionist-derived, Pagan vs. Heathen, and the difference between Tribalist, Folkish, and Universalist.

This is all good content, and we need to be having a discussion about these differences, but it doesn't quite fit what I expected given that the book purports to "look at ... religions from Theodism to Asatru to Norse Paganism." I wanted more meat talking about what each of these religions is, what it means, and what someone who is looking at each religion in turn would find in the various Northern Tradition paths. That said, what is presented tends to be presented fairly, and while the author's have biases they refrain from "bashing" those who disagree. It at no point indicates that any path is inferior, and does a good job of "stepping back" to look at the different approaches reasonably and rationally.

Chapter 2: Defining Devotion, the Evolution of Practice

This chapter talks about how there is a growing movement toward devotional practice among modern German Neopagans. More than any other, this chapter talks about being a solitary vs. being in a group. It also talks about how devotional practice works in these settings. It talks in a great deal of depth about the reactions to devotional practice, and how the Path of Devotion. All-in-all excellent stuff.

Chapter 3: Nine Worlds of Spirit, Core Cosmology

This chapter would be difficult to write for a book of this nature in the best of circumstances, and shows where the stress of finding a good "level" for this book comes in. The readers of this book likely range from people just of the door and who are somewhat lost, to people who have read everything from The Saga of Grettir the Strong and several translations of the The Poetic Edda, to The Road to Hel.

In order to narrow this, the authors chose to focus on just the cosmology and the nine worlds. It talks about how the cosmology involves three key components: the gods, the nine worlds, and wyrd. It then goes on to present a creation myth with some analysis, a prayer to the elements, and how ultimately the nine worlds were created.

It then goes on to talk about the three "tribes" of gods:

Aesir
Vanir
Rokkr

It gives a brief explanation about each of these, and talks about how each of them tend to be viewed by Northern Tradition religions. It at no point says that you must "worship Rokkr," which is some of the propaganda I've seen about those who follow certain NT paths.

It also talks about the nature of Wyrd, giving one of the clearer examples I've seen for this.

This chapter definitely hits its mark: it doesn't get bogged down in mythology, while presenting a clear overview of the Nine Worlds.

Chapter 4: In Reverence, Meditation and Prayer

The chapter starts off with the elegant Sigdrifa's Prayer, which is one of my favorite prayers in any tradition. It then goes on to talk about the nature of prayer and the question of "why we pray." It talks about a few basic prayers that are nearly universal in nature:

Thank you
Please
I love you
I am sorry

This reminded me of something a Christian minister once told me: That the two most authentic, most heartfelt, and most common prayers were:

Help me Help me Help me!
Thank you Thank you Thank you!

After this it gets in to the topic of meditation. Here it doesn't ever really discuss the how or even the why of meditation, but mostly keeps itself to the what along with some mild diagnostics for common complaints. While it might have been useful to include at least one simple breathing exercise--or at least some more comprehensive references on the subject--I can understand not putting it in there. This does, however, elevate the level of the book to include someone who is already set off down this path, rather than evaluating it.

The final section of the chapter involve some "Prayers for Personal Devotions." It includes a reference to Be Thou My Hearth and Shield: A Northern Tradition Book of Prayer by Elizabeth Vongvisith which, while it looks excellent, isn't out yet and doesn't have an "approximate publish date" listed in this book (though I'll be including a link on this blog as soon as I hear about it being finished). The prayers included are:

In Praise of the Vanadis by Gudrun of Mimirsbrunnr
Vanir Meal Blessing by Sigrún Freyskona
A Parent's Prayer for Patience by Raven Kaldera
A Prayer for Faith by Elizabeth Vongvisith
Prayer of the Lone Worshipper by Elizabeth Vongvisith

Overall I have no serious issue with this list. It is a reasonable selection without distracting from the purpose of the book. It would be nice if there were a morning or an evening prayer of some variety just for the sake of coverage (and devotional work of this nature is found in Chapter 7), but most of the major areas are covered.

Chapter 5: Counting on Faith, Prayer Beads

This chapter talks about the use of prayer beads in the Northern Tradition. It starts by talking about the nature of prayer beads and the "why" of their use, along with some basics of their construction, and then gets in to six different sets of bead prayers covering 24 pages (this is as long as all of Chapter 4, excluding the prayers at the end). These are presented with no real introduction, just one after the other. While the book claims in the previous chapter that "There isn't room in this book for prayers for every Deity and occasion," they seem to take a stab at including bead prayers for as many situations as they could reasonably fit.

Let me say that I like the prayers, and like the nature of bead prayers for devotional practice. That said, I feel that this chapter doesn't really belong: It would have been better to include one bead prayer, a link to a few others online, and to have then merged it with the previous chapter's section on prayer.

Chapter 6: Footsteps to the Gods, Solitary Rites

This is one of the best organized chapters in the book. It has clear section headings for it's various subsections, which break down the subject matter in a clear, logical fashion. The material is well organized and presented, covering benefits and hazards, along with the basic components for constructing a ritual. The selected rites for demonstration provide good coverage, and each one has introductory text talking about the rite, what it means, and how it relates to what has been covered so far. Despite the chapter's title, nothing in here requires a solitary practice, except in the choices of example rites.

This leads me to my one complaint with the chapter: Its choice of rites:

Devotional Ritual for Sigyn
Devotional Ritual for Njord
Solitary Rite for the Ancestors
Rite for the Land-Wight
Rite for Tyr (asking his aid)

All of these rites are good, powerful rites, but it again goes back to the "developing one's personal spiritual independent of being a solitary practitioner." These are rites to be performed alone, not rites for what I think of as a solitary practitioner. The choice of coverage here is also interesting: we lack a devotional rite to Thor, Frey, or Odin: three of the most popular deities both in modern times and historically. There are no seasonal rites, rites of passage, or mention of rites such as ordeals. While this is clearly not supposed to be a "book of rites," it would be nice if there were more comprehensive coverage in this area.

That there is no discussion of seasonal rites at all really feels like a missing component of this book, since there isn't even a calendar, "wheel of the year," or list of holidays. Particularly for a solitary practitioner, but even in a group setting, these can form an important core of practice.

Beyond that, however, this chapter is probably the strongest in the entire book.

Chapter 7: Altar Work and God Posts

This chapter is divided into two major sections: Altars and God Posts.

The section on altars is excellent. The authors talk about the nature of sacred images, what goes on an altar, and how to set up your first altar. A photo of an altar to Hel is presented, along with one to Frey and several daily prayers that can be performed at that altar.

The section on God Posts is informative and interesting, but I do not feel it belongs in anything resembling an introductory book for solitary practitioners. What it takes to pull off a God Post--in terms of skill, time, resources, and land--is fairly nontrivial for most people, especially those who are "solitary practitioners." It isn't the kind of thing you can erect in an apartment building all that effectively, or put up in a public park. While they are very powerful devotional acts, I would have liked it if we had more on devotional altars, and maybe a side note and a few photographs to cover God Posts.

Chapter 8: Right Action, Doing the Work

This is the closest thing we have to a section on ethics. It talks about the various ethical systems, the challenges of ethical systems in reconstructionist religions (e.g., it is no longer acceptable to hang people in sacrifice to Odin), and on the few universal constants in Heathen religions. It talks about the idea of exchange and some very important key principles, and gives some examples of applying those principles.

I like this chapter a lot. One thing that we need is to have a comprehensive discussion of ethics, and this isn't nearly as well summarized in any other book I've seen as it is here.

Chapter 9: Sacred Inquiry, The Conundrum of Words

This chapter is about written lore. Not so much the actual contents of that lore, but how it is approached. It discusses the challenges, the issue of UPG vs. lore.

To someone who has been around the community for a while, there isn't much new in this chapter: it provides a bird's-eye survey of the landscape on how written lore is treated, along with it's use. Still, this coverage is extremely valuable and is presented in a fairly balanced--if somewhat Reconstructionist-derived--view.

Further Notes on Content

There were two issues regarding information presentation that I feel need to be brought up. These points may seem minor, but I feel like they are important because we are starting to see them come up more frequently in instructional books by Pagan authors.

The first is that the authors avoided lists. In numerous cases throughout the book, three or more items are presented in a series of paragraphs, each paragraph covering one option. While this is fine for exposition, I kept thinking back to my training in technical writing: people remember bulleted lists better. They also help break up the mass of words on a page, thus making the entire page easier to read. Instead we see a reference to the Six Ways of Being Religious, followed by eight individual paragraphs about them. I feel that it would have been better to prefix that by listing the "Six Ways" in a bulleted list, and then followed them with the paragraphs explaining them.

In Chapter 4, it lists the prayers "Thank you," "Please," "I Love You," and "I am sorry" and delving in to them, yet at no point are all four listed together, put into a list at all, or attached to a subject. There's nothing to indicate where each one might be, or where it's discussion might really begin or end. You are simply reading along and then come across "The fourth prayer is 'I am Sorry.'"

Another example where this comes up is in the first chapter, where there are no section headings or lists indicating what exactly I am looking at. This all makes finding specific information difficult, and diminishes the book as a reference text after it has been read through.

The second point is something I've noticed about Kaldera's style. He likes to present a point of view, and then provide a set of quotes "of interest" which provide other points of view. This works well in fairly conversational works or works where one's building a shared PCPG, e.g., in Kaldera's Pathwalker's Guide to the Nine Worlds. I don't feel that it worked nearly as well in this book, which is more instructional and informative in nature. It would have been better to integrate these in to the content--with a sentence introducing or explaining it (even as little as a "As X has said..."). The use of back-to-back block quotes or a multi-page quotes with no paragraphs, in particular, with no lead-in or following explanations can be very jarring.

Conclusion

The overall content of the book is excellent, and I recommend it highly. We need more books like this one, which provide a good and up-to-date coverage of the Northern Tradition path itself, rather than the mythology or individual practices associated with such.

The major issue I have is that it is suffers from a lack of good editing, e.g., gap analysis, focusing and clarifying of the scope, and a lack of structure and flow in several of the chapters. There are also smaller issues, such as words being presented both with and without the accent mark (e.g, "Sigrún" on page 96 vs. "Sigrun" on page 122).

The material that is included is excellent and if it could fix these issues, and address how the book is billed in terms of it's name and focus, the material that is there would be worthy of 5 stars.

The Role of Religion

2009-05-01T10:30:00.001-06:00

One of the things that is frequently misunderstood in our society is the role of religion in people's lives. There are two opposite errors that people make:

We see in the modern atheist movement--typified by individuals such as Dawkins and Hitchens--a concept that religion basically amounts to superstition, who's role in people's lives is to substitute and fill in the individual's gaps in knowledge. They treat religion as a competitor to Science™.

We see in the modern fundamentalist movement--typified by entirely too many politicians--a theory that their religion is external. Something to be forced on others. It doesn't matter why their god believes that homosexuality was wrong, it is and therefore others should be strongly discouraged from practicing it.

In many of the important respects both of these get confused about what I believe the purpose of religion to be: religion is a tool by which we can gain fulfillment and happiness in our daily lives, it is a tool by which we can bring about health and happiness in others, and shows a grasp of theology reminiscent of "God wants a bigger goat!" They both treat religion as the crudest of superstitions: "If I do/don't do X, the gods will smite me!"

This may be true of some religions, but it is not true of my path, and I do not believe that it is the proper role for religion in our lives. Rather I believe that there are three pillars for the proper role of religion:

Similar to Psychology: "To help us become rational, moral human beings." This forms the "mind."
Similar to Action: To help us improve the world around us. To help others find their way, by ourselves becoming the change we would see in the world. This forms the "body."
Similar to Philosophy: To help us understand ourselves, the mysteries of human existence, and our own inner realities. This forms of the "soul."

These three are not independent: they work together to help us realize Ourselves in service to the Gods. In serving myself I serve others, in serving others I serve the gods. In serving the gods I serve others, in serving others I serve myself. This is one of the fundamental concepts behind the Wounded Healer: Using one's own wounded nature to help others in our service.

In essence, religion is a way of helping us attain clarity of understanding and a better world, not merely as individuals, but as a people. It is not the only way, and we don't all have to be the same in order to realize it, but it is a powerful tool that helps some of us on the road.

Religion in the Workplace

2009-04-26T20:36:00.001-06:00

This is a revised and expanded version of an essay I wrote back in July 2008.

This is, in part, a response to Daven's essay Religion in the Workplace, and in part derived from my experiences here and in other places.

In the essay, Daven poses the question "How much religion should be taken to the workplace?" This is an interesting and important question, but unfortunately he seems to get caught up in the trappings of religion instead of the actual practice of religion. His examples talk about unburned scented candles, images of the goddess, shrines, signature lines, and the like.

I hold Daven in the highest regard (being a former student of his high magic class). But this article, to me, is asking the wrong question and looking at the wrong things. The trappings of religion are not as important as our faith and our devotional practices to the gods.

If you want an article about the trappings of religion in the workplace, he makes some excellent points.

While some may disagree with me on this, I do not see the point of building a shrine at work, unless maybe it is to a local landwight in which case you can probably get away with a few flowers on your desk or with putting something unobtrusive outside. Posting the Charge of the Goddess might be acceptable practice (or the Christian down the hall might be doing it with the Lord's Prayer), but that does not mean that it is appropriate to do so. As Daven points out:

Understand that while you talking about Paganism in the lunch room or over the water cooler may be tolerated, the business is about making money.

...and that's just it. Posting a copy of the Nine Noble Virtue as a reminder to myself might be a worthwhile exercise, but the truth of the matter is that if I want to post them at work I should be evaluating my motives very carefully. They should be part of who I am, and why would I need to post them publicly when I could just as easily stick them on a piece of paper in my desk?

I'll go out on a limb here and say that posting them publicly is an exercise in broadcasting one's beliefs to others and not reflective--one way or the other--on the internal state of the person in question.

I wear a pentacle ring that is specifically charged. In situations where I am concerned about the reaction I flip it around so that the pentacle is on the inside. If I thought it would be a problem for a long period of time, I would consider moving the ring to my necklace (which lives inside of my shirt) and/or wearing another ring charged with similar properties.

I am not closeted--even slightly--I am quite open with my beliefs. I am also sensitive to the fact that my faith is--first and foremost--between me and the gods. If I am more effective in a workplace by not walking around with a large pentacle on my t-shirt, then I will dress accordingly. My goals are workplace effectiveness and honor of the spirits, not showing off. If the gods demanded that I walk around with a t-shirt with a large pentacle on it, I would try to negotiate and, barring that, find a job where I can get away with it with a minimum of hassle (though I generally find if a Christian could wear a big cross on their t-shirt the company won't mind the pentacle for standard equal opportunity reasons, YMMV).

I am far more concerned about behaviors than I am with these trappings. The first question here is "what are your needs." I pray several times a day and try to go through my prayer beads on a semi-regular basis. This, to me, needs to be acceptable behavior, but there is no reason they even should see it under most circumstances. Some flexibility around my holy days (e.g., I've made it a point that I must be in town at the end of October) and such is another major sticking point for me, but most places I've worked have been accommodating (though I do get to use PTO for it). These requirements are no different than that I need to be able to take holidays off since that's my only time with my out-of-state family--its just one of the priorities we need to think about when choosing a job and a workplace environment--I could not work in retail without very carefully negotiating what days I did and did not get off, simply because those are the times of the year I get to spend time with my family traditionally. For a classical shaman of the northern tradition there would be more stringent requirements, for an agnostic there would be fewer, but in the end these requirements are no different from any others.

It is important to me that I pray. It is not especially important to me that I keep incense at my desk all day.

So what about the Christian with a copy of the Lord's Prayer up who tries to save you? The evangelical Christian is required to proselytize as part of her faith, the faith of the coven that trained me years ago specifically forbade it. I am semi-tolerant of such behavior in moderation (they shouldn't push the point when I say no, but being asked along is fine), but its important to note that this isn't about what "they" can do: its about our relationship with the deities.

Recently I was asked along with some of the people I work with when they went to pray to a Buddhist equivalent to a land-wight. It was a beautiful experience that was quite obviously a matter of behavior. If I had said no, they would have gone on their way without me. I do not feel compelled to join, they don't treat me differently for not joining, and it takes place out of sight on an already established shrine. Praying in this manner is elegant and respectful, and it doesn't intrude on anyone who doesn't want to see.

It also doesn't require keeping a shrine on my desk.

Brief Update

2009-04-22T00:32:00.003-06:00

Been a bit since I updated. I just started a new job a week ago, and am getting into the swing of things there. I have a book review and another essay I'm working on that should be up soon though ^_^

Amazon: Guys, Put the Torches Down

2009-04-14T02:08:00.013-06:00

Recently there was a massive brouhaha over the deranking of certain books with gay, lesbian, and sex themes on Amazon. Amazon's initial response was that it was a deliberate "adult filter" that they had set up, which sounds like the classic PR response. Amazon later announced that the software had a "glitch" in it, which is why the books got deranked, and that it would correct the glitch.

The trick now is that a lot of people don't believe them.

I write software for a living. This sort of thing happens all of the time, and generally has less to do with malice and more to do with a mistake in programming. It's easy to tweak a variable--especially in any software that involves pattern recognition--or implement a filter that "seems like a good idea at the time" and find that it has echoing consequences that you didn't predict. It is not hard for me to see how the following sequence of events might have happened:

Amazon decides to implement/tweak an adult filter for some reason. I can think of (quite a few) business reasons they might decide to do this.
They implement/tweak the filter, run it against a test set of data, see that it looks good. It doesn't get rid of "The Last Unicorn" or Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," but it gets rid of some random "Big Book of Erotic Stories." Great, it works! Let's deploy it!
Unintended consequence: A bunch of gay, lesbian, etc books get deranked. People call in protest, twitter ends up with #amazonfail, within a day the thing has spread to near-epic proportions and people are calling in protest.
Amazon's PR people do what PR people do: they reach for the nearest ready explanation for the first few people who call and recite the form response. "We are implementing something to protect teh children." This--predictably--only inflames things further since there is a real bug lurking in the code.
Someone actually looks at the number of calls and the books being deranked (e.g., Brokeback Mountain, I mean, really, how can anyone think that was deliberate?) They realize there is a bug. It gets put on their bug tracker and they give a press release saying they'll fix it.

This is a wholly predictable response. I've seen this happen with software designed for customers before: someone made a change; client calls back and says its broken; immediate response goes back that it isn't broken, it's a feature; client provides copious documentation on how it is broken; software company says "well, whoops, damn... we'll get right on that." Fairly normal, I've seen it multiple times in companies of all sizes, it doesn't surprise me that it happens at Amazon as well.

So why are people convinced this is being done deliberately? One person on LJ commented "Interesting how as soon as they're caught red-handed it becomes a 'computer glitch.'" A lot of others came out with similar statements (e.g., #glitchmyass), but really, as I mentioned before: if this weren't a glitch, would Brokeback Mountain really have been on the hatchet list? Really? I have trouble believing that--especially when a movie has been made which to the best of my knowledge was not deranked.

As Robert J. Hanlon put it: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

The Wild Hunt blog listed some of the deranked books that still remained deranked. As of this moment, Brokeback Mountain, Gay Witchcraft, Rites of Pleasure, Sexy Witch, The Double Goddess, and Lesbian Rites are all, at the time of this writing, ranked again.

So two possibilities remain: Either it is not a glitch, but they learned their lesson and are unlikely to repeat it or (much more likely) it was a glitch, and they have modified their test-cases to try and keep it from happening again.

Either way it is being fixed as we speak, so can we please stop trying to burn them in effigy?

Terminology

2009-04-12T23:35:00.008-06:00

People love to futz about with the words we use to describe ourselves. Partly this is an offshoot of labeling theory and our tendency as groups to create what sociologists call an "In Language" to facilitate communication. It gives us something distinctive by which to identify both ourselves and others, and people can get extremely defensive about their particular use of labels.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that people tend to go to extremes in inclusion, they seem to either:

Think that everything under the sun can be classified under the label, e.g., "Sure summoning Cthulhu is Wiccan!"

Think that nothing outside of a very narrow range of already defined practices, e.g., "What do you mean you offered chocolate to Odin?!?! There's no lore to support that! You can't be Ásatrú!"

On the flip side, this also means that some people won't accept perfectly good labels because of some nebulous association they've made and believe it to be "too restrictive," when in truth it would serve just fine. My particular example of this is the rejection of the word "Heathen" by a lot of Northern Tradition Pagans: they claim that "Heathen" only applies to reconstructionists, when in truth there is no reason in either etymology or modern usage to think that it means anything other than "Germanic Pagan" in our context.

In other cases they apply whatever label they think is vaguely interesting, even if it doesn't really apply. Someone cannot be a "Christian Wiccan": They are separate religions entirely. They can be a "Christian Witch," but as religions the practices and beliefs are functionally incompatible. Yet it is remarkable how many people go around claiming to be such.

Language is a means of communication. We need to be capable of creating informative distinctions by our use of language, and recognize that words have scope. If a word is appropriate we should be willing to fight for our inclusion under it. If a word does not describe us, we should clearly distinguish ourselves from it.

For example: As indicated above, I see nothing about the word "Heathen" that should even vaguely imply "Reconstructionist" while excluding "Reconstructionist-derived" or "Reconstructionist-inspired" paths. So yes, I define myself as Heathen and will fight for its use in this context.

I also dislike most of the alternatives I've seen proposed. "Northern Tradition Pagan" doesn't precisely roll off of the tongue and the distinction between "Reconstructionist" and "Reconstructionist-derived" is--as far as most people are concerned--very subtle. If we need that level of distinction, it is probably better encompassed by using terms such "Mesopagan vs. Neopagan" instead of "Pagan vs. Heathen." This is especially true when one considers the degree of confusion that can be caused by unqualified use of the word "Pagan," as pointed out by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance:

We recognize that many Wiccans, Neopagans, and others regularly use the terms "Pagan" and "Paganism" to describe themselves. Everyone should be free to continue whatever definitions that they wish. However, the possibility of major confusion exists -- particularly if one is talking to a general audience. When addressing non-Wiccans or non-Neopagans, it is important that the term:

Be carefully defined in advance, or that

Its meaning is clearly understandable from the text's context.

Otherwise, the speaker or writer will be referring to one group of people, while the listeners or readers will assume that other groups are being referred to.

This gets down to the very core of the issue: using the best terms to describe ourselves under the circumstances and given the audience.

On the other hand, Ásatrú means "Æsir's faith." It also refers to a fairly well-defined reconstructionist religion. Since my faith and practice extend beyond the Æsir--in ways that are fairly major departures, rather than minor ones--and my path is not reconstructionist, I will make it immediately and abundantly clear that I am not Ásatrú. I have no problem with Ásatrú, it is a good path for many and I have a great deal of respect for it, but it is simply not my path.

So, depending on company, I believe all of the following terms aptly describe me:

Pagan (particularly Neopagan)
Heathen
Northern Tradition Pagan/Heathen (I don't like this one, and I have some deep philosophical differences with a lot of NTPs, but at the same time the term applies to everything from Ásatrú to Theodism to any other vaguely Northern European Neopagan branch).
Spirit Worker
Occultist

Terms that do not describe me:

Shaman (Core or Classical)
Wiccan
Wiccatru
Ásatrú
"Kalderan" (more on this one later)
Reconstructionist

There are also some terms I am ambivalent on, for example:

Witch
Shamanic Practitioner
Odinist

These terms may or may not be descriptive, but have either some qualifiers or associations that I am uncertain or or actively dislike, so I am of two-minds about them. Odinist is probably the most widely cited example of this: The historic associations on this one irk me and the frequent racist associations are disgusting, but it is accurately descriptive at the basic level as a follower primarily of Odin.

In all of this, I accept an individual's right to self-determination within certain limits. This is all how I choose to define the terms, to help clarify so that when people read this blog or talk to me they know what I mean when I say "I am a Heathen," and I am open to discussion on any of these points. What I encourage is for people to carefully consider what words and phrases they think describe them, and why they want to use them.

As with many things, the end-determination isn't as important as the process of considering it.

Crude Superstition

2009-04-08T13:42:00.017-06:00

Previously, when talking about associations I mentioned a quote by Dion Fortune, where she says that "It is this lack of training which makes popular occultism so very apt to degenerate into the crudest superstition." Unfortunately, for many modern Neopagans and Mesopagans, this seems to encompass their entire approach to spirituality.

Deities are treated as mere abstractions or bowdlerized and simplified to the point of meaninglessness even--or perhaps especially--by those who claim to follow that path.

Spirituality is far more than standing around in a circle and chanting bad poetry together. Spirituality is more than something you do on the weekends with a couple of friends, or on Sundays in a Church. It is more than trying to cast spells or dance to raise power.

Spirituality is, in essence, an attempt to touch Mystery. To get in touch with the Divine presence. The word "Spirituality" comes from the word "Spirit," which derives from the latin spiritus -- "breath, spirit" -- which came from the word spirare -- "to breathe." In the Torah/Pentateuch YHVH Elohim "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." (Genesis 2:7; see the parallel that, in the Northern Tradition, Odin gives man Önd, or "breath.")

So we see in spirituality--no matter what our culture--something vital, something that connects us with the very essence of being, the breath of life. It is something intrinsic to our being.

Similarly, theology--when properly done--is more than the literal interpretation of source texts, and more than the rote recital of pithy aphorisms without understanding or context. It is more than citing The Lore™ or any historical document and saying they believed it then, we should believe it now.

Theology is the philosophical side of what we do, it is the philosophical study of the nature of the Divine and of Religion. It comes from the Greek word theologos (one discoursing on the gods). It encompasses the discussion of ethics, the nature of the divine, and the nature of being.

Years ago I attended a seminar by some monks from the Society of St. John the Evangelist (wiki). In the course of this seminar, they asked us to consider "What is Baptism." One of the answers that we discussed is that "it is an attempt to connect with a Mystery." One of many in Christianity, actually, but one of the most significant sacraments. Like the symbolism of washing away impurities from one's hands before entering a Shinto shrine, the water symbolically washes away the individual's sin and welcomes them to the Church. It is a fundamental rite of initiation, whereby the individual leaves a Christian.

Yet many modern Neopagans and Mesopagans want their religion to be a weekend culture, not a spirituality. They want what spirituality they do find to be tame, predictable, or easily controlled with the right color of candle. They want their theology to be either as rigid and fundamentalist as protestantism, or so loose as to make statements like the Chaos Magician's "nothing is true, everything is permitted" almost look restrictive and resent any discussion of ethics or boundaries in a religious context...

Some resent authority and experience in any form, others will follow anyone who claims to be an authority, and we see an increase in people who believe the solution to all the world's problems comes from burning little slips of paper. To quote Zak Kramer in his essay on the Adolescence of the Pagan Community:

[T]he various Pagan communities are going through an ugly adolescence, and the decisions that current Pagans make about what our religion means to us, how it relates to the rest of the (non-Pagan) world, and how we transmit those convictions to neophytes will have a profound effect on Pagan religions in the future. I think it is a foregone conclusion that most won't survive in their present forms; the question is, what forms do we want them to take?

We see people declaring themselves to be a Goði or Gyðja, when as Svartesol puts it, they have not earned it. We see some Wiccan groups handing out 3^rd degree initiations to people after 6 months if they can pay enough, and others who believe a handful of online-only classes with no supplementary reading and multiple-choice tests are sufficient for an initiation. We see people treating everything under the sun as real, no matter how much foolishness is involved, or worse, as real but toothless (it isn't really a chitinous vampiric insect, it's a fairy that is just misunderstood!)

We see the gods become nothing more than a table of abstract associations and a means to an end that works strictly in our service.

At the core of many Pagan religions is a rich, deep theology and an amazingly potent spiritual system. In stories of gods, giants, and demons we see a ancient people's attempts at defining--as put by H. R. Ellis-Davidson--the mysteries of inner reality. In the story of Coyote stealing the Water Monster's children we see an amazing story on ethics, conservation, teamwork, and an explanation on why we must die.

In stories of turning to stone we get lessons about navigation and about not staying up too late.

In the story of Óðinn sacrificing his eye, we see a story of sacrifice, the importance of wisdom and knowledge, and the cost of magic. We get an idea of the character of the god, and we see in him someone who will pay almost any price--and suffer any trial--in exchange for knowledge.

In late-period pieces that put Þórr in a dress, we see the importance of swallowing one's pride and of using the mind to overcome hurdles, as opposed to merely using brute force.

This is the most superficial analysis of these stories--they are all much deeper in nature--and we see a rich, deep symbolic and poetic language being used to relay these allegories. We have a true and rich mythology, and yet many people treat those myths as nothing more than shallow reflections, making one of two opposite errors: Either treating them as literal, or treating them as purely figurative.

Either way is bad theology.

We should be questioning, examining, and reflecting on them and seeing how what they say applies--and doesn't apply--to a modern world. Whether the god Þórr ever actually got into a dress and some spirit worker is relaying the actual story from what they saw, or if it is relayed by a god at some later date, or if it was made up by humans for entertainment and teaching purposes is irrelevant. Our stories are filled with potential and reflections on human existence, and we should be willing to threat them as philosophy and understand them both in the context of our own experiences and the context of human existence.

We can discuss these things, and we are starting to do so (see the Further Reading section at the end for some examples), but the adolescence of the Pagan communities is far far from over.

To end with a quote from Zak Kramer:

Will Pagans continue to primarily focus on superstition, seeking to impose their wills on the universe for their own, often self-gratifying, ends? Or, will we seek to be part of, and act with, the unfolding, evolving Cosmos, which is the manifestion of the Divine? Do the Gods serve us, or do we serve the Gods?

PTSD

2009-04-08T12:58:00.006-06:00

Evidently the Army has been pressuring doctors not to diagnose soldiers as having PTSD.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a real, serious condition that affects a lot of people who have been in traumatic circumstances, including but not limited to war, childhood sexual abuse, and natural disasters. It arises in situations where "the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror."

It is extremely difficult to treat, and the people who have been through it need proper treatment. If this story is true--and it seems to be--then it is utterly disgusting to me that we would short shift people who have volunteered to serve our country in such a capacity. To quote Theodore Roosevelt:

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have.

Something to contact your congresscritters about.

Boundaries

2009-04-05T17:35:00.011-06:00

This is a revised and expanded version of an essay from December 2008.

One of the things that we as a society seem to have is a poor grasp of emotional boundaries.

Through the course of our lives all of us build within ourselves an intricate set of boundaries and definitions. "This is who I am" and "this is who you are." For some people these boundaries are extremely well defined, for others they barely exist.

Read more over on Weaving Wyrd.

Gomen

2009-04-01T18:09:00.003-06:00

Sorry about the delay, I've been dealing with some issues on my end that have made keeping posts up difficult over the last week. More essays coming soon!

On a side note, Visions of Vanaheim by Svartesol is finished and up on Lulu. Check it out!

The Importance of Associations

2009-03-23T00:32:00.008-06:00

One of the first things that one comes across when researching deities and mystical paths are various associations. What color is used for this goddess? What elements? What symbols, runes, and astrological signs represent her? Which numbers? Can she be tied into the Tree of Life?

When I first started learning the elements, some of the first questions asked were of the form What types of rocks do you associate with air?

It can get truly baffling and in many respects is wholly ahistorical in nature from our perspective as Norse Occultists--associations were likely made, but probably not in the way they are being made today. There is a history of associations being made in this way which tracks alongside occultist groups such as the Order of the Golden Dawn, and we can see table after table of associations in the work of their members, many of which we still use today for our own work.

Unfortunately, associations--while everywhere--have been increasingly losing their relevance and meaning to many practitioners. We run into the immediate danger of treating a Deity as merely a set of associations and abstractions: Call Freyja for your love problems! Trouble with leadership? Go see Zeus! Need victory in your upcoming business meeting? Odin's your man! Numerous books, guides, and tables seem to feel that the best way to summarize Odin is to give him a neatly compartmentalized domain, a color, and an astrological association.

Beyond being disrespectful, this superficial trap demonstrates a lack of proper education and training in the mystical arts.

Read the rest of this essay over at Weaving Wyrd.

Spiritual Direction

2009-03-20T01:29:00.005-06:00

One of the things that Christian and Jewish traditions have that many Neopagan traditions do not is a concept of "spiritual counseling" or "spiritual direction" associated to clergy. This is a form of clerical counseling to help people deepen their own spirituality, deal with spiritual issues, and deepen their relationship with the Divine.

This is not counseling or psychotherapy, but borrows concepts from each. It is not necessarily mystical or shamanic in nature, though it may have those elements to it. While we may find such useful as part of the process, things like journeying, bloodwalking, divination, or any such tools serve is an auxiliary function to the far more important process of helping someone get closer to the Divine and live more fulfilled lives.

In a sense, this is part of what Spirit Work is all about, to quote Harner's The Way of the Shaman:

The shaman shows his patients that they are not emotionally and spiritually alone in their struggles against illness and death. The shaman shares his special powers and convinces patients, on a deep level of consciousness, that another human is willing to offer up his own self to help them.

For corporeal clients our job runs significantly deeper than helping them get rid of a blood debt, keep the faeries out of their house, or deal with the chitinous "pet" that has attached itself to a young woman's spine. In short, to paraphrase Bruce Schneier on security: spiritual direction is a process, not a product. It is not any one thing that we can do and then the obligation ends, but an ongoing effort that one makes in concert with individuals who are seeking meaning in their life. To quote Nathaniel Branden:

We humans have a need to feel we understand the world in which we live. We have a need to make sense out of our experience. We have a need for some intelligible portrait of who we are as human beings and what our lives are or should be about. In short, we have a need for a philosophical vision of reality. [...] But the need for answers persists. The need for values by which to guide our lives remains unabated. The hunger for intelligibility is as strong as it ever was. The world around us is more and more confusing, more and more frightening; the need to understand it cries out in anguish.

Helping others with this part of this process is a component of spiritual direction. Helping others finding meaning in their lives: not through dogma, not through platitudes, but within themselves and to--as Henri Nouwen discusses--use our own wounded nature to help others.

I am new on this path and I would be lying if I said I had even the most rudimentary questions, let alone answers, on how to begin this process. I have only minimal and somewhat scattered training in this, and am not even entirely sure what all goes into it, but it is a need that I see in people all around me.

Maybe one day, I will be able to help someone with it.

The Word Should

2009-03-15T04:00:00.002-06:00

One of the constant struggles that we face in our lives as humans--let alone spirit workers--is the challenging hurdle of the word should.

There are a thousand things in any given moment that one should be doing. I should be cleaning, I should be doing laundry, I should be exercising more, I should be researching the stock market, I should be practicing hapkido, playing a game of Go, or studying for an exam, or reading the sagas, or reading at all, or founding an LLP, or writing software, practicing energy work, or working harder at my job.

It is true, I should be doing all of these things, and a thousand other things besides. I should be doing a lot of things, and at any given moment those shoulds can come around to bite me, with two predictable consequences:

I cannot focus on an activity that I am working on, for knowledge of what I should be doing

Given multiple possibilities in a given moment, I can become paralyzed and fall into loops.

This advice has shown up in a variety of formats through the years, and it basically comes down to this: live in the moment. If you are going to goof off today, goof off. If you are going to work, then get things done. If you have set your mind to do something, then do it and don't keep putting it off.

Should is not a very useful word. It implies a judgement of myself that I have no reason to make, it implies outside expectations of me which are not necessarily there, and it implies goals in my life that I do not necessarily have.

Rather than saying I should do something, it is much more useful to say what I will do as distinct from what I am doing. Anything that I will do later can wait until what I am doing is finished. There is no sense worrying about it. By the same token, if I need to do something, then there is no sense postponing it.

Lore and UPG

2009-03-13T04:20:00.005-06:00

One of the things that I like about Ásatrú is that it accepts proudly the label "the religion with homework." Practitioners are expected to research and read everything from badly translated poems to sagas to commentaries by researchers on the field. In Wicca we would often see people come along who basically "became Wiccan overnight": they read one book and decided they were Wiccan. The problem with this is that "Wicca is a religion. It is not a club or an organization."

Read the rest of this article on Weaving Wyrd.

Going Back to the Basics

2009-03-11T16:05:00.002-06:00

In all martial arts--and indeed just about every skill--there is a continual emphasis "going back to the basics." My Hapkido instructor--an 8 dan in Tae Kwon Do and an 8 dan in Hapkido--says that there are still things in his first Forms that he is still working on. In rapier fighting, Hapkido, and tantojutsu we drill footwork to death, because everything else comes from it and "sloppy stances make sloppy technique."

In Lessons of the Fundamentals of Go Kageyama repeatedly emphasizes the importance of going back to the basics in all things: from Go to Baseball to Cooking, saying of Go that:

When a beginner learns the game, the first things he should learn are the fundamental skills. When he advances to the point where he begins to think of himself as a strong player, the thing he needs to do to become even stronger is to go back and study the fundamentals once more.

No matter how good you are or how good you think you are, it is important to go back and revisit the basics. Yet it is tempting to say "I know that" or to gloss over the basics of a craft that we think we are good at, yet this is a grave mistake, as we like to say in Hapkido: "To consider yourself as knowledgeable is to commit an error." Once I get to the point where I believe myself as knowledgeable, I know something has gone horribly wrong, since I should be realizing how much more there is to learn--not praising myself for how much I think I know.

Occultism has a lot of the characteristics of a martial art. It has a nearly infinite progression, and many of the techniques simply cannot be mastered without repetition and practice. Some of the techniques can cause real harm to the practitioner, the client, or someone else and some are extremely difficult to learn. It is important to build those basic foundations before continuing, to quote Diana Paxson in Trance-Portation:

Even, or especially, if you already have a given skill, you must practice it regularly--several times a week--for about a month, or until you feel ready to go on. Those with more experience may actually find some of the early lessons harder, as they may have old habits to unlearn. However, you will find that these skills, once mastered, are useful in themselves and may provide a foundation that can support the practice of more esoteric skills like oracular and possessory work.

Yet many times people like to treat occultism as if it had no learning curve. As if one can simply spend a few minutes, read a book or two, and suddenly be an expert. Many others--some of whom actually are quite talented--have let their success go to their heads in whatever role they fill. As a result, they gloss over the basics in their own practice, having lost sight of their importance. As a result, they stop advancing and stop improving.

Breaking it Down

Having established that basics are important, what are the basics? Many of these vary by tradition, I think for most occultist practices the following makes a good starting point:

Mindfulness practice
Meditation, prayer, and/or devotional work.
Grounding, Centering, Shielding

We can probably expand from there, but I throw those three categories of practice into "things you can't go wrong with," that anyone can learn and most people could benefit from knowing.

Mindfulness, as discussed previously helps us with the art of living consciously, of making each day count. The exact mechanism we use for the practice (I like mindfulness through breathing, but each individual may have different things that work better for them) can vary, but the essence of it remains the same: practice paying attention to something, practice seeing the world without preconceptions.

Meditation and prayer have a host of benefits for self-reflection and training the mind, along with getting us closer to the gods.

Just about every introductory book on some form of Occultism starts with Grounding, Centering, and Shielding in some form or another. Pathwalker's Guide starts out with a few basics in this area, Trance-Portation does as well. My Celtic Trad teachers repeatedly drilled into me "practice grounding, practice centering, practice shielding. If you do nothing else, practice those three." Everything else derives from them in some way, and they are the techniques that are most useful in our day-to-day lives.

Walking into a stressful meeting? Ground, Center, Shield.
Feeling overwhelmed at work? Ground, Center, Shield.
Roommate's depression rubbing off on you? Ground, Center, Shield.
Feeling anxious about tomorrow? Ground, Center, Shield.

etc.

It isn't a panacea by any means, but it is a good first step and it can't hurt. It is also fundamental to future practice, from thaumaturgy to theurgic magic, from journeying to blood walking, from Kabbalah to Shamanism, they all include some variation of grounding, centering, and shielding.

In terms of good examples of how training the basics can work, Trance-Portation does a great job of breaking down journeying into it's fundamental basics which can be practiced again and again. I hope to see more books like it in the future.

The Shaman and the Spirit Worker

2009-03-10T15:50:00.007-06:00

In Raven Kaldera's excellent essay Classic Shamanism And Core Shamanism: Basic Differences he defines the difference between Core Shamanism, based on Harner's Way of the Shaman and other work, and what he terms "Classical Shamanism," which represents people who have been wholly claimed and taken by the spirits.

I am not a "Classical Shaman": the gods have not claimed me to that degree and I have not undergone shamanic sickness (at least not yet to the degree discussed), but I also find I have substantial differences with "Core Shamans." As Lupa of Therioshamanism recently stated:

I look at where my path diverges significantly from these two ends of the spectrum. I do experience journeying as being riskier than what a lot of core shamans describe. However, I don’t do the complete submission to the spirits that I’ve seen on the other end. I do my best to not take the spirits for granted, but I also maintain autonomy–as in D/s, I have hard limits to my vulnerability, and ways to enforce them. And that is what has worked well for me, even before I began working with shamanism.

This does not seem to be a binary (or a trinary) system. Some people lean closer to Core Shamanism, others seem to fall closer to Classical Shamanism. Some people who have not been fully claimed as "Shamans" still end up with "Shaman Sickness Light," and taboos can be binding and cause illness. I am not the equivalent of a brain surgeon in performing work for clients (far far far from it), but there are some things in shamanic practice that I believe can be widely learned by seekers who are dedicated and respectful, and that this is one of many paths of service to the gods. Basically landing between "teach anyone who is interested" and to teach spirit work to those "staring down the barrel of that divine cannon." That some things take months or years to learn, let alone master and have potentially severe repercussions (e.g., bloodwalking), and other things the rough basics of can be taught relatively quickly and safely and that a lot of people can benefit from (e.g., grounding), with a lot in-between.

I have to a greater or lesser extent chosen this path, and for a while I think I could have walked away without significant trouble and served in some other way, perhaps not even conscious of my role or task. Now I would have more trouble doing that, and later I might have more trouble still. I am mostly aligned to one tradition, but have debts and associations in several different traditions and have been told to take knowledge wherever I can find it.

I am finding a variety of people in this position. Not quite Core, not quite Classical, but borrowing elements from both. Feeling that Core Shamanism lack of emphasis on safety is worrying at best, that Harner's statement that journeying is safer than dreaming is dangerous (I've been attacked by things that "followed me home" before, and had visible claw marks on my astral body from the encounter), and finding themselves working mostly or entirely in a cultural context, while still not being "tapped" and called to be classical shamans.

I like the term "Spirit Worker," since I think it covers all three of these groups. We're all spirit workers, regardless of whether we are working with landwights, animal spirits, gods of various traditions, or "simply" journeying through the Nine Worlds. It applies to both shamans and shamanic practitioners of various sorts who--for all of our differences--have a lot in common.

One thing I am certain on is that all three groups need to be talking to one another and opening up respectful dialogues of communication. We should be talking about our experiences, about safety, about techniques, and about what each of us can bring to the table. I am also sure that no one's path is "better" and that I make a pretty poor arbitrator over other people's experiences and UPG. Quoting Raven Kaldera in his essay Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism: The Practical Divide:

We need to think about who our allies are, and how many of them we can collect. After all, that’s a very shamanic way of thinking: can I make an ally of that plant? That animal spirit? That piece of woods? That stone? That ancestor? That deity? Unlike the stark simplicity of monotheism, tribal shamans were judged by their having a lot of spirits, not just one or a handful. We can think in the same way for human allies.

What would it take to ally to other communities, even if there are some things we don’t see eye to eye on? Neo-shamanic practitioners? Neo-Pagans? Wiccans? Reconstructionists? Mystical Christians and Jews? New Age folk? Reiki people? Ecologists? Body modification spiritualists? One could spread the net even wider.

Living Life in Circles

2009-03-05T12:46:00.009-07:00

Recently I was reminded of this beautiful comic from XKCD. In the main text it reads:

The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.

Like the stick figure in the comic, I don't have all of the answers here: "I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become." I also don't know if the path I am on will ever actually get me there. I find myself trapped in the same loops as the rest of the world. When I get out of that mold, it follows similar routes to those I have followed before and I make slow progress on my projects.

Part of the challenge with unemployment is that it is easy to fall into a rut where you have all the time in the world and no time at all. Where you blink and go 'where did my day (week) go?" despite lacking firm commitments. The problem becomes exacerbated when we don't find a way to get out of the house or have some other form of changing external stimulus with which to index ourselves off of.

Yet at the same time it seems like a huge part of the struggle to become a spirit worker, priest, or monastic involves... repetition. Waking up at the same time to do a similar set of devotional rites. The process of kaizen involves making gradual changes in your actions over time by consciously and regularly repeating them, bringing them into your standard routine.

The difference is that one is conscious and the other is unconscious. I refresh my inbox generally because I am avoiding or postponing something I have to do: not because I actually want to see if I have mail. This can continue all day, and then suddenly you run into a situation where your day has vanished into "things I meant to have done." Your entire life can vanish this way, without ever meaning it to. In the Guy Lombardo song "Enjoy Yourself," we see the lyrics:

You're gonna take that ocean trip, no matter, come what may
You've got your reservations made, but you just can't get away
Next year for sure, you'll see the world, you'll really get around
But how far can you travel when you're six feet underground?

We want to think that we can just blink out today, then tomorrow, or the next, or the next, but "soon" I will find the time. then it never happens and we find ourselves years later having no idea how we got here. Suddenly it is "later than you think" in either the day or your life, and everything has gone by in a flash.

There are two aspects here that must be considered.

The first is that we have generally progressed farther than we think we have, but not necessarily in the ways we expected or know to look for.

The second is that, by falling into these patterns, we miss fantastic opportunities to explore life and the world around us, to advance in the things we claim we want to advance in, and to advance in areas of self development that we had scarcely even considered.

This is the key meaning behind Socrates's statement in Plato's Apology 38a, where he says that:

For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less likely to believe.

Another translation of this passage is the origin of the famous quote "an unexamined life is not worth living" and it is clear from context that exactly this sort of thing is meant. Acting without knowledge of why we act, repetition without meaning, unconscious actions that dictate the flow of our existence.

This doesn't mean that we can't "goof off," but as Bear Heart indicates in The Wind is My Mother, we should do so consciously. If you want to goof off today, then have a good time and goof off with no regrets. Go play video games, turn the cell phone off and go hiking, read a book, play with your kids or your dog, or just sit by a creek and stare into space. Enjoy yourself.

Similarly, if you want to be productive today, then the goal is to be productive, again without regret.

To bring things back to where we started, this is where daily devotional rites, monastic practice, etc come into play. It isn't that the repetition itself is bad. The repetition helps train the body and the mind and can be used to help us become more aware of ourselves. The act of practicing a Form/Kata regularly trains the muscles and the mind, it can reveal new things about our own body, the form, and the martial art itself.

The problem is in mindless repetition. Set out your goals and accomplish them, and that accomplishment may require training, and it may require repetition. If you are a spirit worker or if you follow a particular religious path (even one you are carving yourself), it almost certainly will. Whatever it is you need to be doing, refreshing one's inbox is decidedly not on the menu.

The same is true of social norms and taboos. What if we, as advised in another XKCD comic, "Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out." Examine our beliefs, leaving nothing as beyond question. Ask ourselves what makes an older practice worth emulating in a modern context, and question those same societal norms and taboos that we follow every day. Why are there men and women's bathrooms? Why can't men wear dresses? Why can't you romantically love more than one person at once?

Why shouldn't you walk down the street singing?

This doesn't mean that we should violate social norms for the sake of violating those norms, or that everyone should suddenly become polyamorous. Sometimes those norms are functional, or there are perfectly good reasons a given individual might choose to act in a certain manner, or why social norms are the way that they are. The problem is, again, with mindlessly following them without attempting to understand them or--worse--even noticing them. Some people get extremely defensive of them, because "this is just what you do," never once attempting to understand why things are the way they are.

Getting there from here

Okay, so the statements are easy enough, how does one actually accomplish this?

The short answer is that, like the stick figures in XKCD, I don't know. The longer answer is that I have an idea. Like with many things, this is a "process not a product." There's not really a sense of "UR DOIN IT WRONG," so much as "this is a long path up the mountain, and I may be required to backtrack along the way." The goal is forward progress, not necessarily actually reaching the top.

So, recognizing that I am not there, how can I start to make forward progress? To quote Nathaniel Branden in his essay The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

The great, glaring gap in just about all ethical systems of which I have knowledge, even when many of the particular values and virtues they advocate may be laudable, is the absence of a technology to assist people in getting there, an effective means for acquiring these values and virtues, a realistic path people can follow. That is the great missing step in most religions and philosophies. And this is where psychology comes in: One of the tasks of psychology is to provide a technology for facilitating the process of becoming a rational, moral human being.

While he was speaking specifically to ethical systems, his statement applies just as well in our current dilemma: How to become what we want to be. Now that we know the goal state, psychology is a natural place to look to figure out where we want to go.

As humans, two of the natural tools in this area that you almost can't go wrong with are kaizen and mindfulness. There are other tools (one category of which I'll talk more about briefly later), but at least from what I've seen it never hurts to start here. The other technique that is available to us as occultists is transformative magic, for which I'll mostly leave off with a book reference to Runes for Transformation by Kaedrich Olsen.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is, as Elizabeth Vongvisith put it, "the art of paying attention." It is approaching life, the universe, and everything without assumptions or preconceptions, without letting your body or your mind go fully on autopilot. One of the early mindfulness meditations that is widely recommended is simply noticing your breath. The inhale, the exhale, what do each feel like? What muscles move? What triggers it?

We needn't take this to the level of Sir Francis Galton, who Dion Fortune reports in Psychic Self Defense, saying that he" experimented with mental control of respiration, and having obtained it, found that the automatic function had fallen into abeyance, and he had to spend three anxious days breathing by will power and voluntary attention until the automatic function was re-established."

Control of these processes isn't really the goal, but rather, observation. In the book Emotional Alchemy, which combines mindfulness with schema therapy, one of the early meditations involves a glass of a flavored drink. What makes you reach for it to take a sip? Notice the anticipation as you bring it to your mouth, the saliva response, how the glass feels in terms of temperature, condensation, and texture. What does it look like? How does it look as you tilt the glass?

The important thing is noticing these things, things we normally take for granted. As I sit here typing this I consumed an italian soda. I remember the taste, the texture, and so on for the period after I first got it. I think I barely tasted it after the first few sips.

Kaizen

Kaizen (改善, literally "improvement") is a word that gets abused by business consultants, but which has real, practical application and meaning. According to Wikipedia, kaizen is a "Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life." It is the process of gradually making improvements to yourself.

For example, let's say that you want to change 10 things about yourself. Space them out over a week or a month, gradually adopting one at a time. That way, if you have trouble with one, you have still adopted all of the others leading up to that point. If you try and adopt all ten, not only are you less likely to succeed (it is easier to succeed at one thing at a time than ten), but regression on any one area may lead to regression in all of the other areas.

Rather than berating oneself for behaving a particular way, it is much more constructive to break down why one is that way and, knowing that, establishing a plan to move forward.

Generally, however, it is not enough to simply say "I will do these things this week, and those things next week," we need something more robust. This is where psychology comes into play in a big way: helping us achieve what we want to become.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

What will work for any given individual is up for debate, but one of the broader approaches I like are cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT), and specifically mindfulness-based cognitive therapies (MBCT). While full psychotherapy generally involves a psychotherapist, there are tools here that we can look at and adopt in our daily lives. I'm not going to go too in-depth here, since I am far from an expert and most of this deserves more than the small space I can give it here.

The core of MCBT is not to try and push the negative thoughts and emotions out of the way, but to notice them and accept them without judgement. Just like with physical reflexes, we can develop emotional "reflex actions" called schemata that the events around us can trigger. These schemata form a sort of "mental short-cut," and most people tend to build a variety of such shortcuts into their lives going back to childhood. The first step in this process is in determining what these patterns are and understanding them, not trying to sweep them aside or berating ourselves for having them.

One of the areas within this is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which purposes that the core to many of these problems comes down to the acronym FEAR:

Fusion with your thoughts
Evaluation of experience
Avoidance of your experience
Reason giving for your behavior

Essentially: Acting without being mindful, subconsciously finding a way to "protect yourself from it" through avoidance, and then back-rationalizing how you acted or are acting. It then advises us to ACT:

Accept your reactions and be present
Choose a valued direction
Take action

There is more to it, of course, but this is fundamentally where much of this starts. Determine and accept where you are, be present, and make a decision to be something else.

This is definitely a "process" and not a "product." You cannot "fail at mindfulness" in the general case, but only stumble along the way and evaluate in retrospect. "Was I being mindful? What can I do in the future to be more mindful?" Rather than berate ourselves for being something we're not, we look instead to change ourselves to what we want to be.

Urdummheit: Primeval Stupidity

2009-02-28T16:56:00.009-07:00

This is an adapted and expanded version of an essay I wrote in a personal blog.

Recently I learned a new word thanks to the book Exploring the Northern Tradition by Krasskova and Kaldera. Urdummheit: A German word that means--basically--that those who came before "us" are stupid. That there is a "primeval stupidity." People who believe this theory believe that we--in our enlightened, rational society--are somehow smarter than those who have come before. They believe that they made up myths and legends out of whole cloth and believed those legends literally and exactly, the way modern fundamentalists take the bible literally. It was believed literally by the people--not to be taken as symbol or allegory--because they were wholly ignorant and largely incapable of understanding the world around them.

Read the rest of this essay over on Weaving Wyrd.

The Role of Prayer

2009-02-24T14:30:00.001-07:00

A lot of heathens seem to have extremely odd views when it comes to prayer. Many seem to shun it, viewing it as unnecessary for one reason or another. These reasons are varied, but I tend to see many of them miss a deeper question of "Why Pray?" Raven Kaldera states that "To me, prayer seems like a natural extension of believing in deities" and, in the Foreward of Galina Krasskova's Sigdrifa's Prayer: An Exploration & Exegesis presents arguments against some of the major reasons as to why people do not pray.

But to me the more interesting question is "Why Should We Pray?" If prayer is a natural extension of believing in deities, then it is natural that in periods of doubt we would pray less. These times, however, are when I believe prayer is most essential even if they aren't "really" there. What, in essence, is in it for us?

One answer is that we should pray because the gods command it of us or that the gods deserve devotion. This is all fine and good, but it is again tied to our doubts and fears, it is mired in our attachments. It also means that when we fail to pray, we feel like we have failed our gods. I do not believe this is strictly the case: I believe that in failing to pray we fail ourselves, not the gods. The gods do not need our prayer and I believe that there is something more to prayer that makes it valuable even if we wonder whether the gods are listening to us.

To answer that in more depth we must first ask what is prayer? Prayer, to me, is a way of attempting to connect with something greater than ourselves. It is the process of opening oneself up to a myriad of possibilities and directions, and laying ourself bare before the universe and--more importantly--ourselves. It is the process of clearing our minds of distractions and reaching for the Divine. Prayer, to me, is not that much removed from meditation. Centering prayer in particular is very clearly a form of meditation, but all prayer has that element to it.

So treating prayer as a form of meditation, one of the major purposes of such is help train your mind. To train yourself to be able to fall into that state of divine reverence, to open yourself up, and to ponder the deeper meanings of a phrase or passage while falling completely into it.

To quote Galina Krasskova in Sigdrifa's Prayer:

I can only speak from my own perspective here, but to pray properly is to lay oneself bear before the Gods. It is to take full responsibility for the flow of one's wyrd and to choose to stand in absolute vulnerability before the Gods. Prayer, when done rightly, can be an immensely frightening thing. It's one-on-one dialogue with the Gods without any distractions or any excuses. [...] It's a frightening thing that inevitably draws one closer to that numinous force that will, without fail bring about change and spiritual evolution. Sometimes it's downright terrifying.

Prayer, essentially, is a state of mind that is related to the words you speak only in how your mind responds to them. The Nicene Creed is a statement of belief, but the proper mindset for saying the Nicene Creed is not rote recitation: it is reflective on what it means. What does it mean to say that Jesus is "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father?" What are the implications and history of this belief? Mere recitation pales in comparison and is shallow substitute to educated and considered belief.

When we recite Sigdrifa's Prayer, what are we really saying when we finish the closing:

Eloquence and native wit bestow on us
And healing hands while we live

It's a beautiful passage, but there is more to it than merely reciting it rote. Such has a place, but mostly in so far as its an exercise to train the mind. It is a great place to practice mindfulness.

This is extremely important, to quote Chah Subhatto (ชา สุภัทโท) in Right Practice -- Steady Practice:

You should all bear in mind that this practice is difficult. To train other things is not so difficult, it's easy, but the human mind is hard to train. The Lord Buddha trained his mind. The mind is the important thing. Everything within this body-mind system comes together at the mind. The eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body all receive sensations and send them into the mind, which is the supervisor of all the other sense organs. Therefore it is important to train the mind. If the mind is well trained all problems come to an end. If there are still problems it's because the mind still doubts, it doesn't know in accordance with the truth. That is why there are problems.

In all of this we see several natural reasons to go about the process of praying: It helps us focus our mind and we can honor the spirits. Going about this process says something about ourselves and what kind of people we are, true, but it is more than that: we do it because we need to take those moments out of the day to quietly reflect. Before we talk to a spirit we should cleanse our space and strengthen our connection to the gods as much as possible, and entering that quiet, reflective, prayerful state is a great way to do that.

I'll close with a quote from Henri Nouwen's excellent Wounded Healer

There he comes to the shocking, but at the same time self-evident, insight that prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

Thoughts on Urban Paganism and Urban Spirit Work

2009-02-21T16:58:00.004-07:00

This is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay I've written.

One of the challenging things about my path is that it is entirely urban. This doesn't mean that I create new, urban deities and follow those but rather than my practice draws me to the city and binds me to the city in a way that some people are bound to the countryside.

I don't follow "Squat, Skor and Skram" or make offerings to "Asphalta," I don't get tattoos for competition representing capitalism (particularly because, for most of us, capitalism is cooperative and not directly competitive), and I don't have body piercings or plan to get them. I don't use gasoline or antifreeze in my rituals, and I think if I ever think that such is a good idea for my elemental practice I should have someone commit me to an asylum. I am not a tribal eclectic pagan or chaos magician who happens to live in the city, which seems to be who Kaldera and Schwartztein's book The Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle is aimed at. I am also not studying what is called "Technoshamanism," per se, and am not a member of the modern primitive movement. I have no issue with those who practice such paths, but they are not my path.

Read the rest of this essay over at Weaving Wyrd.

Reality, Spirits, Gods, and The Afterlife

2009-02-19T12:57:00.002-07:00

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
fair fame of one who has earned.

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
the doom on each one dead.
(Hávamál)

I am not a psychopomp and, though I have seen them from afar, I have never been past the gates of Helheim. I have some experiences that I attribute to past lives, but nothing that I am 100% sure of and nothing--even if the experiences are completely factual--that would indicate the mechanics of what is going on "behind the scenes."

A while back a young woman sitting next to me on the light rail started trying to convert me to her brand of Christianity. A large portion of her argument dealt with the "life in the world to come" and how G-d would cast me if I did not believe. This is bad theology in general, but it is beside point: What does it matter what happens to our soul after we die?

It seems a lot of people get caught up in this. They firmly believe in some specific outcome, and challenging the factual nature of that outcome is considered anathema. The young woman trying to convert me was mortified when I told her that I didn't especially care about what happened after my death because, after all, I'll know for absolute certain soon enough anyway.

There are numerous reasons to do "good acts," to strive to live "a simple and harmonious life with nature and people," and to treat life as a continual learning process that exist independently of any form of afterlife, next life, or judgement. Quoting Nathaniel Branden in his essay The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

I am referring to the principle of benevolence, mutual helpfulness and mutual aid between human beings. I believe it is a virtue to support life. I believe it is a virtue to assist those who are struggling for life. I believe it is a virtue to seek to alleviate suffering. None of this entails the notion of self-sacrifice. I am not saying that we should place the interests of others above our own. I am not saying that our primary moral obligation is to alleviate the pain of others. I am not saying that we do not have the right to place our own interests first. I am saying that the principle of benevolence and mutual aid is entirely compatible with an ethic of self-interest and more: An ethic of self-interest logically must advocate the principle of benevolence and mutual aid.

Given that we live in society, and given that misfortune or tragedy can strike any one of us, it is clearly in our self-interest to live in a world in which human beings deal with one another in a spirit of mutual benevolence and helpfulness. Could anyone seriously argue that the principle of mutual aid does not have survival value?

What happens to my soul after I die doesn't even enter into the equation. There are too many good reasons to, as Mahatma Gandhi put it, ""Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever" that are wholly independent what happens after I die. I might as well act accordingly. I have to believe that, if there is a judgement step in the process, they (or I) will understand my reasons for caring more about acts and learning in my life than in whatever my specific beliefs were in the process.

Similarly, I do not know the mechanisms behind the spirit world and shamanic practice. I do not know for an absolute fact if they are a matter of psychological abstractions, Psi, some form of manifestation of the collective unconscious, singular aspects of single pantheist deity, reflections of previous and current human imaginings, or true gods, wights, and spirits as described by old pagan religions.

Sure, I believe in the reality of such for a variety of reasons, but the truth is that--like Archbishop Rowan Williams and the Virgin Birth--I believe in it but am not "too fussed" about it. What matters to me is the much deeper and more fundamental question of "Does it Work?" There is something there, I am talking to it, and it is talking back to me. I am gaining from this interaction and I see a positive development in my life and in the lives of others from working with this entity, so what does it matter the specifics of how the entity came into being?

Does it work?

Going up to some entity I am getting to know and informing it that it is a mental abstraction seems like the height of arrogance to me. Treating it as "just an abstraction" of a greater whole or some sort of collective unconscious implies to me that you think you actually know what is going on. I certainly don't know for sure, and I am not about to tell something which my mind portrays as bigger, more powerful, and wiser than I am will ever be that it doesn't really exist. Such would be rude.

Even if this is the case and we all recognized it to be so, I wouldn't tell part of my psyche that "you are just a part of me, you know." The more I study shamanic states of consciousness and psychology, the more powerful I realize the mind really is. Perhaps that is the explanation for what Edith Turner saw when she said:

Then I knew the Africans were right. There is spirit stuff. There is spirit affliction; it is not a matter of metaphor and symbol, or even psychology.

Perhaps it can be contained wholly within the mind, perhaps combined with whatever mechanisms are behind Psi. Perhaps not. Either way, the more fundamental question is still "Does it work?" Does shamanic healing work? Do shamanic states of consciousness work? Does faring forth and pathwalking work?

Do we gain from it, can we help ourselves and those around us, can we make a difference in either this world or in the spirit world we believe we travel to that is useful?

I believe that they are not abstractions, that they are functionally deities regardless of the mechanisms by which they came about, but I don't pretend to know for absolute sure. I am also not so much of a hardliner as Raven Kaldera, when he says in his Northern Tradition FAQ that:

This is a polytheistic spiritual tradition. No way to get around that one. Not only do you have to believe fully and thoroughly in these Gods and wights in order to really practice it, if you come at them with any less than complete faith in their existence, they may be offended and refuse to deal with you...and for this tradition, it's all about dealing with the spirits. No spirits, no luck. Not only are they all real, they are all distinct from each other as well.

If you choose to approach them with that attitude, they may very well choose not to do business with you (or clobber you over the head so that you do believe in them, which they are perfectly capable of doing). My own psyche would probably refuse to do business with me if I approached it with such arrogance and such attachment to my own assumptions about the nature of my own subconscious. On the other hand, even if they are "merely" psychological in nature that still implies an amazing amount of power. Quoting Shamanism and Psychology on Therioshamanism:

Apart from the physical effects this may have, if you assume journeyers travel inwardly instead of outwardly, you are talking about someone who is exploring the depths of hir own psyche. The archetypes and motifs experienced along the way are the brain’s method of structuring the psyche.

In many indigenous societies, shamans are trained by their predecessors. This includes methods of not going batshit insane (and yes, these cultures generally know the difference between a shaman/holy person/medicine person/etc., and someone who is simply mentally ill to the point of impaired functioning). However, most core shamans don’t have a psychological background of any sort, and core shamanism such as it is is a woeful substitute, comparatively speaking. While this doesn’t render all core shamans ineffective, it does mean that often the seriousness and potential danger of journeying is underestimated.

In short, I'm not "too fussed" about it: My approach is orthopraxy focused instead of orthodoxy focused. Approaching and treating the gods with respect, approaching them without preconceptions and without treating them as bowdlerized and flattened abstractions, is far far more important than that you absolutely 100% believe in their existence before you start trying to talk with them. The safety concerns do not change, the conversations do not change, and the need to treat them with respect does not change.

In mathematical modeling we like to quote George Box in saying that "All models are wrong, but some are useful." I know that my mental model of reality is wrong, probably fundamentally so in a lot of respects, but that isn't the point.

The question would be "is it useful?"

What is my Path?

2009-02-19T10:45:00.003-07:00

By way of introduction, let me give a little history on myself and my beliefs.

I am a 29 year old Software Engineer with a firm background in applied mathematics. After being raised as an Episcopalian (with five years of Roman Catholic education and religion classes on top of that) I converted to a variation of Solitary Wicca in 1998. I mostly treated this as an abstract theoretical framework, and viewed magic as a psychological framework. To quote Aleister Crowley in his Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic: 'The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain.' He goes on to say:

If, then, I say, with Solomon:

"The Spirit Cimieries teaches logic," what I mean is:

"Those portions of my brain which subserve the logical faculty may be stimulated and developed by following out the processes called 'The Invocation of Cimieries.'"

And this is a purely materialistic rational statement; it is independent of any objective hierarchy at all. Philosophy has nothing to say; and Science can only suspend judgment, pending a proper and methodical investigation of the facts alleged.

I practiced with a friend of mine, and we had some interesting--and some rather powerful--experiences, but nothing I considered definitive at the time. Then, while i was home visiting my parents in New Orleans, I saw something glowing. It was hovering about a foot off of the wall, and there was no mistaking it for a trick of light. I slept in the next room and, the next day, wrote an email to a friend of mine who I knew was very experienced with these kinds of things. She checked in remotely, explained that it was probably a house boullie--a kind of benign entity--and the mere fact of being able to name and identify it was very comforting. I asked her to teach me.

After that she brought on other students and we formed a small teaching coven that was separate from her primary Celtic Trad coven. We had Celtic Trad members, a Wiccan, a shamanic practitioner, a student of Christian Mysticism, and one other individual of uncertain leanings in our mix. I learned a great deal with them, and started what would turn into a very longstanding relationship with Coyote and Grandfather Raven. Toward the end of my work with them, I started to be drawn more into the Norse worldview, and was practicing something along the lines of Norse Wicca.

Then I moved away. From there I continued my study, taking Daven's High Magic course, but for the most part started to fade.

Then after Katrina They stepped in and helped me out of a bad situation, and so I pledged myself and so at their request began moving farther into the Northern Tradition Paganism and Ásatrú. I found that whatever it was I was looking for was not in Ásatrú proper, but I didn't have a term for it yet. They wanted me to do something, but I had trouble ascertaining exactly where they wanted that path to lead.

So after about a year, when I had managed to settle down into a better living situation, I talked with a friend of mine about it and she indicated that one of her friends was on that path and was starting to look for students. Thus formed the group I have been training with ever since. In this time my relationship and signal clarity have both improved, and I believe that I am a better person for it.

That is a rough outline of how I got to the path I am on now. I am now training in Northern Tradition Spirit Work and am a follower of Odin, though I have developed relationships with many others along the way. My focus at the moment is on Shamanic States of Consciousness, on Faring Forth, and on other things along those lines, though I know the time for me to study galdr is coming up...

In Their Service.

Books

2009-01-01T08:00:00.001-07:00

Book Reviews

For my book reviews I like to employ Daven's Rating System:

Stars Meaning
✬✩✩✩✩ Pitiful. This book should never have been published. A waste of trees.
✭✩✩✩✩ Poor. To be bought only if you have a lot of money to waste.
✭✬✩✩✩ Bad. There may be some useful info here, but I wouldn't voluntarily buy it.
✭✭✩✩✩ Below Average. Get it if there is nothing else you can buy or borrow.
✭✭✬✩✩ Average. Good and bad elements cancel each other out.
✭✭✭✩✩ Above Average, there is some good things here.
✭✭✭✬✩ Good. There should be more books like this.
✭✭✭✭✩ Very good. Most libraries should consider getting this one.
✭✭✭✭✬ Excellent. If you see this book get it.
✭✭✭✭✭ Superior. Run run run to purchase this book, you will thank me.

Reviews

Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner by Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera (✭✭✭✬✩, 3.5/5, 2 May 2009)
Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman (✭✭✭✭✭, 5/5, 23 May 2009)
Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet by Jeannette M. Gagan (✭✭✭✬✩, 3.5/5, 16 June 2009)
Soul Retrieval, Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman (✭✭✭✭✬, 4.5/5, 4 September 2009)

Stars	Meaning
✬✩✩✩✩	Pitiful. This book should never have been published. A waste of trees.
✭✩✩✩✩	Poor. To be bought only if you have a lot of money to waste.
✭✬✩✩✩	Bad. There may be some useful info here, but I wouldn't voluntarily buy it.
✭✭✩✩✩	Below Average. Get it if there is nothing else you can buy or borrow.
✭✭✬✩✩	Average. Good and bad elements cancel each other out.
✭✭✭✩✩	Above Average, there is some good things here.
✭✭✭✬✩	Good. There should be more books like this.
✭✭✭✭✩	Very good. Most libraries should consider getting this one.
✭✭✭✭✬	Excellent. If you see this book get it.
✭✭✭✭✭	Superior. Run run run to purchase this book, you will thank me.