spearcarrier

I try to work on my comic these days, but I’ve had to accept that what happened to me was very traumatizing. That’s part of the interruption: the thing that holds you back from the skies, from the spirits I once kissed passionately and danced with. Tonight, I am working on the model for the very character the bastard (Fairy Hitler) used to get his in. The model stares at me from the monitor. I stare back. I have to say out loud, “He’s dead.” Just to hear it.

The old tales, especially with Ireland, talk a little bit about what happens to the bard that makes it back. They’re filled with longing for the green place. Their music is never the same – either it becomes hauntingly gorgeous but unbearably sad, or they can only speak the truth so that their songs become lays of prophecy. Touch the earth, they may age but a hundred years. They’re never the same again, and so for all they walk among former friends, family and lovers they’re still apart inside. Forever.

What part is the worst from what happened to me? I can’t say. But losing my stories was one of the worst. I struggle with them now. The things that come from my pen are intellectual. Oh, they’re filled with wit. They have humor. They’re sarcastic. I enjoy insights I know I once had, but as my spirit spouse said “were returned” to me. The dance of words flow from my fingers and to the virtual page in delightful choreographic patterns.

But my comics, my stories, the thing I wanted to tell the world most suffers for me.

This is what happens to the bard that is taken away, the minstrel that is minced, the skald that is forsaken.

You want to go to those far away lands? Even if you have memories of that place from another time, I recommend you don’t. If you do, you’ll be forever changed. The fare may be a price higher than you want to pay. Read a book, enjoy the silly stories we tell ourselves here. Don’t go there.

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

Bypassing the Ages to Find the Real Spirits

Since taking up traditional shamanism, I have had an internal conflict. It was trying to reconcile venerating and honoring Frigg, Woden, and Loki with a path that did not have them.

The Judeo point of view has infected reconstructing and/or remembering the old religions as people try to go backwards. There are people trying to build churches¹, and they have dogmas for you to follow. While leaving the church and stepping into heathenry and paganism, they are bringing that thinking with them. In short, they’re not leaving the church behind.

You cannot fit the world’s oldest raw spiritual path into a modern, sanitized, church-style marching order. You just can’t. They don’t go together.

And then there is the kith and kin misunderstanding. People gather their group to worship Odin. They prick their thumbs for blood. They swear a little blood pact and decide that they are a tribe, to the point that some ostracize their own family. There is a difference between building a cozy friend group online and actual deep-time blood lineage and ancestral ties. In Old Norse and the broader Germanic lore, the absolute bedrock of your existence was the ætt—the clan bloodline. It was not a social club. Your biological family stood above all. Chosen family was a luxury.

So how do we fix the conflict?

When Wodnas called to me, I asked him, “What do you want?” And he said to me, “To turn back time.”

I immediately was like, I ain’t no prophet. I’m a poet, a really bad singer, and a storyteller. And he’s like, “That’s what we need.”

Yeah okay, it was a bit more firm, defiant, and better articulated.

Odin wasn’t telling me to build a time machine, which is great because there’s no way I could’ve. I’ve realized that one thing he meant was for me to personally go back to when shamanism was the spiritual path no matter the spirits I encountered. It means I throw out the temples, the chains. It means going back to a time when we sat around the fire or hearth and the shaman was your entertainer.

Proto-sciences, the historical linguistics, and comparative mythology make some of this possible as weird as it sounds, but not in a reconstructionist sort of way. More as a guideline, while allowing the spirits to tell me who they are. There are clues, like the 5th-century gold bracteate Dr. Crawford talked about, where the runic text didn’t read as expected. Then there are the spirits.

Even with the guesswork, the proto-sciences strip away the politics and social clubbery. They take you back to the linguistic and cultural bedrock, which is exactly where the spirits actually come from and probably where they’re still hanging out.

I don’t need to reconstruct my religion, because shamanism is the religion. The spirits aren’t dead. They’re right here. I don’t need dogma. I go to them as they are.

In traditional shamanism, the dream is real. The spirits are real. Some are old. Some are gone because it was their time. The rest are there, and they are approachable. Fine then. I’m gonna get walking, shall I?

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1. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. ↩︎

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

This morning I’m not pondering the spirits, nor my problems with wyrms, nor even breakfast for which I think my hips are grateful. I woke up at something like 4 in the morning feeling battered from a conversation I’d had with someone. It was the kind of conversation that always leaves me feeling like human connection is a luxury I’ll never be able to afford, and I wake up in the night asking myself why in the fuck am I bothering. I realized there in the dark with a kitten trying to put its head in my mouth for pets that it all came down to the use of one word: ma’am.

A lot of people have opinions over the use of this particular word. Many would prefer it if you didn’t call them by it, even if it’s meant with the best of intentions. It ages them, is the complaint by some. They’re not used to it because they’re not from the American South, is the complaint by others. It’s used to create a social divide and avoid connection is my complaint–especially when said in a conversation where one party member wishes to create a sense of rule and order, and usually that rule and order tips in their favor. If things aren’t tipping in their favor, they’re deferring with respect to the person the rules are tipping towards.

If I had a granddaughter, and she were trying to grab a toy from another child there’s a high chance I’d be saying, “No, ma’am. No ma’am. You give that back!” With respect, the child is being given a social clue about authority and their little ma’am diaper butt needs to listen.

If I were military personnel faced with a female superior, I’d salute and probably say, “Yes, ma’am!” Rank would be acknowledged, and the word would stand as a divide between us. You can’t get overly familiar when you’re in different social classes. What would the neighbors think.

When pulled over by officers, you’re taught to use ma’am and sir very very respectfully because they have power over you. Power that’s increasingly abused in this day and age.

Yaaaahhh… it goes a wee bit past “Can I help you cross the street, ma’am?” although that also hurts when you throw the honorific at someone who doesn’t want to be classified as having to use a cane just yet. The fact is honorifics like that word are social signals, and context matters a lot. Last night, I was quite often put in my place using the word “ma’am”. The more the guy on the phone said it, the more I kicked against it because I wasn’t a four year old trying to grab a toy away from another child. I was a grown woman defending her right to certain defensive thought processes she had to adopt over the past two years to survive.

The person in question dislikes how I process cultural information and often assumes I’m trying to make all cultures fit under some weird blanket definition. I can give you an example off the top of my head because I’d noticed a parallel yesterday morning. I was watching a short documentary about one of the Siberian peoples, and I noticed they had totem carvings similar to the ones created by native people in Alaska. Now, that there is a *possible* cultural overlap due to contact of some time is a given. But I wasn’t worried about Alaska. The parallel *I* saw was that the houses in the documentary looked extremely Norse in structure, and the poles were set in the way many historians think the Norse god poles would have been done. I thought, “It’s like the Norse godpoles.”

I didn’t think to myself, “It’s just like the Norse godpoles.” I noted superficial similarity, and I stopped a moment to ponder the Migration Period and how one man named Thor had tracked Norse culture back to that region in theory. I didn’t assume that just because godpoles are still thriving in that part of the world the Nordic ways live on. (If anything I’d assume the Nordic ways had a distant grandparent that brought their ways into the fold.) The result is that after having made a mental comparison and processed the imagery, I’m sitting here picturing the godpole I saw in reasonable detail. I even can trace the shadows on the grooves… While also knowing what I’m picturing isn’t a “godpole”; the documentary didn’t say what that totemic figurine was called. It might not even have been for a spirit of any kind. I wasn’t told.

Say what you mean and ma’am what you say. If I were to blurt out “oh, that’s like the Norse godpoles!” I’d immediately get slapped down verbally before I could finish my thought. I actually chewed my lip as I was being accused of blanketing cultures and making assumptions last night, and I thought to myself, “I guess this is going to be just like with everyone else. I’m not allowed to have an opinion, nor can I engage in any way.”

But the times I’ve not asked questions and let the information flow, I’ve also been fussed at – not just by last night’s speaker but by other people. “Why don’t you ask questions?” people demand. “Because I’m trying to process the data first, but when I try I’m told I’m doing it wrong. I can’t ask questions when I don’t have any data in my kiddie pool to ask from,” I have tried to reply. Usually the reply is silenced. I should ask questions. I should be curious.

But I am being curious, every time I pick up a piece of the world puzzle and think to myself, “This context reminds me of context from over there.” My mind is touching that data, and it’s folding the information like origami. Then it will be unfolded but not forgotten, because I was able to chew the flavor. This thing I do is a form of cognitive pattern recognition. It allows me to see a bigger picture. And yes, it’s a survival mechanism.

If I’d been able to do it when I was hijacked, a lot would have gone very differently. Aside from being caught in a goblin’s web, gaslit into confusion and thus robbed of survival discernment I’d have noticed the negative patterns around me. I’d have been able to push back. I already used to notice patterns before that. Ever since I got my life back, the personality quirk is on hyper-drive. I’m shadow punching the information to make sure another goblin isn’t hiding, and I know it. This “ma’am-ing” of my natural cognitive process is exactly what those predators relied on.

“Trust the gods, they’re harsh. Be more reverent!” “Your spirit is resting!” “Trust the process!” “Stay out of the astral!” Let me translate that: “No, ma’am!” when it came to my sovereign place against or with the spirits. The lines were there, drawn by people around me. They just weren’t as polite about it.

The thing about being ma’am-ed that hurt was a divide was being created. It said to me: “We will never be friendly. We will never connect. I will always depend on my role over you as a framework for our interactions, and you little miss need to go back to sucking your thumb and being quiet. There is an invisible separation that depends more on a struggle for power than allowing a natural flow to take place.” And this, dear readers, was what woke me at 4 in the morning and had me staring at the back of my eyeballs. I realized I’d just been isolated away from another connection, and that it was best I let it go. It’s a very lonely place to be when those sorts of thoughts wake you in the dark.

There is another very important thing about the word ma’am, and its counterpart sir, that makes them both bad words in my book. Bad words, I said, because they were placed into my life as a replacement and it destroyed the last remaining Algonquian word my family consciously used.

Her name was Debra: a friend from school, so White her pink flushed pink and her hair was platinum blonde. Southern, crass, and had been thrown out by her stepmother so I took her home to live with us. We were friends for years.

Back in those days if my mother yelled for me, I’d answer back, “Huh!” This word is pronounced only slightly how it’s spelled. It’s not “hoah” like in the army. It’s “huoh” through the nose, and we only used it when answering our parents.

One day after a couple of years of hearing I and my older brother respond to our parents in this manner, Debra snapped at me about rudeness and disrespect. I should say sir and ma’am, I was told by my White friend. My father stood nearby, listening. My mother said nothing. And the entire family never used Huh again.

Years later I learned our use of huh wasn’t just sir and ma’am, it was a high mark of respect. It was an incredibly respectful response to my parents. But my friend, who didn’t stay friends with me much longer after that and is far too mundane to want to connect with these days, killed it by imposing her cultural values. By assuming we were Western. I really hate the term colonization because of how it’s misused in history, but this is definitely one case where I’d use the term. The word ma’am is the tombstone to a word that was already dying out.

Where I grew up was unique in its culture. Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, was literally the birthplace of the American shrimping industry. My family had been shrimpers for generations there. My father was the last because I, the girl, was the only one interested in working alongside him and he wouldn’t have it. The businesses that are ruining the island with their overpopulation and development brought in the kind of palm trees you’d see in California, but our palm trees were short and squat. They were the natural habitat for an endangered breed of bat. Our culture involved fishing nets, hand games using cadences, the river, and pirates. We were very proud of our pirates.

But yet I and my brothers were the only ones using the word. We weren’t raised in town. We didn’t go to town. The first time I went to a Taco Bell was when I was 18, on a date. I didn’t know what the inside of Pizza Hut looked like. Literally my childhood is filled with days in the forest, running around, or harvesting berries with my mother. Helping Dad with the nets. Standing on a boat deck with the briny river spray on my cheeks, watching the sea gulls. Happy days that no amount of nice lawns and shopping malls could ever replace. Days I grieve for.

Although I was raised alongside Western children and can understand some of the things the West does, that doesn’t mean I approach everything from a Western point of view. Don’t get me wrong: some things are definitely Western in my outlook and behavior. But. It doesn’t mean I was raised using sir, ma’am, or a variety of other things. Whiteness, or even multicultural as I am, doesn’t mean you’re tucking napkins under your nose. There are a thousand different cultures in the White spectrum just the same as anywhere else. There have been way too many times I’ve had to have things explained to me by a white friend. It’s an ongoing joke with us, actually. I’ll literally ask them, “What do you white people do?” As Many Cats pointed half-jokingly out to me today, “Yeah, you’ve only been in a Cracker Barrel one whole time as a child and I had to explain horseradish to you.”

When someone uses “ma’am” from polite compliance, they are assuming I come from a world where that concept even exists. I think this situation is simply a culture clash one half of all parties involved doesn’t realize exists. I honestly think a lot of people came before me that really were trying to put everything into blanket terms, and somehow, I’m getting lumped into that category much in the same way my spiritual hijacking gets lumped into the spiritual crisis category by the undiscerning. I also think the other half of the conversation has been hurt by some of the people they’ve encountered and this slap down I am often hit with is their personal knee-jerk. It’s just the kick is usually being accused of assuming things while things are being assumed about me, and that rather sucks.

Now. After I’ve said all that, there are some acknowledgments in order. The person in question spent over three hours on the phone with me. They didn’t mean to be dismissive, and they weren’t trying to be dismissive in the way it came across. They’re a great person, and I enjoy our conversations for the most part. As I lay there in the dark this morning, I reminded myself that some of my feelings were probably triggers coming awake and nothing more. The buttons had been hit, after all.

But the honesty of that moment remains. I’d bared my soul because in any given moment, I’m a hair’s breadth away from walking away from shamanism or anything “powerful” just to protect my sanity and heart. There are things still happening and wounds that still need healing. These things aren’t their responsibility, mind you. They’re my trauma and my pain to deal with, and as I have always had to do alone I will approach each at face value. Except one, which isn’t trauma so much as a lingering literal monster. That bastard I could do without so much, I’ve been considering turning to Christianity.

At the end of the conversation, I’d signed off with, “Stop calling me, ma’am.” The reply? “I will keep doing it.” Very well then, I thought to myself. I’d already been reminded of a take away from many conversations in my life: learn to shut up. Go “yeah” and make glottal stops a lot. (Uh-huh.) Let them talk… and remember, if you don’t remember what they told you it’s not your failing, because your kinesthetic nature is being repressed and it’s taking your ability to remember and learn with it. That approach makes things harder for me, but easier for them even if this also means I will eventually hear, “I thought you wanted to learn.” The only response is to meekly say, “I’m sorry,” and allow the disconnect to happen.

Which I think is the point to my early morning rant. The term ma’am is an honorific that holds a lot of ammo within. As with all honorifics, that ammo is also a wall. It’s a marker that puts everyone into their place. It can put you into the place of an extremely elderly woman that needs help crossing the street: a member of society to be honored but also treated as fragile. You can become a figure of authority, someone to salute to. Or you can be demoted to “silly female” and “junior member that needs to know their place”. It isn’t the word, you see. It’s context, the context of “this is where things are divided, and by that divide a disconnect remains.”

Now. The problem I face is I’m not very good at keeping quiet. I try. Do I put post-it notes all over my house that read “let them talk so they can hear themselves”? Oh, wait. I could staple my lips shut. Or lobotomize my brain to stop it from thinking. After all, being silent is just what’s expected of my gender whether or not this situation is that kind of matter. No one’s going to notice nor care. I know this. I also had noticed the problem get worse when I turned 45, but that’s a topic for a whole different day.

The truth is, the best solution is to fall silent. Gender aside, they feel the need to lecture and have me quietly listen as if we were in a Chinese classroom or university study hall. I’d listen better if I didn’t feel the need to defend myself so often. But why am I defending myself? Oh, yeah. Because I desire connection, and being accused of things alienates. Being “put in my place” also. That.

Maybe the connection isn’t worth it. I don’t have a lot of people in my life because, like my conversational partner, I can be a bit strong. I stopped trying to connect to younger generations because it’s exhausting to be told your lived experiences never happened or that cultural experience sharing as a teaching is making everything all about you. It’s boring the amounts of narcissistic spoiled brats that use stubbing a toe as foundation for claiming severe emotional trauma while at the very same time telling me I never had it so bad. I’m exhausted by “Orange Man Bad” and “Democrat is Devil”. I think I’d rather wash the dishes in silence.

At the very beginning of our journey, my talk partner had told me “Just don’t engage.” To cut off connections, seal myself up. They were talking about supernatural events that didn’t and don’t allow complete disengagement. But. In this case, I realize… I can do that here. I can just not engage.

Not to be mean. But because “ma’am” stood as a neon sign and wall on where I was expected to stand last night. It wasn’t to hurt me. They put that there to protect themselves. To push over that wall or unplug that sign would be to disrespect them. Sure, I don’t appreciate being called “ma’am” in the same way a LOT of Southern women dislike it.¹ It’s rude and diminishing. But, for me it’s just a word. For my talking partner, it’s clearly something more and I should allow them their disconnect if it helps them to feel safe.

I wish I’d been able to get them to at least say to me, “I know a guy,” about the problem I’d opened up to them about. They didn’t offer, and they probably don’t know a guy. It’s wrong to expect more. I’ll be grateful for the time they gave me.

As for choosing to be silent. I’m not sure I can hold the line there. But. The price for my compliance is a retreat into my own territory. I’m not “being silent and not heard” the way some expect. I’m “falling silent because I’m not there”.

Because, I was reminded this morning as I lay in the dark, the biggest reason why people put up these walls against me is because my reality is too large and too close. I used to fight against it, to try to force connections because I was so lonely. That only made things worse. Like it or not, I’m just one of those people whose connections are rare if at all.

It makes for a scary future. But ya gotta wonder if being ma’amed to death isn’t worse.

1. Not to be confused with the polite respectful “ma’am” you get from gentlemen at the store who are your age or your own children. I didn’t grow up using ma’am, though. Not my culture. But I’ve observed it. ↩︎

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

It went against what my teacher wanted me to do, but I’m very glad I listened to my inner instinct and started hunting down the shamanistic crisis. I learned the phases. I learned they’re not all according to the same plan. And I learned that when my powers came alive last year, I was a full fledged shaman. A baby. Ready for training. I was in what many call the “resting phase” when my butterfly wings were still drying, and I was fragile. Vulnerable. A tasty snack without elders to protect me, as per tradition.

I can tell you when I was captured. I was minding my own business, enjoying the view from Saturn’s rings. I thought I tripped. I had fallen face first into the rocks, and catlike hoped no one saw me. I called my friend and laughed about it. The next day I noticed the tether on my right ankle, the same one I had tripped by. I didn’t trip. I was lassoed. In fact, the entities that lassoed me had chased me for a while, but I was always too fast for them. “Damn angels,” I used to mutter. But they weren’t angels, not in the holy sense.

That is the day I was fully hijacked, as my father had warned could happen. But he wasn’t here to protect me, and the family had been misaligned away years before anyway. I had no one left. By design, you’d think.

There are two types of shaman: horizontal and vertical. I know this from a brief conversation with Dr. Terryl Janik, who dropped information that put me on the path to learning the dark side of shamanism that no one talks about. It’s a sordid path filled with assault and victims covered in blood. It’s a tale covering the sick symptom of an imbalance. The yin and the yang, as it were.

So dear readers, let me tell you about the two sides of shamanism that thrived in the Northeast Woodlands of the United States before Christianity ever set foot on the shores. If it weren’t for Frank Speck and others of his day, we might not know as much as we do. If you are an awakening shaman soul in the United States, perhaps this post will help you restore some of the lore: things that have been stripped from us but other parts of the world continued to carry. It doesn’t matter if you’re White, Black, Orange or Purple. The art doesn’t care what color you are. If it did, it wouldn’t have survived so worldwide in so many forms.

Those of you who know traditional shamanistic paths from other parts of the world, from the Mongolian Böö and Udagan to the South American curanderos and machi, may recognize some of it. After all shamanism, and yes I’m using the anthropological blanket term for my own purposes, is the oldest and most worldwide of religions. It spread from wherever the origin points actually were (you can argue about that elsewhere if you please) and kept to humanity because humanity is literally evolved to need it, to do it, to be it. Well. One of the Algonquian words is pawwaw.

We used to make totems, or fetishes, for our spirits as they still do in parts of Mongolia. The Ulcha carve their totems, or sewen. In Siberia they have ongon. In the Kongo they have minkisi. These little totems, of which the words for have been lost for the most part, acted as houses and representations. They were home base for helper spirits. They held a shaman’s power. They were friends, companions.

A new pawwaw would find a place where a spirit resided and sing to coax it out and be a friend. I suppose that’s a form of taming it, but I don’t see that in the same way as many people do. My dog is my friend, but he’s tamed and subservient. The spirits are co-workers and family. You’d woo them as you’d woo a beautiful maiden, sometimes beating your drum and singing for days. Or you’d play your flute. You’d even take a tiny bow and play it: the first Native American style mouthharps¹. The icaros of the Amazon, the mbira of Zimbabwe, and the khomus of Siberia have similar methods.

There were initiation rites, as well. A young Penobscot boy might drink a white tea and fast for several nights, then spend a period of time isolated as his new shaman wings dried and became whole. Similar rites exist all over the world, with Alaska coming to my mind first. Another very strong parallel is that a pawwaw would come about in a variety of ways, the same ones that hold true worldwide: sickness, death, the spirits coming for a crisis, a strong dream, and any other number of supernatural events.

There’s another very important parallel; the reason why I’m writing tonight. It’s where things went askew a long time ago, before the United States became a thing. When my direct ancestors—men and women both—were strong spiritual leaders and grand sachems. Probably when other direct ancestors were walking the tundra with their staffs and disciples towards the next village to foretell prophecy and get a good meal. This would be the light and dark of shamanism, the balance between two halves: sorcerers and dreamers. Vertical. Horizontal.

Yes, there are two different types of shaman. Other parts of the world divide them into the White and Black shamans of Mongolia, the curanderos and brujos of the Amazon, the machi and kalku of the Mapuche, or the nganga and ndoki of Central Africa. And more, I’m sure of it.

But only in part thanks to Harner, who admitted he’d provided only a baseline, many here don’t understand this. They think that shamanism is about drum-beating and, I’m sad to say, gatekeeping when someone comes with an astral problem that’s too big for them to understand much less handle. They snap, “Stay out of the astral!” They tell people what spirits they can and cannot work with, going so far as to try to break apart loving relationships while probably knowing full well they risk breaking their fellow practitioner’s power. They travel into the dream while imposing cookie cutter standards on how a person goes. They insist everything must happen in lucid dreaming and softly, for healing and mental health only.

They are only one half of the equation, and if I had to use a movie reference to get my point across then let me remind everyone that Darth Vadar’s purpose was to rebalance the Force because the dreamers were out of control.

What I’m saying is that of the two halves of shamanism, Harner’s core shamanism taught only the side we used to call dreamer. So let’s start with the dreamers. Let’s talk about what they do. We already know the methods in the American Northeast and probably other parts (including Alaska). I’ll just stick with the general stuff: the stuff that’s so prevalent to the point of pain in parts of the West.

The dreamers are healers. They’re what many reading this post are familiar with. They seek lost objects or people using their astral sight. They’d peek at places far away to locate the enemy or where the game has gone. They make herbal cures. They do the soul retrievals. They can psychopomp, guiding the dead to rest so they don’t stick around and become a problem for the living. They master the art of lucid dreaming and work primarily in the dream, or the astral to some of you. Anthropologically speaking, these are the practitioners who work horizontally to keep the community running. I like to remember it this way: you lay horizontally to sleep. At least, as a general rule.

It’s safe to say that most of the Western paths create horizontal shamans. Dreamers only admitted here! It’s palatable in a society that increasingly wants to strip away our ability to defend ourselves. Experienced practitioners will advise protections, but only in the form of armor and an entourage of spirit bodyguards. Did I mention they’re only half of it, yet? I’m saying it again. Not everyone can drum into the dream the way they do. Not everyone even sees the world the way they do. Not everyone lays horizontal on a mat to work with the spirits. There are those who need to stand: the sorcerers.

It isn’t that a sorcerer has to actually stand in order to get into the dream. They can drum, they can meditate. Or, like me, they must dance or be moving their body somehow. The Ulcha drum, dance and sing at the same time, if you like complications. They’re mostly healers same as anywhere else. One distinction is that they stand. They’re vertically bent. What makes a sorcerer is that he’s a spiritual warrior. It’s how he rolls.

I also have to step to the side a bit on that as well. Being a shaman doesn’t mean you’re going to fit into a perfect mold of horizontal or vertical. Some shaman in Mongolia will work as a white shaman one day but then work as a black shaman the next. If you try to pour yourself into one of two boxes, you’re committing the same sins as the Western practitioner. You’re going to have things you’re good at and things you aren’t, just like with any other life skill.

The pawwaw sorcerer could throw hexes and call spirits to do battle. He sometimes was strong enough to do things visible to the naked eye, like moving small things with his mind or working with the weather. His dances were legendary. His songs could strike fear into the wicked. His antics and boasts were village entertainment as he acted as the spiritual equivalent of the brave warrior. They’d fight each other for shits and giggles to test their mettle, throwing their spirit helpers at one another, and sometimes they’d get serious. (As a matter of fact, this still happens in parts of South America today with the brujos.) He could also psychopomp and heal.

I’m very aware that over the past couple of generations, the term sorcerer has become a bad thing. It’s not just because of the notorious assault sorcery that can happen in South America, where certain shamanic practitioners—like the Kanaimà cults—will literally cut up a victim alive to eat their power and life force. It goes further back, at least in the Northeast when the first Europeans had come with their ships and diseases.

To the Puritans and the Jesuits, anyone doing this kind of heavy spiritual lifting was immediately branded a Satanic witch. Well, let’s be honest. The spirits were also demons to the Europeans. Anything they didn’t understand was evil. Then the people began to get sick. The sorcerers couldn’t fight it while the dreamers also didn’t know what to do. One by one, villages dwindled into nothing.

Social shift happened, the thing that unbalanced everything. The sorcerers became the source of all evil. They were blamed for everything bad, even feats a dreamer was more likely to do. Where once a wealthy family would have employed a personal “house sorcerer” to protect the family, it became wise to avoid anyone like that altogether. “I’m a dreamer!” became the common protest (of which I even heard my father say) because by the 1900’s, if you were born vertically and the spirits began teaching you… you would simply disappear.

Now when we say the word sorcerer, we’re talking about the killers and monsters. We’re not talking about the glory days that echo in movies and fantasy stories. We’ve forgotten that a sorcerer wasn’t a monster, he was a warrior with a very very important job: he protected all of us from the spiritual predators. The real monsters. He battled for our lives.

Maybe he wore spirit armor the same way shamans in Mongolia still do. Maybe his drum was his voice and not a horse. Maybe his spirits were the strongest. Or maybe he was a simple man, like my father, who warded the yard and batted away the monster from his daughter’s bedroom with a shout. Either way, I’ve noticed that everyone is so centered on “Sorcerer Bad” and even “Sorcerer Myth” that the ecosystem is out of whack.

We need our sorcerers. We need to remember how to re-balance the energy around us. I had a notable ayahuasca shaman tell me the other day that wicked forces had been attacking us for a long time now. It got so bad she wrapped herself up and stopped allowing anything to touch her. I myself have been dealing with a hijacking since sometime last year, all the while trying to get people to hear me that it’s not shamanic crisis… because I’d become full-fledged before that. Dreamers have told me “you must need a soul retrieval” when I need someone to fight for me, at least long enough for me to get to where I can pick up my spear and join the war. We’re so uninformed and out of whack without the memories of our brave warriors, we can’t even tell when things have gone wrong. We think it’s right that our legs are being lobbed off and our entrails are strewn across the sky. Pro tip: it’s not.

My father once told me that our family had fled because of our power. That there was a curse following us. That we’d faced bad juju. Now that I’ve had to read and regain things the family had lost, I understand. I came from a family of sorcerers, and I am just as vertical as the rest. It came from both sides, too. My multicultural heritage blended so that I and my brothers didn’t have a chance to be normal. We were always going to stand on the outside. Then when we were attacked, plucked one by one, we fell. All of us. Me included.

Why? Because sorcerers in this day and age are rare. I’d hate to think I’m the last pawwaw, and especially not the last sorcerer. In my line, though, I am. Society took care of that. The forces that will take a young pawwaw down ensured it. But sitting here tonight writing this for all of you, I’m desperate that you hear me. I don’t have to be the last one. I don’t have to be the only one. I’d rather I weren’t.

I’ve had a very hard life. Then when I finally came out the other end, because of my vertical bent, I was immediately lassoed and trapped. I was attacked. Both spiritual and human predators came to feast, because a sorcerer’s power is like Essence of Gelfling. I sit here with thorns in my eyes. Blood pours down my cheeks. If I must be blinded, I’ll do it standing. Vertically.

If you’re trying to do things horizontally and it’s not quite right, consider that you might be vertical. Consider that you’re not meant for the cookie cutter passive way of being. I know I used to look at those people with envy. How easy it seemed for them, that they weren’t being attacked. That with all the protections I was taught to put out, it still wasn’t enough. It hurt that in their pettiness and ignorance they brushed me aside when I needed an elder, someone to keep me alive while my wings unfurled. But tonight, it’s suddenly very important to me that I’m vertical. That I was meant to be a spiritual warrior.

It’s important that my gifts are hands on. That I can slice a spirit in half, fire harpoons across the world, and change my shape into gigantic centipedes that make even dragons tremble in fear. I can pull poisons or rebalance you. I can walk you across the water of the dead without fear. I embrace the dark while working for a brighter morning. I’m needed this way.

You might be, too. Let us be sorcerers together. Let us defend people from the forces that made an experienced shaman curl into a permanent ball. Let us stand. We’re not meant to lay down. Without us, the wyrd is unbalanced. We are the yang to the yin. We belong here.

It’s not a safe job. You will get scars, and the dreamers will probably still look at you sideways when you don’t fit the mold. But if you’re built to stand, lying down will only kill you faster. You’ll be more than a sitting duck. You’ll be a pig with an apple in your mouth.

History books tried to bury us, and the neo-shamans try to meditate us away, but the ecosystem doesn’t care about weekend retreats. It needs its immune system. It’s time we remembered how to fight. So if you’re out there getting chewed on while someone tells you your soul is just ‘resting,’ stop lying on the mat. Stand up. The unseen world has enough tourists. It’s time the vertical shamans danced to the beat of their own drums once again.

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For reading if you like that kind of stuff:

• Kathleen J. Bragdon (Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650, 1996)
• William S. Simmons (Spirit of the New England Tribes, 1986)
• Caroline Humphrey (Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols, 1996)
• Frank G. Speck, Penobscot Shamanism (1919)
• Piers Vitebsky (The Shaman, 2001)
• Kira Van Deusen (Flying Tiger: Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur, 2001)

1. Bruno Nettl (Native American Instruments / Music in Primitive Culture) ↩︎

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

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For my current academic endeavor, one for which I temporarily set the Loki paper aside, I have been learning about spiritual crisis. After all, I experienced one, and it turned out badly.

Now for me, the main spiritual crisis of my awakening journey is over. I have went through the hero’s journey, in which I had to save a part of my stolen soul against a supernatural being. I have met entities that I took to be Norse gods and other famous faces. I have met smaller entities. I have met a lot of impostors. I have been confused, abused, isolated, pushed around, and I’ve had my energy eaten as if I were the buffet at a restaurant. I have been attacked by covens. I’ve taken possession of scorpion creations sent against me, stomped goblins, and raged against the universe.

But I’m no longer in that crisis. This is very important. I am no longer waking up finding myself in jars and bells and other traps put out by others who wished to stop me from growing because either they’re power hungry or just petty and jealous. I’m no longer confused by pretenders. My house is quiet now because I learned how to make space, to say no, to declare my sovereignty and put a stop to things—which was part of the reason for the crisis: learning how to stand in my own power.

The worst thing that I have learned is the most important. The West does not have the bit of lore that my father gave me: When you are a new shaman, and your powers are just awakening, you are a behbeh on the hill. You are vulnerable and alone. It’s as if the Spartans just put you out to die.

I’m going to reiterate redundantly. During and especially at the end of your actual crisis, you are extremely vulnerable. Extremely vulnerable. You are tasty. You are weak. You are that behbeh caribou at the back of the herd next to your ailing grandma. The predators are coming for one of you, and they would prefer you because you are tender meat.

What you do in this phase, traditionally from cultures around the globe, is get with an elder—preferably another established shaman—who will help you, guide you, protect you, teach you how to be what you are. They are your ear during the crisis. They are the tower under which you stand. They prevent you from getting harmed.

While I was going through my crisis, I turned to a lot of people for help. As has been outlined in previous blog posts, I was turned away repeatedly. I was called wackadoo. I was told to get professional help.

The covens that were after my crown of power did not succeed. I know this because the way they gained power—and they had boasted to me about this—was through killing their target. The leader claimed that God would give him the crown. I managed to get away from them.

The reason why the ending to my crisis story is tragic is because the crisis part had ended, but the hijacking part that my father had warned me about had begun. When I finally managed to fend off things and get help from someone who actually would listen, I came out of it with a condition called power loss.

The monsters that were chewing on me are no longer a problem because they were subdued, tamed, and chased off. In spirit, you can be injured and damaged just the same as you can in the physical world. My spirit had suffered an injury, and that injury was allowed to fester. I knew something was wrong. I was going from person to person, begging for help. No one would listen.

Finally, the power just completely faded. Oh, I can still feel things around me, but I can no longer see. For the kind of work that I do, that is a death sentence to my job. I had a shaman tell me to get used to just going blind and using a sense of smell—for a job that requires sight. I had a Reiki master tell me that we all do these things to ourselves. I have never had anyone take my injury seriously. It’s looking like nobody in the Western philosophies of shamanism knows.

It’s infuriating. I was just reading an account earlier today of when two shamans were out astrally hanging out; one got injured and the other immediately called his spirit helper and healed his friend. Healed him. But you won’t find that here.

Today, I once again reached out to two “shamans.” I use the term loosely. Many in the States claim they’re shamans, but the minute they are presented with something my ancestors would have understood, they balk and hide behind certain curtains.

I got a response from one, I’ll give her that. This was more than most have done. She did give me a reply on the same day. This is what she wrote:

Dear K.J.,

Thank you for reaching out and for sharing what sounds like a very intense and painful experience. I can hear how much distress you have been carrying and how frustrating it has been to feel dismissed or misunderstood while trying to find help. From what you describe, it sounds like you have been through a period of profound upheaval that has left you feeling disconnected, injured, and alone while trying to make sense of what happened. Experiences like this can be extremely overwhelming.

While my work does touch on spiritual development and integration, I’m not equipped to provide the kind of support that someone needs when they are moving through a crisis of this magnitude. Situations involving severe distress are best supported by trained professionals who can work with someone closely and consistently during a difficult period like this.

For that reason, I’m not able to offer the help you’re asking for directly. I do encourage you to continue seeking out qualified support from someone who can work with you in a sustained and structured way. You deserve real care and steady support as you navigate what you’ve been going through, and I hope you’re able to connect with someone who can provide that for you.

I wish you the best.

This person, a reverend with a PhD., calls themselves a “shamanic minister” and “award-winning author”. They claim to understand spiritual crisis, which is why I chose them despite how expensive they were. They gave me a polite, professional reply that clearly demonstrated they knew nothing about the unseen or what a spiritual crisis actually entails. They didn’t even point me to someone who might have answers.

I’m not writing this to shame her, even if this goes beyond any legal issue. In America at least, you’re not allowed to use certain words while offering your spiritual hand to the world. Spiritual crisis is still regarded by the West as a mental health condition. Most people don’t understand the spirits, and lords help you if you end up in a place of psychological power run by atheists. But I admit I am this close to making a wall of shame highlighting every so-called shaman and “shamanic practitioner” who ignored me, turned me down, and proved themselves to be loyal clerks in the Temple of Psychiatric Shackles. I’m writing this because something has to be said about this. It’s no longer enough that I am writing an academic paper on how to tell a crisis from a hijacking. These people give cookie-cutter, professional, “go get help from a psychiatrist” replies, and they’re charging anywhere from $150 to $400 to even $800 an hour. This woman has options on her website to spend upwards of $1,600 for a week-long coaching course over something that sounds incredibly foo-foo. I have to say it again: she claims to help with spiritual crisis!

I realize that the Harner-style of shamanism purposefully gutted the dark part. I know the darkness is unpalatable to many. But those dark things are real. They are confirmed by many others describing experiences that might as well be coming off this blog and from my lips. Like one blog I was reading the other day—they were talking about being attacked by a shaman, and lo and behold, they mentioned centipede infestations. Funny that. I was dealing with centipedes.

When you approach one of these many “shamanic” people, you really need to check what they are offering. With the exception of a few, I have seen a lot of love and light, angels, “all is good.” They offer snake oil services, and every last one of them that I have approached so far has gone, “Oh God. You were attacked by monsters. Oh, dear. Yeah. You need, like, a psychiatrist.”

Meanwhile, there’s this man called Dr. Gallagher who started as a psychiatrist and ended up working with Jesuit priests chasing out demons because he realized that there is schizophrenia, and then there’s possession. I have yet to get in touch with him. I really want to get in touch with him.

If you feel the need to find a “shamanic” practitioner, pay attention. It’s clear that even if they are trying to do good, their knowledge is incomplete. More often than not they are not willing to improve, get stronger, and fit the big, big sets of moccasins that they are trying to fill.

So where does that leave those of us who have been through trial by fire? We are left holding the fragmented lore our fathers gave us, navigating a landscape of well-meaning but ill-equipped practitioners. We must be our own elders, tribes of one, when we should be seeking connection and a way to re-establish the network in a society that is not as tribal as some would like to think. The moccasins are empty. And for now, we are the only ones left who remember how to walk in them.

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If you like what you’re reading, hit like (if you have the option) and even subscribe. Talk to me: tell me when you’ve dealt with a medical misunderstanding or if you’ve found anything helpful.

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

This paper very briefly examines the institution of slavery in ancient Rome, exploring how slaves were legally defined as property yet formed the economic and social backbone of Roman society. The study touches on the complex paradox of a civilization dependent on an oppressed population it simultaneously feared and integrated into daily life.

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.

Fantasy – I wrote it years ago, but I admit without help it wouldn’t sound half as mediocre-okay as it does.

Fantasy

If you’re into printables or want the mp3, you can visit my bandcamp or head over to my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fantasy-that-has-145589130

Originally published at River Shaman. You can comment here or there.