A Few Notes on Weakness

This is moreso a follow-up to my post Falling Apart, Coming Back Together that I had been meaning to write, plus a supplement to my more recent Past, Patterns, and Keeping Silent.

To help me begin, I’m going to bring up Phil’s comment in the former post, in which he brings up some very good points. In order to help me compile just what I’m trying to say however, I’ll start off by saying that I too have chronic illness–in fact it was the onset of this chronic illness that tipped the scales when it came to my shamanic practice. I had leanings most of my life, but it was in 2005 when this thing hit, that the dam really burst open for me. I still have it. No amount of discipline, praying or “mind over matter” will ever make it go away. It’s here, and here to stay for the rest of my life. This doesn’t make me weak, or inadequate, and certainly not incapable of performing the duties in the path I walk. I walk a more ordeal-oriented path as a result–but this wasn’t my choice. Psychological scars also are present, and there are things, mentally and physically, that I will never “get over”.

Or, to put it this way: Certain things never will be gotten over–and no one should ever expect you to.

Sometimes it is only in the presence of injury, disease and related hardship that true knowledge can fully blossom.

In fact, this is one of the reasons why I always detested and despised the New Age drek The Secret or the Christian Purpose Driven Life, or otherwise related ‘name-it-and-claim-it’ philosophies. No matter how skilled a magician you are, or how hard you pray or how disciplined you are…shit happens. It just happens. It’s what you do with that shit, what you transmute it into, that matters.

Phil’s quote in his one reply was quite handy in this:

This is where the idea of lycanthropy as a disease can be useful. If you let it control you, and it is the master, that’s the bad situation where you have amnesiac werewolves who go on killing sprees. If you can control it, and use it most productively, let the beast out when it needs to get out and so forth, then that’s a position of true power and mastery, and it doesn’t involve squelching it or conquering it, or getting rid of that disease either (which is something one rarely sees in films and such…).

Of course you can apply this to a wide variety of ailments, but the general idea is there. And I think, for the moment, I’ll leave you all to ruminate over that, because my ability to form intelligent words right now is drastically flagging at the moment.

Shells, and other things

The Symbolism of the Cowrie Shell

I visited the coast this weekend, trying to get away from some of the stress of home. Amidst the tacky, tourist-trap gift shops, one could find many stores selling a wide variety of seashells and other related things from the ocean. I developed an intense attraction and desire to pick up cowry shells, and ended up coming home with a whole big bag of them, mostly cypraea moneta and cypraea annulus. Now, I aware of the basic nature by which cowries were appreciated by the Egyptians, and I had planned on picking up a few for my practices. As it turns out, I find that cowries have so many other meanings, associations and uses–some of which I find rather synchronistic and fortuitous to parts of my current situation.

Ah, the interesting things in life.

In any case, I plan on updating a little more on my trip, because a close encounter with feral ponies has served to remind me of certain thoughts on totemism I wish to express. I’d also like to address some good points and some thoughts that a few others made in my last post at some point.

Magical Mutts and Paradigmal Pedigrees

Recently I was involved a bit in a discussion on different types of magic and learning styles–primarily those who learned through institutions of magical learning or other organized group, versus those who learned on their own. The whole discussion amused me greatly, but it also made me think.

To me, I see two sides of the issue. On the one hand, I see those who have learned under a particular tradition. They were probably part of a group, and learned through some sort of training or initiatory or grading process. They’ve received their “paradigmal pedigree” and have the paper trail to show it. On the other hand you have the “magical mutts”, those who have studied and learned on their own, with no formal training, and probably with no real involvement in any magical group.

The former side sees the latter as undisciplined, and probably not really practicing “true” magic. The latter sees the former as too stuffy and rigid and too caught within their particular rut or paradigm to grow further. Terms like “slave’s magic” and “hedge magic” are brought up. Either that or, I’ve seen instances where the mutts wished they had pedigrees–probably something to do with an insecurity of somesort maybe, as opposed to a desire to learn anything else on one’s own. And well, the ones with the pedigrees don’t like being accused of taking too narrow an approach with their magic, of course.

I simply sit, observe, and chuckle to myself at times when I encounter these sorts of exchanges. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen such discussions, even outright arguments (though the one I most recently witnessed didn’t qualify as an argument by any stretch) boil up before. I use dog metaphors when discussing this sort of thing because I think its an appropriate parallel, and well, it goes with my whole theme you see. As for me personally, well. I myself would classify as a magical mongrel (even an outright pariah* in some cases, based on some of my more ah, unconventional beliefs and practices).

You ask a bunch of dog owners, and you’ll get a bunch of different responses on wether or not a mutt or a purebred is the better dog to have. There are accounts where you can train a mutt just as easily to do a purebred’s job, and there are accounts where you can only rely on a specific conformation or behavior to get the job done. Sometimes the bloodline becomes too bottlenecked–old traditions too rigid and restricting–there is a need for new blood. In the end…really, it doesn’t matter to me wether you learned by yourself or you learned under a specific group, tradition, or system.

What I look for in a person is Knowledge, Will(ingness), and Intent. Whether you are a part of a tradition or forge one of your own, these things are important. A more appropriate saying is that it isn’t the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog. If a person goes about their magical work and play with full sincerity and willingness to learn and follow through, and the knowledge to back it all up–or the willingness to acquire said knowledge, then that’s the important thing. Discipline, in short. Anyone can have that, or gain it, or develop it on their own.

I’d have to say I have quite a bit of fight in me. I’m still fighting, and I don’t have any plans on stopping, either.

*Pariah: A mongrel feral dog that lives on the outskirts of civilization and is generally shunned. The Canaan Dog of Isreal is an example of a pariah dog that’s become a breed…now that would make for an interesting metaphor.

The Biology of Pokemon

The Biology of Pokemon

There are some postmodern magicians and occultists out who work with fictional sources, some might find the above link useful in their studies. It’s certainly interesting at least from an educational perspective, and of course for any plain old gamer geeks reading this (I’d count as more of the former though, than the latter).

The Thoughts of an Info-Hound

Getting high is information gathering, staying high is the result of transmuting information into living experience.

~Antero Alli, Angel Tech

This quote is oh, so true on so many levels. It’s one of the reasons why I have such an intense bibliophilia, and an intense love of gathering information in general. The sort of high I get when I discover something new, and then apply that sort of information, is in a way how I connect closely to Thoth/Djehuty, my Teacher and my Guide. A gnosis of word and thought and, blossoming from that, desire.

I think I’ll start making posts of inspirational quotes, or just ones I happen to dig.

Drive-by Coyote-musings

If Coyote taught me anything in my life, it’s to never be a specialist. Being a jack-of-all trades has its benefits, and it’s much easier to avoid stagnation and being stuck in a rut. Coyotes themselves aren’t specialists, they are immensely flexible creatures both genetically as well as socially and intellectually. They can function in small packs or large, or completely solitary. They can scavenge, they can hunt. They can adapt to almost any environment. The pressures put on them by humans and the ever-changing environment around them only seem to aid in their transformation. They are indeed a very alchemical creature.

There are advantages to being a specialist, just as there are advantages to being a jack-of-all-trades. Just compare a hunting coyote to a hunting jaguar (which, the two do share overlapping territories in South America and formerly states like Arizona and New Mexico) and you can see which one is the more specialized hunter. However, there are also advantages to adapting oneself in multiple areas at once–of the two animals, which one happens to be endangered, and which one thrives despite the pressures put upon it? I’m going to throw the breaks on this metaphor for now though, because it dances dangerously close to lauding one totem over another, which is certainly not my intention nor my focus.

Steering back on track, my focus here is that, as a totem, teacher and even godform, Coyote has taught me that it doesn’t benefit me to stay in ruts. This is especially true of my magical and shamanic practice. Sticking to the tenets of my primary totem, I always make sure to keep myself constantly flexible, so that I’m able to evolve and adapt my practice, and my mind, as often as possible.

Sacred Make-Believe

Lately I’ve been reading Patrick Dunn’s Magic, Power, Language, Symbol: A Magician’s Exploration of Linguistics, and it’s by far becoming one of my favorite books (my list of favorite books keeps getting longer, it seems). It’s given me quite a bit to chew over, and this isn’t going to be my last commentary on the book. But something he mentioned really stuck out with me, specifically as it relates to some of my earliest forms of magic-working which I initially referred to as “playing pretend with myself”, which I later augmented to a form of ritual-working or “sacred make-believe”. This technique he talks about is called derive and is mentioned in an article called ‘Beneath the Pavement, The Beast’, written by Stephen Grasso in Generation Hex. To quote Dunn:

Derive (pronounced approximately “duh-REEV”) was originally a way of integrating artistic sensibility with the environment, by deliberate derangement of the senses and drifting from locale to locale as if they were unfamiliar or alien.

Just recently I can recall doing something very similar to this, in my travels to Germany, were everything was unfamiliar to me in a very direct, literal sense as well. But, seeing as some of the specific places in Germany I was visiting had ancestral or symbolic ties, I also saw it as a very magical and very, hm…to take a page out of Patrick Harpur’s book, diamonic quality to it, in which multiple layers of awareness and multiple levels of existence were overlapping. This was especially apparent in my trip to Kassel-Wolfhagen, my ancestral hometown. Even the beginning plane-ride into the country, flying from west to east, and back again a month later from east to west, held for me very deeply symbolic connotations. Dunn goes on to say:

The practice of using derive for magic is not entirely in line with situationist principles, such as they were, but it does provide a means of regarding the world not as an alien piece of art but as an analogue to the astral plane.

This seemed to hit the nail right on the head with some of my previous practices, things that started out simply as pretending with oneself (something I did often, as I was a bit of a loner as a child–something that seemed to bother the adults more than it did me), and which I later became to call “sacred make-believe”, if for nothing else when I realized early on, at least subconsciously at first, that these sorts of “quests” or “missions” had very real impacts on the world around me. And still do. That said, I do like the term derive much better, and I get this funny sort of feeling when I realize how giddy it makes me when I find words to pin to things.

I’ve always enjoyed this more active role to astral-journeying, a way were one can interact on many different planes at once. Then again, I’ve always found myself a threshold-creature, never really keeping both feet in the same place at any one time.

Halloween Notes

Happy Halloween/Samhain to those who celebrate.

My plans for the day have been cut very short due to a bacterial-related illness, so I will be spending it home on antibiotics, and thinking about a few things.  October 31st leads us into November, a month of bringing in the harvest and gathering together, and remembering the dead.  It is also a time of slaughter, when food-animals are harvested, generally a community affair.  It, to me, really kind of brings the whole “remembering the dead”-thing to a new level, when you sit down to the table to enjoy the flesh of your favorite critter.  With our stockyards and factory farming and soulless killing procedures, you figure the older traditions probably operated with far more respect with the animals that were consumed than we do today.  There was a sense of community, of soul.  As postmodern pagans and magical folk, it would do us good to perhaps reflect on those old traditions, and figure out our own ways to inject soul back into some of our eating habits.

Tonight I’ll be reflecting on these and other things.  October was the month of my grandfather’s death, as well as the death of a beloved cat.  From now and throughout November, ancestors will be remembered, stories will be told, the dead of various forms will be remembered and honored.  I will also be working on a few magical projects, one of which involves a little experimental geomancy (or I should say, GEODEMANCY).  More on that later.