Pagan Tropers Unite!

That's so awesome

Yesterday I went to the beach and swished my glass shark tooth and Smoll Voyager Turtle in the seawater. I then found six dropped/forgotten pennies while sweeping at work. Hopefully it means "someone will finally pay me for one of my stories and once it starts making waves in the Asian-American writing world, I can quit my day-job."

Addition: I also found out that Haik is so involved with me and insistent on helping out with my emotional well-being because in his words, I "gave him a face." See, me taking the initiative in thinking up a god's appearance is quite different from the reverse, where various gods take the appearance of another creator's characters with the proper look/personality to help me associate with them better.

When I started writing The Crocodile God and gave Haik a very specific appearance of a crocodile-themed sleeve on one arm, dark skin, an Australian accent, and lots of muscles, I was partly basing that off an Australian-Samoan dancer called Dave Kuresa who I first saw in Te Vaka's music videos. (Dave clearly isn't Filipino and therefore doesn't have Filipino batok, plus he's actually pretty light-skinned, but "giant tattooed Polynesian" is still perfect for "precolonial Filipino sea-god.")

According to him and Macha, when someone "gives a face" to a spirit, it's a very personal connection and that's why 1) Haik switched so fast from "looks like Jason Momoa" to the appearance I wrote for him, and 2) he's so invested in my happiness that even the other gods/ancestors are telling him to cool down a little, because he's being REALLY INTENSE.

Tealdeer: Pretty sure I accidentally gave Haik a really easy springboard for manifestation, but I haven't met any hot Aussie-Polynesian men with a suspiciously detailed knowledge of Filipino culture yet, so updates on this are pending.

—
Other addition: Last month I bought "The Forgotten Children of Maui" by Lane Wilcken, which is a whole book about the Polynesian Maui-mythos hidden in plain sight in the Philippines. Various Maui-Expy deities/heroes/gods are "Bathala," "Aponitolau," "Dumalawi," "Awig," and "Lumawig." I already knew Bathala had some of Maui's feats, but seeing as I get along nicely with him, he pretty clearly lacks the "trickster" aspect of Maui.

Lumawig the Ilokano Maui came up to me last week, to much Death Glares from... everyone. Bathala wrangled him away and told him to talk to me later, since I don't have a good history with tricksters and Tagalogs don't get along well with Ilokanos, but before Lumawig was thrown out of my head-space in a fine imitation of Loki, he managed to blurt out that "Hey girl I know Tagalogs and Ilokanos don't get along very well but y'all were right next door and Tagalog-Maui is dead anyway!"

Bathala promptly explained that this is a REALLY bad word-choice, but he's also technically right. Still, "death" for a god is more like Only Mostly Dead or "the way a plant SEEMS to die, but the roots are still hidden underground" than a full-on Cessation of Existence.

One of the Pinoy gods will explain things more clearly when I stop going "MOTHERFUCKER, WHY IS LUMAWIG SUCH A DICK."

edited 15th Dec '17 12:14:20 PM by Sharysa

Just got my hands on a book at Santa Muerte, and while I have no intention of working with her ( I feel like that might be appropriative if only because I have no cultural connection to her ) I think My Dark Mother is using this book to teach me some things about OUR relationship. I need to set up an altar and find some nice idols that can serve as vessels for my spirit. It's so weird how you'll forget that something is important or why it's important until something will remind you.

The problem is that it's not easy to set up an altar and make use of it in a house full of scaredy-cat fundamentalist Christians. I have seen some interesting miniature altars online, but I don't know if that would work for me ; I suppose I should at least give it a try, since I don't have room for anything more than that.

As a necromancer, it only makes sense that I'd be interested in a death spirit

Don't worry about altars if your living situation isn't set up for it, man. All my god-stuff is in a box in my dresser right now, partly because my mom is Catholic and partly because I share a room and everything's crowded already.

Also, updates on the book or Santa Muerte experiences are welcome. <3

Santa Muerte is a folk saint with a rapidly-growing following, a feminine death spirit who may have been an ancient Aztec goddess. She rules over everything that dies and everything that decays, so literally every aspect of life falls under her domain; she's totally amoral and doesn't care if what you're asking for is immoral, which has made her a hit with the cartels. She isn't the least bit picky about who venerates / works with her or even how they do it; she has no orthodoxy - idol and icon veneration is central to the most common expressions of her cultus.

So, I have been researching concepts of Evil for so many months...because for the past couple of years such a metonymic otherworldly force does not seem up for being quietly ignored.

And I previously wondered what the difference then is between people projecting their own Jung-Psychology Shadow on a person (to call that person "inhumane" then not only robs a person of humanity like that's not nice, but more substantively elevates them to a sort of evil godhood: they have become "inhuman" and therefore defaults to Other or otherworldly; divine and godly)—versus noticing that a person has been overtaken by a divine force that, if acting out in a human life, is inappropriate when that "divine" force doesn't know or care how to People in large part because it's divine...unlike gods that, you know, for hospitableness will do A Form You Are Comfortable With thing.) But it looked to me as though it could be the same thing. Disclaimer: this is largely Marie von Franz' fairy tale and folklore analysis.

I got around to reading Meeting the Shadow, a collection of essays about the nature of evil in psychology and society—oh hey Audre Lorde is a contributor!

And I found (in another essay, not Lorde's) the reminder that the psychological Shadow is often antagonistic but never evil—because the Shadow is honest. The ego lies. As necessary as the ego is to have some core integrity—despite what a lot of new agers put out, the ego is healthy and necessary...but it lies. That egoistic lying creates Shadows. It's the lie, then, that's truly evil.

And it clicked, that that's what distinguishes carrying a societal projection from demonic or divine possession: Where is the lie?

Sorry if that was obvious to anyone reading, but it was an epiphany to me. Also noting that these are sort of kind of secular authors...so, lying being definitive of evil may be a cultural consequence of Christian influence. Scott M. Peck wrote about evil being a killer of the spirit and joy in life, but the book by him that I am drawing from is People of the Lie, not People of the Kill. Many pagan religions have tricksters treated as valuable and clever and get stuff done or cut down what very well should have fallen, and surely among fairies it's possible that every word is true but it's still dishonest to tell or frame a truth like that (if that makes any sense). It can still accomplish the most malignant things.

So I'll just put a pin on that. Alas, I still haven't finished Eichmann in Jerusalem and a coworker borrowed my copy of Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales.

Edit to Add that but most of everyone I'm reading says that an individual can't do much against collective evil. Beww! I'm interested in Stephen Aizenstat's Dream Tending because it has a chapter on Archetypal Activism.

edited 17th Dec '17 7:10:40 PM by Faemon

Archetypal activism?

Sorry for the late reply. The World's Dream, type of thing—supposed to be working with the collective subconscious, but because most of the recommended work is asking the dream "who are you?" and not "what does this dream mean?" (Because finding or rather calculating meaning is too 'awake' an activity; Aizenstat's work with dreamy meets dreams and develops dreams on the standard or level of...well...dreams.)

So, someone might be depressed for no logically discernable reason, but if a body of water is being reclaimed or something and the dream of the pond is sad about it, then that can be a calling to do something in waking life for the sake of a dreaming being whose dreams aren't strictly one's own.

Not exactly what I was looking for, as its turns out, but still a generally interesting read.

I think we have very similar ideas but use words differently. When I've visited your wordpress, I've agreed with many of your positions but I would have used different language. In this instance, I would use "perception" in place of "dream" because for me the word dream has the immediate association with sleep, and I don't necessarily think these are sleeping things. I think we're sharing perceptions with these minds, some of which are what we might call primitive because they are more feeling than thinking minds.

Perception is definitely a better word for it. Stephen Aizenstat's Dream Tending chronicles a way to go from dreams (because, I guess, that's the most inevitable state of mind to get into that the waking mind won't get in the way of the numinous?) to...yes, that all: waking perceptions, offerings and rituals to physically enact, and building a "council" of dream characters th—that's a pantheon, Stephen, that's a spiritworker's pantheon! Perfectly functional word right there. But yeah of course I get why he uses those words, with the depth psychology origins, then everything will be influenced by the predecessors in that field or discipline and the rest would be what's commonplace. I just think it's fun that it (to me) ended up describing, well, pagan spiritwork but not by that name.

It also began with an exercise to find the Archetypal Ego and after a while of reading it I was like...gnosis, that's what chaotes call gnosis. Archetypal Ego is like five whole syllables more. (But eh, it might grow on me!)

There's an interesting wordpress for egyptian mythology:

https://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/

Some factz:

- Anubis was associated with lanterns.

- Kek run a slaughterhouse for Apep.

- Apep is Ra's umbilical cord.

- Horus had a female counter part that gave birth to Thoth's baboon miscarried mutant form.

That blog is fascinating. I always knew the basics of Egyptian mythology, but I'll definitely save it for reading.

Also, bah for sickness. So I've been sick on and off, for the past few days now (got a cough last week, and then got a fever while RECOVERING from the cough) and yesterday I decided to take a full day for overtime + holiday pay, instead of my scheduled half-day.

See, I don't have insurance, so when I got the cough, I could only take three days off with sick pay, and if I'd gotten a doctor's note for the rest of the week, it would cost almost all of my paycheck and then I wouldn't have gotten paid for the rest of the week I'd get off.

And now I keep getting little bouts of dizziness. Or my favorite, "FUCK I'M ABOUT TO FALL OVER! EVEN THOUGH I ONLY TURNED MY HEAD SLIGHTLY FASTER THAN NORMAL OR BENT DOWN TO PICK SOMETHING UP."

I'm not PHYSICALLY that tired, but I know it's because my immune system is mad at me for not wanting to put in the recovery time. (Or rather that I can't AFFORD to put in the recovery time.)

There was an interesting update on New Year's Day, though: Haik and I were talking about the complicated nature of our relationship (yay to Filipino ties and godspousery, but no to my colonization issues and depression) and how I'm constantly going back and forth on the issue of "Is this a total godspouse matter where we openly acknowledge each other as mortal/god spouses, or is it like my thing with Dionysus, where he steps in on certain issues and otherwise stays back?"

Which is the entire problem because, well, I'm Filipino all the time and not just on bad or good days such as with depression, so godspousery with a Filipino deity would naturally take up most aspects of my life and that shit scares me.

So Haik assured me that while I might SEEM commitment-phobic on the outside, he's neither surprised nor worried because apparently he deals with the struggles of decolonizing Filipinos a lot (thanks, conquistadors). He said, "You feel like you want this relationship right now. Maybe it's forever, maybe it's not. But you are not lying to me. If your feelings change later on, that's okay."

And then Seer-Dionysus just steps in going "NO. Do not sever yourselves out of fear." He repeats it two or three times, with growing volume, and we're just going "What the fuck, Dionysus, what's wrong???"

But he doesn't hear us, so he only changes his shrieking to "THE BOND IS MADE! IT CANNOT BE UNMADE!" He just kept repeating it over and over for a couple of minutes at the top of his lungs, and then he devolved into some kind of ecstatic howling and screaming, which freaked me the fuck out.

It's even weirder than his usual seer episodes, because not only did he barge in on a private talk between me and Haik, his voice was REALLY FUCKING GODLY with no trace of Anakin Skywalker anymore. Like, you know how the Greek gods' true forms make mortals die on sight? Dionysus' real voice hurts when I hear it, and his god-prophecy to me and Haik felt like someone was twisting screws in my ears.

Tui arrived while I was hiding behind Haik, and he assured me that Dionysus is just making a prophecy and he's not going to hurt me, no matter how weird and loud he's being, but he will be here as a human buffer because he knows I'm small and the gods are big. (Tui is pretty Adorkable when he's not sad about colonization. Recently he's started to call me anak^note a Tagalog term of endearment for kids, literally means "baby/child" despite not being Filipino himself, solely because he likes hearing me chuckle about it.)

So Tui was right because in a few minutes, Dionysus calmed down and promised to talk to me about it when I'm 1) less freaked out, and 2) healthy again. So, probably in a few days.

The only upside is that 2018 can get a lot better than being constantly sick.

Slightly better news: I've been anointing my glass shark-tooth and the Smoll Voyager turtle in the ocean about once a week, and I feel like SOMETHING is happening since I get a big energy-shiver from doing it. Also planning to quit my job soon, because between "dozens of customers with unknown health states" and "going out in the rain/cold," I don't think staying too long is good for me OR the store if I'm sick every other week in the winter.

Especially since I don't have insurance, so getting a doctor's note will cost a week's paycheck ON TOP of the money I lose from not working.

For help with the quit-my-job/find-a-new-job transition, I asked the gods to land me one of the jobs at the places I've scoped out (by anointing Ganesh's statuette and Brighid's crosses with jasmine oil). I also asked the Ocean for help on my most recent "anoint my ocean trinkets with seawater" trip.

That's awful. I remember how much you wanted to not be unemployed, but if they overwork you and it costs what you make to recover from a one-two punch of sicknesses...maybe it's A Sign. If only a Sign were a security net or solution! Because not having money still sucks.

Indigenous Rights Australia

The 26th of January in Australia commemorates the arrival of British ships whose governor stuck a flag in the ground. People more considerate of the Aborigines perspective of that event would like to celebrate some other day to be proud of Australia.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price...doesn't get it, and has been making some noise that sounds to me like she doesn't get it. I get why she doesn't get it, I notice that she sees it as focusing efforts and attention to something symbolic that doesn't convert to actually improving the lives of Aborigines in any practical way.

And I think the hostile pushback is only validating her view that hashtag to Change The Date is run by privileged people who want to show off their concern far more than they want to effectively improve lives in any practical way. And who don't want to humble themselves to listen to any other perspective. And who want to silence any threat to a collective savior complex.

The issue reminds me of an American who posted something like, cultural appropriation makes up 2% of their problems in life or less—the reservation they live on has not had clean running water for years.

But if the concern is that...all that passion, effort, and time out of the lives of activists are not going to something practical—that instead it gets invested in symbolic cultural criticism...

Lookit, I don't believe that's quite how it works, it's not going to work to say that, oh, all the problems with That Bloody Day being Australia Day is imaginary and so advocacy for that should stop so everyone can do something else that's real...but I understand the frustration, and maybe it is worth saying to get halfway-woke symbolic/cultural activists radicalized towards active activism.

But...I believe that the feeling of being a product of everybody else's imagination comes from being marginalized, and means that there is a presence in imagination that is better leveraged than stymied.

It's one of those times I feel moved to say, Connection Not Competition. It could have been a case of, "Hey friends of this cause, while you're rallying and protesting in the streets to Change The Date, don't forget to also lend a hand or donate to—!"

But no. And I understand why no, but this...is not the way...

Philippine Folklore: This Is Also Not The Way

For a while too uneventful to mention, I had decided to try working with the presently un-Google-able tegbusaw, spirit guides of warriors in the society of Manobo people from Agusan del Sur, eat liver and blood, possess the bodies of warriors...my anthropologist roommate mentioned ritual wrapping ropes around one's own wrists to channel these, and in some places these tegbusaw-possessed warriors were traditionally called some variant of "amok" as in running amok...but that latter is Dothraki Citation, so, must needs more research. (The name of these beings, I read from Florencia, a baylan informant in Grace Nono's Song of the Babaylan.)

Culture's weird. It's great to sit in my roommate's archaeology classes and look at carvings of boats the same traditional design as ours (ours, I say! Ouuourrsss...) on some cave in far-off Hawaii, and go, "Oh, hey! Cultural cousins!" But the tegbusaw of the people of Right Over There They're Like Right There...still are not the spirits of my people, the tribe of Thoroughly Colonized Metropolitan Middle-Class.

It isn't even like that hallucinatory sleep paralysis episode back in 2006 where I thought I saw my sophomore English teacher in the room but without...without the face...and six years later I read about nopperabo on the internet and sporfled my drink. (Dangblasted ethereal tourists!)

This was more in the vein of, I know I have anger issues, and made a conscious, deliberate decision to personify it and dissociate from it. This in hopes that will grant enough distance to understand/process rather than be possessed by anger.

I would hope it's also pop culture here by now in the possible cognate Talagbusao, the Bukidnon god of war (as documented in The Soul Book: Introduction to Philippine Pagan Religion by Francisco R. Demetrio, Gilda Fernando, and N. Zialcita...later adapted for a storybook antagonist in the comic book adventures of occult detective Alexandra Trese.)

Anyway, I tried to talk with my consciously deliberately designated tegbusaw again earlier this week. This time, I saw something odd in my mind's eye that doesn't actually have anything to do with the awkward angst of postcolonial personhood.

It was an invisible glowing yellow-red welt in my body, and something writhing and inky inside that reminded me of something I'd read in The Year 1000 about ink-making. Ink used to come from oaks that wasps laid eggs in.

So...if I feels analyzed it, there's a pain there covered with anger—which, duh, can the pain just out and show itself already so I can hug myself and get over this already? Grr, my own anger makes me so angry...

But yeah. I metaphorically-maybe-metaphysically...have The Gall to be angry.

Anyway, not a tegbusaw or Talagbusao. That can be a relief!

Founder of Ár nDraíocht Féin posthumously accused of sexual violence. Content warning for the rest of this post.

That's...Isaac Bonewits of the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame.

A friend of mine in that organization hopes that current management will divorce themselves entirely from desires to keep up "Isaac's vision" for the community, laud the accuser for her bravery in speaking up, and form this organization as committed to anti-abuse activism among pagans. Because alternative religions have a rape culture problem. And mainstream religions. And mainstream secular entertainment industry. And secular culture.

I've been re-reading the essay "The Demonic Side of Sexuality" by Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig. It clings too much I think to Oedipal/Electra complexes from the Freudian school of thought, ignoring the history of the Electra Complex as a response to social pressure to normalize what sounds like an epidemic of parental sexual abuse among, well, patients who couldn't cope well with the rest of life and became Freud's patients. But as the essayist puts it, "All attempts to render (sex) completely harmless and to present it as something 'completely natural' flounder and fail (...) What does it mean for psychology that sexuality always has something sinister about it, even today when we believe that we have liberated ourselves from this attitude?"

The essayist's conclusion is that sexuality is numinous and sacred, like some grand divine force inherently corrupted by being present among mere mortals. "Sexuality offers us symbols for all aspects of individuation (...fill this blank with horrible examples...) Nowhere is the union of all the opposites, the unio mystica, the mysterium coniunctionis, more impressively expressed than in the language of eroticism."

Hmph. Fight this essayist who can't even hear me. IMAO Consent is sacred. Liminal transformation is sacred. Sexuality is just one of all "impressive" expressions of power, power-within, a dynamic mutuality...and power-over, when it's abused.

I also wish that A Sign was "here's five million dollars from the lottery, a benevolent rich person, or a mysterious duffel bag lying around, go give your two weeks' notice." Sigh. To be honest, it's been lurking in the back of my head that I should quit ever since the bakery tried to foist the job of "unloading delivery pallets alone" onto my 110-pound self, but I really wanted a steady income.

At least I'm signing up for a women-of-color open mic later this month. So while I'm sorting out job and laptop issues, I have art to look forward too.

—
The insistence on wishy-washy "SEX IS MAGICAL AND GORGEOUS!!!!11122@" thinking just seems really naive to me.

I mean, sex is extremely important and it's logically taken on a huge role in culture/religion/magic, but at the same time it's messy and weird, there's no getting around it. Like how a lot of people think "spiritual awakening" is all rainbows and nirvana, without any kind of "crapcrapcrap am I going crazy? No? BUT I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING CRAZY."

edited 10th Jan '18 10:39:28 PM by Sharysa

I've decided to start looking for a cute lil prayer rug to use as a portable altar, prayer beads to make meditation and all that junk easier, and idols and icons up the wazoo because I need to externalize my spirits but create suitable vessels for them so they'll have anchors in my physical reality. I also wanna start using my tarot decks to externalize our communications because I sometimes have difficult distinguishing my thoughts from their input and I really don't need that kind of self-doubt.

Yay, altars. Good luck finding neat statues and prayer rugs.

Bruh

You know how lately, I tend to talk to the Ocean about stuff I need help with?

Today the Ocean talked back, and it was very reassuring.

I don't know if it's a guy or girl though.

Welp, Ocean is a man made of seawater. And I had a hard time telling if his voice was male or female because while he is masculine-bodied, he doesn't identify as male ALL the time because the sea has no genitalia, after all. He sometimes corrects me to use "they" pronouns when he's not in the mood to be a dude.

According to Ocean, "I am who you need." As in, "I am of the gender you need."

Was not expecting that.

edited 29th Jan '18 1:13:21 PM by Sharysa

Spirits stay gender-fuckin' lol

My Dark Mother has a decidedly masculine aspect that I briefly interacted with when we first established contact but I needed to approach her as a feminine being so I wouldn't sexualize her the way I do almost all masculine spirits lol

I always say spirits are personality-shifters rather than shape-shifters because they don't just look and sound different, they BECOME different at times. It's somewhat akin to that faux Wiccan notion that all deities are facets of one Divinity.

Hello again, I was here a few pages back and seem to specialize in drive-bys.

Have any of you read "The Velveteen Rabbit"?

I ask because I wonder if anyone else has had interesting dream(s) about their toys and what constitutes Reality.

I cleaned my room back in December and finally decided it was time to throw away my old Barbies.

I had mangled the poor gals in my younger years, trying to make their hair and clothes fashionable.

I spoke to them before I put the pair in the trash bag, saying something like "I'm sorry, but I think no one else is going to play with you."

A month later or so, I saw them in a dream, but how they originally were, not the sorry state I had reduced them to. One wore her beautiful purple princess dress and her hair was as long as it should have been and the other was wearing her 80's gym clothes and looking fabulous, big hair and all.

It was not a memory because they were standing on their own with no one manipulating them.

They didn't talk to me or anything, but me seeing them look like that again was fun.

I'm thinking maybe they are now in the Toy version of Heaven and forgave me for throwing them out.

I haven't seen them again, but I don't think I need to.

It's things like this that make me think about spirits.

[TL;DR: Did some cleaning, threw out old dolls, they appear to me in a dream later in their original state. Wondering if anyone else has had dreams about old toys becoming Real.]

I know nothing of them but some kind of unstoppable spiritual force is giving me revelations and telling me to go to groves of trees and shout them awake.

The more I go to churches, the more I read the bible , the more I find Paganism taking over.

I haven't read The Velveteen Rabbit myself, but the premise of Love Imbues Life is a very old one, and the "toys are alive" idea gels pretty nicely with animism in general.

Personally, I don't feel like your dolls thought what you did was "mangling"—there's a Toy Story scene where we get to see the toys play with Andy from their point-of-view, and it's an exciting Western movie full of gunfights and action. Your dolls probably figured they were "acting" in different roles.

Yay for paganism. Come join us, we have lots of conversations with deities/spirits.

edited 11th Feb '18 12:38:45 PM by Sharysa

Relevant given the context:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079SSP8X2

DOES THIS MEAN WE GET A LATINO PAGAN WHO DOESN'T DO SANTERIA???