I had a dream of the green man the other night... its a classic image the green man being driven out of a village out of fear of his wildness by the people... it was a sad scene...
it makes me wonder about deforestation, habitat loss, the destroying of large areas of land to create housing developments.
People do not build or create their communities with nature or with any mindfulness to the wild... natural communities, wild communities of other-than-human-persons are destroyed to make room for homo-domesticus. The green man is most definitely driven out of these areas.
I was also thinking of a faun that comes and enters into my body from time to time... it often feels that Cernunnos, the green man and the faun share a common ethereal body manifesting as either or depending on what is needed of them. The faun was of a large wild wooded area near my home I had given offerings to him and asked for him to share space with me so I could learn from him... and he did... it was an amazing process... at any rate his level of mischievousness was intense... bordering on a sick sense of humor, and a wrathful sense of justice. What made this faun sick? The forest was nothing compared to the size it used to be that he was one with. The level of respect payed there was higher then most however trash was to be found all over. The forest itself was chopped up into islands with pavement roads and developments tearing it apart.
The other night my grrrrl friend pointed out how dangerous and mischievous forest spirits can be, I know to well how much this is so... and she pointed out how much more mischievous and dangerous they are when threatened, we discussed how important it is to make them our allies if possible, to be wild and a part of the forest again in our communities and ways of life.
I look at the forests destroyed by housing developments and i see that none of it is necessary at all! That its all poor planning and life style decisions as well as ecological and social apathy brought about and perpetuated by those first colonized European Christan's driving the green man from the village.
How can we invite the green man back into our communities again? What offering and ritual action is needed to invoke him into our communities? What will bring the faun back to health, to make him seem less of a demon to those who see him as such out of ignorance? How can we honor the horned god where we live?
We can start by looking at how we consume the bounty of nature, how we live our lives daily, where we get our food. We can invite the green man back into our village by including the wild into the village again. Creating bio-swales instead of draining street water into the sewer system, creating green roofs on our houses, building with natural materials like cob, straw bale, and renewable resources, getting rid of pavement and the need for mass transit by re-designing our communities around COMMUNITY, so we can walk to all the places we need to go. Or we can create our own villages as a permacultured part of the wild forest... human beings have the ability to actually aid ecosystems with their presence as well as bio-remediate the areas that have been damaged. What would the psyche of a people be like if they lived not in civilization but in and with the wild again, not beside it but a part of it?
The joy of the green man and the growth and balance of his dancing feet would be in our hearts, the masculine stereotypes and gender roles would change and no longer would men be seen as symbols of oppression. Art and beauty would be just another natural expression like a birds song, simple and humble and to be found in the artifacts we create for daily living.
To invoke these beings of nature, these spirits and powers the ritual is a change in the way we live our lives. The new magical training is skill building in eco-design, whole systems design, permaculture, renewable resources, sustainability, and alternative energy. The circle that is cast is the recognition of our interdependence, and the chants are the affirmations and oaths that we will change the way we live and no longer participate in this driving of the green man from our village. We invite him back and give offerings to him, by create the pace for him to exist in our village and in our actions.
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Sunday, March 16, 2008
greening the village
Monday, December 10, 2007
Animism Americana
I have long struggled with the conflict between the imperialism of my European heritage and the need to reconcile with a foreign land. the truth is that our DNA is a construct of thousands of ancestors before us who walked upon the land. For Native people this land is the same land their people have inhabited for thousands of years, which gives them an inherent intimate relationship with it. Those of us of colonial ancestors have a different dynamic to deal with, in that our genetics may not be of the land, but our experiences and culture is. We are the accumulation of personal experience, ethnic experience, of not only our ancestors but the living we interact with on a daily basis. We are more a result of our culture then our DNA.
This is where new animism diverges from the attitudes of modern paganism. The ancient culture simply do not exist, and the are brutal aspects of it that are no longer applicable. Animism is the base for all human expression, and it is buried in the mythology of our genetic ancestors, whether it is the Celts, Germans, Norse, Slavs. Romans, or Greeks, Africans, or Chinese. Animism is preserved to be rediscovered by the new animist. One has to be mindful that culture context these mythologies were persevered in, no longer exists but gives us valuable information on HOW to develop an animist model that is distinct to all that we are. Many look at the old myths and think "this is what we do and believe to express earth religion" - the animist sees in them "this is how the ancient came to their conclusions and world view, and this is how we can find a unique world view that reconciles our genetics and culture with the land we inhabit." This may seem a subtle to some but it is a very fundamental difference between the modern pagan and the new animist; However, a modern pagan can be a new animist.
There is a theory that there was a trans-generational historical trauma the Indo-European descendants have felt for thousands of years, in which they inflict upon others through the process of colonialization. New Animism and Bio-Regional Animism signifies a major step in healing the scars of this trauma.
Americana is a term used to describe the accumulation of many interconnecting and colliding cultures that has built the greater American culture. It is a broad sense of American ethnicity and incorporates many attributing influences; the African-American Slave Culture, the Latino Culture, the Creol Culture, the Native American Cultures, the New England Culture, the South west Culture, the Midwest Culture, the Appalachia Culture, The Pacific Northwest Culture, the French-Canadian Culture. Americana is expressed differently in different , and is the unique ethnicity of a given location, that was given by the combination of the land, the natives, and the incoming colonialists and slave cultures.
The Americana of the Appalachia country gave rise to the expression of Bluegrass; it is a combination of Irish and Scottish settlement with African Slave culture and Native American tribes of the region. The Northwest is a Collision of the Fur Trapping Cultures of the Russians, French, and English; the exploration cultures; the Gold Rush and Land Rush that brought Swedish, Irish, and Scottish; the Chinese rail workers; and the Plateau and Pacific Coastal Native cultures; all of this is Northwest Americana.
Instead of looking so much into the genetics of our heritage we should look at the ethnic identity of the Bio-Regions of North America as much as their Ecological Identity. Animism Americana places the expressions of these Americana Cultures into an Animist framework that is informed by, but not restricted to, our genetic ancestry. The end result is not going to be Celtic Animism or Norse Animism, or Slavic Animism, which can only exist within those cultures that most Americans have little to no involvement with. Instead, what we have is Northwest Animism Americana, Appalachia Animism Americana, Creole Animism Americana (etc. . ). Animism Americana implies along side ecological bio-regional identity, that ethnic identity of North American Bio-Regions be placed into a spiritual animist context.
Monday, October 8, 2007
This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY!
In honor of
A(lfred) Irving Hallowell
(source)
Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al.
October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask?
A day of respect, or DOR DAY!
OK... so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice... I guess it depends on you!
But here is the idea...
Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too...
by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens.
It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc... but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were!
This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones...deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place... its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect... communication, acknowledgment, and celebration!
Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well... hmmm....), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists.
Have a Happy DOR DAY!
Thanks Irving for opening a Door...
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Building your body from the land up...
From wellnessadvocate.com
The frequency at which these cells are replaced differs in various types of bodily tissues. Some tissues regenerate very quickly and some take years. Except for our brain and certain parts of the nervous system, we actually regenerate a new body every seven years. Most of our cells are replaced within that time.
When you were seven years old, you had a very different body from when you were first born. When you were fourteen, you were in another new body. Hormones influenced you and helped you to grow taller and more like a young adult than a child. By the time you were 21 you were in an adult body. This body was totally different from the one you were born with or the one you will have when you are 70 years old.
Just as hormones influence the changes in your body, so does everything else that you do. Foods that you eat are the materials that form the body's building blocks. When you eat an unhealthy food you are affecting more than your waistline. You are having an effect on the health of the new body that you will have seven years from now. Every time you exercise you are increasing your potential for a stronger body in the future. Each time you smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of alcohol or take a harmful drug you are poisoning your body and increasing your chances of developing diseased cells. Excess stress can prevent the cells from forming perfectly. The life force is continually regenerating you and you can directly influence your health and the body that you have in the future. By incorporating certain wellness practices you can get your body to build stronger, healthier cells as it replaces the old ones.
When your body regenerates new cells do you want them to be healthy cells or diseased cells? Your actions can make the difference! You have the power to create illness or health in your own body. With active prevention you take action to encourage your body to be healthy. There are many techniques for this such as proper nutrition, regular exercise, fresh air and sunshine and abstaining from poisons such as alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Anti-stress techniques such as deep breathing and meditation can also create wellness in your body and can help you to ward off disease."
To read more on this subject please read this article from the New Scientist.
" Our cells are literally flushed out, and rebuilt with new cells.
Depending on what source you read (from Dr. Deepak Chopra, MD to Gray’s Anatomy), our body replace its tissues and cells every 1 to 7 years.
- Muscles get replaced every 6 months to 3 years
- The pancreas replaces every 5-12 months
- Our bones replace every 8 months to 4 years
- Red blood cells replace every 90-120 days
- The intestinal lining replaces every 5-30 days
Realize, we have been doing this regeneration every day since the day we were first conceived."
This topic has been a source of inspiration for me for a long time...
When you look at this information and you look at the fact that you literally are what you eat, then the perception that if one was to move to a new bioregion or ecoregion then one would literally be composed of this ecoregion within a seven year period.
We are composed of our ecoregions and bioregions... our cells are designed by place, even our DNA is composed of the foods we eat.
Eating bioregionaly helps to adapt one to ones bioregion, because you are literally building your body out of it. Feeding your children a bioregional diet also helps with this process...
So much of the foods we eat are from other places this is such an ecologically and socially destructive practice, but it also confuses our very being! One example... Eating local Bee pollen can help one defend against pollen allergies... but only if the Bee pollen is from local bees.
If one only wanted to look at this from a purely metaphorical level, just knowing that you are composed of the foods from the bioregion you live as a part of... just looking at your own body would help remind you that you are one with the land and sky and waters of your land. The actual act of obtaining food bioregionaly to build your body from the land up actually facilitates the maintaining and developing of relationships, which as we all know is the basis of animist ontology.
Eating locally also helps us reconcile our sense of not belong to a place of not being native to place, as well as our sense of loss as to a identity based on regionality, and BEING native to place. If we know that our body is composed of the land helps to foster being native again, just knowing that our cells die and are reborn only to be built from what we put in it, puts a new spin on the word native, which in its most literal definition means to be born of a place... to be of a place, or to be from a place... and if one is eating foods from ones life place and ones cells are deign and being reborn... after seven years of living in a place you are that place... literally!
You really are what you EAT, and if you eat Bioregionaly, go our side look around and say to your self with pride, I AM THAT! I am the land talking and thinking and reading this about its self right now! How wondrous!
The simple act of eating can facilitate a ecological sense of self and identity based on place... to me this breaks down concepts of race, ethnicity, cultural identity and brings it down to the earth...LITERALLY! And is a basis for bioregional animist based identity and cultural.
So become a localvour! Think globally eat locally!
Animist Manifesto
All that exists lives
All that lives is worthy of respect
You don’t have to like what you respect
Not liking someone is no reason for not respecting them
Respecting someone is no reason for not eating them
Reasons are best worked out in relationship – especially if you are looking for reasons to eat someone – or if you are looking for reasons not to be eaten
If you agree that all that exists is alive and worthy of respect, it is best to talk about ‘persons’ or ‘people’ rather than ‘beings’ or ‘spirits’, let alone ‘biomechanisms’, ‘resources’, ‘possessions’, and ‘things’
The world is full of persons (people if you prefer), but few of them are human
The world is full of other-than-human persons
The world is full of other-than-oak persons
The world is full of other-than-hedgehog persons
The world is full of other-than-salmon persons
The world is full of other-than-kingfisher persons
The world is full of other-than-rock persons…
‘Other-than’ has at least three references:
it reminds us that we are persons in relationship with others,
it reminds us that many of our closest kin are human, while the closest kin of oaks are oaks, so we talk most easily with humans while rocks talk most easily with other rocks…
it reminds us to speak first of what we know best (those closest to us)
Make that four references:
it reminds us to celebrate difference as an opportunity to expand our relationships rather than seeing it as a cause of conflict or conquest
All life is relational and we should not collapse our intimate alterities into identities
Others and otherness keep us open to change, open to becoming, never finally fixed in being
Alterities resist entropy and encourage creativity through rationality, sociality (or, as William Blake said, ‘enmity is true friendship’)
Animism is neither monist nor dualist, it is only just beginning when you get beyond counting one, two… At its best it is thoroughly, gloriously, unashamedly, rampantly pluralist
Respect means being cautious and constructive
It is cautiously approaching others — and our own wishes,
It is constructing relationships, constructing opportunities to talk, to relate, to listen, to spend time in the face-to-face presence and company of others
It is taking care of, caring for, caring about, being careful about…
It can be shown by leaving alone and by giving gifts
believers in ‘human rights’, for example, demonstrate their belief in rights not only by supporting legislation to protect individuals from states, companies and majorities, but by not insisting on hogging the whole road or pavement, not insisting on another human getting out of the way on a busy street…
You don’t have to hug every tree to show them respect but you might have to let trees grow where they will—you might have to move your telephone lines or greenhouse
You might have to build that road away from that rock or that tree
Hugging trees that you don’t know may be rude – try introducing yourself first
Just because the world and the cosmos is full of life does not make it a nice and easy place to live. Lots of persons are quite unfriendly to others. Many see us as a good dinner. They might respect us as they eat us. Or they may need education. Like us, they might learn best in relationship with others who show respect even to those they don’t like, and especially to those they like the taste of.
Although evolution has no aim, life is not pointless. The purpose of life is to be good people — and good humans or good rocks or good badgers. What we have to find out is what ‘good’ means where we are, when we are, with whom we are, and so on. It is certainly wrapped up with the word ‘respect’ and all the acts that implies.
Since all that exists lives—and since all that lives is, in some senses, to some degree, conscious, communicative and relational—and since many of the persons with whom we humans share this planet have a far better idea of what’s going on than we do—we can now stop all the silliness about being the pinnacle of creation, the highest achievement of evolution, the self-consciousness of the world or cosmos… We’re just part of the whole living community and we’ve got a lot to learn. Our job isn’t to save the planet, or speak for the animals, or evolve towards higher states. Many other-than-human people are already happily self-aware, thank you very much, and if we paid attention we might learn a few things ourselves. By the way, we’re probably not alone in mistaking ourselves for the most important people in the world: hedgehogs probably think they are (but they’re spiky flea-ridden beasts so why believe them?!).
Um, when I said that ‘all that exists lives’, I’m not sure about plastic bags.
But I am certain that we should not treat objects as mere resources, somehow available or even given to us, or humanity, to use as we will or wish.
The same goes for words like ‘substances’, especially those that exist within plant and fungal persons. There are substances, but they aren’t ours until they are given, gifted to us. And then we’d better find out why we’ve been given whatever gifts we get. And we’d better ask how those gifts might be best used (whether its for pleasure, power, wisdom or whatever). This is especially true if the plant or mushroom person who offers us the gift substance has to lose their life in the process.
Maybe sometimes the mushrooms just want to help us join in the big conversation that’s going on all around us. But not all rocks, fish, plants, fungi, birds, animals or humans want to talk with us:
Sometimes they want to be quiet
Sometimes they want to be rude
Sometimes they have other concerns
Sometimes they don’t understand
Sometimes we don’t speak the language
Sometimes we don’t know the appropriate gift
The precise and proper way to show respect depends where you are, who you are, who you are respecting and what they expect. Gifts, like swords and words, have more than one side. Alcohol is a gift in one place, a poison somewhere else. Handshakes are friendly in one place, shows of strength elsewhere. Kissing is respectful to some people, an assault on others. Respectful etiquette is hard work but its reward is fuller participation in a large and exciting community of life.
Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking for us
Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking to us
Animism is just over the bridge that closes the Cartesian gap by knowing how to answer the question, What is your favourite colour? Perhaps it is the bridge. Perhaps there is no gap and animists are people who refuse to collude with the illusion
Animism is often discovered by sitting beneath trees, on hills, in rivers, with hedgehogs, beside fires… Animism is better communicated in trickster tales, soulful songs, powerful poems, rousing rituals, and/or elemental etiquette than in manifestos.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Reconciliation
Then they began to encroach on other indo-European territory and subjugating those Indo-European cultures with their own. We see this with the expansion of Russia, into Eastern Europe, the Germanic invasion into Celtic territory and most prominent in our historical awareness are the Greeks, then the Romans. Not only that these Indo-European cultures amalgamated, through many methods of expansion into Europe itself. Little is known about the alpine races of Europe that pre-dated the explosion of Celtic and Germanic migrations.
In more modern history the age of exploration saw the Spanish, Dutch, and English expand great territories around the world. Somewhere in-between all of this, these cultures lost their own Bio-Regional identities with the state religion of Rome, later superseded by the expansion of Christianity. Christianity being of Semitic origin in the Middle East beginning as a faction of Judaism. At large the Indo-European had adopted a foreign mythos with stories centered around middle-eastern Bio-Regions and introducing the concept of Monotheism (one god/divine force of an anthropmophic figure over all creation) severing the Indo-European expression even further from Bio-Regional awareness and subjugating nature to natural resources to be consumed to fuel the economic and religious expansion into distant lands.
Not a single part of the world can claim to be untouched by this expansion. The expansion saw the subjugation of many first peoples and their animist perspectives to the authority of the European world view which belonged to the Europeans as much as it did these first people. This expansion spread plague and deceases desecrating many populations and obliterating entire civilizations, along side large scale economic exploitation of the remaining populations which is still going on today.
As an American of European heritage this is a very hard history to swallow and digest. Not that this kind of history cannot be found in China, and the Muslim expansion in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Or with the genocides between tribal civilizations in today’s world. But it is a the history of my people, but in many ways I have to question how much of it applies to me personally? After all I never owned slaves, I never raped and pillaged native villages, and I never demanded my religion be adopted over another. So, I do not see the use of feeling guilt about this history; however my concern is this history places me in undeserved privilege where the entire world has unjustly been bent towards these advantages. This does concern me greatly! How do post-colonial Europeans reconcile with the land and people they have colonized?
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Friday, September 21, 2007
Bio-Regional Animism in Less than Five Minutes
This is a speech I will be giving at The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Paluse, in Moscow Idaho, on Sunday the 23rd of September 2007.
Spirituality is everywhere to be found; it unfolds with the peddles of a rose, and gurgles in the song of a creek, and in the canyons, and running through the forest. This is the experience animism is built from. It is the belief in spirit. It does not distinguish from the spiritual and the material; instead, they are one and the same.
Our planet is a vast network of ecosystems that work in highly concentrated ways and have been surveyed for their resources then divided to be bought and sold on the market. Through this homogenous market, our culture has become disconnected from our eco-systems, losing the sacredness of daily life. Nature is not a collection of resources for human consumption, but are equals to humans. This teaches us to relate our lives to what is needed for daily sustenance and to contributing back to nature, forcing one to realize that life is sacrificed to sustain life. This perspective demands empathy with our environment and to feel its reality in order to implement environmental, ecological, and social change. Humans are not above nature but as much a part of it in everyway. However, we have been irresponsible, subjugating our environment to mere material and forgetting its spiritual nature.
Bio-Regional Animism seeks to re-cultivates the sacred relationship of humans and the eco-systems they inhabit by recognizing the lessons taught by animist cultures worldwide, past and the present, and applying the animist process to our eco-systems. It spiritually relates our modern culture to the forest, rivers, mountains, animals, energies, and scientific principles as individuals with inherent worth and dignity. Scientific understanding of the environment, like knowing where your water and food comes from, social activities of local wildlife, and the medicinal value of indigenous plants, builds the foundation for relating to our ecosystem through improvisational ceremonies and meditations. This is achieved by discarding the dualism of modern society, and realizing there is only spirit.
Bio-Regional animism is not a new religion or even a new tradition of neo-paganism; rather, it is a way of relating to our environment in a deeply spiritual way and can co-exist with other ways of life, given openness to the needs, desires, and unique understanding of their ecosystem. Bio-Regional animism is not the path for those who seek predefinitions and structure; instead, it directly challenges these notions, leaving us with the very soil under our feet and sky above our heads, and that is what we work with to grow our spiritual relationships.
