LIFE AND DEATH: A FAIRY PERSPECTIVE

I woke up this morning from a dream about death. And with the message that it's not a big deal from the point of view of death itself, only from the point of view of life. Death seemed like quite a normal and MINOR occurrence, I guess like someone returning from holiday, or coming back from a party.

I was reading a piece yesterday about the Fairy attitude to death, by Dora Van Gelder: "Once we see the world from the fairy point of view, we get a glimpse of a new universe. So many things that matter very much to us do not seem to matter at all to them. Life and death, for instance, are things they know all about; to them there is no uncertainty and no tragedy involved. Human beings so often shrink from life and fear death. Fairies actually see the flow of life through all things. We live in a world of form without understanding the life force beneath the forms. To us the loss of form means the end of life, but fairies are never deceived in this way. They have a penetrating and powerful lesson for us."

And maybe animals too? We pride ourselves on having a future awareness of our deaths that animals do not have. But maybe much of that is fear. Animals are not distanced from their instincts like we often are, and I don't think the instincts view death as an extinction. Animals know who they are, they know how to live according to their different natures. We humans do not, we are the new-born ones.

We are deeply attached to our physical forms, we think that is who we are, rather than the underlying life force. That is what Dora Van Gelder is saying. We suffer from existential amnesia. Not only are we identified with our own physical form, but it gets worse than that, for we become identified with the physical forms of others, they become who we are too, and so we grieve when they die. And this is a very real thing, I don't want to make it sound like some sort of silly delusion. But it is precisely how we learn to let go of our over-attachment to physical forms. It is ourselves, who we thought we were, that we grieve for. The other person is probably just fine, and maybe feeling a bit sheepish for having made such a fuss about dying (as I think one of my relatives felt after they had died.) Death is just the dissolution of the physical body, that is all, it is not the dissolution of the Spirit. Though what happens after we die is a mystery, and I think it is best left that way, for it opens us to the mystery of life.

And I think the fairies have been showing me the same thing with relationships. We get so heavy about them, we consecrate them in church, the other person becomes our 'other half', and I think that is just silly. It seems to be something we usually can't help doing when we are younger. If we remain open, that process of feeling destroyed when the relationship ends can transform us. Or we can just carry on in the same old way with a replacement partner. The choice is ours.

My experience is of something - and this year it has felt like the fairies - shoving me towards other people for a dance that changes me in some way, and then it is over. And we are often judging of this sort of thing. It doesn't mean that the dance may not last a long time. But it is still a dance with a beginning, middle and end. I can feel a bit knocked around by it, but that is just me learning to see these things differently and more lightly. And I think it allows for more depth rather than less.

And it is all the same thing. We get attached to our physical forms, we get attached to the physical forms of others, we get attached to jobs and money and possessions and reputations, as though they are who we are. Hanging loose to all this, so that there is more room for the Spirit, seems to be central to our human journey. Learning to hang loose often requires a lot of grieving, we may feel torn apart at times, and it may take years to absorb. It is a visceral journey to remembering and to wisdom, but would we want it any other way?

So we are at the party, and we have been at the party for years. And then one day a stranger turns up, a compelling and very real presence enters the room, and we realise it has all been a game, it shifts our perspective entirely, if we allow it to. Actually, it frees us, frees us from this attachment we have that is always a source of suffering, though maybe pushed away at the back of our minds much of the time.

CEREMONY by Leslie Marmon Silko

I think this book is kind of required reading, if you are the type who reads. Silko wrote the book in the 1970s when she was in her twenties, and it is visceral, something bigger than her demanded it be written (IMO :) ) It is her only major novel, as if this is what she was, precociously, born to say.

Silko is part Native American, but was excluded from the traditional ceremonies as a youth because she was not pure blood. Her main character Tayo also has mixed heritage, and is subject to similar prejudice. And he has been traumatised by WWII. The story of the book is of his healing. A traditional medicine man who sticks just to the old ways cannot help him. A medicine man who understands the spirit of the white man, who sees him as subject to a kind of witchery that means he sees the world as only objects, devoid of life, is able to help him. Help free him of that psychological colonising influence that is nowadays a major theme of healing amongst indigenous people worldwide.

 

Tayo at one point performs some traditional ceremony himself: he can't remember the details, so he invents them, but his heart understands the ceremony and its intentions, and you feel the power of that. Ceremony can heal. And traditional ways need to continually adapt, or they will die.

 

This is a powerful message for those who cry 'cultural appropriation' and attempt to freeze and claim exclusive ownership of their past. And a powerful message for us in the modern world, where ceremony is something we need to create, from the heart, carte blanche. The old ways are our inspiration, but they are not ours and we are not in any way beholden to them: there is much creativity and power possible at these rare points of cultural fluidity. Tradition has depth, but often at the price of the spontaneity that the heart needs.

FAERY

The Fairies want to be known by us, and to be in good relationship with us - and that includes humour and revelry as well as respect and gifts. That relationship keeps them alive and it keeps us alive. They don't want to be public in the modern celebrity sense. It is good to get to know the places near you where they hang out. I live on Dartmoor, so there is an abundance of places.

To encounter them you need to see with your heart. You may catch glimpses out of the corner of your eye, or you may just feel them, or you may see faces in trees and rocks. You may see them with your inner eye or in dreams. Some people paint and draw them.

 

Faery does not have the same boundaries as we have. It is its own world, but it is also the natural world in its aliveness and spirit. Fairies are individual beings, but they are also all one and you can visit them in their nature places while you are at home. For us individual means separate, but that is just our illusion. Look at a stand of trees and you will see both individual and collective in harmony.

 

And if you are into this thing we call Shamanism, then your local nature beings, which I am calling fairy, want to know you, in a sense they have claimed you and the more you recognise that, the more they will help you know who you are and to live in balance.

 

They are not confined by time and space in the way we are. And if you move area, the fairies where you are will help you find your new home in that new area. Their world is simpler and clearer than ours, they are not bogged down in their psychology like we often are. And when you are suffering, you can ask them for help - a fairy oracle deck can be useful - and when they come closer, your suffering will alleviate and change perspective.

 

They do relationship differently to us – for them it is a dance, and when the dance is over, they bow graciously and move on in delight. This idea that you have to be with just this one person for the rest of your life, and if the dance ends it has ‘failed’ – well, that flies in the face of nature and its flow and mystery, it is a crazy human thing. Relationship is carried lightly, and is more profound for that.

If you have horses, you may find plaits decorating their manes, woven in seconds by nimble fingers that delight in riding them too.

 

I've had the fairies on my case all my life, without knowing it much of the time. My Mum used to hang out with the Little People as a child in the west of Ireland. I was named after Fionnbharr the king of the fairies at Knockmaa, near where she lived. But she did not know this (my English muggle Dad chose my name), and nor did I know it when I called my son the other half of that name, Finn. And then when I lived in Glastonbury, they sent Fenny Castle my way, an old fort known locally as the last refuge of the fairies.

 

They are coming my way again at present. I feel very happy to make them centrepiece in my life, to do their work. In a sense, I am one of them, and I’m sure many of us here are too 😊 

So go lightly and joyfully, and here is a fairy documentary that is well-worth watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdK21dZalY

LOCKDOWN BLUES OR LOCKDOWN DREAMTIME?

So the UK government has just put us back into lockdown-lite. That puts us indoors and into ourselves. Trust it. I don't mean trust everything the government does. I mean trust the inward place into which the lockdown puts many of us, and the length of time it has been going on.... and on for.

We have the energy of the collective with us in this dreamtime exploration. It is unprecedented, and may never happen again. (Though one noted astrologer predicts the next pandemic to be in 2028/9).

You could say the first phase, back in April, was about the crust breaking: our reluctance to be in that inward place and to dream, being broken down. It is much easier to stay busy, and we generally have the energy of the collective with us on that one.

And then over time we get taken to that slower inward place, in which our old selves and our old lives are dissolved and up for question. And that went on for months, and it can be uncomfortable, and it can feel like life is on hold, even that it is being wasted. But that is the nature of the dreaming place. It is slow, and nothing definite happens, but Spirit washes into us and changes us all the same.

In a sense, it is what we are here to do. To provide a physical vessel so that Spirit can dream.

And we seemed to be slowly coming out of it, and then the government - which is ultimately ourselves, an expression of the collective to which, like it or not, we belong - pushed us under again.

Another way of looking at the Dreamtime is as the Underworld Journey, in which we are first taken apart, sometimes painfully, so that new life can find space amongst our old emotional habits, and then we are re-constituted with a new sense of our lives. And sometimes that Underworld Journey seems to go on and on, and we kick against it and want to get busy and make our lives work again. But the only way really is to just remain with ourselves and to remain attuned to the deeper unfolding.

And so that is what the government has just done. Put us back in that place. But we have been there a long time now, and I think it is time to begin dreaming the future. Who we may be and what we may do. I don't think it is time to begin doing the new yet. But it is time to begin dreaming it. To begin Vision Questing.

And in this way Dreaming is also like Prayer. We are aligning what Spirit wants with what we want. And when that alignment is there, stuff happens. It is like a flower unfolding, and we need to be sensitive to what phase of unfoldment our particular flower is in. If the bud is still tight, then we know the dream is there to be unfolded, but we may not even know what type of flower it is. So sometimes we just need to carry that sense of a dream, we hold it and we nurture it, and we stay close to it. But we may not know what it is, and we will only get in the way if we reach after knowing, like trying to prise open a bud. At other times it is damn well time to start being specific and making it happen. Or being it. And stop indulging our pitiable self-doubt 🤣 That is a fire many of us have to go through, more than once. The dream is not 'ours', it belongs to Spirit, which is why synchronous events occur, and it is to be lived for the sake of the collective as well as ourselves.

But I think collectively it is now a time when the old has been sufficiently dissolved and sufficiently composted for us to begin to dream the future. But provisionally, and staying in that inward place for as long as it is asked of us.

And then beyond. It is a way of living and of being that we are being initiated into, that we will need to keep coming back to, and not let the busyness and its values predominate in the way that they tend to.

WITCH BURNINGS: THE HISTORICAL RECORD

Yesterday I began an online course with Sharon Blackie, a story-teller who wrote 'If Women Rose Rooted'. The course is called 'Someday Your Witch Will Come'. I am one of 2 men amongst 200 participants. Come on guys!

Sharon distinguishes between the historical witch, and what they have become in the modern imagination, a woman who is part of the natural world, and with the power that comes with that. Exactly how I describe the foundations of Shamanism. (And the real meaning of 'core shamanism' IMO.)

 

The execution of witches occurred over a 350 year period in Europe, and detailed records were kept, on which Sharon based her account. She was sorry to disappoint people, but the figure of up to 9 million women burnt at the stake is simply not the case (I'd watched that figure inflate over the years, but didn't feel it was an arena into which I could go.) The true figure is between 40 and 60 thousand. And was about 75% women and 25% men.

 

A 'witch' always had negative connotations. It described someone who was malevolent. The church was behind the persecution, and their real motive was to root out heresy. But it was the local community - women as well as men - that accused people of witchcraft, ie acts intended to harm others. The accused were usually people who were outsiders in some ways, a bit odd or difficult, or kept themselves to themselves. The women who performed the work we now associate with witches - midwives, herbalists etc - were valued members of the community, and unlikely therefore to be accused of witchcraft. So it all seems a bit topsy-turvy compared to how we are used to thinking of it.

 

At one point during the seminar we divided into small groups. It was suggested that we discuss the 'witch wound' and ways it can be healed. The women in the group talked about it in terms of how difficult they can find it to put themselves forward and be fully themselves. It was interesting for me to be part of this and hear the women's point of view. There has indeed been a 3000 year suppression of the feminine in Europe, as we have become increasingly distanced from nature. It is, however, more complex than that. My experience as an astrologer has shown me that the Jungian model of men finding their feminine half, and women finding their masculine half after midlife is broadly true. It is a natural process. So I think the issues of men becoming more connected and feelingful, and women finding it hard to be fully who they are and not what others want them to be, is perennial and part of our wiring. So yes, part of the issue is to do with a cultural suppression of the feminine. But part of it is also wiring that seems to balance out at midlife.

 

Sharon recommended 'The Witch' by Ronald Hutton.

SHAMANIC ILLNESS and the FIXIT MEN

It occurred to me as I sat in my local cafe 2 days ago (my lockdown way of being around actual people for a while) that a lot of these soul ailments you get nowadays - chronic fatigue, auto-immune stuff, irritable bowel, fibromyalgia - involve unlived passion. I can't prove it. But it immediately rang true for the first person I mentioned it to. And it has been true for myself, suffering chronic fatigue from 1992 onwards, and getting well as I listened to something in myself, and lived it, that I had overlooked for years in the interests of 'fitting in'.

The thing is that conventional society with its norms doesn't have much room for, or even approval of, people with a creative passion within them. It can't be controlled, and it breaks the rules of how a 'normal' person should live. And that is why such people may get ill. It takes courage to live from that daemon within. And many people, of course, become identified with that illness, it becomes who they are, and they can spend decades looking to conventional medicine for a cure and needing to impress on others that they really are ill. Which they are. Because we live in a society that has forgotten the connection between body and soul.

And I think that talking in terms of a creative passion, or a daemon, is our way of describing what in an indigenous society would be looked at as the Spirits having come calling and made you an offer you can't refuse. The Shamanic Illness. Our culture sees the individual as separate, on an heroic journey unique to themselves. For an indigenous person, the self is relational, you do not have an identity separate from your relationships with those around you and with those who came before you and indeed the whole natural world. This view of the self is closer to how things are. Our modern atomised individual, with their whole string of 'rights' just compounding the illusion.

 

So your daemon, your creativity, isn't 'yours', it belongs to the universe; it needs to be courageously lived, and put at the service of others. Then you will gradually become well.

By the same token, our demons which trouble us aren't 'ours' either. They are spirits visiting us, and we can form a relationship with them (see Eduardo Duran: Healing the Soul Wound.) And a traditional view of mental illnesses would be this too: they are spirits visiting an essentially healthy person.

And so what is it that we become if we live this passion? Particularly if it takes us in the direction of directly helping people? This is that knotty question of are we shamans? And here is an interesting take on it, which I got the other day off Lewis Mehl Madrona, whose online course on Two -Eyed seeing I am currently attending. He said a bunch of Lakota in North Dakota who do this sort of work were recently talking about what they should call themselves. 'Healer' was presumptuous, Medicine Man was like something out of a spaghetti western. So they settled in the end on 'Fix-it men'. I thought I can go with that. I can be a Fix-it man. Maybe this blog should be called The Global Fix-it Person 😂But seriously, I have a wave of nice feeling wash over me at anything that makes me the same as everyone else, that dissolves my ego and keeps my feet firmly on the ground.