Monday, April 30, 2012

Goddesses of Healing and Health

The Goddess of Healing and the Goddess of Health are not the same.

It's important to know that. They are often confused. Too many people ask for Healing, when what they want is  Health.

The Health Goddess in my Pantheon is Venus Cloacina, also know as Venus of the Sewers. She is the Goddess of the healthy compost heap, that makes even the most barren soil fertile. She's the Goddess of the midden, the cesspool, and the pit latrine. Those places where we dump our shit so we don't infect the whole village with cholera or typhoid.

She had a shrine right in the middle of Rome, and it was believed that the health of the Empire rested in Her hands.

They were right. Anyone who has ever been somewhere that didn't have a good way to deal with human waste will tell you how quickly people become sick.

We had to replace our septic system last year, so I learned a lot about septic systems. A healthy septic system is actually a whole ecosystem of its own. It was not cheap and it was a rather tortuous multistage process.

When it was done, I erected a shrine to the Goddess Cloacina. Her symbols are Flowers and
Hummingbirds, so I planted a wildflower and bulb garden to attract pollinators and stuck a birdbath, with a statue in the middle.

The bulbs have begun to come up and it is very pretty to look at.

The Goddess of Health is a Maiden Goddess or a Mother Goddess. Spring, Summer or Fall. Health is a state of exuberance and action. Health is a cherubic fat cheeked infant or a careless teenager. Health is the old guy who runs marathons or the old lady who power walks up and down your street every morning

Health is all about balance and plenty. Turning manure, kitchen waste and grass clippings into healthy soil, growing food in that healthy soil, feeding our children and ourselves.

Healing is very different.

My Goddess of Healing is the Old Woman. She That Opens the Doors Between The Worlds. Kali Ma. Crooked Woman. Midwife. Psychopomp.

She is the one who attends birthing, healing and dying. More on birthing and dying in another post; here I wish to talk about healing.

Healing is painful. Always.

Healing is a surgeon's knife. Healing is chemotherapy. Healing is looking inwards and fighting your demons.

If you don't hurt, you are not healing.

One of the truisms in EMS is that we love screaming patients. Screaming patients have an airway. Screaming patients can still feel the parts of themselves they've hurt. Screaming patients have the energy to scream. Screaming patients can probably be fixed.

The quiet ones? The ones who look at you, with eyes falsely calm from shock, and say, "I think it might be bad." Yeah, they're likely to go really sour, really fast.

The same with mental healing. Grief heals. Fear heals. Anger heals. Guilt heals. Shame heals.We, as organisms living on this planet, are gifted with all these ways to know when we aren't being treated right. All these mechanisms to help us fix our circumstances. The trouble is we spend a lot of time trying to pretend that we can change reality without going through the healing process. We pretend we can just stop feeling these uncomfortable things. We don't use them to solve problems, we just randomly strike out. We've been told that these feelings are somehow bad or weak. That only the positive emotions are allowable.

Like scalpels, the dark emotions are capable of destroying, of course. However, I have never seen anyone who truly experienced healing without feeling all of these. Consider that diseases that destroy the ability to feel pain are some of the most feared in human history. Without the ability to feel pain, one is vulnerable to injury and infection.

I have heard people say things like, "Oh, I don't want to be angry. I want to heal. Anger just makes you bitter."

Anger stops you from getting into another bad situation. Maybe you need to be angry for a while, to protect yourself.

I have heard people say, "I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want to heal."

Yes, of course, no one wants to be afraid all the time. Maybe it's time to learn what is truly dangerous.

Healing's season is Winter. Like Birth and Death, it happens best in the dark and the quiet, with trusted loved ones close by. The sick room is the domain of the Old Woman. One way or another, it is she who ushers you from one state to another. She is unruffled by body fluids and is not concerned with your dignity or hers. Weep, moan, scream, or rage. It's all one to her.

Sometimes the end product of our time spent with her is Health. Sometimes Birth. Sometimes Death. We can deny her, when she comes to help us, but it would be unwise to do so.

To ask for "Healing" can be a bit like asking for "Spiritual Growth". Be specific, because She tends to give you precisely what you ask for.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

On The Road With The Wild Hunstman

This was originally posted here on Heather's Adventures in Animism blog as a guest post.


Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

--JRR Tolkien

The Wild Huntsman that I know doesn’t ride a horse or wield a sword.  Of course, my teenage imagination wanted him to.  I wanted to believe that somewhere there were druids and standing stones and everything as perfect once upon a time and we lived in a fallen world and we merely needed to be led back to the garden...

Wait...I’ve heard that story, somewhere.  But I digress...

The Wild Huntsman that I know drives a fine piece of Detroit steel, probably a Mustang or a Thunderbird, model circa 1969.  An unlawfully loud, gas-guzzling, fume-spouting, dragon of a car.    

When I first started driving, I started to feel Him on the roads.  On image came into my mind, fueled half by stories I read, half by my own experiences and visions.  I could imagine him clearly, on the streets that I knew.  His steed either red or black, depending on the night.  When it rained or snowed, it was black.  The paint gleamed with lambent unnatural silver under the streetlights.  Cruising down Woodward, or Jefferson, you swore the damned thing glowed...but no, it was a trick of the fog.  If you were on the freeway, all you saw were its red tail lights and you were just thankful He wasn’t interested in taking you with Him.

On clear nights it was red, and even the cops let Him slide, “Didja see that guy?” the younger cop would ask, as it flew by, clocking 98.

“Didn’t see nothin’” said the older guy, “Drink yer coffee.”

I always knew the nights He was on the road.  I’d make it from Southfield to Ann Arbor in half the time it should have taken.   On I-75 between Downtown Detroit and the Ohio border a pack of cars might find themselves caught up in the Hunstman’s chase.  In the morning they’d wonder how the hell they made Toledo in forty minutes and Dayton in two hours, but at least tonight, the Hunter wasn’t up for a wreck

Maybe the Wild Huntsman as phantom automobile is just a figment of my mad imagination, but what else would the Huntsman ride, now?.  

The automobile is the teenage spirit of sex and death in modern America.  The names themselves are totems: Mustang, Lynx, Thunderbird, Impala.  The list is endless.    

An automobile moves with the power of fire.  We invest it with a bit of our own spirit.  When we drive, we refer to the car as “Me” and “I”.  One might say, “I wish that guy would get off my butt.” meaning the vehicle behind is being driven too closely.  Is it any wonder we anthropomorphise them?  Give them their own houses? Take care of them as if they were our children?  It would be a little mad not to.  We lose our virginity in them. We construct our identity around them.  We die in them.  Stealing a car is treated much more seriously than rape or perhaps even murder.  The Archetypical American story is the Road Story; whether it’s some dirt track somewhere, Route 66 or any part of Eisenhower Interstate System.

Every road has a spirit.  That’s why crossroads are so powerful.  It’s where the ley lines meet, if you will.  But we’ve made a huge system of roads that have no crossroads.  They are merely lines of force and power.   They join as rivers join and branch off, nothing to stop it.

We’re enticed with the idea of “the Freedom of the Road”, even if we never take the road farther than our job.  It’s just knowing that we could.

Sometimes we do make those road trips.  When I was a child, I made many with my parents, and then as a teenager and young adult.  The only way to properly see parts of this country is from the road. Specifically following those paths that are limited to vehicles with combustion engines.

Buried in the Interstate system is the knowledge that, like Roman roads, like Gothic castles, they were built for warfare; to move troops and weaponry.  More, they carry our food, our goods, the stuff of our lives.  Everything in the room with you, right now, has a 99.9% chance of having had to be shipped in a container truck across some interstate.  More than anything, the Interstate is what binds our Early 21st Century lives together.

They are very serious about their mission, but like soldiers off duty, they want to play.  With the sun shining, on a clear day, when traffic is light, you can feel the Hunter in his guise as Young Lover.  Think James Dean, think Easy Rider, think a thousand other road movies.  If you want to see the God as Lover, you have only to look beside you, at the red light.  He’s there, in that boy’s eyes as he drops his foot on the accelerator and disappears in a cloud of testosterone

Where’s the Goddess in all this?  These roads are not exclusively male, by any means.  Perhaps they were built so, in the early days, but no longer.  Look at that road again.  There she is...Venus turns to give a you a slow wink before she floors her sweet pink roadster, making you feel young again.   Look to the medians.  A hundred wildflowers and grasses spring up, where by rights, nothing should be able to survive the constant car exhausts, but the land struggles on.  The Goddess laughing at our foolishness, because one day we will be gone and the roads will be all that is left of us.  She knows.  She’s seen it.  The old Roman roads still endure here and there, after all.  In the mean time, Hera’s driving a peacock green mini-van with a few kids in back, watching out for all the soccer moms.  Persephone’s sitting beside Demeter, tooling around in a yellow Viper with the top down.


I have felt the Goddess ride beside me when the music was just perfect and I was on I-94, headed to Chicago, just for a pizza.  I have felt Her, watching from the woods, on a bitter cold January night when I pulled off to the side of the road, fifty miles from any light pollution and saw the Milky Way the way the ancients saw it.  I have heard her voice when she’s said “Slow down hard.  NOW.” just before someone pulls an asshole move and cuts me off.  

These roads have powerful magic.  They were built by people, to serve people.  But every creation has a dark side.  

If the Wild Huntsman calls you, He calls you to get lost on these roads.  He may call you to die on these roads.  Drive in the middle of the night and you can feel Him.  Look at the thousands of roadside shrines for your proof of the human sacrifices He demands.  

Six million accidents every year.

Not all of them fatal.  Most of them just fender benders, not even worth mentioning.  But more die in wrecks than are killed by drugs or disease or any other single cause.

Remember how young you were the first time you knew someone who died in a car wreck?  For me it was fifteen, maybe.  

I’m an EMT, so I go to these wrecks, and help who I can.  When it’s bad, its very, very bad.  And it’s human error or hubris that cause most wrecks.  The Spirits of the Road are unforgiving and The Huntsman is not known for mercy.  

As you drive by those roadside shrines, spare a thought to the power of that gesture.  A cross, a marker.  Many cultures believed that if one died on the road, one had to be guided home.  Great power is evoked at places of death.  Our roads are haunted places.    

When someone dies on scene, at a wreck, there is a protocol.  Next time you’re stopped on a freeway for hours, consider that an accident might have been a death and they’re waiting for someone with the proper authority to come to move the body.

The gods and goddesses of death are there too.  If they’re lucky, an accident victim dies instantly, their shade standing, staring at the wreck.  “What happened?” they always ask.  

If they’re not lucky, a broken body is pulled from twisted metal, lasting just long enough to die on the way.

When you pass one of those shrines, spare a prayer that that shade has been guided safely home.

We do not honor the Spirits of the Roads at our peril.  

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Paganaidd's Pantheon

So, my friend, Heather, finally gave me a name for what I practice. This weird thing that I have been calling "Eclectic Solitary Paganism" for years, because I had no other name for it.

Americana Animism


I love it. It describes it precisely.

When I first got into Paganism, I was drawn to the Celtic stuff. My family is Welsh...Like immigrated in 1967 Welsh. I spent about three years in my childhood in Wales, but I never got to be Welsh. I was always far too American.

The more I learned about Paganism, the more it seemed to speak to me. I got very deep into Paganism, at one point running a small coven. I worked as a professional psychic, medical intuitive and medium for many years (still do, in fact)

BUT...I began to become very uncomfortable with certain aspects of Neo-Paganism.

For instance, the very words: Shaman, Druid, Witch, Wicca, Strega etc. They have particular meanings that I (as a native speaker and lover of the English language) couldn't help but notice were being trifled with.

Then, the assertion that "enlightened people" should not suffer misfortune.  I have been disabled for a big chunk of my adult life, and I don't enjoy being told that if I were a better witch, I would be well. Yes, people told me this, in those words.

By the time I had my children, I turned my mind to other things. I was still very into being a Pagan, but I just figured I was more the kitchen witch type, who didn't care for or have time for anything elaborate.

I took some fascinating classes in Paganism whenever I could. Some were very scholarly, some were quite woo, but I was still searching.

I always knew I was an Animist, but I also knew I had a solid pantheon of gods, figures, thoughtforms, nice ideas, whatever you want to call it. It was such a hodgepodge, though. I don't mean to misappropriate other people's culture, nor do I want people to think I mockingly making up my own gods.

Talking with Heather this morning, she called it Americana Animism.

Yes, that's it. The spirits of the land as they interact with us, the people who live on this land in the Here and Now.

So, to get this discussion started, here is my (incomplete) pantheon of Gods, in no particular order.

The Wild Huntsman, God of the Roads.
Thomas Jefferson, Ancestor Spirit of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln, Ancestor Spirit of the United States.
The Old Woman, Goddess of Birth, Healing and Death, sometimes known as Kali, Santisima Muerte (especially as worshipped by drug dealers), Fibrowoman or Crippled Woman.
The God of Fire in all its forms--Electric. Fossil Fuel. Nuclear. In the end, it is all from the sun, so perhaps Apollo?
St Florian, Saint of Firefighters
Justice/Liberty: Sometimes she seems so interchangeable, I can't tell whether She is two aspects of the same Goddess, or perhaps They are twin Goddesses?
 The Blessed Virgin: Goddess of my mother's house.
Jesus in his guise as "The Least of My Brothers"
Cloacina, Goddess of the Sewers and Keeper of Health.

There are more, but this is enough to get us started. I'll speak to the Spirits of Place in a future post

Who are the Gods of your Pantheon?