AND THAT IS HOW THE PLANT SPOKE

 

At a recent Ecotherapy retreat I learned a new way of being with plants. After some time with a plant, to write in a kind of stream of consciousness, without moving the pen from the page, following a prompt. In my case the prompt was 

The plant spoke....

I capitalize Speaking when I am writing about non-human persons because the voice always has a quality about it that I know it is a different kind of speaking, a non-human kind of speaking. 

The plant was the one above, and yes for purists I know it is a weed here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is Mimulus or Monkey Plant. 

And this is what I wrote, just straight from the pen, with the references to 1980's hair bands intact:

'The plant Spoke about living on the edge about the flow of water and the stasis of rock and about how nothing is still for ever and one day it will be washed away and how for now it smiles and cares enough to spread and grow and spread and grow and how its children and its grandchildren are smiling nearby and how much it knows them and how it cares enough to do this always and how living on the edge is living on a prayer but all the plants here know how to pray and the wind is the carrier of prayers from plants and human people alike without distinction and how knowledge travels underground beneath the rocks and how knowledge passes to the next generation and after you know something you don't have to think about it ever again because it is inside you and when you nod and accede to the wind you don't say what you know because you already know it and the creatures of the river bank all know the same things and when something happens it happens to everyone and that is how the plant Spoke'

AFTER THREE HUNDRED ACID TRIPS YOU GET SLUDGE METAL

 When the old people tell you not to take the drugs, the problem is, dang, you know they took the drugs. 

You hope they are saying, I took the drugs and I that is why I know it is not necessary for your spiritual development, and probably even bad for you, because I have experience of such things. But they never say that. They just say, don't take the drugs. And some of them smile mysteriously. Old times, heh heh heh. 

So of course you take the drugs anyway. 

Dr Michael Harner, anthropologist and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, most certainly took the drugs. His first published book was Hallucinogens and Shamanism, published in 1973. He describes his ahayuasca experiences as shocking, overwhelming, meaningful, life threatening, and delightful.

Shamanic experiences using entheogens or psychedelics are often ordeals. They can involve hardship and terror. My previous post was about limit experiences. They are to be taken seriously, and they are undertaken not in the service of endless spiritual growth, but to save lives or to save communities. 

Dr Harner also knew that the Madre Ahayuasca is a powerful being. In Ayahuasca ceremonies the human people thank her and praise her and propitiate her because they know she is powerful and she is not necessarily your friend. Dr Harner thought that she may even have her own agenda. There is a difference between a bad trip that teaches you what you most need to know, and a powerful being trying to harm you. You have to be wise enough to know the difference. This means context, and I don't just mean set and setting for the trip itself. I mean societal context. I mean history, ancestry, the internalizing of the stories, support, aftercare. As I have said, it is the job of the Shaman to turn into the bear. It is the job of the community to see the bear. 

Where are our great stories about liminal spaces and ordeals and journeys? They are hidden in fairy tales and movies and academic texts. There is no community to see the bear. You take three hundred acid trips, and what you get is sludge metal. I actually quite like a bit of sludge, and I am pleased that its proponents have found meaning in a chaotic world. But it is not going to transform our communities and heal our collective souls.* 

What if I told you (as the ancient meme goes) that Dr Harner discovered that it was possible to enter a Shamanic state of consciousness by drumming at a particular rhythm that sets up theta waves in the brain. You can find his drumming on YouTube, a lovely old double drum. Or you can download an app. And you can journey by yourself, in the privacy of your own home, with a drumming track and a black t shirt over your eyes, and instructions from Core Shamanic teachers, or other teachers who know the same things. You don't need limit experiences, the wonderful beings you meet in Non Ordinary Reality will help you with those. You don't need heroic doses of anything. 

So, is this the pretty beige Insta version? Is this for yoga moms? Is this for the restless rich who can't commit and like a bit of Shamanism in their portfolio of endless self improvement and healing of god knows what?

A major point missed by some in the psychedelic renaissance, is that ecstatic experiences are value neutral. Psychedelics are a particularly good example of value neutral. The substance itself is amoral, and may or may not be interested in your welfare or that of humanity. Even the experience of union with all that is, which is experienced commonly within the psychedelic trip, is amoral. An experiment with LSD users illustrates this. They gave participants LSD and induced in them a feeling of gratitude. Those who felt gratitude were more likely to agree to the next part of the experiment: grinding up worms in a blender. I kinda imagine all these folks tripping their heads off, grinding up the worms and weeping with gratitude, and then I wonder how the hell this stuff got past the ethics committee. As an animist I am just yuck, the poor worms. 

There is an anti-inspirational photo online which I won't link to because I don't want to give it more air time, but it is a photo of Neo Nazi organization The Base. It is a group photo taken after a ritual during which the members took LSD and wandered in a chaotic state around the countryside, and slaughtered a ram, whose messed up head features in the photo. The Base is not the only one on the far right to enjoy the odd trip. Julius Evola, the Italian Uber-Nazi who influenced Mussolini, enjoyed psychedelics. As for the appalling Sydney Gottlieb, who ran MKUltra for the CIA, he was a heavy LSD user himself, and had far right links, as did Albert Hoffman who was no saint despite being lionized by the psychedelic community. 

Of course using psychedelics does not make you a Nazi, but my point is even the feelings of oneness and bliss you can get with them does not make you enlightened either. Psychedelics are value neutral. They are what they are. It is intention, and context as I express above, that make the trip meaningful, and helpful beyond just the holy fuck of it all. 

Below is a Medium article by Jules Evans, which I recommend. I can't better it, so I have just copied the link here. He makes ten useful points about ecstatic experiences in general, in order to normalize them and help us out when we in the west have lost context and history. 

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/we-need-better-cultural-resources-to-make-sense-of-ecstatic-experiences-d26a68dad47e

I look forward to the democratization of Shamanic journeying. I make this limited claim:  most people can journey to the Upper and Lower Worlds, and meet helping spirits, and learn things and help themselves and others. There have been times in animist societies where every extended family has someone who knows enough Shamanic stuff to help out.  Knowing these things does not 'make you a Shaman'. But neither does sustained use of psychedelics. 

 

The photo is from an earth bank in Wellington. The circle with a dot in the middle, or the eye, is often the first layer of the psychedelic experience. I am thinking of the dot art of Aboriginal people in the place now called Australia. I am also thinking of Tool album covers.

*Recommended: Sanguisugabogg's very downtuned and grisly album Homicidal Ecstasy, if you like having your brain shredded

A VERY ROUGH GUIDE TO ECSTASY: WITH SOME CONTENT WARNING

He is suspended upside down by two hooks through his flesh, on a scaffold. Propelled into a trance state by pain and ritual, he calls to members of the crowd and divines for them, using Runes.

He is Tim Nancarrow, and he is a PhD student at the University of Newcastle researching the virtues of ritual sacrifice. The event was Midgardsblot 2022, an extreme Metal music and Heathenry festival in Norway. Here is their poster for 2023.  On their website, the cursor is in the shape of the Horns, which amuses me greatly. I wish I had been there!

https://youtu.be/BJvcBhIpALM 

is the address for The Nordic Mythology Podcast's interview with Tim, where he discusses his work in hook suspension and how this is a very visceral interpretation of the sacrifice of the Northern God Odin. Odin hung for nine nights on a windswept tree, with no food or drink, and sacrificed himself to himself, in order to bring us the Runes. Odin went hard, went to the utter limit in his search for wisdom, put his body literally on the line.

Earlier this year, talking of windswept, a young man is running at night. He has not slept for days. He's eaten as he's run. He's buggered, he thinks. He is Dean Stewart, aged 19, and he is running in the Revenant, Aotearoa/New Zealand's toughest adventure race. 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/131036862/toughest-adventure-race-crushes-all-entrants-again

This race takes place over 150 kms of Southland's roughest high country and only four people have ever finished it. Dean, the last competitor left from a field of forty........did not finish it.

Neither did Jean Beaumont, who I heard interviewed during her period of afterglow after the race, inarticulate with joy, relief and brain chemicals. And neither did Karl Watson, who gave up after a night of hallucinations caused by lack of sleep. And neither did Callum Wilkie, who thanked the organizer after he tapped out and said 'I'm really glad I found my limit'.

Limit experiences are one way of attaining ecstatic trance. Not all trance states are ecstatic. There is a trance state that is reflective and inward seeming. Simple Shamanic journeying is not ecstatic. The ecstatic state is more embodied, or at least more likely to involve the body. It is more likely to start with bodily sensations such as pain or heat or cold, and it is more like an upwelling of the senses to the point where the person leaves the body, or becomes greater than the body, or the body becomes greater. It is not always pleasurable either. Pain is an excellent entry point to the ecstatic trance.

Limit experiences are also well understood in the BDSM community. Here BDSM stands for Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. I want here to describe particularly the state of the submissive partner in a Dominant/Submissive situation. Those who are successful Subs have discovered that pain and a temporary dismantling of the personality change their states of consciousness. By temporary dismantling of the personality I mean treatment that humiliates, confuses, torments a person to the point that their usual personality disappears. Then they enter a state called subspace, an altered state of consciousness where they experience a sense of dissolution, a lack of boundaries, and an exquisite vulnerability, openness and trust. When they are in that state, it is the responsibility of the Dom(me) to ensure their safety and re-integration. This aspect of BDSM play does not just mimic a Shamanic type of limit experience, it is that experience. It is as transformative as an ultra-marathon or a magical ritual in that all ecstatic work puts the body on the line. It is very much worth talking to people within the BDSM community; every one of them knows things about themselves that 'vanilla' people don't. And one of those things they know, is how to enter an ecstatic trance.

Hook suspensions, similar to the one described above, take place within the BDSM community and are treated with the moral seriousness and respect such rituals should afford. There is a cottage industry around setting them up and running them safely. It is the equivalent of an elite sport in the BDSM world. So I take Tim Nancarrow's attempt as not just a spectacle, but a genuine piece of magic with a somewhat ironic heritage, given that it is the BDSM community that are the wisdom keepers of what is essentially Shamanic knowledge. 

Then there is the mosh pit, that wonderfully primal source of ecstatic trance that is open to every Metal head, even me. I once used the group energy of a mosh pit to charge a sigil, throwing it into the crowd at a climactic moment. And last night I was lucky enough to attend a gig by seminal Norwegian Black Metal band Mayhem. Mayhem, and other Black Metal bands such as Wolves in the Throne Room, call their gigs rituals. I think this is an acknowledgement of the effects the music has. 

Honestly, after the first blast beat I am gone. I say I won't mosh, because I am 63 after all and have recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis, but I work my way through the crowd, and the black-clad young chaps are terribly helpful and soon I am up the very front, leaning over the rail at the front of the stage. The venue is tiny, dark and sweaty; it has been 29C today. The atmosphere is brilliantly charged. I am in the ecstatic trance state we all share, and this time I use it to chant the names of Runes I need. Thus it becomes a piece of ceremonial magic.

Mayhem are a longstanding jobbing band, and their original members, Hellhammer and Necrobutcher and Attila, are well into their fifties. They gave it heaps that night. It was a pure performance, in the way the drummer drums for the Shaman, the riggers build the scaffold and execute the hook suspension, and the supporters give time and skill to the race. 

And the Dom, or Domme, who takes complete control of the Sub and who is also completely responsible for their safety and welfare - what do they get out of it? The same as the musician or the drummer. Facilitating someone else's limit experience is an act of love and service. It looks glamorous and ego-filled, but properly done, it is the opposite. These curated and contained acts of transgression, by which I mean the literal meaning of crossing over, are happening in different ways all the time. Those who experience them are often otherwise ordinary people, and that is all to the good. The need to work in and around trance is being fulfilled, even when it is understood a bit differently. Where we have no religious language or space for it, we do it anyway. We need ecstatic trance. 

The photos below are of the Mayhem gig. The middle one, which is a bit blurry, is of Necrobutcher and Teloch checking their equipment in between sets. I have mad respect for Necrobutcher; he has seen some shit for sure.

THE BLANKET AND THE BURIAL MOUND

 

 

This is my special blanket. It has the Elder Futhark Rune alphabet on it and these beautiful ravens, and a hood. It is double layered and has a fluffy lining.

 

Midsummer I was out in the middle of the night, undertaking a Northern practice called Utiseta, or sitting out. Traditionally, the magical practitioner sat on a burial mound overnight, although after the practice was discouraged by the church it took place just in secluded areas. It is a way of contacting the dead, or in my case divining through the Night. I once was told that every place is an urupa, the Maori word for cemetery. On every inch of the earth someone has died, so every part of the earth is worthy of attention. All places have spirit. So I can make my own place of power, or sit in an actual cemetery, whatever.

 

I will say little about the night, except that when I left the sitting place to go have a piss, the cloud cover dissolved momentarily and I saw a shooting star for only the third time in my life.

 

I was under a maple tree, and to get there and back I walked through a field of dry grass up to my hips. Of course I had my special blanket with me. I won’t do that again.

 

Afterwards, there was so much grass in the blanket. Over the following weeks I tried to pull out all the grass seeds. At first they were just annoying. My gorgeous blanket! After a while I began to have some respect for the grass and the seeds. Each seed was winged and barbed like a fantastic missile. Each seed burrowed its way into the blanket, to plant itself between the layers. Each seed needed to be individually pulled out, and boy did they resist me. And there were different grasses, I noticed over time. Some were burrowers, and they burrowed through the top layer of blanket. Some were nesters, and they tangled themselves within the fluffy bottom layer. Nesters and burrowers. Each seed has its way, had its purpose, its impetus to grow.

 

I am not great at detail and patience and perseverance, but if the seeds taught me anything it was those calm and underrated virtues. In the end, I washed the blanket and hung it, and stood and pulled and pulled and stroked and teased and pulled and detangled.

 

Grass just evolved that way. Natural selection has made grasses super successful. We humans have been creatures of steppe and plain. We like grass a lot. But also this:

 

Grass seeds have voices too. Seeds told me about need, and earth, and how to hide and grow in the hiding. Seeds made me patient and slow and focused. Seeds changed my state of consciousness.

DELIRIUM: A POEM ABOUT THE DEATH OF MY MOTHER

 

My mother died over ten years ago. I wish I knew then what I know now, about how dying humans exist for a while in both this world and the next, and how personal and exquisite it can be to die. All of what happened in the poem is true. I wanted to write something that balanced true events with the layers of complexity in our relationship. I have read lots of inspirational accounts of supporting the dying, and I wanted to write something that is determinedly not inspirational in that it is not resolved. A bit more like life, in other words. 

Delirium is the most common form of psychosis. It augurs poorly for length of life. Both my parents were delirious near their deaths, but there are strange truths here. Now, I would take a different and more generous interpretation. 

The rose is Dublin Bay. My mother named her roses after the people in her life. Dublin Bay was a favourite of hers. 

Here is the poem:

DELIRIUM

 

My mother

During happy hour at the hospice

Was reassuring me.

She had been kidnapped, and was held in a cabin in the woods.

Really,

A cabin.

In the woods.

But it was all OK. I was not to worry. There was a party.

The party was for her.

She could hear the clink of glasses and the laughter in the next room.

She could choose to join them. It was her party after all.

But not right now.

 

My mother

Ran away. They rang me, and said the Police were looking for her.

By this time she was so light, so insubstantial, she had skipped over the sensor mat and almost floated away.

They found her, some hours later,

Digging in someone’s garden.

Going to ground, digging in, seeking earth, I guess.

She told me, when I arrived,

He was a very nice policeman and he didn’t even molest her.

 

My mother

Tried to kill herself.

She took two Quetiapine and fell out of bed.

They rang me, and said it was not urgent, just to come when I could.

When I arrived, she said she had been very naughty,

But she had seen Jesus, and she had seen her husband.

What was she to do?

 

My mother

Sat on the floor, still agile, light and hollow-boned,

Examining the freckles on her leg.

She explained how each freckle was a person, how each freckle was an idea

Related to each other

A genogram

A map

A system

A galaxy of freckles.

I found it hard to cope with how my mother was rearranging her relationship with the universe.

I laughed a lot, nervously, not understanding.

 

My mother thanked me for coming this time.

She noticed the hard black diary I always carried, my time manager diary.

Oh, she said, I’m so glad you’re the Time Manager. You must be so clever, to manage Time the way you do.

So I’m Dr Who now, full noise, gate crashing the past and the future, squeezing through the tiny bit of present we still have, managing, it’s called, still managing.

 

My mother was rattling in her bed, greying out, her lungs spored and splayed, monstrous, bigger than she was, the disease bigger than she was.

They called me and said come now.

I said I have the day off tomorrow.

They said come now.

With a heart tenderised by the mallet of duty, I went.

The last reflexive breaths tore themselves from her as I arrived.

The nurse said, she must have heard you.

But she’d seen Jesus, and she had seen her husband, and what was she to do?

RUNE WORK

'Well, I guess it's you', he says. He has been around the hall several times, looking for someone to give him a reading. He walked past the Tarot readers and the channellers and psychometry readers and has ended up at my stall. He is young, skinny, and he wants to know if he will go to prison. 

I explain what Runes are, and my process. I then rattle in four great helping spirits from the Upper World, facing each of the four quarters in turn. It's noisy in the hall. The wooden floors set up a bit of an echo and there are many others at work here. I have learned to let these great spirits help me enter a Shamanic state of consciousness so I can do my work. Then I take my box of Runes, and with eyes shut, I throw them onto a white linen cloth. I recite some words. Eyes still shut, I pick out three Runes and put them aside. They represent the Norns, the weavers of fate. They are what has become, what is becoming and what will become. Then I interpret them. I tell stories from Norse mythology to illustrate the learnings. I aim to educate as well as inform. 

This young man has not really owned up to what he has done. It was all someone else's fault and all a misunderstanding. He is chronically misunderstood, especially by his girlfriends. Nothing is fair. He thinks if he goes away this time, it will be because the judge will listen to the girlfriend, who is now his ex. I need to be a bit gentle here. The fact that he has come to me indicates he is ready to do some thinking. I unpack the reading carefully, bearing in mind what one of the helping spirits has told me when I was rattling. This chap has an opportunity here, and his ancestors are cheering him on. He can break a cycle, but his motivation is so tender and new it needs to be handled carefully. I am very positive. This is no time for bluff and bullshit. I am not interested in his excuses. I have a chance to tell him something of what he can become, what the helping spirits who claim him see in him. 

Divination is the second most common Shamanic activity, after healing. I trained in 16 forms of divination, but then I settled on something I was already doing. That was Rune work. I have been working with runes for about nine years now.

Runes are an alphabet. You can write your name in runes. As an alphabet they possibly arose in Etruscan culture and made their way north and west into the Germanic and Nordic lands. The word rune means a secret or a whisper. It seems runes were used not for writing larger texts, but for labels or statements such as naming the maker of a sword, or a blessing on a headstone. Or a spell. It was only in the twentieth century that they became used for divination, and the methods of their use is heavily influenced by more widely known systems such as Tarot or New Age oracle cards. They are well known in the Heathen community, but not so much outside of it. I have done rune readings regularly at spiritual fairs, and most of my querents have never heard of them. I like this. It means the people who come to me are willing to do something different. I am sometimes surprised at the results. They are taking a punt, and so am I because I am willing to stake my reputation on something unusual.

I am on my second set. My first set I made from plum tree wood, the second from apple wood. I etched the wooden discs with a pyrography tool, on both sides.As I did so I sang the Runes and listened to music that featured them. I also took a square piece of white linen, and hemmed it by hand, singing the Runes into it. Then I undertook a ritual for Odin, the god who found the Runes when he sacrificed himself to himself by hanging for nine nights on the World Tree Yggdrasil. Then I undertook a ritual for Freyja, the goddess who taught Odin how to use them. In this double ritual I washed the Rune discs in a mix of red ochre, consecrated water, rye, whisky and blood. I dedicated the Runes to the deities. I overdid the ochre a bit so I ended up painting over the pyrography. So it is a serious piece of kit. They live with their linen cloth in an antique cigar box. If I lost one, I would have to start again. It is the dedication of the Runes to the deities that is the most delicate part of the process. It needs to be renewed often enough. I need to be reminded of who I work with and to thank them.

A simple rune-of-the-day ritual keeps my hand in and reminds me about them. Because runes are such simple forms, I can see them everywhere. I once did a very elaborate ritual around the rune Eiwaz, which took about three months. During that time I put the rune everywhere, in twigs or stones or clothes pegs, and yet it remained invisible. You can draw runes in the air or on a surface, with a liquid. You can combine them into bindrunes and use them as amulets. You can sing them. You can make your body into their shapes (rune yoga). They are so simple they can be embedded into a daily practice. Unlike Tarot say, there are so few of them that they are each made to do a lot of duty. Working with them is a condensed and intuitive process, less amenable to the intellect. 

I am happy to do readings for people. Rune of the Day is free, for anyone. More detailed readings, or consecrated bind Runes, are done at the fairs for money, or for koha, or an appropriate gift. Cabbages are always good.

 

WHAT THE TREES TOLD ME: PART TWO

Middle World journeys are common and often unbidden. Daydreams and peak experiences can have a journeying element. They can be surprising, and even a risky because the spirits we meet in the Middle World don't know us and aren't necessarily our friends. And why should they be? We often aren't all that friendly and respectful to them. We often don't give back. 

A very simple method of Speaking to the spirits of nature is to walk in nature, come across a being like a tree or rock and ask respectfully for a message. Then open yourself up, and wait. 

You can also enter a Shamanic state of consciousness by rattling or drumming or whatever it is you use, and then walk out and come across a being and Speak with them. 

Here is a poem I wrote directly after doing this. It is a slight attempt at older poetic forms, where in this case the last sound of the first line rhymes with the first line of the second. Old Norse poetry is remarkable like this; they do a lot with a few words. English is a huge language and has a lot of words. This is because it is the confluence of many languages. When we write creatively we have many words to choose from. We can say field, meadow, pasture for example. In most other languages, the vocabulary is smaller and they do more with the words they have. Norse poetry uses many different alliterations and rhymes and stresses on words to express and change meaning. It also uses kennings, which are shorthand poetic descriptions. For example, the sea might be the whales' road. If you want to write real Norse poetry here is a good place to start:

http://viking.archeurope.info/index.php?page=old-norse-poetic-metre

Here is the poem, and as I said it is a direct insight, from the trees themselves. It is good to write directly after an experience. We are explorers after all, and explorers take good notes. 

 Five trees grow from one who died
Abide in loving unity
Family dig deep
Sleep not for knowledge gained
Pain for love of Yggdrasil

Yggdrasil is the Axis Mundi or World Tree in the Norse spiritual view. Nine worlds come off it, and beings abound in it. There is a squirrel called Ratatoskr who runs up and down it, carrying trash talk between the eagle at the top and the dragon at the bottom, as well as general gossip. I think I am like Ratatoskr as I move up and down my own Axis Mundi.