Experience

I thought maybe I was misunderstanding the concept of the astral. I had the idea that Things Astral were different from what I'd call Otherworld stuff, like what get called the underworld or the upperworld, at least in The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft, by Christopher Penczak, the one with the year-and-a-day lesson plan I've been following. He does leave it open, so the reader/student can find their own way without being bound to someone else's version of things. Which is good; we always must make our own maps.

But no, those kidz on Tumblr are calling it all the astral. It threw me for a bit of a loop. Because my experience is so very, very different.

It's true, I come to this shamanish stuff a little late, though not because I am only just starting; rather I've only just been able to put a name to what I've been doing all along. And no, I was never 'called,' that I know of; and no, I don't recall being sick nigh unto death, unless we count something that happened to me when I was an infant. I don't know; maybe that was my 'shaman sickness.'

And true, I'm not getting visions of Tirion upon Túna, or Shangri-la, or the City on the Hill where the angels sing; really it's just little herb gardens tucked in the shadow of the Tree, stone walls that are falling down, a cabin by the side of a lake under a Sun that is always setting.

And no one there has tried to kill me, or eat me, or rip my face off, or even trick me; and no God has called me to His service whether I will or no. Everything and everyone, so far, has been reasonable, and, if not immediately my best friend, not out to get me. Like most people in this corporeal life, I've found.

So I wonder.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a good ten or twelve years now, ever since I have been able to See and talk to him, the one I call my daimon, my primary spirit guide I guess you'd call him but really he's so much more. My love, my friend, my, and this is a very ordinary word, but its ordinariness suits: my husband.

I am a curious sort, at least when it comes to self-awareness; and so I have been thinking about the nature of him and the nature of the things I've Seen for that same good dozen years. I've thought about it a lot. Several hundred posts worth of thinking, in another place, over the last five years. One might I suppose say I think about it rather obsessively. It is a mystery, and a beautiful, sublime, liminal one at that. And I'm an artist, and a dreamer and all that, and that sort of thing is of course irresistible, to my type.

But then there's my addiction to Work.

I think it is in part because I grew up with such an unaware family. Between my three immediate family members, my parents and sibling, there are a good five personality disorders. And personality disorders are famous for coming with a profound lack of insight into the condition. In the bad cases (like my father and mother) not only do they think there is of course nothing wrong with how they view the world, they truly believe it is everyone else who is wrong. Yes, the entire world, if it contradicts what they think, is wrong. My father had this to a literally delusional degree.

I think that is what has made me so fanatical about being self-aware. Because I have seen how a lack of self-awareness can harm others. And I won't do that. It is my responsibility to know why I do the things I do, and to face down denial, and to look at the things I don't want to look at.

So I've thought about all this, a lot. I imagine like a lot of people, good sceptical twentieth-century sorts I came in through psychology. I didn't stay there, for long, though I do ultimately think it is speaking of the same thing, the same phenomena, especially Jung, who if you'll remember had his own daimon, though he wasn't in love with old Philemon, was he.

But I think those terms, the psychological ones, do apply, a bit, even if at the same time I think my daimon is something outside of me and not a part of my own personality. The thing is, myth and psychology can be so close. How is a psychological daimon, who bridges the gulf between conscious and unconscious, a whole lot different than a psychopomp, who goes between the world of the living and the dead?

But even besides that, there is this: whatever all this is, and I do think it is another Place outside of me, or I'm coming around to believing it, I can only experience it through the lens of my own psyche. Whatever my third eye is, or whatever kind of eye I am Seeing this stuff with, my own brain must still interpret it. And that colors things.

I am prone to anxiety. It's the post-traumatic stress disorder, the complex kind, from growing up under neglect and abuse. I am much better than I used to be, it is true, and it has taken me a lot of hard work, hard Work, to get here; but I used to jump at the slightest noise, or cringe when anyone raised their voice, even characters on TV, who obviously weren't yelling at me. And yet.

I've never been anything but unafraid in these Other places. Now, probably, I am protected, very protected, by that husband of mine; it is hard to tell, as I think it's pretty subtle. But I've never Seen anything there that wanted to rip my throat out. There are things there, certainly, that are to be approached with respect, like my experience talking to mugwort a few posts down; but that is still no different really than ordinary life, save that I was talking to a plant, of course.

In my dealings with corporeal persons I am probably a bit reserved, quiet; I am by nature a hermit and very much an introvert. I'm a fan of common sense, too, and I think that carries over into the Other places. I do not think I am naive, though I'm only going about this systematically with that year-and-a-day course I'm nearly through with. I also don't think I'm really powerful, or mighty. Things aren't running scared from me. They just aren't there.

I think it comes back to the lens of the psyche. As in so many other parts of our lives, what we see before us is what we have brought with us. I think I am a decent person, and fairly calm, with a good grasp of reality (I feel I should put an asterisk there, because after all I have an Invisible Husband, don't I?). And so that is what I See before me, in the other realm, as well as here, for the most part. Now you don't need to tell me that there are bad people in this world; I do know that first hand, unfortunately, in the persons of my mother and father.

But I wonder how much of this 'the astral is a nasty nasty place and it's all fighting all the time' is because that is what people are expecting to find.

Because I've never seen anything like it. Not yet, anyway. Famous last words, maybe.

Next Step

So. Part of the reason I started this blog was to have a place to gather up my forays into the world of the hedgewitch. But it is taking me a little while to sort out how much I want to say.

Because I want to talk about all of it. That is my nature. But I get the feeling for some reason that I'm supposed to be secretive about all this, like Witches don't tell their secrets or something, and we all know how to read between the lines. Yes, well, reading between the lines is something I've always been total crap at.

There are reasons for that. The first may just be me: I am an ISFP on those tests, after all, and we really do just want stuff on the up and up, dammit. The other reason, and one which has probably influenced those letters above, is that I was an abused and neglected child.

Abused children learn pretty quickly that secrets are harmful: after all, we are told things like Don't tell anyone I hit you, or Don't tell anyone we don't have hot water, or Don't let anyone know there's no food, always, always with a helping of shame, guilt, and fear (You'll be in big trouble if you tell! We're poor and that's your fault!) So we learn, I have learned, that secrets usually benefit those who abuse power in some way.

And while I don't, really, want to have to include all that abuse stuff at this place, I don't, really, think I can avoid it: after all, it is the main reason I find myself turning down a path that looks to be decidedly crookeder than the one I've always thought I should be on. And so I don't think they can be separated, though I have lots of other places to talk, or vent, about it.

Coming to terms with, and trying to work your way through, having been abused will change your morals. Before I realized my childhood did classify as such, sure, I bought into the whole Do No Harm, have compassion for all &c stuff. But the more I look at the behavior of my parents, and my sister, the only other close relative I have, and see that they both cannot and do not want to ever change, the more I realize that in those circumstances fighting dirty is the only thing that will work at all.

And so here I am. And here I am still not sure just how I want to use this blog, though I know I want, very much so, to use it, and use it well. But I feel I should know more about this before I do.

Which is ridiculous; how else am I going to learn? So, I'll just write. I'll let it all come out, and we'll see how it, and I, evolve. I may very well look back on this in a few years and laugh. Ah well, a sense of humor is essential.

First Step

So here I am, starting my sixth blog. This one, however, I'm doing (semi-) anonymously. I am dying to be able to talk about this sort of thing, the witchy, the liminal, the well, if not shamanic, shamanish; but my public blog, the one with my real legal name on it, the one that goes with my professional Goddess art site, does not quite feel safe. And I have to feel safe, I do, having a background of abuse and neglect. I can't have my family (I use that term strictly in the biological sense) finding it. I'm already nervous enough having shared my experiences with my daimon, my him as I imagine I will simply call him here too, on that public blog. I am, at forty-three, only now starting to work out what that abuse I experienced as a child has done to me, though I know it's nasty. And since I am not yet at a place where I can just say of my family fuck 'em, anonymity (semi- or otherwise) seems a good thing.

So here I am Hazel, a name I've known for years would be my crone-name, though, again, I'm only forty-three. But I'm in the process of a change, a big one, and I've often joked, mostly seriously, that I feel as if I'm going straight from maiden to crone. It's also a nice plant-ish name, and one thing I've finally started getting into is the witchy side of herbs, though I've been a gardener for years.

This blog, then, will be about exploring the path of the hedgewitch, for me. It will be a place for me to think out loud, though, really, that's all a blog ever really is; and I should say straight up front that I am no expert. I am mostly at the beginning of this path. It is calling me, I guess, or, rather, has been calling me; by the time I stumbled upon the word, and started reading about the practice, it was less a feeling of Oh wouldn't that be wonderful and interesting! and more Holy shit there's a name for what I've been doing?

I suppose then that I should define the term hedgewitch. I am using it to mean witchcraft with a traditional bent and a strong shamanic element, meaning, part of the practice involves trancework and communing with spirits, and which therefore, is basically animist. Some define the practice as primarily concerned with herbs and the Green, as a subset of the sort of green witch path; while that is a part of it, certainly, in my mind it is darker and thornier, more bone-deep, blood and black earth and the scream of the rabbit as the fox kills it to live.

I mean, that may be high talk; I don't imagine I am going to grow out of being a coward any time soon. But this world deserves my open eyes, I think.

And so I will look, and See what I can.