some of my pagan, shamanistic practices

in 1993 i read tom cowan's a fire in the head.* i was just beginning to explore 'celtic spirituality', with my only guide 'til then being mostly bede's ecclesiastical history, with its stirring hagiographies of the celtic saints whom he, great romanizer that he was, clearly admired. i was a little surprised this past summer to visit a friend who had a copy and who reminded me that i had recommended it to him a few years ago. most recently it has been his 1998 book, the way of the saints,** which has represented mr. cowan on my reading stand. but i reread some of a fire and found it as provocative as it had been 19 years ago, and decided to give a look to his shamanism as a spiritual practice for daily life,*** a book published just two years before the saints.

i have during the past twenty years become fairly well acquainted with most of the controversies and questions around 'celtic spirituality' and 'celtic christianity' and the 'celtic church.' many of them center on texts. there are those who deny that there was or is such a thing as 'celtic christianity' because after all the celts used almost exactly the same missal and breviary as the rest of the church in europe. while it is true that a lot of the new age neo-celtic folk are unaware of what that mass is like, and would probably be more or less appalled by it, the statement seems correct. at the same time i think the scholars who focus on the words used miss most of the spiritual life.

after what has come to be called 'the elizabethan settlement' in 1559 all of england, and the english church in her colonies, used the same book of common prayer. but it was used with a wide variety of practices and ceremonies. the physicality of the cross-vigil, in which a monk would pray the whole psalter with his (or a nun with her) arms held out in the form of a cross, beginning with blessing the four directions, has parallels and perhaps antecedents in the eastern church, but was probably rare in france and italy. praying while immersed in a stream or even the ocean seems a bit extreme to many of us. (i think i could do it if i still lived in charleston.) and animal companions, even if not called by the new-age term power animals, are common to celtic christianity and orthodox christianity, but they do sometimes show up in italy, more or less, as illustrated perhaps by st. francis and the wolf of gubbio. (although some contemporary 'scholars' want the wolf to be a voracious politician rather than a real wolf, the contemporary acceptable world having been reduced to economics and politics.)

cowan in shamanism says of a practice that it is 'quite simply something that one does.' (p. 16) so i thought this evening i might consider some of my practices that i find orthodox but at the same time pagan, with no apologies to either camp. as the sun approached the horizon, i went out to the field near my little cell and made an offering of tobacco in the form of a cigarette with the words of psalm 140 (141):

'Lord, I call upon thee; hast thee unto me, and consider my voice when I cry unto thee.

Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense; and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice. . . . "

then, as the light of the sun faded, i went inside and lit the candles with the hymn

'O gracious light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in Heaven;

O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed,

As our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing thy praises . . . .'

and when i put out the candles tonight, i will say my own little version of a snorring prayer:

'blessed art thou o lord our god, who created the night and the day:

may we come to share in the inheritance of all thy saints, especially st. chad,

and may the darkness of this night be fruitful, through the prayers of the blessed thetokos,

mary, the mother of thy son, who ever lives and reigns with thee and the holy ghost, one god,

unto the ages of ages.'

these little acts are practices, and and i don't think they are too unorthodox. but are they shamanistic? cowan says in shamanism that 'shamanism is the intentional effort to develop intimate and lasting relationships with personal helping spirits by consciously leaving ordinary reality and journeying into the nonordinary realms of the spirit world.' (p. 2) what could be more shamanistic by this definition than the communion of the saints, saints being in cowan's words 'men and women who have never disappeared.' (way, p. 1). to live in the communion of the saints is to develop intimate and lasting relationships with those men and women who constantly remind us that a nonordinary realm, the realm of the kingdom of heaven, is at hand.

now, it may be that cowan is wrong about shamaism, and i am wrong about orthodoxy, and that to be orthodox i must say these words in latin. (although of course a strong argument could be made that the language of heaven is hebrew, or at least greek.) but for now i find my little practice keeps me in touch with the spiral of time that is perhaps only meaningful when it is seen as a doorway into the apprehension of eternity. and i see it as a reminder of the words of the gospel according to john, the gospel most precious to the celts, that 'the light [which] shineth in the darkness . . . was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'

*http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Head-Shamanism-Celtic-Spirit/dp/0062501747/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327381483&sr=1-4#_

**http://www.amazon.com/Way-Saints-Prayers-Practices-Meditations/dp/0399525440/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327381483&sr=1-11

***http://www.amazon.com/Shamanism-Spiritual-Practice-Daily-Life/dp/0895948389/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327381483&sr=1-1

the theophany: water and the spirit

i confess i am addicted to post-apocalyptic-wasteland movies, perhaps because they seem so contemporary. the insane race of mad max continues on highway 101 all the way from port angeles, washington, to east los angeles, california. i find that a wonderful irony. roger corman is one of my favourite directer of b movies, and i remember one of his b or c p-a-w works in which everyone had been changed into zombies by drinking too many skinny decaf vanilla lates except one old man, his daugher, and her boyfriend. girl and boy have the task of repopulating the world, but first the zombies must be exorcised. how? the girl discovers that they are afraid of water. standing in the holy water of a stream in their surviving suburb, they are safe.

it is a common theme of folklore that evil spirits cannot cross running water. but it is also a common theme of folklore that something has happened, that the waters have somehow been bewitched (think the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, or genesis, with its garden, now lost, once watered by a river which became four.) what happens when the waters that were seen to be good in creation are fouled, when they no longer dispel evil although the bottle containing them is marked holy water (think the exorcist--but not for too long.)?

older than the celebration of christmas, the feast of the nativity, is the feast of the epiphany, or theophany. indeed the beginning our salvation is, in the liturgy of the church, marked by the annunciation to mary, the conception of the messiah, as the ancient hymn for that day notes:

Today is the beginning of our salvation,
And the revelation of the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos:
"Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!"

again, the dangers and possibilities of the unborn child is common in folklore, with celtic tales especially aboundin with stories of pregnant women being sent to their death but who are rescued by some miracle, usually involving fish or animals.

but the mighty act of the holy one which began in the virgin's womb is hidden. even after the birth, only a few foreigners, some shepherds--not in ancient palestine a very respected folk--and two old people who were at death's door knew what had happened.

and then: behold! god the son enters into the waters, the voice of god the father is heard from heaven, and god the holy spirit descends like a dove. the restoration of the original goodness of creation has begun, the synergistic work, if i may be allowed a bit of theological jargon, of god and man in the person of the god-man jesus christ.

the waters of death become the waters of life. quickly this understanding of our own baptism becomes part of the tradition of the church (think paul's letter to the romans, chapter 6). and in a sort of parallel image, the church becomes a ship which carries us across the waters, no longer story but calmed at the command of the god-man.

there are so many parallels to this story in folklore, again especially celtic folklore, that i cannot begin to consider them in a blogpost. i will leave you with just one, and it is one of my favourites, connected as it is with the origins of christianity in britain. it is the holy isle of avilon, hidden in the mists, surrounded by the lake presided over by the lady, and visible only to those who have died to the ways of the common world, and initiated into the kingdom of heaven, the land of the apple tree.

circumcision: what's in a name

i have a friend in seminary who is a recent 'convert' to 'the big church'. he grew up a baptist, more or less, and is now being trained in the best post-modern, post-vatican ii, post-bultmann way. while there is much emphasis on 'relevance' to 'contemporary culture' there is very little emphasis on the liturgy as a repository of wisdom. he reported to me with some amusement that in the old hymnals there were hymns for circumcisions. he thought they were for the actual surgical event rather than for the feast of the circumcision of jesus. nowadays of course much of the western church has 'suppressed' that feast and replaced it with either a feast of the holy name or a feast of the mother of god. how was he to know?





we have just come through the darkest period of the year, a darkness which is said in the gospel to be the environment of the true light, which comes into the world at christmas, the nativity of christ. in the christian understanding of history, this incarnation of god the son is the pivotal event of the cosmos, and it is surrounded with a period of preparation--the western church's advent season and the orthodox nativity fast--and smaller feasts that expand on its importance.





it is, i think, helpful to look at this darkest period of the year in a way that goes beyond 'the shortest days' if we are to understand what is at stake. at no other time of the year are the forces of darkness, the forces of evil, working harder. in our 'contemporary culture' these forces take the form primarily of consumerism disguised as 'gift-giving', and are surrounded by great displays of electric lighting which give the illusion that the darkness has comprehended the light. satan comes once again disguised as an angel of light.





the best gift-giving after all recognizes the true potential of the recipient. the wise men brought gifts that were not 'useful' for a new-born, such as disposable diapers and baby lotion, but gifts that recognized him as the king of the world, who would die for his kingdom. i'm not sure what wii games recognize in our youngsters, but it does not seem to be something that develops their highest potential.





and our acceptance of 'artificial light' at all times in all places seems mostly to blind us to the uncreated light rather than illumine us in any way. it is, isaiah reminds us, the people who walk in darkness who have seen the great light. it's very hard at this time of the year to find a dark place to walk. the star followed by the magi has to compete in the sky with the glare of las vegas.


and the idea that sacrifice--especially blood sacrifice--is necessary for true enlightenment is entirely out-of-synch with the new happy-happy-joy-joy worship centers that have been built in the fast half-century, with a 'holy table' replacing the altar, the theology of the feeding of the 5,000 replacing the theology of the upper room.





but the background of all our solstice celebrations seems to have been a sacrifice, either of the king himself or of one of his children. we see remnants of this, suggest scholars such as shirley toulson*, in the festival of santa lucia, in the wild hunt of the norsemen which became tamed as our visit from father christmas, or the hunt for the wren. the church kept this understanding in a variety of ways, starting with the christ mass itself, the mass being understood as a sacrifice. then come the feast of st. stephen, who is credited as the first martyr, the first to witness with his death, and the feast of st. john, who alone of the apostles was able to escape martyrdom because he had not shunned the death of his master by crucifixion, and the feast of the holy innocents, in which the false king herod is ready to shed the blood of children in a vain effort to preserve his own life.





the octave of the christ-mass is the feast of the circumcision. (octaves have also been suppressed in the post-vatican ii church. but the idea is no less helpful, even if, or perhaps even more so, because, it is pythagorean. a vibration is repeated, resonates, at a higher frequency, the octave.) and so on the eighth day of his life, a jewish boy is circumcised, as a witness to the covenant between the holy one and the children of abraham, a covenant which is for the blessing of the whole world. the church sees that covenant as fulfilled with the circumcision of jesus, and a new covenant established with the greater sacrifice of his blood in the crucifixion.





none of this bloody stuff goes down well with our euphamistic 'christmas is for children' avoidance of the real stakes of the invisible struggle going on all around us. (although we don't shy away from shedding the blood of those who oppose our kingship over their oil, and we sacrifice our children in that war.) our pretence that there is no struggle will not make it go away, it rather encourages us to to think we can avoid taking sides.





yet we do know the struggle is going on. the vast popularity of the lord of the rings and of harry potter is evidence that our children do not believe us when we tell them everything is getting better. i have been intrigued by the controversies surrounding these books. critics of the potter books especially seem upset that they do not explicitly seem 'christian'. but the coming of the light into the world is bigger than our creeds--and i say this as someone who firmly believes the symbols of the faith. if we deny the riches of the traditions, whether they are the traditions of the one holy catholic and apostolic church or, the traditions of our grandfathers, even when we don't 'understand' them, then we should not be surprised when the traditions pop up somewhere else.





indeed the next big feast of the church, the epiphany, or theophany, centers around the baptism of jesus, by which all of the waters of the earth are made new, made part of the streams of living waters that proceed from the throne of the holy one. thinking about that puts our treatment of those rivers in a much bigger context. but that, as it is said, is a story for another night.

*shirley toulson. the winter solstice (london: jill normal & hobhouse, 1981).