From the website for the book “Animism: Respecting the Living World” by Graham Harvey:

I’m indebted to Jenny Blain (Sheffield Hallam University, author of Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic (Routledge, 2002) for introducing me to the word wight.

She tells me that wight can be a synonym of “beings” or “persons”, but, more usefully, that it refers to “sentient beings for which we don’t have other words”. Derived from an old English word (with cognates in Old Norse), wiht, the word seems much more useful that the word “spirit”. Too many people, anthropologists included, add the word “spirit” where it really isn’t needed. If trees, rocks, clouds or animals are persons, then it doesn’t help to speak of them as “tree spirits”, etc., unless you want to confuse people into thinking you are making claims about some spiritualised, metaphysical or non-empirical reality. It is only useful to speak of “tree persons” and so on because we need to educate ourselves and other heirs/victims of modernism to find different ways to perceive and relate to other-than-human persons.

(The term “other-than-human persons”, created by Irving Hallowell to say what his Ojibwe hosts had taught him, is fully discussed in my book. Its another “humpty-dumpty” term in my work.)

Wights seems useful too in more poetic circumstances and one’s in which we’re happy to expect people to ask what we mean. It has become an important part of the language of contemporary Heathens.

Come join us for SHIFT at Whitaker Ponds:

http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?ShowResults=yes&SearchText=whitaker+ponds

Saturdays at 12 noon, next to the north baseball field.

Dress for cold, wet, and muddy! Woo hoo!

From Louis Liebenberg’s Art of Tracking: the Origin of Science

A characteristic feature of an advanced science such as modern physics is the coplex hierarchical structure of hypotheses and the fact that the chain of reasoning from observational “facts” to the most general hypotheses mya be very long (Holton, 1973). In contrast, the art of tracking does not have a complex hierarchical structure and the chain of reasoning from observation to the most basic hypotheses is fairly short.

But how does this impact the quality of science?

In contrast, the art of tracking does not have a complex hierachical structure and the chain of reasoning from observation to the most basic hypotheses is fairly short. Yet the lack of a formal hierarchical structure allows for a greater multitude of basic hypotheses.

Thus a culture of informed inquiry, what we now might call a culture of “citizen scientists”, though such a term sounds a bit condescending - not just “citizen scientists”, but citizen thinkers…more informed and insightful than most hierarchically-trained scientists. You can easily observe this in any extant indigenous tracking culture.

Furthermore, the hierarchical structure of an advanced science also makes it less accessible to people who do not have sufficient background knowledge. This situation gives rise to an authoritarian elitism in modern science.

The most influential and dominant tradition among modern scientists in the approach to scientific theories is elitism. According to this view, the layman or the outsider cannot understand and therefore cannot appraise scientific theories. Only a privileged scientific elite can judge their own work. Within the scientific elite there is an authority structure, which means that the scientific community is predominantly authoritarian in its appraisal of scientific theories (Lakatos, 1978b)….Scepticism, including Feyerabend’s (1975) “epistemelogical anarchism”, denies that scientists can have any authority to appraise theories. Scepticism regards scientific theories as just one belief-system which is epistemologically no more “right” than any other belief-system….In contrast to the relatively authoritarian nature of modern sicentists, trackers are much more egalitarian. Even young trackers may, for example, disagree with their elders and propose alternative interpretations of spoor.

Or in the words of the well known tracker, Tom Brown, Jr., “If you believe what I say, you are a fool…prove me right, or prove me wrong…and I bet you can’t prove me wrong!”.

[to buy Louis Liebenberg’s book, try visiting White Pine’s website]

Native American Student and Community Center

SW Broadway and Jackson, Portland, Oregon

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Rod McAfee Friday, February 9, 2007

Spirituality is Being Real

Rod McAfee speaks from his own experience on the meaning of spirituality in our lives. His words go beyond cultural traditions, race, or creed to the fundamental experience of being a human being on this planet today. He encourages people to develop a spiritual practice that is grounded in the teachings of the natural world, a practice that connects Earth and Spirit.

Rod is an Akimel O’odham (Pima) elder. Raised “by the desert” on his Arizona reservation, he witnessed the assimilation of most of his family by Western religions, education, and culture, and still managed to retain his native language and beliefs.

For fifteen years Rod led ceremonies for Native inmates in prisons in Oregon and Washington. A former drug and alcohol counselor for the Native American Rehabilitation Association, he is active in ceremonies throughout the Northwest. Rod is the lead singer for the Spirit Learning Drum, and is intimately connected to the original medicine of water.

$10-20 donation requested for speaker’s honorarium

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Tell Me About “Rhizome”, Grandpa

In a nutshell, rhizome refers to the underground stems of certain plant species that spread, creating new root centers as they organically expand out from the original center. Think of bamboo, aspens, mint, willow, cattails, etc. Conceptually applied to human living, it can refer to small scale, self-organizing, family-centered human settlement networks. Aka, Villages. Jeff Vail, amongst others (Daniel Quinn, the Tribe of Anthropik, etc.), writes extensively about the re-application of this original human philosophy towards modern living.
Enter the Tao

Recently, rereading the Tao Te Ching, I remembered something that had struck me about it a couple years ago; the many refererences in the book to true village living, and the ideal government (or lack thereof).

Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching [trans. Ellen Chen]:
A small state with few people
Let the implements for ten and hundred men be unused
Let the people fear death such that they do not move far away
Although there are boats and carriages,
There are no places to ride them to.

Although there are weapons and armours,
There are no occasions to display them.
Let the people again tie ropes and use them (as memory aids [in replacement of literacy])

Let them enjoy their food,
consider their clothing beautiful,
Be contented with their dwellings,
And happy with their customs.
The neighbouring states overlooking one another,
The dogs’ barking and cocks’ crowing are heard from other states,
Yet till they are old and dying the people do not visit one another.

What does all this mean? Certainly the author, Lao Tse, wrote this book deep in the belly of a well-established (and therefore highly neurotic and destructive) civilization. So his message concerns how to walk away from civilization towards a better life - a rhizomial life. Furthermore, the Tao Te Ching can serve as a primer and inspiration for animist, rhizomial action. Scholars commonly agree that the Tao Te Ching speaks with the voice of an original, shamanistic, animistic Chinese past. I encourage you to read it! Check out Professor Ellen Chen’s translation - I recommend it as the best one I’ve read.

For some interesting history on the evangelical invasion of Taoist folk culture by Buddhist Ch’an (known in japanese as Zen) missionaries, check out Opening a Mountain. Have no doubts - everywhere in the world had its own original standoff between indigenous cultures and the manifest destiny of the civilized. The time has come to return to our beginning, to return to the Tao.

I don’t mean this in the sense of “become a Taoist” - what I find remarkable about the Tao Te Ching involves its spareness of mythological detail - in many ways it goes to the root of animism. I believe it adds richly to the voices that still give clues to the modern animist, to the one searching for a way back to the beginning, back to where Life has always, and will always, flourish.

Come join us for SHIFT at Whitaker Ponds:

http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?ShowResults=yes&SearchText=whitaker+ponds

Saturdays at 12 noon, next to the north baseball field.

Dress for cold, wet, and muddy! Woo hoo!