Take Pity on Me!
I believe all magic comes from (to use Martin Prechtel’s words) Grief, and Praise.
When I think about the wisdom of early civilizations, I tend to think of the lessons they held on to from their pre-civilized animist heritages.
The Eye of Horus above provides an example to me of wisdom. You can look for yourself into the mythology spun around this symbol, as I won’t go into it. Suffice to say this eye has special ‘luck’ and magic to it, because it replaced the plucked eye of someone who had many struggles after descending into the Underworld.
This, to me, represents the eye of someone who has successfully grieved. Grieving opens up the door for magic to happen. Miracles can happen when a tear sits on your cheek, as symbolized by the Eye above.
In much of the animist world, seekers ‘cry’ for visions, make themselves small and pitiable, so that the world of life will notice and take pity on them.
What a simple thing!
I remember one green and sunny Springtime, walking along the street in Khabarovsk, a city in the Russian Far East. There on the sidewalk I saw an injured puppy.
An injured puppy for god’s sake!
Watching him ignored by passers-by, I had to take him home to my tiny cramped room on the tenth floor of a high-rise slum.
I took pity on him. I’ve experienced the world do this all the time for me. Though the Laws of Life say one must kill to live, in the right situation, with enough sincerity, the world will take pity on one freely and openly grieving, as vulnerable as a mouse under the wide blue sky.
On the other side, we fulfill our role too when we have empathy for the world, and take pity on our other-than-human family hurting within it.
Both together make a cycle where needing to kill to eat, and inevitably dying so that others may live, becomes a beautiful dance rather than the cruel cycle of suffering and control all-to-familiar to civilized and domesticated peoples.
So miracles, magic and power in animism comes from the simplicity of real feelings.
Animist peoples see spirituality as simple as behaving in a sincere, human, and real way.
So to experience the magical reality of the animist world, you might start with learning how to cry again.
I’ve certainly had to.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Right on Willem
February 29th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Thanks Billy. I hoped you’d chime in on this one.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:59 am
This is very good, thank-you.
“In much of the animist world, seekers ‘cry’ for visions, make themselves small and pitiable, so that the world of life will notice and take pity on them.”
Can you say more about that in terms of the world at large (not just the human world)?
There is such a hatred of the pitiable in many parts of the human world at the moment, including in ‘alternative’ healing communities eg new agers. So I’m curious how you see the rest of the world responding to open grief.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Often if you listen to the stories of elders and traditional “teachers” you will hear of the time when they were at rock bottom for one reason or other. Maybe addictions, maybe grief of some kind. But they had been beaten down by something till they had no choice but to let go of the pride or arrogance and recieve the help. Usually this was a turn around place for them. They may have recieved a special gift that they now share or possibly the gift was a new purpose.
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Kate-
Thanks!
I”d like to hear more of what you mean by ‘a hatred of the pitiable’. That sounds like some powerful stories lurk behind that comment!
Also, I’d love to answer your question, but I think I need more context - could you expand on it a bit?
Billy-
What AA calls ‘hitting bottom’, right? Perhaps volunteering to ‘hit bottom’ makes magical things happen? What a cool idea. Maybe a Vision Quest means a voluntary effort to ‘hit bottom’, with all the gifts that entails.
Thanks so much for making that comment.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 am
Hey Willem,
“That sounds like some powerful stories lurk behind that comment!”
Well, that would be a long conversation
I think many things, from how many people rely on prozac to manage sadness to the fact that many western cultures have quiet funerals i.e. you can’t cry loudly, but also I feel there is an increasing pressure to hide distress or manage it in certain socially acceptable ways.
My question about how the world responds to grief… I took from your post that there is a magic inherent in being present in one’s grief where the powers of the world meet the person (that is my experience too) and sometimes offer something that was unlooked for or unexpected or couldn’t be seen from the place the person was in before. I think what you and Billy are talking about, and going intentionally to the bottom, is something that the powers of the world love, and I was wondering about the different ways in which people have been met or gifted to.
I know for myself when I am feeling distressed and I allow that and can get past the struggle against it and dive on in, that I go through and come back much more fully into my own power (that is such an amazing experience, thanks for helping me to clarify that).
As you said “grieving opens the door for magic to happen”. For me it’s a newish thing to think of the world taking notice of me when I am in that place, although as a child it was normal I think. I’m trying to think now of the ways that land or plants or animals or whoever might meet us there.
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:40 am
“What AA calls ‘hitting bottom’, right? Perhaps volunteering to ‘hit bottom’ makes magical things happen? What a cool idea. Maybe a Vision Quest means a voluntary effort to ‘hit bottom’, with all the gifts that entails.”
Willem, yeah. From my experience, a Vision Quest can be like that.
Kate said, “…going intentionally to the bottom, is something that the powers of the world love, and I was wondering about the different ways in which people have been met or gifted to….I’m trying to think now of the ways that land or plants or animals or whoever might meet us there.”
I can tell you that yes it happens. Commitment on your part plays a big part in things if it is something that you are deliberately doing to seek that connection. If a person finds them self in that place of pitiableness ( if that’s a word) due to circumstances in their life then maybe the commitment part is already taken care of. If it is a voluntary “quest” kind of situation then maybe a certain level of commitment may be required.
When the connections happen, it is often a good thing to keep the details as a personal thing, which is why I might sound kind of vague here.
Billy
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
Kate-
I think in essence I agree with Billy here. Saying too much amounts to Kiss and Tell, in a real way, because of the intimacy of the exchange. Like a baby at his mother’s breast, or two lovers in bed, or best friends at their secret hiding place.
Generally speaking, I know indigenous tradition talks a lot about plants not offering their healing power unless one asks in the right way when selecting and harvesting them, and same with hunting and so on.
Of course in a modern sense, we can use cleverness and technology somewhat to get around the need for this intimate conversation with the one dying/hurting for you, which turns us into ‘consumers’ rather than ‘courters’. Which does its own damage.
I think I can reveal that by simply and sincerely asking for help from the Land whenever I take folks out to learn tracking and wayfinding skills, that I’ve never had a student lost or injured, though I encourage them to take all kinds of risks to show how much the Land will support a sincere seeker.
This simple and sincere request doesn’t quit mean I’ve ‘hit bottom’, but if I had something bigger to ask for I think I’d have to sacrifice something bigger to earn the intimacy required for such a gift. Just like in any relationship. ‘What have you done for me lately?’
Did any of this answer your question? It sounds like you have powerful experiences of your own that might already answer it better than I have here.
I think the New Age shamanism thing amounts to the modern human love of power, control and performance, projected onto energy work. Of course pitiableness wouldn’t have a high value there.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Willem,
I felt a really strong sense of the importance of grief/praise even when I still worshiped within Christianity. The main initiation rite in Xianity involves debasing oneself in order to approach the deity. They call it confessing your sins and asking Jesus to forgive you so that he can come dwell within you, but it amounts to the same thing: debasing yourself before a spirit in order to initiate or maintain a relationship with it.
I also noticed that the congregations that worshiped with more emotional services tended to feel like they had a stronger connection to the divine than did the more cerebral congregations.
For my own part, I often felt a living presence during moments of strong debasement or heightened praise.
I say these things not to promote Christianity in any way, but to point out how I have noticed these principles of more-than-human relationships happening even within that realm. If, as Prechtel suggests (and I believe,) the spirits thrive on our emotions — eating them and finding nourishment in them the same way we do with food — then who can say that even evangelical Christian worship doesn’t invite attention from the local spirit world? Personally, I think YHWH may have started out as a pushy atmospheric spirit in the Middle East who really figured out how to foster strong emotional responses from his worshipers in order to bolster his own power.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I hear you totally - I’ve thought a lot about this. I suspect the world will accept any emotional food offered wholeheartedly enough.
I do tend to draw a line between certain flavors of Christian concepts of ‘worthiness’ and the indigenous belief that one should humble oneself, attract pity by making oneself vulnerable and small.
In the Christian sense, you have a pervasive sense of personal value tied up in the whole bundle - do you pass muster? Do you measure up? Naughty or nice?
In the indigenous sense, absent the hierarchy of ‘lords’ and ‘kingdoms’, you simply want to attract pity. Your personal worth has nothing to do with any of it - you just want to, for a time, make yourself small and vulnerable, so the world will help you to stand, and in so doing give you gifts to expand your ability to have a life worth living.
I think Jesus did this often, but I don’t think the Christian faith on the whole sees it that way, don’t you think?
March 5th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I can really relate to what you are saying Rix. I was born into and raised in the Roman Catholic church, where I got my confession experiences. That’s not my spiritual practice now but this is what I have taken from those years. There is an element of ritual cleansing to the confession of sins but there is also an aspect to it that requires one to take responsibility for the kind of relationship they have with the Creator and creation. Both, if taken seriously by the person doing it, are acts of humbling oneself before receiving the sacrament of communion with the Holy Spirit.
Just to be clear about what I believe is sin. If I make choices that take me farther away from my relationship with the Creator and my place in creation, that would be sin. These are the things that I would confess if I was humbling myself before seeking communion with the Holy Spirit.
Sorry if some of the words I’ve used have a lot of baggage. It’s the way I know how to express this stuff.
Sincerely,
Billy
March 6th, 2008 at 9:58 am
You make a great distinction there, Willem. I think Xians use the guilt pressure of the laws (and the fact that they can never measure up to them) as the means to hit bottom — at least I did, and most of the grief-worship around me that I noticed (in the Southern Baptist and non-denominational traditions) worked this way as well: “I suck, therefore take pity” as opposed to “I need, therefore take pity.”
Billy, thanks for sharing your take on the Roman Catholic tradition. I like how you pointed out the “responsibility for the kind of relationship” aspect to confession and cleansing. I definitely experienced that as well. It reminds me of what Martin Prechtel said in Grief and Praise that instead of “original sin” the Mayans have “original debt”. You come into the world already in debt to the spirits that have fed you while you grew in your mother’s womb and that kept your people alive. You spend your existence working to repay the upset in that balance — taking responsibility for the relationship.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:57 am
God I love that too. ‘Original Debt’. What a powerful (and honest) relationship.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
[…] if you bless the world and yourself with your sincerely offered […]
March 11th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
That got me thinking: the idea of “original debt” that comes with birth seems to be connected to Chellis Glendinning’s description of birth as “original trauma” (the trauma of dissociation from the womb, which, when not truly tended to, leads to further dissociation within a person’s inner world as well as his/her relationship to the exterior world). Psychic/shamanic rituals (those of grief and praise), according to Glendinning, seek to REassociate humans with the life-world.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Awesome! You know, doesn’t it just say something, that the physicality of a relationship will always tell the truest and most powerful metaphor and story about the relationship.
That makes me happy.