I’M AT BLOGSPOT :)

In case you’ve found this page, I moved to ADVENTURES ON THE DUSKEN PATH for purposes of the pagan blog project. Will be posting there.

Thank thee!

Merry Yule!

Got up to watch the sunrise. Did a little unexpected spell writing.

Burned the yule log candles as the sun came up.

Merry Yule to all!

Dumb Supper Status Report.

Greetings web!

As you may or may not know, I’m currently a senior in college living in a decided Roman Catholic household. So if I was going to hold a dumb supper I knew it would have to be at 3 in the morning. (And indeed it was) And I would have to creep around ninja style, make all the food beforehand, somehow silently transfer it to dishes, stow candles somewhere, set it up and take pictures all without anybody waking up or questioning what I was doing. (I get questioned a lot in my house and frankly didn’t feel like it this eve.)

I made all the food myself and made some excuse as to it being traditional and No Questions Were Asked past that. (I’m vegetarian if you’re wondering where the hell the meat’s at. Long story short touching meat gives me the heebies even though I collect dead animal parts and consider going into taxidermy. Your guess is as good as mine.)

The point is, it worked. I’ll also be staying up for the sunrise to light my yule log candles.

But first: What I baked!

Christmas cookies, like my grandma used to make. She used the same shapes

Delicious close up!

Serbian christmas bread, for the Yugoslavian side of the fam’.

Delicious egg-less dairy-less dough, omnomnom. (This bread was usually made Christmas eve, because it satisfied the no-dairy-no-eggs requirement of the church for ‘fasting breads’.)

Potatoes for german potato salad! (not the weak mayonnaise kind. The cup of vinegar minimum kind.)

Delicious potates. (Vinegar, dijon mustard, onions, sugar, and salt)

Last but not least, German spiced wine. (Glühwein)

My apologies for the pictures of the dumb supper, but if you paid attention up there (^) I ninja’d the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. I would have preferred an elaborate, beautifully considered/put together altar (if you’ve seen my other altars, you know this) but the energy was nice with my ghetto’d supper all the same.

onward!

Place setting

Lights off. Bad camera quality. To top off my ninja skills, the camera began to die in the middle! (Did I mention, quick aside, when I was angrily waiting for my parents to go to bed so I could get on with it I stabbed myself THROUGH THE PALM with pencil lead? Yule offering, anyone?)

Black and white because I am supremely gay.

Nowhere near as pretty as I’d like but it gets the job done. The energy was plentiful with wasted German ancestry, and I was pleased. And the bread? It tastes like bread. (But I can tell you the wine will literally knock you out.)

Merry yule to you all!

-Foxdreams, signing off.

WHAT’S THAT? TIME FOR MORE YULE PORN?

Of course it is. It always is.

Let’s start with this awesome thing that came in the mail today.

OH MAN WHAT IS THAT AWESOMELY WITCHY BOX FOR, FOXDREAMS?

This baby. This is a frank and myrrh scented candle and if it was physically possible I would marry it in the state of new york and make sweet, unending love to how good this thing smells. You think you know how good it smells, but you don’t.

MOVING ON

This is the little christmas tree. Obviously being red-blooded and german-americans, we had to get 2 trees. What? What do you mean that’s excess? Pshaw.

This is the other tree. It makes me look like a fucking munchkin at my impressive 5 foot height.

AND THIS ladies and gents is my yule log. Yes, it was drilled out of a piece of firewood. (Logistically I was like well we’re gonna burn the thing anyway–why not cut out the middleman, here.) Bayberry candles as per tradition, with tree clippings, pinecones from our evergreen and holly leaves and berries from our bushes. (My house is surprisingly good for pagan scavenging. Oh you roman catholics.)

Next post will be baking. I kind of sort of forgot it wasn’t the 22nd today and I want my mulled wine to be fresh. Tomorrow it is (probably, maybe)

(PS if you want your own smells-better-than-sexing-god-candle go look at MagickalCupboard )

Dumb Supper.

Delicious.

That was what I said when I saw Ms. Graveyard’s challenge.

I, like some of the other posters I’ve seen, meant to do a dumb supper on Samhain. Really. I really did. Don’t give me that look, whatthefuck.

I’m also one of those who’s not very ‘close’ to their ancestors, living or dead, to be honest. 3 of my grandparents are dead and to be frank the 4th I do not consider a real part of my family. Our family lineague does this weird thing where we can trace it back to Yugoslavia, through Germany, to Alsace-Lorraine  but after that nobody has any fucking clue where my red hair came from. Really, me and my mom have this suspicious red hair and freckles going on. If you ask me SOMEBODY got it on with an Irishman. I ain’t pointing fingers, or anything…but…I have my suspicions. (Do I blame them? Fuck naw.)

My immediate family considers themselves German by default (my parents are fluent german speakers; my dad learned it as his first language, he got called a Nazi in gradeschool just for being a German, yadda yadda) so for once I’m going traditional-fusion and trying to honor my german-ness.

My (dead) grandma was all about the trad. german stuff. She made us delicious sugar-cinnamon coated apple fritters every time we came over, made the best goddamned german vinegar potato salad (yo I’m sorry but that non-vinegar potato salad is weak. WEAK. MAN UP.) this side of the country, and always followed up with the most delicious strawberry shortcake in this world or the next. She made these secret recipe cookies that she put through one of those dough compressors, you know the ones. The ones that make the christmas stars, and the little trees?

To honor that traditon I’ll be making some of her cookies. I’m also thinking of making the apple fritters, a traditional Yugoslavian (Serbian) christmas cake, complete with coin if I can, and some German mulled/spiced wine. I’m vegetarian and can’t stomach meat in my house (bought from the supermarket) in general, so I’m keeping it meat-free, yo. They won’t know, they’ll all be plastered.

We’re Germans, after all.

This year we also have 2 christmas trees and I’m crafting a yule log from the 8 inches (YEAH YEAH 8 INCHES LAUGH IT UP) we had to cut off the trunk of the one, and boughs of pine needles and cones from the clippings of the other. They’ll be hung over certain doorways in the home. (Old german/yugoslavian thing, yadda yadda)

Tomorrow: Baking day. Bring it on.

Altar Porn

Right now, to start this blog off right for the second time, I’mma post some of my favorite past altars. Why? Because everybody likes altar porn. Go on, tell me you don’t. Like anyone reads blogs for the words.

For the supermoon, last Yule.

Kuan Yin, the altar I used to keep at the apartment. To give honor to my Buddhist days.

Samhain circa 2010, also known as “The Crowd Pleaser”.

(Bast and Anubis are my buds. You ever knock back a few beers with Anubis? Cool guy, really. Seriously.)

Hey, blog.

Let’s start over.

I’m Foxdreams. I practice a fuckton of things that often conflict with each other and make no sense.

I generally refer to what I do as Shamanism, or alternatively whateverthefuckifeelikeism.

I’ll be posting things related to that (probably crossing the line into feminism and lesbianism and a lot of isms) so expect some fun things in the future.

My spirit-guide/companion/fantasticallygaymanwolffriend is ridiculously cool. One day I’ll post you a picture, maybe.

I spend a lot of time with spirits. Like, a lot of time. Especially with dead things. I have a lot of those.

I’m in the process of figuring of what I do and why. Feel free to tag along and shit.

Yule Altar Time

Yule altar pictures for you pervs, yo. If it ain’t fake floral it ain’t legit.

Cleaning Shop

You might notice the numbers in past posts now make no sense. That’s because I changed the focus of this blog from explanatory in nature, to, around a year after it was originally made, whatever-the-fuck-I-want-to-speak-on-ism.

There will probably be ample pictures (probably of cats) and lots of bullshittery, but ain’t that delicious anyway.

I’m leaving the original couple posts up for those curious as to what Shamanism really entails the way I see it and what not, but from here on my friend, we forge a new path.

A lot of what I practice and believe has changed; I’ve become pretty involved in aspects of Gnosticism and suchwith. I’ve become hugely into herbs and craft my own herbal teas.

I went through what I call “The City-Pagan Complex”, when you realize you’re celebrating the seasons indoors with only symbols and you kind of realized you weren’t worshipping what you thought you were, anyway. In fact, I don’t really worship anything. I make altars, but not really to specific things. I don’t do daily devotionals, I don’t pray often in the regular sense. I just do things to do them, and become malleable in the process. I keep altars to deities I have a working relationship with, but it’s like we bump shoulders in hallways and move on.

Truthfully I’ve kind of fallen away from my path. It’s good, sometimes, to do that. When you come back everything seems brighter.

05: The Problem with Michael Harner

This post might be a little too much for some people, but I’m putting my opinions on Michael Harner and core Shamanism in general out there from the start. For some of you who aren’t as intimately involved in the issues surrounding shamanism, maybe you need a little history of the inner-workings of the above mentioned. For your benefit, I provide this here, and then my opinions follow the facts.

For those of you that might like and/or follow core shamanism, I don’t think the path by itself is necessarily false, or holds no value by itself for many people out there, just that one cannot ignore the fact that some of the claims Harner makes about his system are based on sweeping generalizations and not actual fact.

Michael Harner is an anthropologist, he received his phD from the University of California Berkely, and he studies Shamanism. He left his life writing books and doing studies for firsthand experience in the path of Shamanism, which he respected enough to want to participate in. He studied extensive accounts of South American shamanism specifically, and went to study with various shamanic teachers for a number of years.

This part about his studies is quoted directly from his site (linked at the end of this post):

Dr. Harner began learning about shamanism in 1956-57 while studying with the Shuar (Jivaro) tribe of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and started practicing shamanism during his 1960-61 stay with the Conibo people of the Peruvian Amazon. He subsequently returned to the Shuar for additional practical training in shamanism. He became recognized as a shaman by the indigenous shamans with whom he worked, including ones belonging to the following peoples: the Conibo and Shuar (formerly Jívaro) in South America; the Coast Salish, Pomo, and Northern Paiute in western North America; the Inland Inuit and the Sami ( formerly Lapps) in the Arctic; and the Tuvans of central Asia.

Following this, what Harner is known for is both writing The Way of the Shaman, which is essentially a 101 coursebook for core shamanism, and later establishing The Center for Shamanic Studies. Basically, what Harner did was theorize that, based upon his findings and research, all types of Shamanism the world over shared, and even blended or believed similar (or, in this case) basically the same things. He theorized that although every culture had its own beliefs and systems of healing, they were all pretty much facets of the same diamond, the otherworld, and thusly all shamanism can be considered part of the same whole. In his view, shamans the world over were essentially in their practice doing the same basic things as every other shaman.

Okay, so that was the end of the “factual” part. Now, I will state why this view is utterly generalizing and false in my opinion.

Shamanism, in my definition, is a system of beliefs and practices that arise directly out of the belief and cosmology of any culture one wants to speak of. For example, in some fictional culture, say we have a group of people that all believe in an Otherworld that is inhabited by evil spirits, and some good, but mostly evil. Okay, this gives us a belief system. Then, for a moment, consider they have Shamans. Based upon the cosmology of those peoples (they think the Otherworld is mostly evil) the Shaman’s duties include constantly protecting the village from illness, famine, other evil spirits, and other tribes, and also communing with the good spirits in said otherworld. The Shaman would have to, logically, be able to distinguish between the good and evil spirits, based upon this belief system. Perhaps he also has to be able to perform exorcisms, to remove the influences of said evil spirits on the population at large.

Notice, however, that this shaman operates based upon the BELIEF SYSTEM his culture has in place.

Harner claims that you can essentially practice shamanism, as a practice, while believing anything you want. Now, this is a problem in itself, because you can never remove shamanism from its cultural roots. In other to create “core shamanism”, Harner basically pulled cultural practices from mostly North and South American shamans, and figured one could make it work without, essentially, knowing “why”. The biggest offender to me in this category is that he shamelessly appropriates smudging and “sucking” rituals as forms of healing from various native american tribes. Now, by pulling that practice, which is linked at the most basic and primal level to the cosmology of the tribe(s) from which it came, he is already pulling with the practice the reasons for doing the practice…which depend on knowledge of said culture.

What I am saying is you can’t divorce smudging from its cultural roots, because a culture invented smudging based upon its spiritual ideologies. Taking the practices of shamans all over the world, combining them, and claiming they really are the same where is counts is like pulling the legs out from under a table filled with various objects. You simply cannot present someone with a 4 course meal without a table to put it all on. Similarly, stealing the practices of shamans and attempting to tell the world you can practice those things without knowing the religious ideas of the culture is like looking at something halfway. At best it’s giving people a way to practice without any explanation or depth of study on their part, in a neatly packaged box under a label they can digest as Westerners, and at worst it’s serious cultural appropriation and disrespectful to the cultures he takes from.

I simply can’t get past his “I’m a legitimate white shaman, because I studied under a few shamans for a number of years, and I am therefore qualified to teach the masses via an official-sounding institute.” I feel like quite honestly he’s routinely educating people in the exact wrong way: with sweeping generalizations and no differentiation between how an Inuit shaman and how an Amazon shaman operates, which, if one reads even a little literature on the topic, one would realize the differences are very extreme. For an actual good look at shamanism through the anthropological lense, check out Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Arcaic Techniuqes of Ecstacy. Stay away from The Way of the Shaman.

If you want to visit Harner’s site to verify for yourself how you feel about him, it’s this way.