March 31, 2003

• …HIT
  THE
  WALL

  I hit the old wall yesterday.  I guess I actually hit more
  than one wall.  I’ve gotta learn to pay more attention to cautions
  and warnings.  Every time I’ve seen the Opening of the Key Tarot
  reading mentioned in books, it has been described as difficult.  I
  have never known anyone who uses the procedure or who has
  mentioned knowing it.  Of course I thought, “Well, it’s hard for
  them because they’re lazy idiots.  I can do it.”

  Yes, I can do it.  I’m still in the middle of doing
  it.  But wow, it’s a big one.  It isn’t one
  spread.   It is a five-stage process, during which cards get
  laid out seven different ways… or was it eight or nine??  I did
  all the card work yesterday, and made detailed
  technical notes.  I was working on writing out the
  interpretation until late in the evening, when Doug and Greyfox were
  getting ready to gang up on me and take me away from the
  keyboard.  I’ll get back to it after I post this.

  When I got up from my trusty ergonomic office chair here, I realized
  that a fibro-flare had snuck up on me while I was otherwise
  occupied.  I could barely walk.  Within moments after I took
  off the headphones with their psychoactive shamanic trance sounds, I
  started getting muscle spasms here and there.  I’m not talking
  little tics here–ever had a HARD charleyhorse?  –or a cramp in
  the bottom of your foot that tries to pull your toes down and back to
  your heel?  That’s how those spasms were.

  It hurt, but I can deal with that.  Making pain stop hurting
  and start communicating is one of my areas of expertise.  It’s a
  simple technique I teach to others, too, originally at my “painswitch” website until the hosting company went down, and now here on Xanga.  I was using the switch from the moment I got up from here and
  hobbled across the room.  Dismiss the hurting part; it comes and
  goes.

  The part that’s a bit harder to deal with is the stiffness,
  incoordination, and other such effects.  I fumbled around in the
  kitchen, got myself a bite to eat and cleaned up what I spilled in the
  process.  This was a bit more complicated than it usually
  is even in a flare-up, since I wasn’t seeing straight.  Eye
  involvement is uncommon for me, and I’m glad of that.

  Last night some of my muscle spasms were in my head.  NO, not
  my MIND, my skull.  The muscles in my eye sockets, the ones that I
  use to look this way or that, cramped up.  Okay, no bedtime
  reading.  Watch TV.  No, not that, either, with the eyes
  crossed and the left one pointed a few degrees lower than the right
  one, and then apparently all by itself with no participation from me,
  being pulled by those spasming muscles until I’m looking at the tip of
  my nose.

  No cure for it but to shut the eyes and run through the progressive
  whole-body relaxation routine.  So, I spent the remainder of my
  evening as a body-shaped puddle, eyes closed and ears wide open hearing
  the TV, Doug’s game controller clicks and his exclamantions of dismay
  or triumph, and Greyfox’s keyboarding.  Mercifully, sleep came
  soon.

  ---

  Smudging

  Several readers asked about the procedure and significance of smudging.

  It is a Native American ritual that has made its way into New Age
  and NeoPagan practice.   Indians considered (and some still
  do consider) smoke to be a way to send messages to the Great
  Spirit.  Scented smoke was (still is in some places) considered to
  have an influence on lesser spirits.  “Good” scents, the pleasant
  ones such as sweet grass, are said to attract beneficent spirits. 
  Such rationales are not unique to the Americas.  The use, in
  Europe, Africa and Asia, of incense in religious ritual
  predates Christianity.

  One would think (at least this one here would so think) that if good
  smells bring good spirits, bad smells would bring bad spirits. 
  That’s not the way it is beleived to be in those traditions.  The
  pungent smells of sage and cedar are believed to REPEL evil
  spirits.  I’ll take this as evidence that I’m not an evil
  spirit, because I love the scents of smudge, which usually mingle both
  the pungent and the sweet.  For me now, the scents evoke memories
  of medicine wheel gatherings, sweat lodge ceremonies, meditation
  groups, and the many sacred and communal events I’ve attended where
  smudge has been used.

  As I wrote yesterday, I don’t do ritual, usually.   I
  prefer my communion with spirit to be spontaneous, conscious, and
  sincere.  For me, ritual does not provide that.  I would not,
  for example, recite a canned prayer.  My contact with Spirit comes
  from my heart, mind and soul, not from memory.  And yet,
  there are some rituals I perform when I want to set a particular mood
  for my work. 

  I was taught techniques for “grounding and centering”, for adjusting
  my mental focus, for relaxation… even the painswitch can loosely be
  termed a ritual because it is a learned technique repeated by
  rote.  I use those techniques, things which other people might
  consider a sacred ritual or a magickal rite, in the same way that I
  follow recipes in cooking or the procedures in computer
  troubleshooting, etc.

  This morning, Doug was reading yesterday’s blog and the
  comments.  He asked what smudging does, how it’s supposed to
  work.  I told him the folklore, and then said, ”It’s
  superstitious rigamarole.”  That’s how I see it. 
  Then Greyfox spoke up and said it’s the power of the
  placebo.  I’ll buy that, too.

  However, when something happens such as having that “Authority of
  Ritual” card flip face-up while I’m shuffling a brand new deck, I
  pay attention.  Most of my professional colleagues have elaborate
  rituals they follow each time they remove the silk wrap from their
  Tarot cards.   My various decks are kept in everything from
  leather pouches to the cardboard boxes they came in from the factory.

  Some readers never allow others to touch their cards, and keep
  them locked away in a hidden place.  I let my clients in my booths
  at fairs shuffle the cards.  Beliefs differ, traditions conflict,
  and my way of dealing with the conflict long ago was to eliminate the
  rituals and use common sense in the care of my cards.

  But I also work with crystals, and I do psychometry.  I have
  learned by experience that “vibes” or psychic impressions can pass from
  person to person through the medium of objects.  Crystalline or
  metal objects pick up and store these impressions better than organic
  matter, but almost no Tarot reader would use a new deck of cards
  without some sort of purifying ritual.  So, I smudged my new
  deck.  Might not help, but it can’t hurt, right?

  Enjoying the evocative scent, I went on and had some fun with
  it.  I tuned into Spirit and made the ritual REAL for
  me.  Any spiritual power in ritual is in the INTENT, the way we
  focus our attention.  After smudging myself and my cards, I stood
  and waited for the next impulse.  My dog Koji came over, so I
  smudged him.  I heard a snore from Doug, and walked over and
  did a purification ritual for my beloved son.  It seemed only
  fitting to turn and waft the scented smoke at the war news on TV. 
  Then I felt an impulse to step outside and do the usual wind-and-sky
  gestures.

  I’ve watched those movements performed by Native elders in buckskin,
  beads and feathers, and by various Pagan or New Age
  practitioners, skyclad or in flowing robes.  I’ve grown
  and gathered the herbs and tied bundles of them into sticks for
  smudging.   To me, none of that is any more sacred than the
  rest.  The sacred herbs grow from the sacred earth and we light
  them with sacred fire.  We draw in the sacred scents with our
  sacred breath.  Reality is sacred, to me.

  • 4:17 pm
  • 3 Comments