Dancing with Shadows

It can be difficult, as I discussed recently, to find good Pagan books. This week, I've begun reading -- and am being blown away by -- David Abram's Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Abram, to my knowledge, doesn't self-identify as a Pagan, although his bio at The Alliance for Wild Ethics says that Abram is:

An accomplished storyteller and sleight-of-hand magician who has lived and traded magic with indigenous sorcerers in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas . . . .

and he's certainly studied and written about magic. Becoming Animal is, in any event, a Pagan book, in the true sense of the word. The Politics and Prose write-up says:

The shapeshifting of ravens, the erotic nature of gravity, the eloquence of thunder, the pleasures of being edible: all have their place in Abram’s investigation. He shows that from the awakened perspective of the human animal, awareness (or mind) is not an exclusive possession of our species but a lucid quality of the biosphere itself—a quality in which we, along with the oaks and the spiders, steadily participate.

I'm particularly struck by Abram's discussion of shadows. Having worked with James Hillman, it's not surprising that Abram writes about shadows in ways that have multiple meanings. Although he's ostensibly talking about the kind of shadows we cast upon the ground when the sun is shining, I find some of his passages to be equally applicable (and I can't believe Abram isn't aware of what he's doing) to Jungian shadows, as well. Here's a small example:

One of the marks of our obliviousness, one of the countless signs that our thinking minds have grown estranged from the intelligence of our sensing bodies, is that today a great many people seem to believe that shadows are flat. . . . We identify our shadow, in other words, with that visible shape we see projected on the pavement or the whitewashed wall. Since what we glimpse there is a being without depth [heh], we naturally assume that shadows themselves are basically flat -- and if we are asked by a curious child about the life of shadows [again, heh] we are apt to reply that their lives exist in only two dimensions [ok, I'll stop with the "heh"s, but I think you see my point].

. . .

[M]y actual shadow is an enigma more substantial than that flat shape on the ground. That silhouette is only my shadow's outermost surface. . . . [The] apparent gap between myself and that flat swath of darkness is what prompts me, now and then, to accept its invitation to dance, the two of us then strutting and ducking in an improvised pas de deux wherein it's never very clear which one of us is leading [heh; can't help myself] and which is following. It is now obvious, however, that that shape slinking along on the pavement is merely the outermost edge of a thick volume of shade, an umbral depth that extends from the pavement right on up to my knees, torso, and head -- a shadow touching me not just at my feet, but at every point of my person.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong and Abram, trying heroically to get us back in actual touch with the physical shadows cast by our bodies, would berate me for needing to find verbal twists and psychological constructs literally breaking through his words. Indeed, in the essay on magic, linked above, Abram says:

For it is likely that the "inner world" of our Western psychological experience, like the supernatural heaven of Christian belief, originated in the loss of our ancestral reciprocity with the living landscape. When the animate presences with whom we have evolved over several million years are suddenly construed as having less significance than ourselves, when the generative earth that gave birth to us is defined as a soulless or determinate object devoid of sensitivity and sentience, then that wild otherness with which human life had always been entwined must migrate, either into a supersensory heaven beyond the natural world, or else into the human skull itself--the only allowable refuge, in this world, for what is ineffable and unfathomable.

At any rate, it's a meaty book (odd choice of words, perhaps, for a book entitled "Becoming Animal") and one full of the Pagan understanding that EVERYTHING is alive and longing to be in communion, that, "it's all real; it's all [heh] metaphor; there's always more."

If you've read it, or Abram's earlier book, The Spell of the Sensuous I'd love to know your reactions.

Update: As the stumbling oral reading above makes clear, this is a book written to be read, not spoken. The language is lush, almost rococo, and one needs to remain fully present to read it. I'm reading it, as a result, as a series of amuses-gueule, and not in one or two "swell foops," as my grandma used to say.

You Should Listen

I Grow Old, I Grow Old

Could this article be any more biased?

Bread baking is a "blessing".

Sowing and milking came to Europe with both a "missionary zeal" and "peaceful cooperation." That "peaceful cooperation," however, shows "signs of conflict." The lack of logic doesn't matter when explaining how the patriarchs prevailed.

The early farmers moving into Central Europe were sophisticated compared with these children of nature. The farmers wore different clothing, prayed to other idols and spoke a different language.

Early farmers were more "sophisticated" (aka better than) the "children of nature" who were living in Europe. But both of them prayed to "idols" other than, one assumes, the "true god" of the xians.

The farmers even protected their livestock from outside influences, determined to prevent the wild oxen known as aurochs from breeding with their Middle Eastern cows. They feared that such hybrids would only introduce a new wild element into the domesticated breeds.

Their breeding precautions were completely understandable. The revolutionary idea that man could subjugate plants and animals went hand in hand with enormous efforts, patience and ingenuity. The process took thousands of years.

Of course, the hard-working patriarchialists wouldn't want their "enormous efforts, patience, and ingenuity" to be ruined by those less interested in the "subjugation" of all other life forms.

. Çatalhöyük, known as "man's first metropolis," had about 5,000 inhabitants, who lived in mud huts packed tightly together. They worshipped an obese mother goddess, depicted in statues as a figure sitting on a throne decorated with the heads of carnivores.

Catalhoyuk is "man's" first metropolis and the Goddess worshipped there was "obese."

The settlers, wielding their sickles, kept moving farther and farther north, right into the territory of backward peoples. The newcomers were industrious and used to working hard in the fields.

This is opposed to the "backward peoples" who were not used to "working hard in the fields."

By comparison, the more primitive existing inhabitants of the continent wore animal hides and lived in spartan huts. They looked on in bewilderment as the newcomers deforested their hunting grounds, tilled the soil and planted seeds. This apparently upset them and motivated them to resist the intruders.

NO SHIT SHERLOCK!

At this point, our heroine's head asplodes.

Picture found here.

True

She's A Witch! Burn Her!

Here's an interesting tidbit of an article that ties the increase in witch trials to bad weather in Europe. I wasn't aware of the research discussed (but sadly not linked) in the article. But, it makes sense. As the Little Ice Age impacted crops and livelihoods, the search for scapegoats focused on women -- esp. women with property to seize or women who were vulnerable.

I have to say that I often shake my head at many "modern" -- by which I mean, not from the 1970s and 1980s -- Pagans who are quite quick to run away from various feminist discussions of the persecution of witches in other centuries. That someone may have made a calculation error in the exact number of women killed and tortured as witches hardly seems to me to undo the importance of the fact that it was most often women being burned as witches, and that those burned were often women who were (take your pick) single, vulnerable, uppity, had something worth stealing, etc.

As we head into really bad weather over the coming decades, we Pagans might want to keep the above article in mind. I'm all for being as out as possible, forcing governments to recognize us, etc. But as monotheists demonstrate every time some terrorist attack occurs or some bad weather hits, we're the ones most likely to get blamed.

Do you have a hidey hole? A stash of cash for running? A plan?

With Nature

A Gov't Of Occupation Facilitates Resource Extraction

More here.

European Permaculture

I wouldn't call a fir tree forest a desert, but other than that . . . .

The Personal IS The Political

Here's Derrick Jensen, who generally knows precisely about about what he is talking, arguing that, when it comes to the way that civilization is destroying the planet, the personal is not the political.

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

As someone who dances naked around fires, I do think that such acts can help to bring about changes, including changes such as the Voting Rights Act of 1957. I don't "just" do magic. I've often said that the best magical spell for getting a job is filling out the job application.

I understand Jensen's point, his call for serious activism, his frustration. But the world MUST be re-imagined in order to be changed. Some of the most radical things I've done have involved doing magic to support activists who are physically on the line even more than Jensen is.

And, yet, I completely agree with what he's saying:

Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

In the end, as even Jensen's said, we need people to take down civilization and we need people to teach others how to use native plants for medicine. We need shamans to talk to the planet for us and we need people to go sit in ancient redwoods so they won't get cut down. And those of us doing one piece of the work owe it to the others not to call the cops. And not to ridicule.

Picture found here.

Endlessly Disposable

If at present we are seeking to render the totality of the [E]arth's resources endlessly available, endlessly usable, endlessly disposable, it is because endless consumption is the proximate goal of a production without end. Or, better, consumption is what justifies the frenzy of production, which, in turn justifies consumption, the entire cycle serving more to keep us busy than to satisfy our real needs.

~From Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition by Robert Pogue Harrison/

Picture found here

How Many Of The World's Goods Are Measured In Birds' Nests? How Many Should Be?

Talking to Carolyn Raffensperger, Derrick Jensen asks: Wouldn't the precautionary principle then destroy competitive advantage?

Raffensperger answers: I want to turn that sentence around and suggest that competitive advantage destroys. The idea that we can outcompete, that we can compete by lowering dollar costs destroys. The idea that we measure goods in dollars destroys. How many of the world's goods are measured in U.S. dollars and not, for example, in the number of bird's nests? If we measured all of our economy in the number of hatchlings of migratory birds, we would figure competitive advantage in an entirely different way. But competitive advantage drives lower and lower dollar costs on things, and increases the probability that we're going to externalize costs.

As Janine Benyus has pointed out, nature favors cooperation over competition. And that sense of mutualism and reciprocity is undermined with competitive advantage.

The whole question of competitive advantage leads to some absurdities. There are some things that are just plain stupid to trade. Why are we moving water around the planet using fossil fuels? Why does France have a competitive advantage with Perrier over some other bottled water in the United States, or over drinking your tap water? That is not rational.

So to worry that the precautionary principle is going to destroy competitive advantage is to worry about precisely the wrong thing.

~Picture found here.

Native Plants

Many, many heartfelt thanks to all who responded in comments to my question about Wiccan landscaping. I've really enjoyed following links to altars and articles, and I've jotted down a lot of good ideas and book titles.

One point that several commenters raise, and that I've spent a significant amount of time thinking about, is the notion of using only native species plants. The idea has an almost obvious appeal and it certainly makes sense not to try and grow plants that require unnatural (for the area) amounts of water or that will need pesticides in order to thrive. Similarly, one doesn't want to grow plants that can become dangerously invasive (around here, bamboo can quickly go wild and become impossible to eradicate completely; we will not speak of the weed that must not be named (k-u-d-z-u)).

But, I am going to grow a number of non-native plants. Angelica, for example, a native of continental Europe. Dill, which, although it has now naturalized in, inter alia, North America, originated in the Middle East. Wormwood, a native of Asia and Europe. Artemisia, both vulgaris and dracunculus (mugwort and tarragon), a native of southern Europe. (Plant origins found in New Book of Herbs by Jekka McVicar, a practical guide that my DiL gave to me and that I highly recommend). I could go on and on listing the herbs that I want to grow, none of which originated in North America. Many of the arisaemas that I love were originally collected in Japan. How long does a plant need to grow in an area before it's native? Did it have to be here in North America before the Europeans came, both bringing new plants here and exporting North American plants back to Europe? What about plants that are spread by birds or animals; are they ok because their method of migration was more natural than that of my arisimeas? Is it "ok" to grow a plant once it has naturalized, as dill has done?

I've done two things to help me decide which non-native plants are ok to grow here. First, I try v. hard to listen to the land, both by observing what works here and by trancing and talking to the spirit of the land. Second, I'm consulting with my landscape designer, who grew up and went to school in this part of Virginia and who understands my concerns about working with the land, its genius locii, its spirit. He's been a good source for information about what will grow well here, what trees this land appears to willingly receive, and what to avoid.

Lately, too, I've been wondering what the carbon footprint is for a project like landscaping my little yard. I'll be adding a number of trees to the ones already here and I'm looking speculatively at the roof of my garden shed and thinking about green roofs.