Hi, all -
I've taken a few wrong turnings into New Age shi-... er, stuff, but have managed to back out more or less unscathed.
I've always been a seeker of sorts, I was raised by two atheists but always had some feel for the spirit world and the occasional contact with it out in the wild, although I didn't have any context or framework to put it in.
I was Wiccan for a while, but even back then I knew the cultural appropriation was wrong although it was a gut feeling - I didn't have the language, words like "cultural appropriation," to express my discomfort until much later. Eventually I left, in the direction of ADF (
Ar nDraíocht Féin), which was better but still not good. "Druid" is not a religion, it's a designation for a highly trained religious specialist, and it's specific to Celtic cultures - ADF's inclusion of any Indo-European culture under the rubric of "Druidry" bugged me very early on, as did the idea of being a "solitary Druid." (Huh?) I had trouble with "Norse Druids," and by the time they got to "Vedic Druids" I was just done; as well, I was going through some personal upheavals and didn't have the money to remain a member.
At the moment I'm learning about Gaelic Polytheism. I explored Ásatrú and admired the honesty of many of them (the non-racist ones, who were the majority I ran into) about what they'd got from the Eddas and what they'd reconstructed (their catchphrase
Ásatrú, the religion with homework made me very happy) and their commitment to building community - and, frankly, the tendency of many of them to show up to ceremony in good modern clothes instead of playing
SCA Dress-up, unlike far too many Wiccans who seem to judge people's spirituality on the basis of how outlandish their garb is and how many suns, moons, stars and pentacles they can splatter on every possession in sight. However, I'm just not drawn to it as I am to Gaelic culture, language and music, and going by blood was no help because like almost all Euro-Canadians I'm of mixed blood and have both in my ancestry.
So that's where I am at the moment. I'm a near-fluent speaker of Gàidhlig with a good accent, studying and reading and asking hard questions about Gaelic polytheism and appropriation and where I belong and what?s right for me to do.
I'll admit that I've done some smudging in the past, although not now because I've realized it's not OK - and frankly, it didn't work for me, no doubt because I was doing it wrong. I feel much better after bathing in the sea than I ever did after smudging, and when I had to "clean" my apartment I chose to sain it with juniper smoke and leave the cedar and sage alone, and that worked better too. I do almost certainly have a
tiny amount of Native blood, according to family genealogy and a strain of very dark brown eyes only in the line of that ancestor (everyone else has blue or grey eyes) - specifically Shawnee - but it's 1/64 and doesn't make me "Indian." I look European, was raised European, am European.
Recently I was in Hawai?i and went to a place called
Pu?uhonua o H?naunau - AKA the City of Refuge - on the Big Island. The spirit is palpable there, if you?re open to it. I was moved very strongly to speak briefly to the spirits/gods of the place. Since part of the function of the place is/was to provide absolution from breaking
kapu (taboo/prohibition), I figured I might have a bit more leeway there than elsewhere. I had earlier talked to a
kumu (teacher) there about another question - why a Hawai?ian Christian church would prohibit pork products on a piece of sacred ground - and he somewhat uncomfortably revealed that the place may have been sacred to the pig-god Kamapua?a and pork would be
kapu for that reason; he also told me that different gods had different
kapu about what can be offered: pork is one of them, another is not offering anything that was not indigenous to Hawaii before European contact.
So, I went down to the beach and washed my face and hands in the water and said, in Hawaiian, "Old gods of these islands of Hawaii, forgive, if it is kapu please forgive, aloha." (
E n? ?kua kahiko o k?ia pae moku ?o Hawai?i, e kala mai, in? kapu k?ia e ?olu?olu ?oukou e kala mai, aloha, for speakers of the language.) Instantly I got a feeling of both being accepted and turned away - like when you're a kid and skin your knee or something, so you go to the neighbour's house and they fix you up and give you a hug and then tell you to go on home to your parents. I turned around and the first animal I saw was a bird coloured red, black and white: the colours of Brighde, who is the Gaelic goddess I've begun a home shrine to. Two days later I went back and, as per protocol and after checking with a ranger (the
kumu was in a meeting about Tropical Storm Flossie), left an offering of a lei of
maile vine outside the
heiau (temple) for the
kumu to put on the
lele (offering platform), which is inside a locked gate. I didn't feel much, besides some serious irritation with a tourist kid trying to climb a statue until I glared him away, but that wasn't the point: I've no need or wish to cultivate a relationship with the
?kua, I just wanted to thank them for confirming that my ancestors' gods are where I need to look.
As of then I've just lost all interest in Native practices - it's like a window comes down in my mind, labelled
Not your people. I'm an ally - I helped out a little at
c??sna??m, AKA the Marpole Midden (
http://www.musqueam.bc.ca) - but not Native myself; I would obviously be very honoured to be invited to the Big House, but it's vanishingly unlikely that that would happen and I'm not at all looking for it. I have my own traditions to delve into, I don't need to colonize other peoples'.
So, that's my wordy self.
