House Tearmainn

My totem issues seem to be resolved for the time being. Not that they ever stay that way. Wolf can’t stay with me on this path, but I don’t doubt we’ll meet back up again further on. There has always been a sense that he was with me because I needed him to be, I’d asked and begged all those long years ago, and in his kindness he had acquiesced. I was never claimed by him, though, not the way I was by Coyote.

I’m incredibly sad. It is like losing an uncle. I’m also more than a little relieved, though, and when I’m done grieving I think I will finally be able to move forward again. He will be missed.

It’s been a few days of bummers here at Tearmainn Central… work issues (curse you Oracle!), direct deposit failures, cranky kids (and adults) at home, not enough sleep in 7 days, and there is already a new version of Wordpress out. This does not fill me with joy. In fact, it’s been quite enough to extinguish my post-MsC glow.

I’m tempted to leave this post at that and hit the sack, but I really despise going to bed feeling beaten down. Today has, for the most part, been substantially better than yesterday at least. So in an effort to at least fight entropy to a standstill, here is a high level view of my spiritual views. I’ve been wanting to post this for a bit since it seems unfair to dump all of the upcoming spiritual stuff out here without at least some context.

I am a shaman. Not a very good one, but there you are. I’m a firm believer that everyone has their crazy, and it does us well to just accept that in each other, find the people whose broken edges line up with ours, and move on. Much of my own is tied up in my dual nature. When I’m inclined to blame it on something I usually choose having grown up in two wildly different homes due to my parents being divorced. Truth is, though, who cares?

I was raised Catholic until my mother pulled that out from under me rather abruptly around age 10 or so. I fiddled about with it on my own for a few years, tried out being Baptist at the urging of a close friend, then ran into the concept of modern shamanism around age 15. It struck a resounding chord with me, and I immediately decided that it was the path for me.

I also, being 15, decided immediately that I needed a totem and that it should be Wolf. Wolf is cool, after all, and gives +2 dice to combat spells. It took some time to figure out that that’s not quite how it works. For about 3 years I floundered, trying to figure things out by reading books (mostly fiction, natch). In the end I did manage to make a connection with Wolf, but it was not the depth of connection that I was looking for.

By the time I was 17 it had become clear that there was something important missing. In a fit of teenage angst I spent one summer night deep in meditation, open to the possibilities of the universe and whatever I might need to continue on my path. Sometime in the wee hours of that morning I met Coyote. For jackass 17yo reasons I was disappointed, almost crushed, but the level of connection was there and that was enough to get my attention.

The relationship between my natures and their respective totems is complex, but what in this world isn’t? I worked for years on building and controlling my own energy, on how to keep my natures in check and working together, on how to tell when what I was feeling or “hearing” was real or what Raven Kaldera aptly calls “the sock puppets in your head”. I went a fair ways down Wolf’s path, and Coyote’s, but not nearly as far as I could have gone down either as I could have if I had not been divided between them.

A couple of years back I hit a scary point. Coyote’s path is one of questioning fearlessly, and looking the answers square in the face. Wolf’s is one that requires a fair amount of faith. The two collided in an irreconcilable way, with Coyote showing me a path where symbols, including totems, gods, the universe, everything, are devoid of inherent power… and Wolf being perfectly clear that someone who thought that could not walk his path.

So here I am, experiencing a strong spiritual renaissance and looking to resolve that core issue. I have thoughts on that, but it’s a story for another day. Life’s a funny thing, but that’s not why Coyote laughs.