Symbols are Subjective.

Today I was playing with graphics, just trying to get an idea out of my head and into a form I can share. The idea was that each cycle, whether that is a year, a moon cycle, a life cycle or the cycle of a day has common elements that are related to the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. If you're a pagan of some sort, some of the graphic I eventually came up with might make some sort of sense right away.

If it doesn't, that's okay. I understand that it's a symbol, and while symbols might be powerful, they are also subjective. That's what I want to talk about.

My good friend and I started a conversation about oracles and how well each of us utilizes them. I read rune stones and she reads tarot cards. To me, her cards are mostly gobbledygook, and to her, my stones are random characters. To me, my runic readings are sometimes clear as crystal, and to her, the cards bring excellent insight into issues. The difference between us? She studied Tarot and I studied Runes.

It's like knowing a language. If two people share the same language symbols, they can communicate well with each other. If they don't, they'll have trouble understanding each other. For me someone speaking Spanish fluently is simply making sounds since I don't know more than a dozen words of that language. I might catch a word or two, but mostly it's gobbledygook, just like my friend's card layout. That person speaking Spanish might be having just as much trouble understanding me, if they don't know much English. Only when we have a language in common will we really be able to share ideas.

My spiritual language is eclectic. I know enough about runes to read them. I do well with the unique meanings and uses of crystals and stones. I have a smattering of Eastern philosophy and Native American spiritualism and Celtic based ritualism. I'm a naturalistic shaman myself, learning about the spiritual and material worlds by observing them and the ties they have with everything else. There aren't always adequate words in the English language to describe what I know - the symbol sets don't quite match up. That's what's made me interested in other ways of seeing things, in other spiritual languages. I want to know because I see that some of what we understand is the same even though the language we use to express it is different. I hope that other spiritual languages might give me a way to share more easily with others.

 But the language and the sharing are ultimately not the goal. It's the knowing that is. To know that everything is connected and understand how is more important than being able to chart it out in a graphic. That I understand that cycles repeat in ever changing infinite patterns is the knowledge I need to help someone or some spirit find a way out of a pattern that is causing them harm. The knowledge that everything is connected in ways most people can't experience is what I need to understand how to heal some things. The fact that I know that my own language might not include symbols that others understand is what makes me tolerant, what makes me listen and keep learning other people's symbols so we can communicate the best way that we can.

The symbols I use are subjective, and I know that. I try to do my best to explain them to those who are as eager to share understanding as I am. In doing so, I often find myself being taught the symbol set of the person I'm communicating with. We teach each other, and in teaching each other find that we already know what the other is saying, we just didn't speak each others' language.

The language of Tarot and the language of Runes aren't really all that different. They are Oracle, made of symbols that remind us of our intuitive understanding of the connections between everything and how those relations combine to influence what is happening around us. The symbols aren't the same, but the concepts behind them are.

I wonder sometimes if all the misunderstandings in the world only happen because people don't take the time to learn each others' set of symbols or simply reject what they see as different. If we took the time to try to understand, would we find that we all have the same knowledge within us that we simply express in different ways? Something to think about while you ponder the graphic I made and see if your own knowledge fits it in some way.

Love and Light to you all!
dwolf34

"It's Easier Being a Tomboy...."

There’s a conversation I had with a tall, lanky woman in a sex positive coffee shop over a copy of “The Joy of Sex” that’s been hanging around in my mind for a very long time. I’m not sure if she was trying to shock me with her admission that she was trans or just owning up to the fact that she was very awkwardly female in her heels and skirt. But when she opined that the female form was beautiful and she always wished she’d had breasts, I told her I’d gladly give her mine if I could because I’ve never wanted them. The conversation led on to how much easier it was for me to be a tomboy than it was for her to be a sissy, which I conceded at the time. But there she was, in a skirt and heels and claiming her pronoun, and there I was in jeans and hiking boots, still the tomboy after all these years.

In our culture where we don’t have a comfortable box for the kid who really isn’t cis-male or cis-female, it is hard being different, and it really doesn’t matter what that different identity is. The bulk of the population sees themselves as male or female, and everyone else has to be one or the other, either like them or not, easily identifiable by outward markers of gender. I, by not embracing the gender that my body very obviously wears by decking it in the socially acceptable fashion of dresses and facial makeup, am obviously confused, and perhaps in need of professional help.

I actually spent a long time talking honestly to a therapist. And did that professional “cure” me and turn me into a sugar and spice and everything nice girly girl to match my outward and inward primary sexual characteristics? No. She very helpfully encouraged me to be who I am, and to develop strategies for dealing with the rest of the human beings that I share the planet with. She brought up the valid point that no matter what, I can’t change everyone else or what they do, I can only change myself and my reactions to them.

My choice of reaction is to let the world see me as the gender my mother goddess curves suggest to them. I circle the “F” on forms and my driver’s license reports that I am female. What my body genetically is is pretty undeniable, after all. What my gender is inside my own head is less specific, more fluid, never comfortable with either extreme. But I don’t let that worry me. The outside world can see me as a woman who dresses ambiguously and that’s fine with me.

It’s fine because only rarely do I feel called to make someone else uncomfortable, and trying to explain my gender identity tends to do that. If someone is curious, I’ll try to explain so that they can understand, just like I do when someone asks about my not so easily defined religion. Or what I write. Or my identity as a BDSM switch. Or that what I’m sexually attracted to has nothing to do with the body before me but has everything to do with the soul and the personality within. I fully realize that to most people, I sound confused, even though I’m not. I’m very secure with my own self, which is very comfortable being mostly in between all the dichotomies into which the bulk of people divide themselves.

What I’m saying is that if my outer body matched my inner gender, it would have neither broad hips nor broad shoulders. It would have both small breasts and a modest penis. It’s facial features would confuse the eye, soft curves and hard lines blended androgynously. It would likely even have three “sex chromosomes”, XXY, just to add to the ambiguity. It would be hard for me to look “normal”. It would be impossible to classify as “M or F” on those forms. It would have made growing up even harder for me than it was.

Look. I grew up a tomboy. I complained every time my parents made me wear a dress to something until they stopped making me. I played with Barbies who weren’t fashion models but loved to camp out. I played with Hot Wheels and didn’t care which was the fastest, but loved the ones that stuck to the track no matter how convoluted I twisted it. My favorite books were the ones about horses and dogs and more fantastical things, not the ones about princesses or sports heroes. I’ve confused people most of my life, in other words. I reacted by choosing friends who didn’t care, who took me as I was - which was exactly what I did for them. I sat with the rest of the outcasts at lunch, and generally ignored everyone else. I took more than my fair share of abuse, but at home, I always knew I was loved, and that helped me understand that I was okay. And yes, I did therapy, because at one point in my life I stopped being sure that I liked who I was.

Being different isn’t easy. I feel for my trans-gendered friends who have to decide whether or not to disclose their histories. I feel for my kinky friends who have to hide that part of themselves to keep their jobs. I feel for my homosexual friends who don’t hold hands in public because other people judge. I feel for my pagan friends who don’t discuss religion because theirs isn’t mainstream. I feel for my poly friends who get tired of explaining their relationships. But I also feel for my cis-gendered, vanilla, heterosexual, Christian monogamous friends who have never had their own identity challenged, who haven’t gone through an agony of self-acceptance and come out the other side with the extra strength that being yourself despite what everyone else thinks gave me and my outcast friends. I feel for the ones who’ve never considered suicide to avoid the pain of being different and had to reject that because it was the easy way out. I feel for the ones who’ve had an easy life, and who might now, because they know me, have to actually think about why they judge others, or look down on them, try to change them, or even ignore that any other way of being is valid and liveable.

I preach tolerance and kindness and love because these are the things I value and these are the things that help bring people together despite differences and differing choices. I’m more than happy to help people think through their own beliefs, to try to help them understand what they’ve never had to before. To help people relate more harmoniously with each other. To show them that my beliefs and lifestyle do not invalidate or endanger their own. To share the strength I gained through my own journey.

Our individual differences only make our whole world stronger and more beautiful.

I wish you love and happiness, but I hope that your own path hasn’t been so easy that you blindly judge. I hope that you can see the beauty around you, both in the bountiful variety that nature provides us and in the glorious variety of people you interact with. Be kind to each other, please. And even more importantly, be kind to yourselves.

To Live Between

I live between. Between the world and the sky. Between the spirits and the people. Between man and woman. Between carnal and ascetic. Between dominant and submissive. Between teacher and student. Between body, mind and spirit. Between Mother, Father and Creator. Between the North, South, East and West. Between Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Wood.

I could go on, but that’s enough.

It’s not a perfect middle, this place where I’m at. I look like a woman, sometimes think like one and even rarely act like one. My contact with the spirits is often brief, and contact with people only sometimes longer. I am far more submissive in one world than the other. I stand strong between two or three or sometimes four realities and begin to waver among more. I feed my pleasures more often than my denials. My body is a bit overweight and my spirit a bit underfed. But I’m still between, still here, still touching more edges of things than most do.

And this is my place. Not dominant or submissive, but both and neither. Not male or female, but both and neither. Not only my Mother’s servant, but also my Father’s energy worker and my Creator’s shaman. And nothing at all; an empty bowl, a hollow bone, a blank page, a silent room. This is what it means to be shaman, to be me, to walk this path I’m on.

When you need to speak, I’ll strive to listen. When there is something for you to hear, I will talk. When you ask for help, I will seek it for you. If you ask a question, I’ll give you the best answer I have. When you need my focus, you will have all of it. And more often than not, I’ll respond to what you most need, either bringing out that side of myself for you or leading you to see that you need it.

But know this, too. When Mother needs me, I am hers to command. When the spirits tell me to wait, I do. When my feet itch to walk, I walk. If I am distracted, there is probably a reason. And if I give you a feather, a rock, a bone, a book, there is probably a reason for that, too. If I don’t seem to be acting the way you want, then there’s a reason for that, too, even if I might not be aware of it.

There is peace and joy in this life between, so much that it overwhelms me at times. Is there any wonder that I try to stay here, to continue this path, to do what those I have given myself to tell me to do? Even though I live between, confuse people around me and make few strong ties because of it. Even though so many things in my life are only things I’m holding for someone else. Even though the needs of others so often come before my own. Even though I gain new scars along with the experiences I’m given to grow from. Even though I end up explaining things to death and spending a lot of time examining my own self. Even though it may mean that I can’t belong to the pack I still long for. Every time I open my senses, still the chattering monkey brain, and simply feel where I am, I know that this is my place of harmony. That I am meant to live between.

Maybe all that made some things about me clear for you. Maybe it just muddied the waters more or ensured that you think I’m a total nut case. You can ask and I’ll try to explain, if you’d like. But if you understand, if you’ve been here, or are on this path yourself, I hope that you’ll talk to me. It’s a wonder filled path, but lonely, too. I know. I’m here. And I’ve taken this step.