Bioregional Catechism

This'll be an ongoing topic. It comes from a thread in Bioregional Animism, and I want to explore it more fully over the next several months. I am trying to sketch out my beliefs regarding dreams, ancestors, land, and traditions. I will present my conclusions in Montreal this year at the 25th Annual International Association for the Study of Dreams Conference: Dreams Without Borders.

Our ancestors are alive and waiting for us to reach out to them. We can dream back the rituals and recontextualize them on this land. As my friend Fishbowl says, this has been happening in an automatic way since Europeans arrived here. Appalachia country gave rise to the expression of bluegrass, a combination of Irish and Scottish music with African Slave culture and Native American tribes of the region. Fur trapping cultures of the Russians, French, and English collide in the Northwest. The Chinese rail workers brought pieces of China with them to the Plateau and Pacific Coastal Native cultures. All of this is Northwest Americana.

I also believe that cultural pods of people who have done work to recover the indigenous mind are capable of dreaming back--as a community--the traditions that bloom through a sacred tribe. I have witnessed this happening as my dream circle strengthens and grows. We dream with Spirit, and with the ancestors, for each other in an indigenous way.

Personally, walking on Celtic soil (Ireland) reminded me who I am on a level I would not have experienced on any other land. The stone circles enlivened my ancestors through me and caused an overhaul of my insecurity of a woman with white skin. I am trying to call my heart back to California and make roots away from Ireland. But I cannot deny the impact that the land of my bones had on me. I'd not be capable of bioregional animism without first knowing where I come from. My experience there lasted only 3 months, but it was enough to metabolize cultural shadows, boons, lessons, and wisdom of the Celtic land and people. Only those rocks could have taught me what I brought back to Oakland.

Is it possible to engage in the land in a true way without having first walked on one's ancestral soil?

How can we recover the traditions of our ancestors and implement them in proper context?

What roles do our ancestral stories and mythologies play in our lives?

How do we bring the past to the present with consciousness and balance?

What do dreams have to do with all of this?

Feedback welcome.

Magic Mushrooms

So, yesterday I went to the fungus fair, specifically to hear Paul Stamets speak. I'm so moved by the work that he and his wife Dusty are doing that I had to honor them for their unyielding dedication to restoring the sanctity of the mushroom. Paul and Dusty do extensive work with bioremediation, a process whereby they inoculate biohazardous land--diesel cleanups, oil spills, etc. and the mushrooms magically transmute these toxins to purify the land extremely quickly. And you can even eat the mushrooms afterward! Here is one of his recent uses of mushrooms to clean up the oil spill in the SF bay: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi

Politically, Paul and Dusty work to preserve and restore our most biodiverse forests because these highly robust, alive areas yield the most potent medicinal mushrooms. Paul works closely with the government to ensure the survival of these biogems because they're promising antidotes for bioterrorism! (Who cares why the government is motivated to preserve land?) Without going into the shortcomings of Western medicine, the overuse of antibiotics will also make other forms of medicine (mushrooms) necessary in the future.

Finally, Paul showed a many-millennia-old picture found deep in some labyrinthian caves in Algeria. It shows a seven foot-tall man with a bee head and mushrooms growing all over his body. He explained that scientists and anthropologists had "no idea" what the painting was about, though fermenting psilocyben mushrooms in a mean concoction is a known sacred concoction, probably used in those caves. He then went on to show figurines from South and Central America, small squatty figures holding mushrooms. Again, experts had "no idea" what they were holding. When one of them went up for sale, Paul called the curator and asked, "Do you have any idea what the figure is holding?" The woman said, "No idea." He said, "Have you ever considered it may be a mushroom?" "No." Then he told her to check for gills below the mushroom. If they're there, it's definitely a mushroom. She checked. The gills were there. The piece sold for 1.5 million dollars.

Mushrooms are teachers. Paul would not discuss his spiritual experiences on mushrooms, as they are too personal. We scoff at mushrooms' wisdom today and chalk up their spiritual symbiosis with us to hippie recreation. Without the ritual contexts our ancestors employed to contain ceremonies involving psychoactive mushrooms, many experiences on mushrooms may be mere hippie forays. But I dream these rituals will return to us when we are ready to hear from our ancestors. I dream that the language of the mushrooms, the animals, and the plants will awaken within us. I'm so grateful to see this happening through the work of Paul and Dusty Stamets.

I got engaged.

After Jake got ripped off for $50, bribed a Mexican police officer, ruined his favorite sandals, lost his sunglasses and jacket, and got a nasty parasite, we decided to tough it out and go to Chichen Itza. We waited until late in the day since Jake had been so sick. After driving the three hours to get there, however, a parking attendant told us the park was closed. Shit. So, Jake tries to bribe a man (again) to let us in. It doesn't work this time. Fortunately, the man conveys in broken English that the park will reopen in a few hours for a light show. We wait around in our car, and eventually buy tickets, along with translation headphones so we can understand what's going on. The guards corral us over to El Castillo, where we are told to sit and stay. The show begins and neither of us can figure out how to work our headphones. I decide to start wandering the ruins so that one of the guards will stop me. That way, I can ask him how to work my headphones. Only no one stops me! So here I am roaming this ancient sacred site at night by myself, now completely out of the guards' sight. I make my offerings and speak the prayer I carry with me to all the sacred sites. And then Jake comes over to me. No one has stopped him, either! He says, "Thank you for taking such good care of me when I am sick, and all the times. You always take such good care of me. I wanted to bring you to a sacred site and give you this flower from the land and ask you if you will marry me." I say yes. We squeal in delight, and then look around us in awe. The full, orange moon is rising over El Castillo. We are in pitch dark, but fireflies light up the sky all around us. We wonder where we are and see a temple before us that turns out to be the Temple of the Jaguar. It exudes such power that I don't know if I'd have gone up to it without Jake. We realize that we are standing in the Mayan ball court of a game that represented the movements of the cosmos when it was played. I can't think of a more magical moment.

Fire the Grid

This morning at 4:11 Pacific time, 7:11 Eastern time, we have the opportunity to change ourselves and our planet. Of course we always have this ability, but this morning it will be happening en masse. So, if you will not be awake, simply set your intention to create peace, balance, wholeness, gratitude, or whatever it is that you would like to see happen. Give your soul permission to connect with this movement.

If you want a firsthand account of why Fire the Grid is happening at this time, you can hear it from the horse's mouth at www.youtube.com/watch

Or you can go to firethegrid.org, though it will probably be jammed from too much traffic.

I have a website now.

www.erinlangley.com
I am an official e-entity.

Tribute to Mr. Wizard

Mr. Wizard, who ignited countless kids' interest in science, died today. May he have a happy, rewarding afterlife fraught with love and new, exciting experiments. As a tribute, my boyfriend and I are going to do his experiment where you slice a banana using only a needle and thread. Do you remember that episode where the kid put that powder on his hand, reached into the fish tank, and then pulled out his hand, which was NOT WET? I was so enthralled by this magic substance, which I learned today is lycopodium powder. Thanks, Mr. Wizard.

dream-people.net

I finally finished the website, dream-people.net. It was lots of work and hopefully will be useful! If you want to log and track your dreams by theme against an astronomical ephemeris or see how your dreams relate to the planets and stars, check it out. It's fun.

Surprise Mural for My Roommate

Today while my roommate Dan was away, I painted this on his wall. BIG. I hope he likes it!!

Good News.

I have really good news. At the risk of sounding like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, I would like to share it. I finished my thesis, and all three of my advisors told me that it needed no revision. Jeremy Taylor, the dream "expert", recommended it for mass-market publication. I worked hard on it, and it's always nice to have some tangible payoff. I'd forgotten about that part.

I've been wondering if post-modern society with indigenous awareness is possible, and if it is, what it looks like. Even if cities fall apart in our lifetime, we will probably not return to traditional indigenous living. In the relative short-term, the mutilated eco-system alone would make it nearly impossible. Many Westernized people have grown attached to the perceived sophistication of "urban mind". Indigenous wisdom rarely acknowledges a global perspective because the depth and breadth of the native perspective is localized, which is not to say provincial. A natural ecosystem, including human life, is chock-full. Because the original intent of tribal communities is to live in balance with the land and its inhabitants, these inherited ancestral, geographic ties have evolved to sophistication and intimacy beyond our Western understanding. The old technology is called magic, and it uses the language of nature.

How do we evolve a post-modern indigenous mind? Technology, fleeting and ephemeral as it is, plays a role. I have much more to say on this. When my website with my thesis is up, I'll post a link.

Ancestral Apothecary

Last night I arrived back at Newgrange Lodge from several days of traveling this beautiful emerald Isle. As a quick recap, I am in good old Eire just across from Bru na Boinne in the Royal County of Meath, seat of the High Kings of Ireland. I get to recommence my mural, my baby, which I've sorely missed over the past week.

Ireland is working all the kinks out of me so that when I return home, her rivers will course through my veins, her rocks will be my bones, her "tombs" my womb, her songs in my heart, and ambrosial drops of Boand milk showering me with light and life like fey lanterns from the night sky. I love my homeland.

I have found that I know many of these places already. The recognition I felt at Emain Macha shook me. Killarney felt like an old childhood haunt. Newgrange continues to feel like home. I was so happy to come back onto familiar roads last night. I've been traveling with a woman named Gretchen, who has stories that you wouldn't believe. And you may not believe them if I told you so rich and diverse and fraught with persecution are they.

She would scoff at the label, but Gretchen is a horse whisperer. She talks to all animals, really. I've seen her call them over with a glance. . . cows, horses, birds. She heals them. She's got the most healing hands I've felt, though she'd not be caught dead calling herself a healer. She is a woman of the old ways, of herbs, of warriorship, of knowing that pulses through her body. She can hunt and craft things from leather. She knows how to fight. I have seen her urge the weather to change its course. Truly I have not witnessed more power in any one person. Perhaps this is because hers is so demonstrative, though she does not intend for it to be this way.

She's been kidnapped, had her house burned down, been poisoned (twice), experienced torture, and been stalked in her dreams to awaken with the injuries she'd incurred in the dreamworld. Instructions from that abhorrent book The Witches Hammer have been used against her. She has traveled the world and worked with many tribal people of Africa and Australia. She's an animal tracker and biologist. She's here mapping a long distance trail in Ireland, and we are hatching some projects of our own. We're such a complementary duo that when we're together we feel as though anything in the world is possible.

I do not know how much longer I will be here in Ireland. This week I will finish my mural of County Meath and then we'll see if Newgrange Lodge will allow me to stay a bit longer. The apex of my voyage has passed; I feel the pull of the States once again. This is both a regret and a relief. I was beginning to wonder if this island was going to reclaim my flesh. I have even thought I'd be content to die here. But a life and a child await me back home. Who knows what will happen between now and then. . .