Just As Well

Alcoholism runs rampant in my family.

My maternal grandfather died from it. My dad's sister had it - which implies a paternal great-grandparent, as the disease often seems to miss a generation.

My brother is free of it, and my son. My brother's children are still very young, but I'm betting the bug won't show up in them.

Among all my generation, which means all my cousins, maternal and paternal, I seem to be the only sufferer.

But this scourge goes a long way back, deep in the passage of my lineage, for I have sat with my ancestors and I know that all those generations of people suffering with alcoholism comes to a point with me.

I'm on the leading edge of this family - out here on the limb, watching those before me being deeply wounded by the disease and seeing those around me just as deeply gored by living close to an alcoholic.

It's a nasty, nasty illness but it's not simple either in diagnosis or treatment. While I have been sober and healing these 14 years, it has become increasingly obvious that I have to be the family curandero in this matter.

For the centuries it has passed through my antecedents, no-one has done this work: the work of taking on the ancestral disease and stopping it.

And by healing and stopping it, I mean to apply the brakes in both temporal directions, so that my work in spirit here and now oscillates forward and backward in time.It means delving through whirlpools of unheeded and unhealed grief, some of it generations old. And some of it, if I cannot do this work properly, generations in the future.

Sometimes the work of this god makes me cry. But there is literally no-one else to do it, so I take it on: each day, month,year I sit in communion with the orishas, understanding what has happened here and learning always from the pain as well as the joy. I am at the point of the generational arrow and if I didn't do it, I could not look myself in the eye.

I suppose it's just as well that I am the family shaman, then.

Pic: from Pagan Culture

You Might Be A Wetiko If..

I've noted, and will continue to note, much on the Wetiko and the Wetiko culture we appear to be living within. But what, when we use that term, do we really mean by it?

In Columbus and Other Cannibals, Jack Forbes describes the central characteristic of the Wetiko to be “that he consumes other human beings for profit, that is, he is a cannibal”.

I note the masculine pronoun used by Forbes, and heaven knows I've also gone on about how this culture is essentially patriarchal; but really, Wetiko knows no gender. Nor race, nor class nor religion or lack-of-religion. Much like HIV/AIDS, Wetiko is a disease, as well as a shortened form by which we describe all that is worst in humanity for around the last 6-10 thousand years.

I suppose, then, that the one thing we can say about Wetiko disease is that it does not appear to infect any forms of life apart from humankind. It's just possible that there exist non-3D life forms who are also carriers - we would call them demons, evil spirits, or dark forces I suppose.
I don't know, not having had much to do with those beings. And for today, I'd like to look at what some of the distinguishing marks of Wetiko are in humans.

Pstonie has offered his opinion that "..it all stems from unchecked fear" and I think that he's correct. But what is this all we speak of?

So, in the spirit of those ghastly internet memes we all love to groan over, I'm putting together a list of:

"You Might Be A Wetiko If.."

1) Humans, and only the right kind of humans at that, are the only forms of life you consider worthy of the description "living beings".

2) You believe - consciously or semi-consciously - that the amount of money an individual has access to is a direct measure of their worth.

3) Your actions show that you think the planet is here primarily to support human kind.

4) When it comes right down to it, preservation and/or advantage of yourself (or your kind) trumps those rights in every other living being.

5) You engage in retail therapy.

6) You are a firm believer in physical/mental evolution...for human beings only.

7) You propagate those tiresome dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest and it's-a-jungle-out-there memes as justification for your behaviour.

8) You hold up Richard Dawkins/the President of the United States/the super-successful athlete/the thrusting, confident business (wo)man as people to admire; just because of their worldly "achievements".

9) Television programs and Hollywood offerings have meaning in your life.

10) You believe that advertising in the last 50 years is not an unmitigated heap of shit designed to scare you into being a better consumer.

11) You don't see anything wrong with being labelled a consumer.

I'd like to add to this list, but these are just some ideas off the top of my head, for now.

Anyone got some more? Please feel free to append in the comments!

Pic: Wendigo, another name for Wetiko, by hellsama.

See How It Works?

I love synchronicity.

Having been attracted to The Sync Book originally because of its inclusion of Neil Kramer as one of its contributors, I found myself hooked, in a mild fashion, by Synchromysticism  and went on to purchase The Sync Book 2.

I only managed to start volume 2 yesterday, having been held up by finishing my twelve billionth re-reading of ChapterHouse: Dune , the last in the Dune Series actually written by Frank Herbert.

The opening essay in Sync 2 is a beautiful exposition on the nature of synchronicity by Paul Levy - author of Dispelling Wetiko. I read last night in that wondrous state where the author's words bore like little rotifer torches into your soul, igniting  fierce blazes of comprehension which lift you from the page even as you cannot tear your eyes from it.

This morning, I followed a link in my morning news to Reality Sandwich; an essay by Richard Smoley titled Does Prophecy Work? . Smoley delves into Jungian synchronicity here, so I found myself seriously considering the nature of the Sync once again; and was thereby encouraged (a trait of a good sync) to revisit Levy's Wetiko work.

I shall definitely have to get hold of a copy of this book. And meanwhile, I'm thinking about what the exact characteristics of a Wetiko are. I'm not quite ready to list them here, yet - maybe tomorrow.

The second contribution in Sync 2 is by Robert Perry and puts forward his theory of CMPEs - Conjunctions of Meaningfully Parallel Events - as being those syncs with multiple correspondences, which support the idea that the stream we-are-currently-testing-the-water-of is correct for this time and place. Good syncs affirm us spiritually, in other words.

Perry is the author of An Introduction to A Course In Miracles, which I freely admit I've been avoiding like the plague on account of its title and my perception of it being too similar in content to that awful  The Secret nonsense. I may have to change my opinion. On Perry, not The Secret.

So really, just by reading the first 2 chapters of a particular book, I've been led into a commitment to buy 2 others. I wonder how long my to-read list will have become by the time I've finished Sync 2?

And as an aside, I can really recommend  Alan Abbadessa-Green and anything his new press puts out.

See how it works? Well, sometimes.

Update: Followed a tweet a few minutes ago to an article on personality types. Main modern foundations layed by Jung. As I'm reading, a pop-up announces that I might also like to read Carl Jung's Archetypes.Right, right, I think I've got it, dammit.

So Much Fun

A bit of a classic start to Mercury Retrograde. Starting last night, our wireless internet service provider wigged out completely, a more than 12-hour long interruption of service at a most inconvenient time.

But I should have expected it, I guess.

The other thing I should have remembered about Mercury Retrograde is the degradation in quality of casual communication. I was given a warning, after all, what with a bureaucratic nincompoop's insistence on a copy of my matric certificate ( here's a heads-up: not all of us completed High School in South Africa, and those of us who've passed through University more than 30 years ago shouldn't really be asked for these things.).

So this morning, when our gas bottle finally gasped its last exhalation, I rang up the nearest Builders Warehouse  in Rivonia to check that they do exchange 19kg bottles as well as fill up 9kg ones. Assured of getting both bottles replenished, we scooted around to Rivonia and immediately faced what looked very much like the march of the Walking Dead in the Builders Warehouse parking lot. Rivonia habitues are like a cross between the typical English Chav and a Sloane Ranger: garishly decorative, distracted,bumbling,loud and brainless.

And those were just the customers. The staff need an urgent refresher course in the distinction between their arse and their elbow, I think.

We came away with a half-charge on the 9kg bottle and an empty 19kg bottle, having spent a good 90 minutes going from pillar to post and cashier to refund department, only to find out that they had run out of gas.

As I said, this is classic Mercury Retrograde behaviour and I suppose I should've anticipated it. But it wouldn't have been so much fun then, would it?

It Can Not Be Otherwise

A 7 hour planned electricity outage this morning caught us by surprise.

When I say planned, of course, I mean planned by City Power and not communicated to the end users.

So, from 1 in the morning - as Warren was defragging his desktop - until almost precisely 8 am, we had no electric power in the quiet suburb of Bloubosrand.

We had somewhere to go this morning, too, and showers were sketchy. Apologies to anyone who chanced to encounter us out and about.

It was to Woolworths we headed - after stopping at the bank to draw an unusually large sum of money - to pay our Woolies account up in total and close the bothersome account. Woolies weren't always a pain in the arse, either. There was a time when their quality was good and their financial management above reproach. No more, alas. After completely failing to send me statements which actually arrived in my postbox for several months, and after sms-ing me incorrect information on my payment amounts, and after displaying a total lack of regard to South Africa's clothing manufacturers(opting for the glittering, cheap Chinese products which have a lifetime shorter than a disintegrating meteor)...after adding all this up, I decided I didn't care to do business with them anymore.

I've been mulling over the fact recently that good old homo sapiens is getting stupider by the year. Not just according to this entitled, privileged,university-educated middle aged woman, but also according to several sources with much less biased points of view.

It seems that one of the problems may be the environment we've created for ourselves. An environment poisoned by pesticides, replete with high fructose corn syrup, petroleum products toxic to the brain, and a culture where the possession of those afore-mentioned cheap, glittering tawdries is a major marker of worth.

Well, sigh. We surely never set up this earth-plane to be a cake walk, did we?

 My middle-aged Pit Bull, Scylla, displaying her hunting prowess earlier today by catching and then consuming a baby Lourie - something she doesn't do too often, especially the eating part - has reminded me that actually, this plane was never supposed to be a dimension of sweetness-and-light. We eat each other. And kill each other for no apparent reason - worse. And heap such pain and sorrow upon each other all the time, that I wonder why any of us think that peaceful non-harm is a natural state of being.

I have carefully avoided saying that this plane is devoid of Love. For that is not the case.
All sorrows, all he pain, all the seeming unnecessary hurt is all there as part of our plan.
And Love informs that plan, in every shade and shape of its coming-into-being.

It can not, I submit, be otherwise.

The Grey Lourie, mourning loudly even now for its massacred offspring, reminds me of this.

Pic: courtesy Wilkinson's World

New Gates

Hmmm...they seem to like me.

Well, I've concluded that I like them too (especially after  seeing this this morning).

So I've gone to the police station to get a bunch of ID Books, 'varsity records, etc. certified and emailed to the recruitment agent.

It's not cast in stone yet, but trending towards a new, different workplace challenge.

In other, connected, news: Saturn has just gone retrograde right over my natal Mars, in Scorpio (.. and anyone who wants to make something of me having Mars in a) my sun sign  b) my ascendant sign  c) Scorpio  had better stand in line for a bashing) turning us inward upon all sorts of essential life connections. With Mercury to follow retrograde in Pisces in three days' time, I'm fairly astonished that I'm getting anything at all done on the Earth plane at the moment.

Ah, but it's good sometimes to drift upon the dissolution of ego. Rearranging, reassembling how we interface with this world.

Namaste, All. I need to go sniff some Frankincense.

Wings Made Of Ancestors

So yesterday I went for the first job interview in over 11 years.

It was exactly 2 months since my last day at Osiris Trading, and every day since then has been adding to the confirmation that resigning from that company was entirely the right thing to do.

I've been looking around slowly, so slowly - I spotted an open post which I thought might interest me in the middle of last month but after some back-and-forth between the recruitment agent and me, I felt it wasn't all that good a fit after all and dropped the matter.

Two more agents called me in the fortnight after that. One was offering a position which my restraint of trade would have censored, and the other set up an interview between myself and the company yesterday.

I'm not saying much more, just yet - except that it's the first interview I have attended with select representatives of my Ancestors present. No, I don't believe that anyone noticed them, much to their chagrin.

It was a positive and pleasant experience, in all, and that's all I'll say for now.
I'm still busy processing the various questions I have, mostly revolving around the potential for my happiness at this (large) company. I have not just two but my entire host of Ancestors trailing out like wings behind me as I mull this over. And no, that's not difficult to achieve, as long as you have established good communications over time.

I've been asked to give a definite yea or nay by Monday, but I'm not rushing my internal processes, either.
Without a trace of irony I can wonder with interest what conclusion I will come to in a couple of days' time.

Pic: Manataka

Prized Possessions

Since I was very small, I have had two besetting shadows: anger, and grief over others losing their physical possessions.

How odd is that? Not the anger, so much. I can vividly call up white-hot anger from as young as four years old - some people seem to come into the world that way and I'm one of them. But fear of people losing their stuff? That's just messed up.

I can recall one of my earliest emotions as being very anxious that my family didn't lose the things they valued. I would have visions of getting all my loved ones' prized possessions together in my embrace and whisking them to safety - the things, not the people. It often took the form of a long wooden toy train which I would remove to a safe place to stop the anxiety.

Now, I suffered most of my life from one form of anxiety or another; most marked and longest-lasting was my agoraphobia, which only fled from me utterly after I was taken apart completely and re-assembled.

I have scoured the internet for some mention of this very strange fear, but  all that comes up is the fear of losing one's own possessions. That doesn't worry me much. I tend to throw stuff away rather than hoard - I'm not much for keeping material possessions and I feel better with fewer. But the thought of someone close to me losing, failing to gain, or hungering for some...thing causes a great ache in my heart.

Deep personal anger is common enough that it was among the first shadow-puppets to arise in me when I went looking. I continue to deal with it on a daily basis. But this bizarre fear for the attachments of other people is just...loopy.

I have no idea what this is. Just that I've always harboured it. Time to haul it out, I think, and expose it to some light.
Or some Ancestors. You listening, my People?

Pic: from Lolsnaps.com

Locked-Down Doors Of Perception

Robert Mcluhan reviews a newly published work by Duke University's Philosophy Chair Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide To Reality.

McLuhan really has at it, on his blog. He reproduces this list of answers which Rosenberg includes in the book - a sort of Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions for the hard materialist Atheist:

Is there a God? No.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Does prayer work? Of course not.

Is there a soul. Is it immortal? Are you kidding?

Is there free will? Not a chance.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad?There is no moral difference between them.

Why should I be moral. Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don't like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes...

Does the human past have any lessons for our future. Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with.

I have been an Atheist. I am well acquainted with the smug feeling of superiority that many ( oh, OK, me in particular) Atheists use to put themselves to sleep at night. I also know that, if you're being honest and open with yourself, this feeling cannot last.

Regarding Rosenberg's bare-bones brand of Nihilism, I can only conclude - after running it through my own life - that it is a very, very small template through which to filter the experience of being human.

Physics, as we know, does not have all the answers. It's not through a lack of understanding of Physics that so many people search elsewhere for explanations to their life experiences. It's because Physics doesn't begin to address many of them. And, to be fair, it doesn't claim to either. Most Physicists won't touch the Hard Problem with a bargepole, professionally. It's only oddball philosophers like Rosenberg who do.

Perhaps this book would do as shock therapy for folks going through the reductionist materialist phase of their lives - it should be enough of a slap in the face to wake up all but the most locked-down of us.

An Object Revolts

I don't watch a lot of films or very much television, and when the Aileen Wuornos show was hitting the media road I think I was mostly hanging on by my fingernails myself and so didn't notice it.
I was therefore both fascinated and horrified when I caught bits of Nick Broomfield's documentary on the confessed multiple killer the other day.

The thing which struck me forcefully was the utter hysteria surrounding this woman. A prostitute had killed some of her johns; you'd have thought, by the shrill calls for her death which resounded almost immediately the facts started to come to light, that mankind's bloody mobile phones had started rebelling. I mean, how dare she? A prostitute is there for the sole purpose of servicing (mostly) male people. When one of these comfort objects starts killing its users...well.Kill it. Kill it dead.

Being very poorly informed on everything about this case, I started with the Wikipedia article on Aileen.
Even from this poorly-regarded source I received an unmistakable chill of recognition. Maybe you could call it empathy. But I could imagine, quite easily, being in her shoes.

There's no question that little-girl Aileen was abused. I was not. But many things about her struck a chord in me, at some level. The full flight from consciousness. The dissolution of conscience. The half-self-articulated justifications. The anger - that anger found in many women in the Patriarchy, myself included. And at the end, that one over riding desire to just have done with it all.

My anger, although still present, still a part of me, is coming slowly into integration with the rest of who I am. Hers never had a chance.