Australia

Culture, Genocide, and Whingers

One sometimes hears Heathen folk express the feeling that their culture is under attack; more than one Heathen I hold in high esteem has expressed the feeling that they are the target of cultural genocide.

I myself often resonate strongly with the sentiment expressed by Irish band Primordial:

Is this all I’ve been left?
Broken oaths and betrayals
The empty words and dead rhetoric
Of my sold and broken culture

And I said once before
That time heals nothing
I feel like a wounded animal
In the dying throws

Primordial make a particularly rich critique of monoculturalising capitalism; in footage of a live performance I have seen, their vocalist (A. A. Nemtheanga) announces to the audience between songs that “whoever you, whereever you come from, your rights are being taken from you!”

In a way this is a new face of universalisation – we are all the same in that our particularities are being assaulted and dissolved by a remarkable battery of largely commercial and technological social forces. How ironic and tragic.

And yet when straight, white men in patriarchal societies – and many of whom are financially comfortable – complain about being subject to genocide I cannot help but think they’re taking it all a bit far. Some Heathens even go so far as to be out-right whingers – you’d think such behaviour was mandated in Havamal!

The truth is that European ancestral heritage is most of all under assault from its own descendents. If we wish to preserve this heritage then it is European-descended people who need to be awoken from their post-monotheistic (or indeed monotheistic) slumber – at least for long enough that they can make a conscious decision about the course their lives might take.

On other hand, let’s take a reality check. Consider the awesome and under-acknowledged plight of the people of Tibet at the hands of Chinese imperialism.

These folk are being killed for the slightest infraction, forced at gunpoint to betray their traditions. What European can say the same? These stoic folk make the self-righteous outrage some Heathens express seem utterly fatuous, utterly childish. It’s a good thing Heathenism is so obscure or such vocal Heathen windbags would make us a laughing stock.

As part of my studies this year I had the opportunity to write a short report on the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal people in my homeland of Australia. I have presented it here so that my readers can get a clear idea of what it is actually like to be the subject of pre-meditated and systematic genocide.

Some apologists will accuse me of wallowing in ‘white guilt’ or the like, but personally I think this says more about them than about me. I don’t feel guilt at all, I just think it good taste to acknowledge cruelty and injustice even if if is inconvenient  for one’s comfortable complacency to do so. Indeed, acknowledgement is the most important step in righting wrongs.

Restitution of wrong is an ancient Germanic tradition (c.f. the practice of weregild); many of those who mourn the loss of the old ways in one breath want to deny the responsibilities these old ways impress on them in the next breath.

Such individuals therefore misuse the word ‘Heathen’ when they apply it to themselves. Hypocrite is more on the mark.

As I say, I take the views of groups like Primordial seriously and in many respects empathise and agree. But ultimately we need to recognise that even in the loss of our heritage we whiteys haven’t really had it all that bad (well, the Irish have copped much more than most European peoples and I certainly acknowledge that aspect of Primordial’s perspective).

We need to stop wallowing in negativity and paranoia and blaming everyone else and get on with building a positive culture of hope.

Part of that process might include acknowledging the problems of the world, even the problems facing us specifically – but it has to be done in a way that inspires or transforms, not mires us in hopelessness, paranoia, or xenophobia (all of which are traits we have inherited from dualist monotheism and which are alien to the Heathenries of old).

Ok, rant off. Hope you enjoy reading my little report….

What Was The Forced Removal of Aboriginal Children?

It was a systematic attempt, made by State and Federal Australian Governments, to destroy so called ‘full blood’ Aboriginals and to quench Aboriginal languages and cultures.

The idea was to remove any children of mixed ancestry and intermix them into white society until their Aboriginal heritage became dilute and dissolved over generations. The thinly-veiled hope was that “full blooded” aboriginals would die out naturally (poisonous imperialist-political appropriation of evolutionary theory).

Between 1910 and 1970 10-30% of all Aboriginal children were forcibly removed without warning from their families on the basis of their skin colour – not because of any kind of genuine welfare issue or need (Dow, 2008).

They were placed in work camps and foster homes (often with a thin veneer of Catholic or Christian charity) where the treatment often severe or arbitrary. They were often shunted from one place to another without warning, explanation or consultation. Much of the work they had to do was unpaid – that is, slave labour.

Estimates vary according to source and methodology but we can pretty safely say that at least 25% of all children removed in this fashion faced physical or sexual abuse from their supposed carers.

Importantly, rates of indigenous child removal from families are still many times the national average and it is hard to believe that racism is not still a contributing factor to this, above and beyond genuine welfare issues (Reconciliation Australia, 2009). It certainly reflects the intergenerational consequences of the forced child removal policis.

Much of this was first systematically revealed in Bringing Them Home (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission/Australian Human Rights Commission 1997), a Federal Government inquiry which received hundreds of submissions documenting untold human suffering and injustice.

The report popularised the term stolen generations in reference to the aboriginal children removed from their birth families.

Among its recommendations was advice that the Australian Government should offer an apology for its legislated acts against indigenous Australians.

Incidentally, former Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise because he thought the current generation of Australians should not have to apologise for the actions of previous generations. Yet many Australians involved in the removals are still alive and more importantly indigenous Australians are still living out the consequences as fresh wounds – so his argument seems very weak.

Because so much is said about indigenous Australians, and so little energy has been spent listening to or acknowledging their experiences, I have attempted to use their own words to elucidate this presentation.

(All quotes taken from Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission/Australian Human Rights Commission, 1997 or Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission/Australian Human Rights Commission, 2007).

Consequences of Systematic Forced Removal

There’s still a lot of unresolved issues within me. One of the biggest ones is that I cannot really love anyone no more. I’m sick of being hurt. Every time I used to get close to anyone they were just taken away from me. The other fact is, if I did meet someone, I don’t want to have children, cos I’m frightened the welfare system would come back and take my children.
(Confidential evidence 528, New South Wales)

Relationships – we know that adoption runs best when the child is transplanted into a new environment that is secure and offers good opportunities for strong attachment development – hence the rigorous screening of potentially adoptive parents (Leon, 2002).

Forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families involved them being shunted from place to place, abandoned to institutions or white foster parents that may have often been unfeeling or abusive. Having already lost their families, they then could not rely on having anyone else in their lives for very long – if indeed they could find any positive care-givers once they had been removed from their families.

As such they were treated in about as traumatising a way as possible for adoptees – their primary caregivers were taken from them (which is awful enough by itself) with uncertain possibility of finding a substitute securely attached care-giver. It is no surprise that there are significant negative personal and inter-personal consequences caused by these experiences.

Personal Consequences

I still to this day go through stages of depression. Not that I’ve ever taken anything for it – except alcohol. I didn’t drink for a long time. But when I drink a lot it comes back to me. I end up kind of cracking up.
(Confidential evidence 529, New South Wales)

Given the massive disruption and loss of attachment formation for these children, and the severe grief that goes with such wounds, it is not surprising that rates of mental illness and drug abuse are so high in Aboriginal groups. An individual’s abilities to form trusting relationships or have any kind of positive outlook on life would be severely impaired by these experiences.

We can imagine that these peoples’ experiences would leave them with very high baseline anxiety due to the fact that terrible things actually could and did happen at any moment. One is reminded of the concept of learned helplessness (Seligman & Maier, 1967) in this phenomenon.

Without understanding and support, and with their trust betrayed so frequently, it is no surprise that some Aboriginal people would struggle to seek help for their suffering.

And every time you come back in it doesn’t bother you because you’re used to it and you see the same faces. It’s like you never left, you know, in the end.
(Confidential evidence 204, Victoria)

Another significant pattern is that the more exposure to forced removal in personal and family histories, the more institutionalisation Aboriginal people are subsequently vulnerable to. Beaten down by abuse, loss and fear, they are thrust into a vicious downward spiral of despair and punitive control – hence the emotive and ongoing issue of the high rate of Aboriginal imprisonment and deaths/suicides in custody.

Inter-generational Consequences

When we left Port Augusta, when they took us away, we could only talk Aboriginal. We only knew one language and when we went down there, well we had to communicate somehow. Anyway, when I come back I couldn’t even speak my own language. And that really buggered my identity up. It took me 40 odd years before I became a man in my own people’s eyes, through Aboriginal law. Whereas I should’ve went through that when I was about 12 years of age.
(Confidential evidence 179, South Australia)

When it was originally commenced, the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their original families was explicitly justified in terms of destroying their entire cultures and race.

Government and religious/charitable agencies – no matter whether their intentions were good or not – systematically stamped out the stolen generations’ connections to their ancestral languages, beliefs, cultures and practices.

In terms of international law the Australian and State Governments, as well as the adjunct private agencies, were committing genocide and did so for sixty years. The consequent losses are dizzyingly incalculable on an individual level.

I have a problem with smacking kids. I won’t smack them. I won’t control them. I’m just scared of everything about myself. I just don’t know how to be a proper parent sometimes. I can never say no, because I think they’re going to hate me. I remember hating [my foster mother] so I never want the kids to hate me. I try to be perfect.
(Confidential evidence 529, New South Wales)

Having lost their true parents at a young age and being raised in institutional environments, many of those in the stolen generations had little experience of being parented. Without role-models, expectations or their own experiences of being parented to guide them they are left with unique challenges when presented with the task of raising their own children.

This in turn leaves them more vulnerable to the removal of their children for welfare reasons, which opens further layers of inter-generational disconnection, grief, loss and suffering. Even those born after the official end of forced-removal policies are forced to live out and face down the legacy of what was done to their parents and other family members.

Of course, the damage cuts both ways – the families who lost their young being wounded both personally and in terms of their social fabric.

Social Consequences

I felt like a stranger in Ernabella, a stranger in my father’s people. We had no identity with the land, no identity with a certain people. I’ve decided in the last 10, 11 years to, y’know, I went through the law. I’ve been learning culture and learning everything that goes with it because I felt, growing up, that I wasn’t really a blackfella. You hear whitefellas tell you you’re a blackfella. But blackfellas tell you you’re a whitefella. So, you’re caught in a half-caste world.
(Confidential evidence 289, South Australia)

Although the feeling of not belonging can occur in most adoption scenarios (Leon, 2002), for Aboriginal people the dilemma is particularly severe. They were put in the position of never truly being able to be accepted as white due to their skin colour, but were so dislocated from their culture of birth that they could not return.

This rootlessness and social alienation is a damaging existential wound which is difficult to quantify. Perhaps we can get some small insight into it with this thought experiment: imagine waking up every morning, looking in the mirror, and not being sure whether the person looking back at you is familiar or a total stranger. Imagine living that for the rest of your life.

I didn’t know any Aboriginal people at all – none at all. I was placed in a white family and I was just – I was white. I never knew, I never accepted myself to being a black person until – I don’t know – I don’t know if you ever really do accept yourself as being … How can you be proud of being Aboriginal after all the humiliation and the anger and the hatred you have? It’s unbelievable how much you can hold inside.
(Confidential evidence 152, Victoria)

Another significant social dimension of the removal is exposure to racism – both from white people but also internalised negative self-attitudes. Imagine being told your whole life that you must efface everything you are in order to become something that you will never quite be allowed to be!

The complexities of despair, pain, anger, hurt and guilt become written across the social context in the form of both internalised racism and of being a victim of racism.

Today many people dismiss Aboriginal peoples’ worth, judging them negatively because of the serious dysfunction in their communities. It is worth asking – with personal and cultural biographies like these would anyone cope any better? Unlikely.

Judging such folk for their perceived failings is terribly hypocritical, yet those affected by these forced removals might face such judgements every day of their lives, both from others and perhaps from themselves.

The Future?

Actually what you see in a lot of us is the shell, and I believe as an Aboriginal person that everything is inside of me to heal me if I know how to use it, if I know how to maintain it, if I know how to bring out and use it. But sometimes the past is just too hard to look at.Confidential evidence 284, South Australia).

As with any therapeutic endeavour, what ultimately matters is our willingness to have faith in those we work with regardless of how hopeless it all seems (Miller, Duncan and Hubble, 1997). This may take a lot of compassion, patience and care with the issues I have here discussed.

We have had two centuries of White Australia inflicting misery and failure on Aboriginal Australia by imposing and telling rather than consulting and listening, and this has played out dramatically in the case of the forced removal of aboriginal children. This has to change: one definition of insanity is doing the same failed action over and over and expecting it to yield different results.

References

Dow, C. (2008) ‘Sorry’: the unfinished business of the Bringing Them Home report (Australian Parliamentary Library Background Note). Retrieved 7 April 2009 from http://www.aph.gov.au/Library/pubs/BN/2007-08/BringingThemHomeReport.htm

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission/Australian Human Rights Commission (1997) Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Retrieved online 7 April 2009 from http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/report/index.html

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission/Australian Human Rights Commission (2007) The Effects Across Generations. Retrieved 7 April 2009 from http://www.hreoc.gov.au/education/bth/download/effects_resource.pdf

Leon, I. G. (2002) Adoption Losses: Naturally occurring or socially constructed. Child Development, 73 (2), 652-663.

Miller, S., Duncan, B. & Hubble, M., (1997) Escape from Babel: Toward a Unifying Language for Psychotherapy Practice (Norton Professional Books). Norton: New York.

Reconciliation Australia, Sorry FAQ. Retrieved 7 April 2009 from http://www.reconcile.org.au/getsmart/pages/sorry/sorry–faq.php.

Seligman, M.E.P. and Maier, S.F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, 1–9.

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Of Iron and Ocean

After my recent anti-nidstang magic, aimed towards connecting with the local land spirits, some pretty amazing developments have occurred.

There is a stretch of beach near my home at the foot of a sea cliff. The rock is layers, smooth, black and red-brown. I’m no geologist but I think it is mostly layers of igneous, volcanic stone.

Piles of black angular boulders litter the beach here. At high tide they slip from view, only to stubbornly emerge as the sea gasps its last and recedes.

There are mysterious outcrops and places here, including a depression in part of the rock wall which looks like a door to another universe – and from which runs a huge thick vein of red rock that stretches into the ocean.

Last week while wandering among the rocks at low tide I stumbled over a rock formation that offers a perfect “throne”. Somehow the rocks are positioned perfectly for one to sit on in regal style. Even though I have seen these rocks many, many times, I had never before recognised the gestalt of their arrangement.

I sat on these rocks and it felt not unlike how I would imagine a mound sitting, albeit a very royal mound sitting. It felt as though I was being privileged with noticing this seat, as though it were hidden from view unless it wanted to be seen.

And as I sat there, just briefly in the corner of my eye, I saw a mysterious being for the briefest moment.

As a child I read a number of books about Aboriginal mythology, and one of the staples were tall, jet-black, angular land spirits, beings with flaring ears, pointed nails and sinister airs. Australia is no land of spandex-wearing faeries or cute little elves and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now I can’t speak for someone else’s spiritual tradition, but what I saw in the corner of my eye as I sat in that throne was the spitting image of one of those spindly black land spirits. It was tall, and the surface of its body was like a sinkhole to light. It was watching me with a wary curiosity and its eyes glowed a deep red.

Unfortunately as I turned suddenly to get a better look it was gone. But I hoped this would not be our only meeting and I was not disappointed.

A few days later I returned to the rock throne. This time it was just past high tide, so the water almost lapped at my feet. I sat and I called, and made animal noises and shrieked as spontaneity dictated. Eventually I got a response.

Having handed over my actions to my unthinking reflex-mind I was soon exploring the rocks, as an inaudible voice guided me first to this nook, then that cranny. It was as though I was being educated about the secret life of the cliff and boulders, as though I was being shown the insider’s point of view on this place.

I spent quite a long time leaping and bounding, climbing and jumping, until I think I had a pretty good feel for the place. But no spirit. No spectral presence, not even when I sat once more on the throne.

I was starting to get frustrated because I really couldn’t see the point of all this stone ballet. Then I noticed something odd.

Sitting further out from the main boulder area is a single huge, flat-topped rock. This boulder was still water-bound by the tides.

Sitting on the boulder was what looked like the much rusted blade of a saw. Since I had just been about ready to leave, I debated with myself whether to examine this strange sight. But I knew that I had to. I hated the idea of leaving without having made some kind of connection with the being I saw amid the rocks and cliffs.

So out I went, narrowly avoiding getting very soaked. I clambered up onto the boulder and discovered that it was indeed a severely corroded saw blade. This saw had been swimming in the ocean for a very long time, from what I could see. The blade was so rusted that it virtually crumbled in my grasp. No more cutting for this one!

The waves started lashing much higher as I inspected the saw, and I had the strangest feeling that someone was laughing at me as I realised that I had to move quickly before this new watery assault had me soaked. Carefully and swiftly I clambered down the rock and back across the slippery surfaces to the main boulder area.

As soon as I was back to safety the waves resumed their steady seaward march – so it seemed anyway. I didn’t really understand the meaning of the saw, other than perhaps bait to lure me onto the rock where I could be the victim of a wet prank. Oh, and I cut myself lightly as I escaped the seas clutches. “Blood sacrifice” I thought to myself.

After some deliberation I dumped the saw. I figured it was so badly corroded that it was about ready to disintegrate – indeed, it was disintegrating – and that somehow it belonged among the boulders. With that I headed back across the rocky space and off home.

As I neared the edge of the boulder area I heard a noise behind me, I turned to see the strange being, this time in a small rock alcove behind a boulder – another obvious feature like the throne that I had somehow never before noticed. Then it was gone.

I ran over the rocks to where the spirit had stood. I picked among the boulders, finding more hollows and secrets, mystified. Now I knew that it was watching me, but still things seemed rather opaque.

Eventually, no more enlightened as to the being’s purpose, I turned again to leave. This time I stumbled over an iron bar, as long as my forearm, also corroded to the point of disintegration.

As I tested the bar’s heft my mind wandered to an article I recently read about how prehistoric humans made chimes out of resonant stones that would sing when struck. I decided to test some of the local boulders for their tuning.

The rusty bar was not much of a drum stick, being heavy and soft, but to my surprise the rocks sang clear and true! I amused myself for a few minutes recapitulating the prehistoric version of rock stardom before this discovery too seemed to reach the end of my attention span.

I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing something. Then the connection became clear – the rusted saw, the rusted bar, my blood and the veins of iron oxide that run through the rocky cliff face. The being I had seen was the spirit of the Iron here!

With that realisation it began to speak to me in my mind, its voice slow and heavy and clanking. It told me that once all had been hot and liquid and it had danced joyously.

But now for untold stretches of time it had been cold and rigid, bound to the cliff and the boulders that had once been like water. And slowly the sea ate away at the rock, stripping out the veins of iron ore and dissolving even their hard shapes.

The spirit lived a lonely life here, with few for company and an inexorable oceanic aggressor at its doorstep. I felt moved to ask it if it could travel somehow – perhaps it could ride the iron in my blood? Then it presented its own solution – a small-shaped piece of corroded iron that had been wedged between two rocks for what looked like a very long time. The spirit told me to take the iron so that its awareness could travel wherever I took this adopted piece of its form.

It also led me to a beautiful shell hidden among the rocks, a gift it said.

Now it was finally time to head home.

On my way it spoke to me a little. It told me that I am the first European-descended person to have noticed it or been able to engage with it. It told me that what made the difference was my connection to my own spiritual heritage.

It told me that most white people in Australia are completely addled and befuddled when it comes to their spiritual identity, that they don’t know themselves and therefore are unable to go beyond their own context to meet the land and people.

It indicated that my anti-nidstang ritual had specific importance in allowing me to interact with me, and that my ability to perform this ritual was one example of the kind of self-knowledge it feels is required.

Strong words from an Iron Spirit! And as always with such experiences to be taken with caution. But as I sit here with the spirit’s mobile iron “transmitter’ on my lap I cannot help but wonder where this will all lead. At the very least, I hope to learn from it and I hope to offer it the chance to explore the world beyond its harsh and wet home.

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Anti-Nidstang Extravaganza

A while back I was doing some magic involving runes, the Norns and the goddess Brigit.

One consequence of this was that the Norns suggested that I perform a kind of reverse nidstang in order to invite the local land spirits into more presence and comfort with the local human/built environment, and with me in particular.

The issue where I live is particularly loaded because we have seen a lot of very dubious development in the area which has been bad for the local environment (both physical and psychological). Indeed, our local council was dissolved not so long ago due to rampant corruption after allowing many, many unconscionable development projects to go ahead.

Near our home is a place called Sandon Point, a small marshland and then a long promontory out into the sea. The area has a very delicate ecosystem and is also an Aboriginal sacred site and (I think) burial ground.

After years of struggle between a large and unscrupulous corporation and the entire local community a terrible development was permitted over part of the area near the Point – and I must say the houses they have put up are truly ugly things. I mean really horrendous to the eye. If I were a local land spirit I would be very, very, very angry.

I’m told there a lot of spirits around the place and that the ghost of some kind of Aboriginal shaman person still haunts the area. In fact I think I may have once seen this being in my imaginal eye. With all that magic around the place I certainly wouldn’t want to live in one of those upmarket Legoland dwellings.

Thinking about my recent experience which what seemed to be an Aboriginal spirit, I decided now was the time to take the Norns’ advice and perform my anti-nidstang magic. And I decided that the Point was the place to do it.

I prepared my nidstang with some wood from our little garden, carving three runes (Ansuz, Nauthiz and Hagalaz) that were indicated to me by the Norns.

I rode out on my bike to the location late last night. It was an almost full moon which loaned an eerie atmosphere to the proceedings.

So once I was out on the rocks of the Point, the sea glowering on the dark horizon, I suddenly had the thought that correct etiquette would be to state my identity and purpose to the spirits here. This in fact I think a very conventional Aboriginal custom though I wasn’t thinking about it at the time.

So I talked about my ancestry, my ideals and values, my reasons for being there, and so forth. I felt beings drawn in all around me and for while it was like the air was holding its breath.

Then various voices somehow came into my awareness, testing me, asking me difficult questions, attempting to intimidate me. They were not happy and they did not like me particularly, thanks to the actions of others like me. It was a long conversation and I felt quite vulnerable because they quickly demonstrated the ability to control my movements – and threatened that they might make me drown myself.

But I am good at dealing with imaginal realities and we reached some kind of understanding. It helped that after a whole Woden checked in and took over for me. He was a lot better than I at relating to the local spirits and I think his great age and primal nature made a strange kind of sense to them.

I searched for the right place to place the nidstang and at that moment I found that the rocks, the sand and the water all seemed to swirl into the seeming of faces and figures. It was an incredible experience to find myself amid the rich chaos of the place, feeling myself to be watched and with the spirits both physically and imaginally.

Finally I found the right place to plant the nidstang, spoke the names of the runes over it, and bowed in respect to the land, the sea, the sky, the moon and the spectrum of their manifestations.

I stood, the rite completed. Suddenly from both sides of me great flocks of sea birds flew up into the air, singing and shouting, disappearing into the dark night. It was a beautiful moment. I rode home with a sense of curiosity as to what my actions might mean for the local wights, the local people, the whole of the local spirit of place.

Something the spirits at the Point asked me to do was to make contact with the local Aboriginal community and learn more about their ways of relating to the local environment. I am very hesitant to do this. I don’t particularly wish to seem like I am trying to steal from their already assaulted and marginalised culture.

I asked that some openings come my way for this to occur without me taking the first steps or having to force the issue. This way I can be comfortable that I am not overstepping the bounds. I do not know what will come of this.

I’m very pleased to have followed up and completed this bit of magic, and to have carried out the Norns’ advice, to have given something I dreamed and imagined the flesh of physical action. It was a beautiful, if somewhat frightening, experience, and one I am very glad to have had.

Perhaps now I need to call on Brigit and have her take me to the Norns again so that I can report back and get their advice on how to proceed.

It also occurs to me that this magic was a little like the Seat-and-mound seidh I wrote about a post or two ago. As usual I do things in an idiosyncratic way. I’m not comfortable with the idea of calling up someone else’s ancestors per se. But I live here in this environment and I think communing with it is rather necessary.

So perhaps more inspiration will come to me in this vein with time and my practical grasp of seidh might just get to widen a bit further. I wouldn’t mind coming to understand more about the nidstang thing either, and more about its reversal.

Incidentally, thank you Rod Landreth for your very thorough response on the seidh subject, yes I’d love to know more about your work if you want to email me, you hopefully have my email address from the Seidhr Study list posts I’ve made.

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Dealing with a Spirit; Heathens in Australia

Annalise and I had some very strange experiences this last week with what seemed to be a ghost or spirit. Strange enough to be worth documenting.

I should say before I go any further that as always I am hesitant to attach some kind of fixed meaning to terms like “ghost”. I really don’t know what the true nature of this entity was and I can only relate to it phenomenologically, that is, as something I found myself in some kind of engagement or relationship with.

I have to take it as what it presents itself as and put aside metaphysical questions. Otherwise I fear losing the thing itself in exchange for theories which are likely to represent only an approximation of the thing itself.

For the more sceptical reader, therefore, I am not implying or relying upon any particular metaphysical theory when I talk about ghosts or any other of the many odd subjects that I write about in this journal.

Now that this preamble is done…

The story begins with Annalise reporting to me that she feels like some ghost or being is around her, drawing on her strength. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. At the time I didn’t really know what to do, but she got rather sick.

As an aside we spent a few hours doing some big rune chanting and that dropped her sickness from a subjective rating of 9/10 sick vs. well to about 0.3/10 sick vs. well. Not a bad effort.

I find putting numbers on things is useful for tracking feedback in these kinds of circumstances. It can also develop into hypnotic states that let you modify the problem itself. When we observe our experience we tend to alter it, after all.

Around the same time I was beginning to experience progressively more troubling dreams, which really isn’t my idea of fun. At first each night was filled with frustrating and strange phantasms, but over the course of a few nights they became more oppressive.

As all this unfolded I began to feel very depressed. It was as though I had become vulnerable, my defences sapped, and my will and life with them. Both of us were rather miserable.

Then the climax of these events arrived. I found myself asleep, caught in a dream in which the environment continually transformed. As often happens in my dreams I am assigned some mysterious task which I cannot decipher.

Then I find myself tangled in the branches of a huge dead tree animated by a malevolent intelligence. All around me is a blasted night-time landscape. Really solid nightmarish stuff. The tree has any number of vines which lash about and seek to restrain or choke me.Then a great knife appears and floats towards me. I know that it has a malevolent intention of its own, that an invisible hand guides it. This isn’t good! I think to myself, struggling to escape.

Of course at about that time my unconscious helpfully dumps me out of my sleep. I find myself in bed and in the room is a hovering spectral Aboriginal woman. She is very angry at me and is shrouded in an eerie and decidedly unfriendly-looking host of shadows.

I know that there is a lot of terribly history in Australia so I am not particularly surprised that a local land or ancestor spirit might decide to take out some of that misery on me.

From what I understand it isn’t like all the spirits in Aboriginal mythologies are friendly in the first place, let
alone to marauding European invaders or their contemptuous descendents.

I also know that I know how to deal with this sort of situation. I can be up and summoning Thor very quickly,
bellowing and shrieking his name, and in particular signing the hammer, which usually works wonders.

(UPG alert: this is probably a modern practice, I don’t think it has much historical basis, though it works very
nicely nonetheless).

However in situations like this I don’t really want to leap from my bed roaring the varied violent epithets of the Thunder God. So instead I bargain with the interloping entity.

I explain that “we both know” that I could put on such a performance if I wanted to, and that it would hurt them big time. Then I suggest that we pretend that I’ve already done the whole thing, so that they can bugger off and I can go about my business (e.g. sleep).

This kind of bargaining seems surprisingly effective, and it certainly saves a lot of time and effort.

Ok, so its late, I’m in bed, there is a strange being in the room. As soon as I awake I feel it trying to force my eyes closed, trying to lull me back to sleep again. I can sense the dream with the tree and the knife is waiting for me and I really don’t want to find out what happens
next.

So in addition to bargaining with this spirit I am signing the hammer in a very understated way with one hand. I explain that half of my ancestors were recent migrants (so their hands are clean of the atrocities inflicted by European invaders in Australia); and that while the other half probably were involved in some way at some point, I don’t exactly approve of white Australia’s shameful history.

By my logic, I explain, there isn’t much point attacking me. Not while there are so many folks in the country still actively trying to put the screws on both indigenous Australians and the spirits of their culture and land. I say that I think it would be much more advantageous if the spirit and I instead try to communicate.

Well with that the whole threatening vibe coming off this being goes away. It comes closer to me and I can no longer resit falling asleep at its command. I find myself in a hall or a forest (I’m not sure) and here the being appears as an Aboriginal woman.

She is trying to speak to me, to communicate, but there is a tremendous echo on her voice, as though she is on the far side of a great ravine, and I can’t make out the words.

I tell her this, and she comes closer and closer, still shouting, but although her voice becomes clearer I still can’t make out what she is saying. Then suddenly the dream ends.

Since that night I’ve recovered my emotional equilibrium and Annalise no longer has strange intuitions of being attacked either. No further hint of the spirit has been evident, so I really don’t understand what happened that caused the change.

Perhaps the spirit was satisfied that I was genuine in my outlook and went elsewhere to vent its rage? I really don’t know. Perhaps it just got bored of me, or perhaps I just didn’t have what it took to communicate successfully.

I know that in some circles it is not acceptable for non-Aboriginal Australians to talk about experiences with beings which seem to originate from Aboriginal spirituality.

For example right wing loonies just do not want to know about anything outside of their own narrow minds; whereas some left wing loonies (particularly the academically-minded) can’t see the difference between cultural appropriation and spontaneous (and in this case unasked for) experiences.

But I think Australian heathens should openly, if cautiously, acknowledge these kinds of experiences. We are here in this land, not Europe or anywhere else. Like it not we are going to have to come to grips with that – spiritually, practically and politically.

This land is forced to deal with us by our very presence – at some point the ørlög this generates has to mount into interaction, be it positive or negative. We are going to have to move with a lot of care and a lot of respect if we want to forge a positive relation with this land and its people.

I have a feeling that the forces of this land are a lot bigger than we heathens can probably begin to comprehend. With respect, Australia has an ancient power that I am not sure Europe and her children can match.

The heathens of old varied their religious beliefs and practices relative to the climate and geography in which they lived. This is already occurring here in Australia, but perhaps if we consciously embrace this attitude our spiritual practices will be – perhaps less formally true to ancestral heathen, but far more true psychologically.

There I go again with my talk of psychological reconstruction, which amounts to the conviction that spirituality is more than the forms in which it finds its home.

Mythology, culture, belief and practice are all doors into experience. These doors are not totally arbitrary and may even prove indispensable, but they are not enough by themselves.

If we mistake the door for the experience then we end up with empty dogma and dead religion. This is a big part of why faiths like Catholicism are on the decline in the Western world. Heathens would do well to forge a different path, and here in Australia we may find the very land itself teaching us (whether by stick or carrot I do not know).

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