Animist Discipline

Animist discipline is central to the broader community of the life-place. This discipline does not require grandiose ceremonial observances, but is practice with little actions, such as recycling what you consume, or finding reuse for it, and being mindful of what and how much your consume. To eat out less and live within one’s means is a good reminder of how much we consume and how it effects everything else. Being organic on a limited budget is not always practice, but purchasing what you can as local as you can is a big step in the right direction. Also thrift stores, and discount places that sell items that are still usable but have been rejected by the large chains is a great way to not only live within your means but salvage what would otherwise be discarded and participate in local economy. When buying things ask your self how much you need it. In short live a simple life.

Ceremony can be another aspect of an animist discipline, and this does not have to be the complex observances of neo-paganism. There is no need for casting circles in the right direction or calling the directions, in fact during my participation with modern paganism I found this distracting. I was always bothered by the buying and selling of special tools, like athema and swords, and candles, if these things find you without exchange of money it is god, but I believe sacred tools should never be bought, and are not necessary for animist disciplines. Bioregional animist ceremony would take many forms and is a fluid things based on the unique personality of ones life-place. They should be focused on respectful relations with your life-place and all the persons your share it with. Leaving offerings at the base of trees, singing songs with the birds, making dances to honor the seasons are all that is needed. Ceremony should be fluid, improvisational, and simple expressions of life. They can be done privet or shared with others. The importance is the intent of respect to the living world.

One practice I used to have, and I am planing on reviving is that of a shrine. I prefer the concept of a shrine over an alter. In neo-paganism alters are the central focus of elaborate ceremonies and often involve the practice of magic, which I no longer practice. A shrine is a place designated for reflection; it is a place to sit and listen and contemplate. In the past my shrine was a simple small table built by my grandfather which I would place items I’ve collected while out in the woods. Much of the items have since been lost due to unfortunate circumstances, but that just tells me a new start Is needed. Now I have a small flat smooth peace of black basalt I found near the river and a small green piece of basalt I carry in my pocket. I could place a single candle on it, some incense, offerings of different kinds. And the best part is how portable it is. Overtime I will collect other shrines and items to be placed with a shrine. I have determined to select a time of the day to sit and listen and contemplate before my shrine. By doing so I hope to tune myself to the land and be inspired to work with the land in mutual benefit.

Simple acts o joy, sorrow, respect, and expressions of your relationships should become daily parts of my life to help me strengthen my connection to the land and the community I live. By intentionally taking time out of my day to go for walk in the park, sit near the river, watch the squirrels, and generally take care of my own needs in as minimalistic and simple way I remind myself of what I plan on coming closer to living a life of animist ethics.

Inland Seasons

The end of this month I will have lived at the confluence of the Snake River and Clearwater Rivers for a year. I have now witnessed the regions seasonal cycle in full. It has been a good deep winter, where snow has capped the high Palouse grasslands and mountains and been nice and rainy and cool in the warmth of the valley. The springThe end of this month I will have lived at the confluence of the Snake River and Clearwater Rivers for a year. I have now witnessed the regions seasonal cycle in full. It has been a good deep winter, where snow has capped the high Palouse grasslands and mountains and been nice and rainy and cool in the warmth of the valley. The spring comes early to the valley and the trees come alive with pink and white flowers. Summer was a quick blazes of heat, and autumn was nice and rambeling with golden and red Rocky mountain Maple leaves coating the surface. comes early to the valley and the trees come alive with pink and white flowers. Summer was a quick blazes of heat, and autumn was nice and rambeling with golden and red Rocky mountain Maple leaves coating the surface.

Here is something I have learned from this.

Summer is gold and the time of Morning Doves

Autumn is brown and the time of Ravens

Winter is white and the time of Kestrels

Spring is green and the time of the Herons

Morning Dove taught me contentment and stillness.

Raven taught me how to grow from pain.

Kestrels taught me the beauty of aloneness.

I have yet to see what Heron has to teach me.

Writing this, I see that I have to remember these lessons, something I’ve not been good at this year. I should incorporate these seasonal lessons and their teachers into my ritual observances and learn new narratives for the season. I shall make an offering to Heron this weekend and open myself to the lessons to come.

I’ve come to these conclusions through praying with and communing with the land and would not be applicable to all of Inland Cascades have been shown to be relevant to my practice and the Southeastern edge of the Inland Northwest.

Welcome

Hello everyone and welcome to the blog about Bioregional Animism in Inland Cascadia (A.K.A The Inland Northwest USA). It is the region of the Columbia River Drainage that spans from the east of the Cascades to the Continental Devide and takes in Eastern Washington, Northeastern Oregon, Northern Idaho and Western Montana. It is the traditional homeland of Salish and Sahaptin indigenous languages families. It has a semi-arid environment due to the Rainshadow of the Cascades, where the moister accumulated on the Pacific Coast pushes warm air over the top of the Cascades. It is a land of rolling hills of golden wheat that meets the rugged northern rockies and basalt created by ancient seismic activity of what was once a giant lake.

Dreams as Naratives

I’ve been thinking about dreams and I have been thinking about narratives. what do the two have in common?

I’ve heard it say that dreams are our subconscious acting out when we sleep. I do believe that many dreams are just that, dreams. But not all dreams are that simple to dismiss. As a animist I feel that there are many layers to our existence beyond the physical mater; in fact, I make no distinction between the physical and the metaphysical and spiritual. This in turn applies to my dreams.

The subconscious is a mysteries thing which continues to fascinate the scientific world and societies in whole. The ancient Kelts, who where animists themselves, believed the seat of the soul rested in the skull. As a result the skull was a powerful symbol, much like the western heart is today. The Kelts where not the only ones who held the skull as a powerful symbol, such as the Mayan, and many African culture. This admiration for the human Skull indicates a reverence amongst animist cultures. I believe they understood the power of the human mind on emany levels. Some levels modern science is only know catching up to.

With the subconsciousness being that mysteries part of our brain that generates fantastical imagery and scenarios when we sleep, I believe it deserves a name more suiting to this function. In metaphysics the term Subliminal Gnosis is often referred to the part of our mind (and soul) that seeks out communication beyond the surface layers of what western thought considered the “real world”. Could it be, through our dreams, we are witnessing our Subliminal Gnosis communicating on other levels?

The Ancient Kelts held inspiration in high regards. They had special names for it, Imbas in Gaelic and Awen in Welsh. Their society prized the bards and poets who could channel this divine inspiration into narratives. In almost every society significant narratives have been used to to tell the stories of what that culture valued and how it saw it self. These narratives where a preservation of world view and often handed down orally in many animist societies. In theistic societies who developed written word these narratives where preserved in volumes of text. When this happened the narratives lost their fluidity and where frozen in a particular place and time. However oral narratives remained fluid and changed with time, place, and circumstance.

I suspect that our dreams our not only narratives of our selves being shared with us through our Subliminal Gnosis, but are also narratives being told to us through the Subliminal Gnosis by our life-place, the bio-region we live. Could dreaming be used to collect and receive new narratives being shared with us by our Bio-Regions? And if so, do we not have an obligation to start sharing these narratives?

– Fishbowl

Crow Rain (a dream)

I had a dream;

I was standing next to one of the river along a mountain side where I live. The sky was thick with gray clouds. I watched as they moved across the sun and blocked its light. As the sky was getting darker a flock of Crows flew overhead. It began to rain. Someone called out for me to come inside. I turned around and there was a women I know standing on the porch of a house. I went inside with her and we sat at a table near a large window and watched the rain. Shortly afterworlds, a group of men dressed in black military uniforms marched pass us. Trailing behind them was a coyote.

End of dream.

That morning, as I was driving, a crow was picking at the dead body of a coyote on the side of the road.

– Fishbowl

Animism Americana

I have long struggled with the conflict between the imperialism of my European heritage and the need to reconcile with a foreign land. the truth is that our DNA is a construct of thousands of ancestors before us who walked upon the land. For Native people this land is the same land their people have inhabited for thousands of years, which gives them an inherent intimate relationship with it. Those of us of colonial ancestors have a different dynamic to deal with, in that our genetics may not be of the land, but our experiences and culture is. We are the accumulation of personal experience, ethnic experience, of not only our ancestors but the living we interact with on a daily basis. We are more a result of our culture then our DNA.

This is where new animism diverges from the attitudes of modern paganism. The ancient culture simply do not exist, and the are brutal aspects of it that are no longer applicable. Animism is the base for all human expression, and it is buried in the mythology of our genetic ancestors, whether it is the Celts, Germans, Norse, Slavs. Romans, or Greeks, Africans, or Chinese. Animism is preserved to be rediscovered by the new animist. One has to be mindful that culture context these mythologies were persevered in, no longer exists but gives us valuable information on HOW to develop an animist model that is distinct to all that we are. Many look at the old myths and think “this is what we do and believe to express earth religion” - the animist sees in them “this is how the ancient came to their conclusions and world view, and this is how we can find a unique world view that reconciles our genetics and culture with the land we inhabit.” This may seem a subtle to some but it is a very fundamental difference between the modern pagan and the new animist; However, a modern pagan can be a new animist.

There is a theory that there was a trans-generational historical trauma the Indo-European descendants have felt for thousands of years, in which they inflict upon others through the process of colonialization. New Animism and Bio-Regional Animism signifies a major step in healing the scars of this trauma.

Americana is a term used to describe the accumulation of many interconnecting and colliding cultures that has built the greater American culture. It is a broad sense of American ethnicity and incorporates many attributing influences; the African-American Slave Culture, the Latino Culture, the Creol Culture, the Native American Cultures, the New England Culture, the South west Culture, the Midwest Culture, the Appalachia Culture, The Pacific Northwest Culture, the French-Canadian Culture. Americana is expressed differently in different , and is the unique ethnicity of a given location, that was given by the combination of the land, the natives, and the incoming colonialists and slave cultures.

The Americana of the Appalachia country gave rise to the expression of Bluegrass; it is a combination of Irish and Scottish settlement with African Slave culture and Native American tribes of the region. The Northwest is a Collision of the Fur Trapping Cultures of the Russians, French, and English; the exploration cultures; the Gold Rush and Land Rush that brought Swedish, Irish, and Scottish; the Chinese rail workers; and the Plateau and Pacific Coastal Native cultures; all of this is Northwest Americana.

Instead of looking so much into the genetics of our heritage we should look at the ethnic identity of the Bio-Regions of North America as much as their Ecological Identity. Animism Americana places the expressions of these Americana Cultures into an Animist framework that is informed by, but not restricted to, our genetic ancestry. The end result is not going to be Celtic Animism or Norse Animism, or Slavic Animism, which can only exist within those cultures that most Americans have little to no involvement with. Instead, what we have is Northwest Animism Americana, Appalachia Animism Americana, Creole Animism Americana (etc. . ). Animism Americana implies along side ecological bio-regional identity, that ethnic identity of North American Bio-Regions be placed into a spiritual animist context.