Ehwaz

As the Ice Age ended and the Agricultural Revolution commenced, hunters began mastering the arts of animal husbandry.  Sheep, goats and cattle were domesticated for their milk, meat and hides. But the relationship with horses grew especially close thanks to a quirk of equine anatomy - a gap between their front incisors and rear grinding teeth that allowed for placement of a bridle and bit. This meant that horses could be led, directed and even ridden.  Plough horses changed the face of farming, while charioteers and nomads on horseback raised and destroyed empires.

Ehwaz, the horse-rune, often speaks of movement. If Raido is the journey, Ehwaz is the means of transport. This can be as literal (a new vehicle, for example) or metaphorical (i.e. a job which requires extensive travel or even relocation). It can be called upon to move past blockages and to take you away from unpleasant situations or places. But it is a rune which must be directed and controlled, lest you find yourself riding a spooked horse. Ehwaz can provide you the means of escape, but it will be up to you to take the reins.

An equally important aspect of Ehwaz is domestication. Equestrians cannot overpower or outrun their steeds: they must maintain control through the right mixture of firmness and gentleness.  Where Mannaz speaks of partnership between equals, Ehwaz is about the relationship between the tamer and the tamed.  This rune can be used for domination works in the same manner as Hoodoo formulas like Bend Over Oil and Commanding Incense.  (But be careful, lest you find yourself trying to control a bucking bronco).  It can also be used to tame unruly aspects of your own psyche: those suffering from addiction or anger management issues take note.  Meditating on Ehwaz can help us understand the deep mysteries of dominance and submission, concepts often misunderstood in a culture which privileges - in theory if not in practice - "equality" and "freedom."

Odin rode through the Nine Worlds on Sleipner, his eight-legged steed. Ehwaz can also be called upon for spiritual journeying. Combined with Wunjo, Ehwaz can be a powerful tool for inducing ecstatic states: in conjunction with Chalc it can become a steed to carry you on your quest.  Much as horse and rider become one unit, Ehwaz can help you to achieve unity with the Divine. This may be as direct as possession (which is called "horsing" for a reason). It may also be a more subtle but no less profound surrender to the Will of the Gods: Ehwaz can help you to take up Their bit and bridle and allow Them to lead you where you need to go.

If you are overwhelmed and need to call in the cavalry, Ehwaz can be very helpful.  Conjoined with Uruz, it can become a rampaging herd which tramples everything in its path.  With Thurisaz it can strike with the devastating force of a knight's lance: with Ansuz it can send a message and establish communication behind enemy lines.  It can add speed and force to a bind rune, sending your spell galloping toward its goal.  It can also be used in glamour workings to make you appear like a "knight in shining armor" or an unstoppable armored charger.  Like the horse, Ehwaz can offer assistance in many different situations.

While it is important to consider the runes which appear in a reading in total rather than as isolated bits of data, it is especially important to do so with Ehwaz.  Ehwaz is about the joining of two entities into one. The runes which surround it will tell you who is riding the horse, the destination toward which they ride and the obstacles which stand in their way.  Ehwaz often marks an outside force or person coming into play: the surrounding runes will tell you whether the mysterious stranger brings good, ill or some combination thereof. 

The Voudon Gnostic Workbook

Recently a rather heated discussion ensued on a private Facebook group concerning Michael Bertiaux's notorious Voudon Gnostic Workbook. Many participants were outraged with Bertiaux's free and easy blend of sex magic, Reichean orgone work, Afro-Atlantean Transdimensional Algebra, H.P. Lovecraft and deities only know what else.  I opined that Bertiaux's work was useful for practical magicians, and that it owed more debt to Surrealism than Haitian Vodou.  While it most certainly bears little resemblance to anything I've learned from Haitians or Haitian-Americans, it is effective as a thing in itself.

Adam McGee, a scholar at Harvard University, offered an excellent counterpoint:

I have to offer a dissenting view, insofar as I must question the criteria by which you evaluate the system as "worthwhile." Something can be powerful and yet morally repugnant. And morally repugnant it is. Michael Bertiaux's Vodoun Gnostic Workbook presents a vision of Haiti that is infantilizing, colonialist, and racist. Bertiaux writes of Vodou as something that must be lifted out of the hands of Haitians, who do not and cannot understand its complexities. Bertiaux, by introducing a purposely esotericizing language, seeks to "restore" to the control of (white) magi a Vodou that he proposes has Atlantean origins. This has precise historical parallels in the way that some Europeans, upon first viewing the Ile-Ife bronzes, that they had discovered the lost civilization of Atlantis because surely Africans could not have produced such sophisticated art. Having thus expunged from Vodou its most irreducibly Haitian--i.e. black--elements, Bertiaux then reconstructs it as a libidinal space for the performance of lurid sex rituals. This version of "Vodoun" recycles racist stereotypes of hypersexed black bodies and surely draws on H.P. Lovecraft''s depictions of hypersexual, ultraviolent "black voodoo cults." This cannot be defended by recourse to arguments of religious freedom or laissez-faire liberalism.

I agree that Bertiaux's work contains some uncomfortably racist and colonialist ideas and preconceptions.  (It's still better, in my opinion, than Hyatt and Black's truly odious Urban Voodoo). But I felt that the VGW is so outré that few would mistake it for anything save the product of M. Bertiaux's impressively fevered imagination.  In that, I found it less potentially dangerous to the practice of Haitian Vodou than the ever-popular Vodou Initiation Tours. A bunch of sex magicians holding an "oral-anal Guede orgy" aren't likely to be taken as representatives of the tradition.  A plastic shaman who has put a plane ticket and a ceremony on his credit card might be taken seriously by a lazy journalist or a well-meaning but naive seeker.

My major beef with Bertiaux comes from his efforts to claim Haitian roots where none exist.  His OTOA (Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua) claims lineage through a Haitian Martinist, Gnostic Christian and Vodou priest Lucien-François Jean-Maine: L-F J-M is repeatedly quoted as the source for Bertaiux's work.  Yet as Thelemic scholar P.R. Koenig notes:

The reader must bear in mind that there is almost no documentary evidence of the History of the O.T.O.A. There is absolutely no trace of either L.-F. Jean-Maine or of his Gnostic Church, his Memphis Misraïm or his OTO-Version (O.T.O.A.) in any of the 'old' French Gnostic magazines. Obviously the History of the O.T.O.A. and its maze of related organisations seems to be developed by Marc Lully, Michael P. Bertiaux and Manuel C. Lamparter, and maybe Kenneth Grant, in the late 1960s. Bertiaux admitted that his History outline was written from notes drafted by Marc Lully; and those notes had been lost meanwhile.

I do not believe that Bertiaux made this stuff up out of whole cloth, but I suspect his "Haitian roots" come from his local library.  In particular, I suspect he read some early 20th century texts like Her-Ma-Ra-El (Arthur C. Holly)'s Les daïmons du culte vodou.   These works attempted to combine Vodou with other esoteric traditions to establish it as a Respectable World Religion rather than a savage negro cult.  (Their goals were certainly laudable, even if their scholarship was at times questionable...).  Combined with what he gleaned from Hurston, Deren, Seabrook and other Anglophone writers, he was able to create a "Vodou heritage" which would have looked reasonably plausible to readers in the late 1960s, when information on the topic was very scarce indeed -especially for monolingual English speakers.

As more information about Haitian culture and Vodou has become available, contemporary OTOA/LCN folks have begun de-emphasizing Martinism and drawing upon a supposed "Sect Rouge/Zobop" heritage.  This is convenient, as there is little or nothing written on Haiti's secret societies: it's also quite in keeping with the evolution of other origin myths.  (In the 18th and early 19th century Masons and Rosicrucians traced their heritage to Egypt: after the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone and growing knowledge of Egyptian mythology, secret societies began claiming roots in "Atlantis," "Lemuria" and other conveniently sunken continents... ).

I think Adam's comments about Bertiaux's motivation and racist preconceptions are worth exploring.  However, I might take them a step further.  How many foreigners practicing "authentic" Haitian Vodou are looking for Noble Savages and Little Brown Holy Men? How many see this tradition as a source of unsullied and primitive power, something which will free them from the taint of civilization and absolve them of their skin color? All too often I've found the loudest critics of "phony Vodou" are unwilling to question their own motivations or acknowledge their own privilege.  Their efforts to "protect the faith" look suspiciously like efforts by one group of outsiders to gain the moral high ground on another.

In the end, Bertiaux's work will stand as a thing in itself.  You can call it racist, you can call it incoherent, you can call it a brilliant piece of surrealism.  (I could make a case for all three).   I'm satisfied so long as you don't call it Haitian.

Chris Brown, Twitter and the Politics of Race

By now Chris Brown's backstage meltdown at Good Morning America has become international news.  While that was bad enough, he then managed to make his situation even worse with a Tweet that he quickly deleted - but not fast enough to stop it from being widely distributed:

I’m so over people bringing this past shit up!!! Yet we praise Charlie sheen and other celebs for there bullshit.

Brown has a point.  The people laughing at Charlie Sheen's drug abuse seem happy to overlook his long and sordid history of domestic abuse.  And while Mike Tyson went to prison for sexual assault, Pittsburgh quarterback and serial rapist Ben Roethlisberger has managed to avoid any serious penalties for his misdeeds. But alas, as Michael Arceneaux pointed out on The Root:

Many, rightly, don't find this fair. It's obvious that Brown is among them. Unfortunately, life isn't fair, and one would think that a millionaire, of all people, would realize that. We can't often control what life hands us, but our real power lies in our reaction to whatever we're dealt. It's time that Brown accepts what he's done and the reality that he'll never fully be able to escape it.

And now a note to Chris from someone who grew up in rural white America, explaining in a bit more detail just how badly you screwed the pooch on this one.

Where I was born, being open-minded meant understanding "there's a difference between black people and n-----s."  Hating someone just because they were black was not cool: hating someone because they acted in accordance with various stereotypes was common sense.   I am not trying to justify this: you will note that I got the hell out of my hometown as soon as I could and never went back. But let's not pretend that this isn't a common belief among white Americans.

You got arrested for beating your girlfriend. When you were called on your actions, you threw a violent temper tantrum.  Then you committed the truly unforgivable sin: you played the race card.  Because that's exactly what you people do, at least according to White Conventional Wisdom.  You beat your women, you commit crimes, and then you whine about racism rather than taking responsibility for your own actions.  (Don't believe me? Ask the folks who comment on news stories at the New York Post and similar websites).

If you had acted properly penitent about the whole situation, you could have been a Good Example and a Credit to your Race.  If you were a little bit more Compton and a little bit less Cosby, you might have been able to capitalize on your violent reputation.  The entertainment industry has plenty of room for ho-slapping gang-bangers. (Surely I'm not the only one who has noticed that "Gangsta Rap" has become a 21st century minstrel show).  As it is you've succeeded in placing yourself squarely on the wrong side of white America's dividing line.  You've become yet another piece of evidence that racism doesn't really exist, that it's just a ruse used by professional agitators and career criminals for their own ends.  

An Unsolicited Testimonial

When you're trying to get your life back in order after a crisis - especially one which was largely self-inflicted - it's good to get some guidance.  My therapist has been helpful in providing alternate coping strategies and getting to the root of some of my nastier self-destructive tendencies.  But I really don't feel comfortable discussing my religious beliefs with someone who is likely to analyze them in the language of delusion and madness.  And so I called on my friend Galina Krasskova to cast the Runes and provide me some input on the spiritual ramifications of my descent into hell and how I might claw myself out.

Galina is without a doubt one of the most skilled diviners I've ever consulted.  I'd say the Runes come alive in her hands, but it's more accurate to say that she understands that they are alive, not just tools or symbols but sentient forces of nature.  She got to the heart of my problem quickly: she then provided useful advice on things I could do to rectify some of my imbalances and heal my injuries.  Her advice was on point, clear and precise: she told me what I was doing right and wasn't afraid to let me know where I was going wrong.

If you're looking for a Kinder Gentler Reader, you may wish to look elsewhere.  (You may also want to look for another divinatory tool: the Runes are not concerned with your comfort levels).  Galina's friends call her blunt and brutally honest: her enemies call her names that aren't fit for publication on a family-friendly blog.  But if you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth you will find her assistance to be invaluable.

My next tattoo (minus the text)

This began as a Faroe Islands stamp, but it is one of the most powerful and vivid images of Himself that I've ever seen.  I'm hoping to get this on my left breast (over my rune cutting/branding) at this year's Free Spirit Gathering and have dropped a note to Capt. Gordon Staub at Sacred Mark Sanctuary to schedule an appointment.  

A lot of people see Loki as a wacky, fun-loving trickster and that is definitely one aspect of His personality.  But there's a lot more to him than that: it's easy to focus on his joyful mysteries while neglecting His suffering on the rock.  Hopefully this tattoo will remind people of the price He paid to bring us all those humorous stories.  

A Long-Anticipated Followup is Finally Released

In November 2001 I was reviewing CDs for the late and lamented Starvox.  I was also reeling from what I now realize was PTSD in the wake of that little unpleasantness with the Twin Towers. During that time I spent a great deal of time listening to a melancholy folk-rock CD by a band named Charlottesville, The Shark Who Pulled a Mussel.  As I said then:

Every morning I ride the subway past the open wound that used to be the World Trade Center; the stench from the ruins lingers high and acrid as an echoing scream.  Jetliners overhead make me cringe. I start crying at odd moments for no reason at all.  And over and over I've listened to Charlottesville's debut CD, The Shark Who Pulled a Mussel, and found some kind of consolation in Miles Fender and Iris Lapalme's melancholy ruminations on love, life, and loss.

Fender first achieved public notice as the leader of British goth band Earth Calling Angela. With his relocation to San Francisco came a stylistic sea change. Charlottesville has been compared by some to bands like Low and Red House Painters. I'm more reminded of the great AM pop of the 60s, with cheery optimism replaced by a wistful Remembrance of Things Past. If Brian Wilson had picked up an acoustic guitar and recorded Endless Autumn, it might have sounded something like this: at their best, Charlottesville's moody harmonies and penetrating lyrics wouldn't have been out of place on Simon & Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning 3 a.m. or The Sounds of Silence.

Ten years later Miles Fender (the guiding light behind Charlottesville and Goth rockers, Earth Calling Angela), is finally releasing a follow-up, tentatively titled The Heron That Taught Us.  While it may have taken him a while, he certainly seems to have avoided the sophomore slump.  This is a solid melodic effort and a fitting soundtrack to this season's battle with mental illness.

Kierkegaard on the Knight of Infinite Resignation

The wish which would carry him out into reality, but was wrecked upon the impossibility, is now bent inward, but it is not therefore lost, neither is it forgotten.  At one moment it is the obscure emotion of the wish within him which awakens recollections, at another moment he awakens them himself; for he is too proud to be willing that what was the whole content of his life should be the thing of a fleeting moment.  He keeps this love young, and along with him it increases in years and beauty.  On the other hand, he has no need of the intervention of the finite for the further growth of his love.  From the instant he made the movement the princess is lost to him.

In the infinite resignation there is peace and rest; every man who wills it, who has not abased himself by scorning himself (which is still more dreadful than being proud), can train himself to make this movement which in its pain reconciles one with existence.

Fear and Trembling, pp. 54-56.  (Walter Lowrie, translator: 1953).