Topic: Manitou

[tommy2]

Time for Laughter




Time and again I have folk ask me about what I call my “Manitou” experience.  The way it is, I write sketchy notes now and then and will later compose a piece.  The best I was able to do, and still keep a certain amount of coherency, was to transcribe from parchment a letter of two years ago which I penned to my sister Kathy, the LadyHawk.  Since the experiences of my “other self” are a growing and sometimes indescribable series of events, I thought best a chronical would suffice. 

Ceremony, my Friends, is a quite personal matter, as would be assumed.  My Christian upbringing introduced me to public ritual but my own practices of “the Nagual” I portray as one would share their own prayer time ….. usually quite in private.  Of my 35 portrayed attempts, only 3 have had others participate in or even view.  Only my son Bryan and sister Kathy have danced and chanted with me, seen my transfiguration and emotion of ceremonial retreat.  By passing on this script, maybe I can relate for each person reading it to one day find their own mode of self-expression and communion with what they may sense is “superior” to them in a spiritual sense.  All I can say is that anything close to “sacred” which I have found in my life was within my own “other self”, as manifested each and every breath I envision to take.

May each of you gain moral strength and spiritual sight through your own avenue of personal astonishment.

 I would expect nothing less of myself.



Thoughtfully, Tommy Two Feathers






……….…………………………………………………………….


Notes of a Night Shift Nagual   (January 3 thru 30, 2005)


010305 –  Opening the Crack in the World

The moving Full Moon now tries its hardest to peak thru the frozen clouds of a new year.  Where leaves once hung now drape sheets of winter.  The silver grass blades crunch on my way to once again sit at work and write you.  Days and weeks seem to fly for me, also, my sweet sister.  I must surely be having fun. 

I pull out from their hiding places the sacred items I look at closely, fondly, repair or add to only this time of year.  I choose to Remember to Remember what my hands have made for my heart and my eyes of ceremonial awareness.  I know that soon the old men will again come from the tree bark to watch me in my Ojibwa and my wood pile.  Their murmurs I will hear only in my dreams and most peaceful times of wake.  I feel a dawn on the horizon again of my wanting ways to pray for things and people who need praying for.  Bags and bundles, cache and bow …. I dust off and straighten the Lines of my past doings.  Power will again well up in my veins and I will see thru the darkness of my closed eyes.  My sleep will be little, in quiet but restful spurts of knowing found only now and then.  Days will seem as night and darkness will slip away to another time.  It is again the time to clearly see my Way … if only for a while … for a dance or two when I am most by myself. 

If there isn’t a tomorrow it is because I had not time for it.  Today I plan to pick up my arrows and untie the bindings of a tonal long watched thru Nagual eyes.  I will sleep some other month.  I will leave the Dreaming to my sister Warrior.  She does it best in her own confidence of wings.    Grounding – Fire Watch -Ring of Power – Ojibwa flight – game meat and berries – robes and colors – Recapitulation flix – grampa’s cane – candles and crystals.  All these things I touch now, drawing my personal power to me.

…………………………………

I feel as though I again head down a tree-laden road to my favorite fishing hole.  It is a cooling spring or autumn day in my mind and it has rained some hours before.  With a fresh can of worms and a few favorite lures, I hear my old dog ahead of me, sniffing around a rotten log. 
He now stands with ears erect and then vanishes off into the budding flora of a sloping Virginia lakeside.  He barks now like he wants me to follow him …. So I will, as usual. 

Come with me to where we pull off our muddy shoes and laugh at how fun this all is, brother and sister turning a day into a month or so, like any tomorrows will come when they come and not a moment before.     

Here, Alf !!!!!  Here, Boy !!!!!

…………………………  The Commencement

Do you remember all the fires we watched each other stand near, even if we were a half a country map away?  And we still heard the crack of a new log and loved the smoke soaking into our clothes.,  We were too excited to even cry but knew our cries sent off into the winter air passed all time zones and generations of fire watchers and ring dancers.  Canoes, Ojibwas, tents and chicken coops defied gravity within our trances which we shared with old Ones much prouder and far wiser than our greatest of dreams.  But were alive and celebrating with all we had in our guts and in our caches.  Yes, we were alive with ourselves and what we WISHED to be true in mysteries for only maybe a few hours.  This we sat together with, as we held our pipes of prayers and our reflections of greatness.  It is all we could really share as “just ours”, my sweet and true sister.  And it still is this very moment, again and again.

I set now in my mind that this Manitou is the first of the last 15 years I will practice it in Full.  This year I will arrange a giant display of candles and crystals on my Mom’s dining room table in my studio.  Outside I will mostly hang my robes, shield and light my fire as emblems of my dance out there, which I will draw a ring of Power around.

I know that I cannot in the future stand too many treks in the cold, so will let the indoors slowly become a greater reflection of what was once almost totally outside, whether in Iowa, Virginia, Maryland or North Carolina.  It is part of my acceptance of myself in the last 1/3rd of my current lifetime. 
I know that I have kept all my knots tied tightly and all Lines drawn in magnetic truth.  My Intent has been as unbending as my impeccable attempts to accurately drawing my rings of not-forgotten power. 

We have drawn the time travelors to our lodges and shared our meals, as they have shared their tales, their laughter and their smiles.  They have all been our Relations and we know each other well, for no stone has remained unturned in our quest for seeking the mysteries of the Other Side of our realities, you and I.  This we have, of course, done quite well, Sistermine.  You can tell it in our laughter.  We have made ourselves One in this manner and display our Robes accordingly.  OM

[tommy2]

I remember my first Manitou when I was actually kinda scared that I would be sacreligious or disrespectful to whomever had ceremony before.  I also sensed that maybe I would conjure up some demon or something that would quickly smash me, rip me up or just have me for a midnite snack.  I have ALWAYS been VERY careful in my doings.  “Trepadacious” is the word, I think.  I like to call my actions “always respectful”, like when in church or temple.  But I think, mostly, what I have drawn from my ceremonial attempts is a closeness I have achieved with whatever was imaginable to me.  I told myself these things were real and they BECAME real for me in every sense of the word I choose to ponder upon.  Something in my gut, I guess.  A connection with the mysterious which I could not hold onto very long with any church activities I so dearly loved as a youth and young adult.  But, like I am sure I have told you before, I had to lay down my study of Don Juans’ work for a few years, once it all began to soak into me.  It was like I was being sacreligious if I continued absorbing his teachings as I was.  This was because I was beginning to feel myself change.  I was becoming another form or maybe just realizing that there was actually another reality or consciousness available for my awareness.  Then, of course, we began sharing ourselves, you and I, over the miles between Iowa and Virginia.  1989, to be exact.  You sent my headband, which I call my “colors”.  We, over just a few years, found a connection deeper than just being siblings and close friends. 

WE FOUND SOMETHING THAT CHANGED OUR LIVES FOREVER.

I have always, in many senses, Sis, felt very much alone in my self-stalking.  If it weren’t for you, I may have dropped my quest as just another fancy of what I thought I might want in my imaginings.  I dunno.  Either way it was so much easier to accept it all because I was not alone, even if it seemed like it a lot. 
So many things were happening for me at the same time.  My textile job was maturing me; my kids were really becoming fun; my marriage was falling apart and that seemed to matter less and less for me; my meditations were finally mellowing me; and, mostly, my spiritual life was again feeling very active.  I hurt inside but it was a good growing pain which I was beginning to realize of myself.  I WAS alone, without much adult companionship and was lonely for someone to share more of my “self” with.  This was all before the Wanda jean, of course.  Bryan said it the best, with regards to her entry into my life.  “Before you were Dad.  Now you are Tom.”
 I think he understood much, much more than I could begin to imagine of him, you know?  And as for Danny I struggle to bring him back into my focus.  I felt good for years to just kinda “let him go” because if my expectations fell into such utter confusion or, maybe, disbelief that he wasn’t going to be very “normal”.  I struggle today knowing he has hurt his brain function with the elements of his addictions.  He has been in lockup again well over a year … long enough, you’d think, for a lot of the drug to have flushed out of his brain cells, I guess.  But, by his responses to my written words, he seems to be repeating what I say to him.  But I tell him the truth as no one else does, except maybe Bryan, as he struggles as I once did with how Danny has hurt his brother Daniel.  Bryan actually hates the addict who has stolen his brother.  I was there once.  Once.  Now I indulge in my Intent again.  I pour myself upon him as I have no one else, except for the WJ.  I just focus on trapping his attention.  It’s all I can do; just give him SOMEONE whom he can trust as being solid.

And, Sis, I never grieved my Mother dying because of how I got to know her, and how she got to know us after I came back here.  Her and the WJ would laugh and laugh in her bedroom and really “talk” when Dad wasn’t around.  In the hospital I played with her stockinged-feet and sorta faked a couple of card games, because she was so high on her pain killers.  Watching me build three picnic tables, she marked, “I didn’t realize that there was another carpenter in the family beside my Dad.”  Yes, she glowed that night that I had a vision she was calling me to her death bed.  “I’m sure going to miss you.”, she said with a very straight face. 
These words, alone, justify any “sacrifice” we may have made over the years in Iowa we spent caring for her and Dad.

But, really, why did I come back home?  To set you free?  To earn my third feather of experience?  Many reasons, my Dear.  Many.

……………………   The Dance

It’s January 9th and my large studio table is beginning to take on the air of my indoor efforts at ceremony.  Candles and crystals mark the six directions and Power items begin to move into more visible places.  I love this time of year when my Intent takes on a life of its very own.  I have a path started out in the snow to the large bonsai table which will be the focal point of my doings out there, maybe.  I will draw a ring this year, for the first time, only around this table and my fire.
 I want to zero in on my power and leave my Ojibwa and shields as more casual points of my gatherings.  This year, because of my work schedule, my doings will be rather scattered over a couple/three intense weeks of mixed days and nights instead of the usual 2 – 3 solid days of observance.  A warrior must always be flexible.
…………………..
The fog out, on this 20 degree night, makes it very luminous all over.  The lights’ reflection off the fog makes it almost bright out, to me.  A nice night to walk to work, so I did.  I hardly drive to work at all, anymore.  It’s only 3 blocks and is refreshing.  Trying again to establish some chat friends on line, this time thru the Delphi forums.  The Nagual Forum gave me the “thumbs down” for being “too content” and “not struggling” …. Whatever THAT means.  Who could actually know, except the individual person, what kind of road has been walked and for how long?  Beats me.  Always so much talk about Don Juans’ words but nothing on what they actually DID.  Hell, I even was accused of “trying to be an Indian” or pretending I was one. Ha!
Maybe that SpiritWarrior guy knows more about me then I do!  Who knows?
…………………
I watch Dad sleep in his wheelchair, play cards with him and oftentime sit on his bed and listen again to stories 50 years old.  Now I don’t have to wonder how getting older is like because I experience it already thru him, in a way, every day.  And I am sure now that this brought me to realize my own terminal condition, called humanity.  It’s all so transient yet all so important.  We are just where we are and need to realize that.  I am thrilled to have found out, Sis, just what I am.
And, no Sis, I never thought you’d find me on a dance floor on a regular basis.  But you oughta see us now; the first ones out, usually.  Even catch myself showing off when we’re somewhere that there’s not many experienced dancers.  Love that cha-cha.
…………………

01/11/05

And something in me begins to change now, as the Fullest Moon approaches.  Like the two of me separate most fully.  I feel a big part of me leaving the daily, trivial things as quite foolish.  Like the things that are really important about our lives never get found out by ordinary means and senses.  And iffen most folk DID see something, it wouldn’t make any frigging sense, anyway, to them.  Everything is totally alive for me.  The trees and air and the ground pulsate and breathe so loudly.  Humanlike figures now stand around the house, mostly just out of my direct line of sight.  I sense them, large forms erect and solid, looking at me, watching me, or maybe waiting for me to get my act together or something.  I think they come because I am not afraid of them anymore.

Yes, my vigor for all this is renewed with this psych job I am doing on myself.  It is my 2nd 15 years of ceremony started.  I am telling myself maybe my LAST 15 years, I dunno.

011505 …. Yes, my Dear, things definitely are much, much clearer now, now that I look from the Place of No Pity.  I feel the world turning round beneath my wings and I understand.  Hard to share, but clear to mind … the opened mind.  Fears have now fallen to the wayside, to make room on the dancefloor of reality for some very serious and fun steps into “The Active Side of Infinity”.

012305.  Boy, it’s the shits here at work with all this paperwork during the Manitou.  Shit flying, dropping, spinning, getting pushed all over the frigging place!  It’s confusing enough in here!  Christ!  I feel nervous, too, but it’ll pass soon.  Doing a fire Monday since I’ve heard it’s supposed to be in the 40’s, at least.  Cool, man.



Had quite a vision last night, outside at the front door step area on the East.  The ice-covered tree started to glow and told me that she was Mom’s tree since it was the only tree she ever spoke to, since she sat out there a lot.  Have deer meat, cornbread and cranberries planned for a menu.

It’s the next night, almost Monday a.m. and I am much calmer.  Everything which I can cram into my time machine will be done so in the next 24 hours.  Just have to get  out all my Recapitulation flix, a final remix on Power Ring items done, and gathering my kindling bundles, is all that remain to be finalized.  Then I will just let the dance begin without much ado at all.  The deer roasts are bubbling in their crock.  Forgot how good the fragrance was.

A hard wind blew the Manitou in yesterday and brought warm air with it.  It might be a sloppy ceremony.  I remember once in Virginia at the marina house, when it had rained heavily just before the Manitou and it was very muddy down at my burn pit area.  I had stood in one spot, in ceremony stance and trance, and my boots had sunken deep into mud and I had to step out of them to free myself.  It was the night of the Great Wing Flaps, remember?

To my utter amazement I find that all the Lines I thought I was drawing were there all the time, and have always been.  I was merely tracing over them in an attempt to find my own position in something I thought was so vast and incomprehensible.  But this world of wonder which I find myself in, the Nagual world, is so very tiny, so very refined and exact all along.   I had just to find my balance again after all these many, many lifetimes.  Like something right up under my nose all the time, every time.  And this, my sweet sister, I had to find out for my very self.  It was and is something no one could tell me.  Iffen they had, I wouldn’t have gotten it anyway!  Like trying to decipher a coded message that didn’t need decoding at all.  All I had to do was to open my eyes!

Finale   ------  The Closing of the Crack in the World

And the nights’ wind
Carried me off to
Somewhere I usually
Forget about until
It happens again, when
The full moon is fullest \
For me.

Yes the one I now see with my eyes closed, the one that brings the inanimate to life again for a few weeks each year … the only time, it seems, that I truly remember to remember what awareness can possibly entail, if one wants it hard enough.

The Warrior
Two Feathers

[tommy2]

There is a time for a fire.

The end of May. 

I will light a big one.

Prepare now.

Look at your reflection.

There are Ones Remembering to Remember,

like you.


You, also, remember to remember.


the wannabe Warrior, Two Feathers

[tommy2]

An Issuance


All ceremony is virtually the same, with respect to having a formula or agenda.  Remember, please, that things ….. ALL THINGS ….. are a process with certain necessary ingredients.  A job or task, a long or short-term endeavor, phases in ones’ life, ones’ entire life and even ceremonial acts are pieces or particles of attention which need to be heeded, like parts of a puzzle ….. all very necessary items which need to be watched with all of the attention one can possibly muster, especially Wannabe Warriors like myself or even the truest of aesthetics in the flesh of day-to-day life.  We need to maybe be like a young dove on her very first Springtime.  Staying alert is her key to survival.  Our spiritual attunement needs to stay always on the ready, mentally AND spiritually. 

One such ceremony I indulge in, I lovingly call my “Spring Rites”.  It is a ceremony as vital to me as the Manitou, itself.  The three ingredients of my April or May rites are very simple and quite fun, actually.  Firstly, I perform what I call, “The Airing Out”.  I pick a warm and breezy day and open up windows on all sides of our home and turn all the ceiling fans on high.  My idea is to awaken the house from its wintertime nap.  Next I light my favorite incense (Patchouli) and go about my lodge and happily shout things like, “Wake up, Yawl!” or “Up and attem, Folks!”, in a very energetic manner.  Make it fun, OK?  Put on a bright shirt or blouse and a nice springy tune or song and dance around like some woodland fairy-type (like, Jen, maybe? ).  I even stand outside at the door and invite the wind in.  I have a neighbor lady from Laos even doing it now.  Welcome the new and birthful season into your year, Yawl!! 

Next comes “The Speak”, something a little more intense for the awareness.  It is close to a form of meditation, in and of itself.  I find myself on my favorite garden bench or swing and quiet my mind.  I then focus on what I hear around me, picking one sound at a time and then speak to it.  A newly-arrived sparrow rustling in the nearby branches ….. a dog barking down the street ….. the old boards of my bench creaking as I shift my weight ….. the limbs above me turning in their bark as another big wind arises.  Yeh, that great maple, Ferd, that my Grampa planted as a sapling back in the 60’s, when Mom’s house was first being built.  The idea is to bring your awareness back into equanimity with your surroundings, helping usher out the ego during a joyful time, or ANY time, in your life, OK?  “Hey, Mrs. Sparrow, howzit going?  You gonna have your first hungry batch of nestlings soon?”  And, “Hey, Ferd, that last blizzard the first of this month had a hard bite, didn’t it?”

Then I walk around my little estate and continue my intent listening and speaking.  I know folk driving by see my unusual behavior all the time as I talk to the trees and birds.  They won’t know the difference!  I just laugh.  I told my Dad’s now-unused ham radio tower that I was sorry he was silent except for the distinct rattle he made on his pole.  I wonder if Dads’ echo still chatters for this now-rusty tower on windy days like today.  This middle part of the ceremony, taking as long as it takes, is an excellent vessel for my Recapitulations.  Remember to Remember, my Friends, all we affect and all which affects us, even in the very smallest of ways, are very vital ingredients in the physical and non-physical balance of our different hemispheres of existence and even the very cosmos, Herself.

The final segment of my Springtime Arousal is “The Work”, a personal Power movement for any and all ceremonial events.  I got out my Dads’ old garden hoe and stirred up my larger planter boxes and then spaded up my pepper-growing patch, while I was at it.  The beads of sweat I drew were cooled easily with the cold beer can I kept right nearby .  “Power Moves”, by the way, help cement my assemblage point to its new position within the attention shift of a self-stalk such as this.  I want my physical and astral bodies to fully feel what my spirit is saying in my self-expression.  It gives the tonal bindings a real shake up, if you know what I mean.  This IS what it’s all about, don’t cha know?

You see, my Friends, the magnetic North and South Lines which I draw in the earth and snow, along with my Ring of Power, are a pre-placed Dead Reconning of my Intent and maybe all Intent, Herself.  I dunno.  Remember to Remember that ceremony of any type creates a cumulative affect and effect for Silent Knowledge.  It is the foundation of my lifes’ building and keeps me more alive than I could possibly try to describe, even if I keep on trying my best at it, for sure. 


Happy Springtime, Yawl.


T2F/042307