Eoten

Animist poet

Wild poetry, untamed stories and animist teachings from Eóten

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Without Animism: Power

Our culture tends to see power as ‘power over’; the word itself has become synonymous with abusive behaviour, assholes in suits, the political system and the struggle to control our world, individually and communally.

But while all of these are related to power, they are not truly power. Power, when we actually experience it, is not about what we control or do but about what we can draw on in the situation.

In animism, we talk a lot about relationships and how important they are. Power is one area where the quality of our relationships is crucial; when our relationships to the important things are strong, we have their power within us. Our relationships to death, love, truth, magic, meaning and our land are just some of the sources of power that we can build up and be changed by in our lives.

The power of these sources depends on how we relate with them and requires that we approach them with warriorship. The more challenging a relationship is for us, the more power we can claim from it. An excellent example is death, where a healthy relationship can transform the chains and restraints we have placed upon ourselves and leave us more free than we could imagine. But we have to be willing to face our own mortality and grief and pain to be able to claim this power.

This kind of power gives us the space to experience our lives on our own terms, to be creative with the situation to find solutions, to allow unhealthy constraints and relationships to fall away. It can give us the courage to tell the truth, or to lie without care if that’s safer. It can give us the strength to accept the inevitable loss and pain of an illness, and to find connection in shared trauma. It can give us the inspiration to tell a new story, reveal an alternative approach or forget our own worries as we work on behalf of others.

Power like this is what transforms lives and turns human beings into agents of change for themselves and their communities. This is the kind of power that can be wielded by those with the least control in our society; the deep, challenging truths that we learn when we confront the taboos of our culture can free us from their bonds completely.

Animism shows us that there are different types of power that we can draw on; the inborn power of our deepest natures, the power we claim through our experiences, the power we steal from others, the power we reject when it seems too big for us, the power we are given by our land and ancestors, the power we create when we work together as a community.

Each of these powers is something we can actively relate to on our own terms.

Without animism, we’re left with only questions about power. We see people in our culture asking these questions all the time, out loud or in action. How do I reclaim the power I lost in a trauma? How do I relate to my own power without being abusive? How do I turn my mortality and sense of loss into personal power? What is my power for? How do I live with it without letting it consuming me? Why does power frighten me so much? Why do people abuse their power?

The power over others and our environment is just one way that power manifests. It’s an unhealthy expression most of the time, and our lack of understanding of power has lead to this becoming the most common use of power. The understanding of power as something that we gain when we control and manipulate stems from our disconnection, insecurity, fear and confusion.

When we’re disconnected from the relationships we’re in, with our land, body, family, culture, we start to see them as overwhelming, invisible antagonists in our lives. We feel chaotically controlled by our world, and power becomes the way we attempt to wrestle control back. When we can’t relate to the feminine, expressions of femininity can become threatening; we feel we have to control and destroy those expressions in order to be safe.

If we can’t relate to the chaos and vastness of the earth and our dependence on it, we feel threatened and need to control, tame and destroy manifestations of that chaos and natural diversity. We may not realise that this is why we’re choosing these paths, but our damaged relationships are the driving force beneath them all the same.

When we’re unable to face the unsettling nature of our existence, our mortality and pain, the absurdity of our world, our insecurity pushes us to gain power over what’s upsetting us. We become more and more determined to stop reminders of our own instability and vulnerability, including other people who remind us of them.

This insecurity in our own existence drives us into more and more extreme attempts to eradicate the source of the discomfort. If we’re uncomfortable and insecure about the possiblity of become impoverished, our ability to empathise with the poor is pushed aside in favour of attacking and hiding them as the perceived ‘source’ of our insecurity.

Power is rooted in truth; we have to be able to see and accept the reality of the situation we all find ourselves in. The vulnerability of our lives, the looming mortality and discomfort and disappointment – we all live with this, but only those who face it can claim their power. If we lie to ourselves, we can’t engage with the relationships effectively, and we can’t create change inside ourselves or outside.

Robin Hobb writes in her Farseer books about the Warriors Prayer. It’s very simple, but in order to reclaim our power, it’s a potent one. Simply by saying ‘yes’ to the world and ourselves as we are, we can begin to see all the powers of life we hold the keys to.

Reclaiming Lost Power

What is power?

Many of us see power in a negative light; we don’t trust it, we don’t like it in others. It’s understandable – for a long time, our culture has seen power as the ability to do, especially the ability to do to others.

But through practicing animism, I’ve learnt that power is much more complicated than that. I’ve witnessed power in the moment of vulnerability, of healing, or grief. I’ve seen it in people who are creating through dance, paint, words, song. I’ve felt it in rhythm and darkness, the use of blood and bones, runes in the hands of a runemaster.

Power has been a running thread through my work, coming to understand it, reclaim it and hold it. I’ve seen it manifest in lots of different ways, both in myself and in other people; everyone seems to have a personal way of power.

Power is really the capacity to be present, to be real.

When I’ve found myself deeply challenged, being empowered has always been about standing where I am, being real and honest with myself.

When we think about people who are truly powerful – not simply politically but personally – who do we think of? People who have achieved great things, and also the quieter sort of person, who holds their own space completely.

These are both ways that people hold power; the power allows them to do what they do, but it stems from a deep knowledge and comfort with themselves, acceptance of what they are, where they are.

These are people who are real, and they appear it to everyone around them. They can seem to shine, to be bigger than life, or to be intimidating, or to be subtly alive in a way most people aren’t. They are full of their own power, and it imbues everything they do with energy.

People like this are quite rare, but there are many more of us who experience brief flashes of personal power. Moments when we are completely at ease with who we are and act from that space.

When we are absolutely certain of what we are doing.

These moments come when we can get out of our own way and allow our full power to flow through us and into the world. We can do this because the self doubt has gone quiet, and the paranoia about how we appear to others has eased. We can do it because our fears and uncertainty about what we are and what our life is about have fallen aside.

Moments like this are deeply inspiring and transformative, and they can influence our lives for a long time after they’ve passed. And we can create space for these moments to happen more frequently, and call on this power within us when we need it, by working with the principles and tools of animism.

My animist practice has taught me that this power is available to everyone, and can be accessed more easily when we practice it. The principle of warriorship is most important here, in that it pushes us to face the areas that we are uncomfortable – which are the places within us that get in the way of our power.

For example, I reclaimed a huge part of my power when I healed my fear of madness.

The backstory of this particular wound is that I come from a deeply athiest family that held no truck with spirituality or spirits or anything like animism, and my experiences as a child didn’t fit in that paradigm at all. I discovered that my experiences were considered ‘madness’ by my family and most people in my culture, and it was deeply frightening to believe that I was going to become lost in my own mind if I engaged with them.

When I challenged this fear, I used altars and crafting and ceremony to embrace the madness in myself, and to heal my relationship with it. This was a piece of healing work that required a lot of warriorship; I was facing a fear that really terrified me, getting really close to it, trying it on and accepting it as part of me.

This work returned a huge chunk of my power that I had lost for years, it was very very important. Because of the way our culture works, I don’t think I would have been able to reclaim this part of myself without a knowledge of animism and it’s methods. The way that I did the work was very intuitive, but without the framework of how to work with symbolism, intent, energy and power, it would have been very intimidating and confusing to attempt.

Power is vital when we want to make changes in the world.

Not because it allows us to overpower others but because it gives us the freedom to make our own choices, think our own thoughts, follow our own paths and stand our ground in our nature when things get challenging. If we can’t access our own power, we can’t withstand the pressures of the world that sway us, intimidate us, manipulate us and overwhelm us.

At the most extreme, power is what allows us to face an evil or destructive force.

When we can say – this is who I am, and I’m willing to die rather than betray myself – we have ultimate power. We may be subjected to all the pressure possible to change, but our power allows us to withstand – and when we are dealing with truly evil, destructive or cruel forces, this is the only way we can create change.

This is the power of the peaceful protest – the ability to say “we will not be dissuaded from our protest, no matter what you do”.

Power like that comes from facing the deepest of fears and wounds.

Our mortality, our nihilism, our grief and our lack of control. It may take many rounds of work, but we can come to accept these aspects of our lives, and learn to drawn strength from them.

When we can do that, we have the power not just to do, but to fully and freely be.

Protection

Protection is another umbrella term; it covers all the animist practices that can help us reinforce, heal and recover our boundaries.

Protection works on the physical, emotional and energetic levels, and can include anything that helps us manage our boundaries, whether it seems ‘protective’ or not. Some examples of protection methods are power reclamation, sigils, altar work, deity or animal work, shadow work and sacred space.

Protection is helpful when:

  • We are recovering from abuse or trauma.
  • We are striving to be more creative or expressive, as protection allows us to be more visible and vulnerable.
  • We need to seek shelter from an abusive situation.
  • We are learning to enforce our boundaries with others or with ourselves.
  • We are developing trust in our animist practice.
  • We are engaging with difficult or challenging energies.
  • We are working with the land or other non-human spirits.
  • We are developing our trance practices.
  • We are learning to hold and use our personal power.

Protection is such a varied practice that encompasses so many tools. Almost any animist tool could be included under this umbrella, because the best protection is to be healthy, whole and comfortable with our own power.

Folk Magic

Folk magic is what happens when animist methods like ceremony, craft, altar work and working with spirit helpers are combined.

Folk magic can be very specific to the time period, location and people who are using it; it’s often shared between members of a tradition, and it’s commonly called witchcraft in European areas. It can be subtle or expansive, more or less structured, solitary or communal; it differs from the Occult traditions in it’s open, flexible, changing nature.

Folk magic is useful when:

  • We have been given a spiritual teaching to embody throughout our day.
  • We want to protect our boundaries, at home or abroad.
  • We need an anchor for our power, nature or inspiration to carry with us.
  • We want to affect a change in our lives, such as better health or changing a habit.
  • We want to honour a relationship with a deity, spirit helper, animal, plant, ancestor, place or person.
  • We are working on embodying or invoking a spirit helper’s magic.
  • We need creative inspiration.

Folk magic is the flexible conclusion of animist practices; when we put them together, we have a toolkit for dealing with any situation, and for solving any problem. It is founded on the fundamental tools of animism; ceremony, altar work, crafting, spirit communication, divination.

Once we are comfortable with these fundamental tools, we can play with them to create exactly what we need in our animist practice.

To learn how to use the fundamental tools of animism, join the free 12 week course here.

Working With Fear

 

Some of the most common questions I get asked are about fear. Fear of pain, fear of death, fear of thunder, fear of owls, fear of conflict, fear of failure, fear of brussel sprouts… the list of things people can fear is endless.

Personally, my most important work around fear began after my Dad died. I was 21, and the spiritual, physical and mental pressures I’d been under brought me to the point of collapse; I developed a severe phobia of putting anything in my body. I couldn’t eat, drink or take medication without having a panic attack.

This went on for 3 months and, obviously, I was in a bad way. I lost a huge amount of weight, became suicidal and was nearly taken into hospital. But this surge of fear was the beginning of something wonderful, because it was the final push I needed to find a teacher and begin learning animism formally.

I will not let fear control me

The first step in recovering from my own phobia was a promise I made to myself. I would not let the fear control me, I would not let fear run my life.

This was a powerful moment, an act of power that gave me a bit of room for working with the fear. It gave me something to hold onto as I challenged myself, and something to believe in when I felt overwhelmed by the power of the fear.

Reclamation of power

The next part of recovering from the phobia involved reclaiming a lot of my own power. I hadn’t realised it, didn’t even have the words for it, but I had become a shell of myself.

Every trauma and stress and small decision to ignore my own instincts had depleted me. Each time I had turned away from what I needed, and chosen what someone else wanted, had left me weaker. Each time I had given in on my own boundaries, in exchange for feeling accepted or normal, had taken me further out of touch with who and what I was.

Recovering my own power involved a multi-pronged approach; I worked with my teacher a she used Andean energy medicine to heal the patterns of self-betrayal directly. I held several ceremonies to large parts of myself that had become buried and forgotten.

I accepted the help of an animal spirit who could teach me how to be fierce, focused, confident, assertive. And I asked for the help of the lineage of spirits that had passed on these tools through the centuries, providing a space for them to work in my life through an altar.

And finally, I used acts of power, over and over. I challenged the phobia by eating, first a small amount, then a little more, then new things, until the wave of fear I felt was intimately familiar. I knew exactly how it would come, what it would feel like, and how long I’d have to wait until it faded.

And each time it faded, I felt a little stronger. I had conquered it again; I hadn’t let it control me. The impact this had on my confidence was huge.

Relationship to fear

For a long time, I believed that my fear was of having a physical reaction to something I ate or drank.

But eventually, I saw that what I was really afraid of was being afraid. I was terrified that something unpredictable would happen that would make me frightened. It wasn’t just eating, it was flying, driving in a car, meeting new people; any situation that I believed could unexpectedly turn bad gave me a tight little fearful feeling.

Realising what it was that I was truly afraid of allowed me to work on my relationship to it. Animism is based on the understanding that we can actively participate in our relationships with everything in our lives, including emotions, ideas and situations.

I had a difficult relationship with fear, and seeing that has allowed me to gradually work on that relationship to the point where I appreciate, honour and listen to my fear rather than fighting it.

Animist practices for working with fear

Animism is the ancient expression of how we relate to life. Through animist practices, I’ve been able to change my relationship with fear, and so with the things that used to frighten me. Here are some ideas for working with your own fears from an animist perspective:

1. See this as a relationship.
Whether you’re afraid of birds or spiders or the flu, what does your fear look like? What would your fear say to you if you were listening? What would you want to say to it? At what point did your relationship with this part of life turn difficult? And what would a healthy relationship feel like?

2. Honour the fear.
What has this fear given you? How has it helped you? You might have to look at some hard truths here, if your fear is an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for your life. You might have to let go of some anger at your fear in order to see the gifts it’s brought for you. You might have to take some time with the question before an answer unfolds.

As an example, my own phobia gave me a way to exercise control when I felt totally out of control, pushed me to face my need for spiritual practice, forced me to recognise that I needed help, taught me a powerful lesson about fear vs power, taught me compassion for others in fear, made me take responsibility for my health and path. Without this phobia, I may never have begun the journey of reclaiming my power.

3. Reclaim the power.
Use every tool in the animist toolbox to reclaim your power through this relationship. Craft objects to honour it, write poetry for it, hold ceremonies to thank it for it’s gifts, transform it through energy work and folk magic, ask for an animal or teacher to help you understand the relationship better, ask your ancestors for support and guidance through the problem.

And finally, create an act of power that you can use to challenge the fear as you shift the relationship; without stepping into that space that you fear, gradually at first, you will never fully reclaim the power that you’ve hidden there.

As my first teacher used to say,

“To let something go, you actually have to hold it first.”

An unhealthy fear doesn’t have to hold you back, I’m living proof of that. And while my relationship with fear is a work in progress, knowing that it is a relationship and that I can work with it gives me the confidence to challenge it when and how I need to.

Fear is a powerful message; it tells us where we’ve lost part of who we are, and which part of our lives to work with to reclaim ourselves.

You can find more about the above animist tools in the free 12 week course Foundation in Animism, and more about acts of power in my book The Way of Change.