And now for something completely different... An essay written in earnest about the complications of Shamanic practice. I hope you enjoy this guest piece!
- Doc Thule
Running Red Wolf Would Like to Talk About Time Management Skills
----
My brother and sister shamans, its so good to finally see you all gathered together in one place. It only took us three months, about 150 emails, text messages and phone calls trying to coordinate, reschedule, re-coordinate and negotiate when this circle was actually going to happen. So before we get to calling in the spirits of the directions and creating a sacred vessel in which to do our work, I have to ask each one of you here (from a space of deep love and understanding towards my fellow healers and medicine workers) one very important question:
What the actual fuck?
No, I’m dead fucking serious here. Don’t give me the stink eye, Blue Wolf Cloud, I’m absolutely fucking sick of this. Three months? For real? We’ve been doing this intertribal circle for fourteen years now, and it still takes an act of the Creator Spirit to get us to drag our sorry feather-clad asses into the same space to sit long enough to do our fucking jobs?
Do any of you know what a fucking calendar is, or how to keep track of time? We didn’t each build our own fucking medicine wheels aligned perfectly to the cardinal points and demarcating the transit of the seasons just for goddamn art projects, did we? And you know what Half Moon Feather, I don’t give a flying fuck that time is an illusion, or that we’re all living in the Great Moment, because I have better fucking things to do than try to get each one of you flaky fucks to pay more than a Condor Father shit’s worth of attention to the day of the fucking year and stick to a plan more than five minutes out.
Thunder Bird help me if you aren’t going to make me go all vision quest on your initiated asses with this bullshit.
Look, I know us shaman motherfuckers do alot of fucking drugs. And- what’s that Red Cloud? “Its not drugs, its medicine”? You are one to fucking talk, aren’t you? I see the way you hit the peace pipe; so don’t you tell me that “you’re just going to do one more journey before you call it quits for the night”. Yeah, I bought that line for the first few years, but that shit doesn’t fool me anymore. That ain’t sacred tobacco in there. I checked, thank you, and let me tell you: you need to Slow the Fuck Down with that shit, bro. Like Whoa.
But like I was saying before I was rudely interrupted: I know we do ALOT of fucking drugs. Don’t get it twisted, I’ll pop a peyote button and go talk to the ancestors as quick as the next medicine man, but I also keep one fucking foot in the middle world, you know? And I at least have the fucking decency and respect for each one of you asshole reflections of the One True Self to keep a calendar and actually maintain the fucking thing.
Earth Mother fucking protect the next one of you that bitches about me being a tight ass about time, or not going with the flow, or letting Ego get in the way of Spirit. Somewhere in those sorcerer spaced-out minds of yours is the ability to look at clocks and jot down an important fucking date or two. I seem to recall you all being REAL fuckin’ punctual back when your Teachers told you be somewhere, somewhen for your initiations. Do I have to go into the spirit world and summon up some of them to remind you about how to fucking read a clock? I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to know their pupils are so on their shit that they forget to even tell their fellow shamans that they can’t make it to a Solstice Sun Circle until three weeks after it fucking happened.
Yeah Water Spider Woman, I’m looking right at you. And don’t wave that feather fan at me unless you fucking mean it bitch, so help me I will totally go Wolf Spirit all over your fucking Spider clan ass.
Now if one of you dopey motherfuckers can spark up the white sage and rattle in some fucking directions, we can light this candle.
A-fuckin’-Ho!
(by Andrew Killilea)
