Animals

Symbols and allegories.
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Heith
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Re: Animals

Post by Heith »

Nefastos wrote:
When I meet with people who are disgusted by humankind & ready to turn into spiritual if not physical violence, I always think how much it helped me to learn to see us human beings as animals. When our very bad attributes are seen in that light - that we just follow the paths of least resistance, as Bailey said, like the other mollusks - it is easier to understand how greatly we often err & how small we often make ourselves. We just don't know better yet, even when we think we do.
Indeed. I've found this helpful as well. It is easier to like people if I spot animal qualities in them, and somewhat easier to understand their ways. I even did a practice of sorts of this- I would draw everyone I knew as an animal and spend time thinking what animals and why. Not slandering or praising anyone, just observing and coming to a conclusion. After this, it was easier to accept them. Some people were very offended when I would tell them these things, but this is the kind of human way of thinking that to be compared to an animal is an insult, even if the animal would be maginificent. But I guess for those who know me, they understand that this. Sometimes it even goes in a way that one can sort of see which animal is inside someone, like I've seen in Aquila.

I no longer hate children, because I imagine them as puppies. One needs to be a little bit patient with them. It also becomes easier for me to understand their gestures if I look at them like they would be dogs. I still dislike the majority of children, but one can't instantly go for success I guess.
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Nefastos
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Re: Animals

Post by Nefastos »

Heith wrote:It is easier to like people if I spot animal qualities in them, and somewhat easier to understand their ways. I even did a practice of sorts of this- I would draw everyone I knew as an animal and spend time thinking what animals and why.


Like Pekka Ervast said, some older religions' habit of animal sacrifice comes (partly) from the magical/devotional act of "giving up the animal in oneself" - in order to ascend to more individual humanity. In our time, it seems that the things have changed & we have too much non-animal in us (separative rationality, the lower human reason). So, to conserve animal life both without & within could perhaps be seen as a form of yoga, ie. spiritual practice.

Heith wrote:[smiergáhttu and para] were often thought to be roundish creature resembling a ball of wool with either one or three legs. Even if para was a artificial creation, it sometimes appeared as an animal (a cat, or in Europe, a rabbit or hare).

Para was created out of household items, stolen goods and sacramental bread.


Compare to Kafka's Odradek.

Kafka, like Lovecraft, surely was a reincarnated witch, facing the karma of his past sorceries. :ugeek:
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Jiva
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Re: Animals

Post by Jiva »

There's too much to quote, but the para and smiergáhttu sound like the Norse troll cats or rabbits. These were also animals made of yarn that sucked milk from animals or otherwise stole it for their witch's benefit. However, if one was caught and destroyed it wouldn't hurt the affect the witch in the slightest unlike if it had been her hugr.
Heith wrote:There is a kind of slimy mushroom extract which was thought to be left behind by para. Apparently, it resembles butter. People called this "para's butter" or "para's shit". (Here again another fine example of the many references to bodily waste in finnish folk magic!) If one whipped it, this would cause suffering for the witch.
There are apparently a few fungi called witches' butter, although only two are yellow. I was thinking about this when writing my original post, but forgot to mention it in the end. And I'm completely unsurprised that Finnish folk tradition makes use of shit once again :lol:. When I get bored at work I sometimes catch myself wondering why it was apparently such a popular thing to use, but have to stop cause I just imagine the most ridiculous circumstances.

Definitely lots to think about :D. Maybe my totem animal can be a horrifying mythological hybrid of a cat and a bird/insect :P.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Heith
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Re: Animals

Post by Heith »

Jiva wrote: Definitely lots to think about :D. Maybe my totem animal can be a horrifying mythological hybrid of a cat and a bird/insect :P.
I would love to see a sketch of this sometime :D

I now defy going offtopic (at the same time I'm sort of reluctant to start a new thread dedicated for the magical use of bodily waste among the Finno-ugric people) but to comment to your question about why excrement was used in magical workings so often, I guess the first reason was that people didn't feel repulsed in the same way as they do today. All waste was beneficial, as it was used in farming. And I guess all things that are attached to man or fall of him, be it hair or nails or shit, is considered to hold a part of that person's väki (sort of, magical might or essence- this term is really difficult to translate) and in this way they can affect or be affected by their surroundings. When a hair falls off, and if it gets in touch with for example, a rapid, then that person will be affected by the rapid (by going insane, as the rapid is "touching" their head). Now if a person is touched by things that have been in contact with the dead, for example, a washing board where a corpse has been washed, that person will be affected by the magical qualities of said board, even if the contact is indirect.

It's a simple yet complex system of "everything has the ability to affect everything". It seems that some things had a more powerful väki than others; women's väki (their genitalia), death väki and snake's väki are among mighty examples. But now I stop writing because otherwise this gets totally offtopic.
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Insanus
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Re: Animals

Post by Insanus »

I'm mostly afraid of animals, and almost always feel like they're hostile. Except crows, I've always liked them. As a kid I liked to think that crows keep an eye on me & that they'll come to help if I'm in trouble & that they'll keep a record of what I'm doing and report it somewhere every week or so :D

I used to think that I just dislike most animals, but later I've understood them as some sort of a mirror of my emotional state: in certain states of mind I like animals, but that's not very often.
I also feel like animals react a lot when I'm deep in some state of being, be it emotional or energetical.

EDIT:

Now that I think of it, if people feel affinity with certain animals do they also feel it with each other?
I mean, at least some use terms like "cat-persons" and "dog-persons". Feels like there might be a good chance for some sort of personal practice; to consciously try to find affinity with animals & by doing so trying to develop the side in oneself the animal symbolizes?
Certainly this sort of practice is familiar to someone on this forum?
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
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Heith
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Re: Animals

Post by Heith »

Insanus wrote:Feels like there might be a good chance for some sort of personal practice; to consciously try to find affinity with animals & by doing so trying to develop the side in oneself the animal symbolizes?
Certainly this sort of practice is familiar to someone on this forum?
Yes, I do this a lot.
Nokkonen
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Re: Animals

Post by Nokkonen »

I've come to deeply respect my dog and animals in general. I've never been on a downward path, but I can definitely see that having a pet can be very healing for one's soul.

What I admire about my dog is the total lack of pretense with her affections. When she wants to be loved on, she will let me know and even if I sometimes reject her, she will eventually come back and ask to be scratched from the belly. And she's lavish with her affection, giving even to complete strangers if she happens to like them (she doesn't like everybody and if she doesn't, she doesn't approach). Personally, I feel like she's teaching me about social behavior. I tend to be very stand-offish in social contact, and sometimes when I have to socialize, I try to conjure the qualities of my dog to just go to different people without hesitation and expect to be liked.

Ever since I was a child, I've sometimes seen other people with animal features superimposed on their faces. I know a person who's got wolverine qualities, a person who looks like a fox, a mouse, and so on, but I've never been able to figure out if I had that in me too. My affinity has always been more with lactobacteria (and attractive as they are, I hope I don't resemble Bifidobacterium thermacidophilum), although now that I'm dabbling with shamanizing, I'm working more with animal spirits too.
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Mimesis
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Re: Animals

Post by Mimesis »

I have always had a great respect and empathy for animals; much more so than for humans in many respects, particularly in my younger years, although I hope that this has now become more wholesome and well-rounded.

However, despite this deep and over-arching respect, I have never had any particularly powerful experience with any one animal. Thinking of what one may call a 'spirit animal' or 'totem', for example, has been something I have not been able to answer for many years, and had resigned myself to thinking that I simply don't have a specific connection in that way.

For reasons essentially different, yet connected to those discussed here, I have recently begun to learn to ride a horse. They have always been an animal that I have found stunningly beautiful. Such power, strength and finesse, I find it impossible not to stand in awe of them when I have the opportunity. As well as of the symbolism and the high and noble ideal that they can represent.
And what a rich history with man they have; venerated religiously, as well as within war, peace and prestige. They have had to endure being used for both the best and worst of man.

I have now ridden twice, and am already convinced of a very strong relation between this and aspects of the great work. There is a strong esoteric thread in the relationship that one must develop with a horse that one is about to ride. It had been too easy to think of horse riding being about man controlling a horse to his dictation before. It is however not at all like this; it is more like an agreement. Much like how our every movement, action and word effects the moments in our life and work that follow both immediately and over the long passing of time, so too does every touch, look, movement and action inform the way in which a horse understands, interprets and thus acts toward man. In the context of riding, to me at least, this means that an agreement is sought with the horse, rather than an attempt to control it. And in this agreement, one must essentially become 'one' with the horse. So too should we 'become' our occult work, rather than merely attempt to 'control' it(?).

Another thing to strike me is how intuitively and easily they can read people, and in effect mirror this in the way they answer our plea for an agreement, or a pact, so to speak. The first time I rode, despite it being my first time, I did so with something close to confidence. As a result, so too did the horse feel comfortable in our agreement, which was equally displayed in its response to me whilst riding.
When riding the same horse for a second time, due to other goings on, I was a lot more uncertain and, in some ways, preoccupied. The horse mirrored this exactly in its behaviour and reaction to me.
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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Nefastos
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Re: Animals

Post by Nefastos »

Omoksha wrote:Another thing to strike me is how intuitively and easily they can read people, and in effect mirror this in the way they answer our plea for an agreement, or a pact, so to speak.


This is something I have heard from several friends who practice riding. It once again brings to mind empathy & intuition, those psychic abilities which are so deep in all the nature, in man and beast both, but which only man has chosen to ignore & atrophy.

It is easy to imagine you riding, brother, who are the gallant knight of our little order. It also sounds like you have entered into a kind of a Sagittarius phase in your work, which hopefully will help to bring access to a new kind of harmony. If I undestand correctly, the bow & arrow held by the Sagittarian centaur stand for the precision with which these endings are made from the distance, instead of being in the middle of the battle anymore.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Mimesis
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Re: Animals

Post by Mimesis »

Nefastos wrote:
This is something I have heard from several friends who practice riding. It once again brings to mind empathy & intuition, those psychic abilities which are so deep in all the nature, in man and beast both, but which only man has chosen to ignore & atrophy.
Most definitely. I often think with sadness of how man's intellect has been largely directed toward the choice of rejecting this natural empathy and intuition, which is present in the heart of nature and all things that haven't forgotten it. In our attempts to understand the world, we have taken ourselves so far away from it that we can only destroy our hope of ever living in harmony and understanding with it.

But I take some joy in thinking that perhaps the horse can teach me some of it again, and open my heart up to a little more of its intuitive influence.

Nefastos wrote:
It is easy to imagine you riding, brother, who are the gallant knight of our little order. It also sounds like you have entered into a kind of a Sagittarius phase in your work, which hopefully will help to bring access to a new kind of harmony. If I undestand correctly, the bow & arrow held by the Sagittarian centaur stand for the precision with which these endings are made from the distance, instead of being in the middle of the battle anymore.
I thank you dear brother, significantly for this. Both for relating me to something as noble as a knight, and also for this Sagittarian insight.

To the former; how one wishes and strives to live up to such an ideal. Which, in the context of horse riding, I find very relevant. It attunes one very much to the moment, and draws all of ones thoughts, actions and movements into and toward the ideal of right action and awareness within every moment. This is equally relevant whether on the back of a horse or the back of the whirlwind we know as life.

As for the latter; I had not recognised or considered this, so this gives me much to think about and place in the context of this current moment. Thank you!
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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