Tag Archives: sorcery

The Paradox of Healing

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Blog by Valerie
Years ago when I took a uni course on social psychology my main takeaway was that people who use positive psychology have better mental health than those who don’t. But, if a belief or mantra that has been helping the person is shown to be untrue, their mental health becomes worse than people who have not used positive psychology at all.
That resonated, because years before then when I lived in South Africa, I used positive psychology to survive danger (murder, fire, death threats, riots — if you’re interested you can read about it in my short novel). I drove around repeating to myself, ‘I am safe’. It helped, and it was exhausting to keep up that mindset in such circumstances. When I got back to the US, all I did for three weeks was sleep, walk in the woods and cook. I had a lot to rebalance, and I knew my positive psychology coping strategy was a form of trickery, or sorcery.
I haven’t written much about sorcery because I prefer not to use it much. I think I’m in a minority among spiritual practitioners about this. But when we do sorcery, we’re potentially missing important life lessons, while also opening ourselves up to more powerful sorcery and trickery by others in a cycle of endless power games.
I consider it sorcery to do a ritual for a specific intended outcome, such as keeping myself safe in an unsafe environment, getting a specific job, etc. Note: I consider it a prayer or wish when doubt and openness are intentionally included. And I consider it rebalancing and healing when shifting trauma- based beliefs into life affirming ones, such as moving from “Life overwhelms me” to “Life supports me.” This is healing trauma trickery / destructive sorcery!
Consider the difference between a ritual with the intention of “I call the right job to me now”, and “I receive an offer for the job I just interviewed for within the week”. I like to use the phrase”or something better” at the end of many prayers, with trust that I can’t even imagine at times what would be best for me, and with the acceptance that what’s best will feel unpleasant at times. That’s part of trusting life and embodying a shamanic “I don’t know” mind. If for survival reasons you decide you really do want to just use sorcery to get the job, then I don’t want to lay any existential judgement about that being wrong; I just want to say that there are tricky consequences for that, often which we don’t realise until later.
There’s a common myth that healing can be completed, like we can cross it off a list. A wounded healer is often understood to be someone who’s “finished healing” in many ways and is ongoingly healing deeper layers in their life. There are some lessons that we don’t revisit in our lives, and others we are surprised come up again: “I thought I/he/she was over that by now!” (Image from here)
So much of why this is a myth is because we can’t transcend our circumstances. I can’t heal a wound around capitalism while living in a capitalist economy. I can make changes in my life to limit my relationship with capitalism, but I can’t totally escape it. Even if I went to live alone in the bush, totally naked and without a knife or anything manufactured, I’d still have had my life path and thinking shaped by capitalism to the extent of choosing  extreme rejection of it!
I have been noticing thoughts coming up about a belief in trusting that I have everything I need, so if, for example, my family isn’t around, then I mustn’t need them. I needed to think that way to survive estrangement; it was a balm for a big, painful abandonment wound that I carry. But I don’t need that sorcery, that positive psychology trickery, anymore. The truth is, I do need my family, and I am actively experiencing abandonment every moment of every day we can’t relate. What I can trust is that I need to strengthen my capacity to be with the pain of the wound. My capacity to be truthful and neutral about a wound is my medicine as a Medicine Woman. And embodying my medicine strengthens me and those around me. That allows me to protect myself better, so I don’t play out abandonment games with others in my life. When I have the capacity to accept and hold the truth, that I both need my family and don’t have them in my life, then I feel more empowered and more whole. The wound gives me purpose and defines my medicine. (Image from here)
That’s the paradox of healing: we’re strong and secure in being both wounded and whole at the same time. Sorcery, whether positive or negative, doesn’t give us that. It is by its nature, forceful and charged, not neutral, open, and flowing. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever use it, but it does mean, we are wise to use it carefully.
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Trickery of heartfelt words

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Blog by Valerie

Many of us are familiar with the four (or five) agreements concept of spiritual teachings Miguel Ruiz wrote about based on ancient Toltec wisdom. The first is: Be impeccable with your word. It is much easier to be tricky with our words than our actions. Actions require lack of awareness, sneakiness or even betrayal at times to follow through on a trick, whereas being tricky with our words seems to have become so common that it’s often forgotten a few minutes after we’ve done it.

Unless you are in intimate relationship with someone like me who has an elephant’s memory for words. Growing up, watching how well someone’s words were aligned with their actions helped me judge how safe I was with them, because my home environment was so dangerous and my nervous system so often triggered that I couldn’t rely on feeling safe in my body to discern which people were safe to be around. Even now in my forties after years of estrangement from my family of origin and many healing experiences, I am still uncovering layers of feelings of unsafety and relational dynamics where I was tricked because I loved someone and gave too much benefit of doubt when they told me something I wanted to hear and their actions didn’t quite align…

I had a conversation with a friend about colonisation a few years ago, and she said an elder told her that the British didn’t have superior manpower or military strength when they invaded; they overpowered the people with their words. I have written before about unconscious sorcery, and it continues to be something I experience and witness regularly. But this blog is about the way we use our words, and the tricks our minds play on us and those we love when we believe what we say (at least in the moment).

I have had experiences with people who are in their hearts in a moment, but then dis-ease such as Wetiko takes over and their minds get to work changing the story and tricking them. How many of us say something and mean it in a moment, then think about it later and realise we don’t still feel that way, then go back and correct it with the person? It’s hard to do that. And yet those words sit there, and we may not realise how much of our relationship is built on them and the emotional power they possess.

I see this as one of the greatest tricks playing out right now in the world; on a big scale, there are people saying things like: “[Y]ou always want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart” about Donald Trump’s incongruent words and actions. On a small scale how many of us say “I’m good” when asked how we are, when in fact we do not feel good, or at least not wholly so. It took me a few years to work out ways of navigating these interactions gracefully in shops and places where people are meaning to make small talk but I don’t want to smile and lie and build that energy into my day. I find saying something I  like tends to work, e.g.: “How are you today?” “I’m appreciating the sunshine outside.” “Oh yes, it’s a hot one.” (Image from here)

Some friends have told me I expect too much from people. That bums me out, because I don’t expect more than I ask of myself. Others say, just take people at their word and decide if they’re safe or not based on actions, but it feels too harshly black-and-white to me to put people into categories labelled ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’.

I had a conflict with a friend many years ago, and we talked about it and made up, but I felt insecure with her for years afterwards. When I brought that feeling up a few times she told me I was being crazy; then when another conflict arose and I said I felt hurt by some of her behaviour, she immediately brought up our conflict from five years prior and said she had forgiven me for that so I had no right to bring up something else, I had to just forgive her as well. I certainly didn’t feel forgiven! I felt like my insecure feelings had unfortunately been vindicated. A few months later when she wanted to meet and put everything behind us, I felt like I couldn’t trust her anymore, so there was no point. Without the potential for building trust, I can’t feel safe in a relationship. So even thought it really hurt, I had to let it go.

I do believe that she believed she had forgiven me. And I don’t know if she didn’t know how to or what the block was, but when it became clear she was still upset about the first conflict and was denying it, I lost hope for healing together. And that friend who talked about colonisation being a conquering of words, well, she conquered the doors to my heart with some powerful words that it turns out were not impeccably used. I can accept that we both were tricked in good faith, and I can rebuild trust by talking about it, so the words between us change and we can do our best to be more impeccable this time around. The responsibility of using our word belongs to each of us to co-create a healthy world together! (Image from here)

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Unconscious Sorcery

Healing, Indigenous Science, Spiritual Skills, , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Often the term ‘sorcery’ is used negatively, but any manifestation of a spirited, emotive thought or prayer can be considered sorcery. As Shaman Chiron Armand says:

“[T]he word sorcery implies control one wields or seeks to wield over life, spirits, or other incarnate beings. That one might be capable of wielding force that yields great consequences in the subtle realms without intending to or even knowing one has collapses the all-too-neat answers that magic and sorcery hand us [about] human agency.”

To answer this, Shaman Christina Pratt says, “The distinction between acts of healing and acts of [negative] sorcery is self-control.” She gives the following examples of “everyday manipulations and unconscious abuses of power that are effectively unconscious sorcery”: telling a child they are stupid, an MD telling a patient they have 6 weeks to live, manipulating a situation for a desired outcome, and blaming others for our pain, and reminds us that “unconscious though this sorcery may be, it is still harmful.” And I would add that spiritually we have some responsibility, and ought to act on that once we become consciously aware.

FB Mystic Magic. Native American | Native american prayers, Native ...I bring this up because I find unconscious sorcery very common. I recently got to the root of a painful thought loop that’s informed my whole life and was quite surprised to find that it wasn’t intergenerational trauma as I expected, but in fact (I’m assuming unconscious) negative sorcery from a former big shot professor who had it in for my mother. I did hear stories growing up about how he had bullied her, like how when she was pregnant with me and asked for afternoon classes due to morning sickness, he gave her 8am classes instead. The belief he cursed me with was “you don’t belong here”. And I do feel it was directed at me, maybe even more than my mother, because he took great issue with a young mother having an academic career. And I made her into a mother.

When you think about curses from negative sorcery, you may think about a more tribal culture. Like a cave Lukas and I were shown in Guatemala where people hired sorcerers to send blessings and curses using different colored candles and incantations. Just going near that cave got us sick, the energy was so intense. But what a curse I’ve lived with all these years because of a mean spirited wish turned into action from an old man. For me the issue is the spirit we bring to things more than self control. That man would have been aware he was angry with my mother, and that his behaviour was hurting her, if not aware of the impact of his psychic attacks. If my mother had been in more integrity she might’ve been protected from his curse, or might’ve become aware of it sooner. Her own conflict and insecurity about being a working mother likely allowed it into my formative psyche.

Curse of the Wendigo Part 1 by McEvanSandwich on DeviantArtThat was his hook. But what about me? As Shaman Chiron Armand explains: “In some instances, such forceful projection by the unconscious sorcerer can lead to displacement of the projected-upon’s internal Self, especially in young children, the habitually marginalized, and those lacking firmly rooted identities, leading to soul theft.” And his curse really did affect my identity in such a way. Each of you reading this likely had something said to you in childhood that affected you greatly that you’re aware of. At some point such things tend to become self fulfilling and we embody them, living the curse (or blessing). I say blessing because unconscious sorcery needn’t be negative in intent to have an impact. For example, ‘you’re a leader’ may have been projected onto a privileged young Anglo man so many times, he has learnt to use that energy and embody it, confidently working his way up in a company, taking risks others wouldn’t dream of. And the more he does, the more people project onto him that he’s a leader, and reinforce that blessing more positive form of unconscious sorcery. (Image entitled Curse of the Wendigo Part 1 from here)

Now you can argue he’s actually been cursed to live out a life that may not be ideal for him, or consciously what he’d choose if he was more self aware. You can also argue that by constantly feeling I didn’t belong wherever I was, that helped spur my inward healing journey so it was a blessing. The point of this writing, though, is to show that the impact of unconscious sorcery is based largely on the spirit or intent of the energy. And my view of that we are responsible for our energy, which includes acts of unconscious sorcery. Being more self aware improves our ability to use our energy, our power, wisely and with integrity. (FYI a previous post on soul theft/wetiko/windingo is here.)Magic Moon | Native american art, Native art, Native american paintingsSo the next time you’re angry at a politician and notice yourself sending them daggered thoughts laced with negative emotion, or find yourself verbally ranting about them, stop and ask yourself how you’re using your power, and if you really intend to be cursing them. Cause what we do to others we invite into our own lives! And if you think you have been cursed, feel free to contact me or someone you trust with shamanic skills for help.

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