Thank you for this post!
Reblogging as the importance of this work can not be understated.
I am going to do my best to participate in this working to the best of my ability, and i encourage anyone else who is moved to do so to participate as well.
The Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation: An Open Letter to the Curious
By Alder Night
Hello, friends! I’m so excited that you’re interested in the Elevation! It’s coming up really soon, and we’d love for you to be involved.
Essentially, the Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation (or Trans Rite of Elevation – TRoE for short) is a collaborative nine-day ancestor elevation ritual, styled after rituals in the Espiritismo Cruzada (Blended Spiritism) tradition, which is open. It originated as the brainchild of a small group of trans spirit-workers, myself included, at the Polytheist Leadership Conference in the summer of 2014. The thought was, the trans dead, trans women of color in particular, are a “uniquely traumatized group of spirits who often” die in awful and painful ways after dealing with a lifetime of people trying to deny their humanity. That kind of pain and rage and shame and trauma
I was trying to get caught up reading and commenting to posts the other day and I came to a one that dray0308 from Dream Big Dream Often reblogged. The title of the post was “Worrying About Nothing” This post was about questioning yourself, your choices and decisions rather than just living and enjoying your life.
It’s sad how often we judge ourselves. We suffer under the crushing fear that we can’t live the life we want because we aren’t doing enough, we aren’t good enough, we aren’t smart enough, we aren’t pretty or handsome enough. We just aren’t, right enough.
I’ve been to that dark place. I spent 10 years struggling with little to no self esteem and believing everything bad in my life was my fault, that there was nothing I could do right. I spared no judgment against myself. I saw my son, how we…
I hemmed and hawed about writing this post, as yesterday was a meaningful date in my personal history.
On the evening of Friday, 19 October 2007, my father died.
I would not find out about until the next day – Saturday – as my mother called me almost 8 hours later, leaving a four-word message on the home answering machine, to inform me that my father had passed.
My husband, my sons, and I had returned from a local skate tournament to see that little flashing light notifying us of an incoming call that we had received earlier that afternoon from an unfamiliar number.
I had been estranged from my parents for several years at that point. To put it bluntly, my mother had ‘disowned’ me in 2005 over something so incredibly petty that I am ashamed to admit now that I honored her wishes for nearly 2 years. And, unfortunately, my father did, too.
But I remember that last conversation that I’d had with my father in early October 2005.
Cancer had returned – malignant melanoma – but my father had insisted that it wasn’t such a big deal.
We danced around the subject of the impending surgery that would require the loss of his right eye, and, in typical form, my father joked about his options upon coming to terms with the reality that he’d probably have to wear an eyepatch.
He insisted that he couldn’t decide if he should tell people that he’d become a pirate, or if he should tell people that he’d given his eye to Odin, for knowledge.
I didn’t know what to say; I was just pleased to be speaking to my father, and I told him that I would be delighted to support him in either choice. In a roundabout way, I was trying to comfort him, but honestly, I would have agreed to support him in any way that I could, even if most of the time my support of him simply required that I cheerfully go along with his jokes.
That was my father. That’s the way that he coped best with adversity – through joking about it.
Though I didn’t want to discuss our own adversity — that elephant in the room — concerning how he missed me, and how he hoped that my mother and I ‘could somehow work things out’ so that he would be ‘allowed to talk to [me] again.’
I was inwardly furious that he felt like he had to sneak around – while my mother was not home – just to talk to me. (Of course, I was too stubborn to look the other way concerning my mother’s obviously toxic and controlling behavior. I was well aware of what a rare occurrence it was that my mother was not at home.)
Despite this, I truly thought that my father and I would speak again.
But we didn’t.
After my father died, my brother told me that the cancer had spread rather fast – but my father was overly proud man and it surprised no one that my father insisted on downplaying the debilitating effects on his quality of life – but as a result, my father refused to allow anyone to contact me concerning this reality.
I’ve no doubt that my father thought that he’d live forever, as long as he could joke about it, but he told my brother that he was even more ashamed to be seen as sickly or frail by anyone, let alone, his daughters.
Please let them remember me the way that I was was what I was told that he had said.
It turned out that my older sister -who was also estranged, also ‘disowned’ by my mother – didn’t even know that he’d died until two months after the funeral. While I am grateful that at least I had been informed in time to actually attend his funeral, I’m ashamed to admit that I was told that she knew but that she just didn’t show.
I regret that I didn’t question that further.
~~~
But, my dysfunctional family aside, I miss my father dearly, even now, even today, eight years later.
So what do I do to honor my father?
I will hold a ‘silent supper’ for him this week, wherein I provide him offerings of his favorite foods. Steak and potatoes. Blueberry pie. Sardines. Figs.
As well, it is likely that I will go to McDonald’s today. I will order – and mindfully consume – a Big Mac and a strawberry milkshake. It was the meal that my father loved, the ‘last meal’ that I was told that my father would often insist that he wanted – and then insist upon eating – even though I’d imagine that his body could scarcely have handled digesting such ‘junk food’ towards the end of his life. (Though that wouldn’t have deterred him, however.)
But I will enjoy it, as he would have wanted to enjoy it. (I mean, what the hell, I can imagine him arguing, I’m dying. I don’t worry about nutrition now. Fuck that. I want McDonald’s.)
As well, I have a playlist of his favorite songs that I will allow myself to listen to, and it is very likely that I will have a good cry over this one:
Perhaps I will read him Philip Levine’s poem, ‘Starlight’
(This is the poet, Philip Levine, reading ‘Starlight’)
~~~
This is a photo-booth photo of my father and I from 1974ish or so.
It is one of my favorite photos that I have of my father.
This is a photo of a self-portrait that my father painted in early 2007.
I know that I haven’t been posting much, or rather, I haven’t been posting as often as I’d intended. Though it’s not as if I have a shortage of topics to write about – as a matter of fact, I’ve been writing a lot lately.
My devotional practice has been going through some changes, and as much as I wanted to share my thoughts about some of the work that I’ve been doing, it just hasn’t happened. I’ve been wanting to write about the connections that I have been making – but somehow coordinating my thoughts into succinct blog posts hasn’t been going so well.
Somehow I haven’t been able to Post All the Things.
But I did want to post about how delighted I was to receive my copy of Silence Maestas handmade Loki devotional:
So I moved some things around on my altar – because He seemed to want it up there as soon as I opened it.
But it’s a strange sort of thing because when I was reading it, the vibe that I was getting from Him seemed to be both excited and irritated that I was reading it. Perhaps He was cranky over the fact that I had to remove the book from its place on the altar there in order to read it? I don’t know.
I bought a copy because I was excited to support Silence’s book project overall, but I was also curious and excited to read more information concerning the feminine Loki as well.
So my purchasing this book was intended as a gift for both of Us, in this sort of roundabout way: it was certainly intended as a gift for Him, and a combination gift/informational research project for me. (I’ll admit that those two aspects often become somewhat entwined whenever I purchase books pertaining to Him, but, then again, not every Loki-book ends up on the altar… so there you have it.)
I also got the nudge from Him to get my hands on this antler-piece
–thought I’m not exactly sure why. Another gift, perhaps.
I’m kinda using this as a bookmark – as the leather thong that came attached to the antler works rather well for holding my place in the large poetry book that I’m reading right now – but when I’m not reading, He seems to like it if I keep it on His altar for now.
And most recently, there’s these Loki and Sleipnir mini-rosary beads from Beth Wodandis Designs:
They are lovely is all I can say.
I was struck by the coloring and quality of the labradorite. I find them especially beautiful*
You see, I almost fell asleep while praying with them on the night that I received them.
The other darker beads are ‘dumortierite.’
I have read that dumortierite works well to increase one’s state of inner peace.
Indeed.
I am not kidding when I say that holding these has been immensely calming somehow, even though I had read in several other places that ‘dumortierite can be psychically energizing.’ Labradorite has a similar intensity of effect for me…but either way, I am not complaining.
Perhaps I have been more hyperactive than usual, therefore the intensity of these two stones has had a calming influence in response to my hyperactive energetic state.
Who knows?
~~~
*It would seem that Loki considered this mini-rosary as an appropriate gift for Him, as well, since every piece of labradorite I’ve ever had has eventually ended up on His altar somewhere.
Perhaps I should make Him a themed altar just for all that labradorite that He’s been wanting ❤
A great read on the topic of Godphones and the related responsibilities of having a ‘ Godphone.’
(Though, to be honest, my ‘god-phone’ isn’t akin in the slightest bit to a telephone. It’s less audio-visual and more…tactile/sensation-based. It’s rather difficult to explain.)
“Dude pick up the phone, Dionysus has been trying to call for three weeks and now He’s bugging ME about you!”
Honestly though, only Dionysus and Hekate have given me the experience of Godphoning. Cthulhu and Morrighan can’t be assed. As Godphoning is such an intensely personal experience that falls into UPG, my mileage may vary from another practitioners’. Generally though, most of us have a lot of common experiences that crop up in all our posts on the subject, and so I’m going to add to that wealth of knowledge.
The funny thing about godphoning is that it’s a joke term. A certain clique of spirit workers, shamans, and other spiritually minded folk were trying to explain the different ways divine communication can occur with humans. It was a VERY accurate joke though, and it stuck and is now used amongst the general populace. But what is a godphone?
I believe that we are in Week 4, but my depression and social anxiety has been hitting me hard in the past few weeks, and I will definitely admit that I’ve been struggling more than usual with my daily routines. Therefore, I’m not posting as much.
As well, as much as I’d intended to post my weekly process in this project, I haven’t been… but I have been doing the meditations and journaling.
I do think about the past- how I used to allow myself to feel so readily, and how it is not so easy now because of how I feel about my body.
When I think of the color magenta, I especially think of passion and body confidence.
During the meditation, I also felt nudged to associate this color with the intersection between sexuality and spirituality.
It is a warm, passionate color that has playfulness about it that especially reminds me of when my sexuality was uncomplicated and fun and I had the confidence to move and enjoy and I felt better about my body.
I wonder how to get back to that sense of passion and body confidence.
With this in mind, I am trying to re-discover it by taking better care of my body. I am trying to do less comfort-eating and engage in more exercise and physical activities.
Such as this morning, it felt good to weed my front garden. I’d felt guilty as weeding always makes me feel as if the land-wights are upset that I am tearing out all the plant life in my gardens almost to the point of barrenness. (Barren because I’ve yet to replace the hedges that I removed last summer with any flowers, and so nothing but weeds has been growing in those narrow dirt patches where the hedges used to be.)
For this reason, I am often overwhelmed (or likewise reluctant) to begin weeding — but once I do begin, I reach a good rhythm in my work. Soon enough, I’ve worked up a good sweat in the Florida sun, but I do not notice the intensity of my efforts until I’ve begun to see droplets falling into the soft, dark soil. I am perspiring freely into the dirt. Perhaps this is my offering – the sweat of my work as I clear away the weeds, deadfall, and other withered debris around my single rose bush and heather. The heather is rather large now and I have had to cut it back several times due to its growth. I feed both the rose-bush and the heather regularly enough that it’s quite possible if I left those two plants alone, they might take over the rest of the garden…if the weeds’ root-systems didn’t often choke them out.
Perhaps the front garden could be a metaphor for my life right now: The beauty of my garden is only found in one neat little corner while the rest is either choked with weeds or barren of growth.
But if joy (ie, the flowers) were allowed to flourish, that joy just might overtake everything.
Magenta is the color of passionate growth,as the blooms of the rose-bush are light pink edged in varying shades of dark pink, or magenta.
bloodteethandflame 