“The world has gotten smaller.” The phrase has become clichéd as the atomic age has gaven way to the internet age. Young adults entering the workforce today have never lived in a time when they couldn’t sit in their homes or workplaces and communicate with people who are on the other side of the globe as easily as they could talk to someone from the next town over. Combine this ease of communication with high speed transportation such as jet airplanes and it is easy to see how one’s concept of the world could be far more inclusive than in any time in the past.

This phenomenon has been especially invaluable for small and widely spread groups of people. Online support groups for people with rare illnesses is one of the more common and representative examples of this. Certainly the pagan demographic relies on the net quite a bit to maintain cohesion.

However, of late I have found myself wondering if this “smaller world” stuff is an illusion, and perhaps a dangerous one at that.

The world hasn’t gotten smaller, that is a simple fact. NASA probably would have mentioned it if it had. Our perception of the world and the people on it, has changed enormously in the past one hundred years. Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic solo flight was just eighty years ago. We went from the first solo ocean crossing in an airplane to the first footsteps on another world in forty-two years. This is a pace of change unprecedented in the history of humankind. With the radical changes brought about by engine powered transportation and the advent of instant communication (starting with the telegraph) it is no wonder that we have a world-concept that would have been completely alien only a couple of generations ago.

There have been many authors (and bloggers for that matter) who have addressed the issues surrounding the pace of change on our world. I am going to try to stay away from that worthy subject. Rather, my concerns are more personal and have more to do with how this “smaller world” idea effects what one of my friends affectionately refers to as her “zombie apocalypse plan.”

The “zombie apocalypse plan” (ZAP) for those of you who don’t know, is one’s plan(s) for what to do in the event of some form of society impairing calamity. I have mention in the past in BarkingShaman that our Lady has been pushing us to make plans that allow for the possibility of “civil unrest,” so our ZAP takes that into account. Being spirit workers and magicians also opens up the chance that a situation may arise requiring some form of ZAP of a magical nature that most people may remain oblivious to.

Personally I believe that most likely ZAP situations are will have both mundane and magical/spiritual components. There are many reasons that I and many other spirit workers, non-spirit working magicians or even completely non-spooky people, feel the need to make zombie apocalypse plans (and just to clarify I don’t mean “zombie” in a literal sense). Those reasons could take up an entire BarkingShaman post in themselves, if I thought it would be appropriate to post such things on the internet, which I don’t.

The reason that building zombie apocalypse plans makes me think of the false nature of the “small world” perspective is that the process of putting together ZAPs has made me realize just how physically inaccessible many of the people important to me are. If one chooses to take automotive transportation out of the question for a moment, and unless you drive a diesel car or truck you should, most things become pretty fucking far away.

For instance, the supermarket I go to is just five minutes away from me by car. However, on foot that 1.77mi suddenly seems like a bit much just to grab one thing. My closest friend to me is fifty-five miles away, a two day walk at best. People dear to me in distant places like Australia would be as lost to me as if they were on the moon for all the ease of contact if things fell apart. Anyone who has through-hiked the Appalachian Trail (which I have unfortunately not done) will tell you that the world is just as large as it has always been.

Tashlin as a clan, (as opposed to as my last name, the clan came first lest you think me that full of hubris) has worked hard in the past several years to build relationships with many people, mostly in the pagan demographic. It is sobering for us to realize that if the shit hits the fan, most of us will be on our own. The tendency in the last several years for spirit workers to gather and relocate to specific geographic regions is quite disturbing in this context.

Stepping away from the ZAP situations a bit, it is also concerning to realize how shallow our sense of unity and power as minorities really are. Many communities, including the pagan and GLBT communities use the internet to maintain a focused sense of identity. That unity is where power comes from. I’m not trying to say that without the net, towns would not have pride parades and covens would not meet for Samhain. However, without the national and international coverage of the Veterans Administration’s delays and hand wringing over making the pentacle available for the headstones of troops killed in battle, I don’t think that the pentacle would today be an option for the families of deceased service members. Most of that coverage came through the internet. It doesn’t take a terribly paranoid though progression to see how GLBT or pagan rights could be more easily curtailed through limiting online access to related resources (the same arguments being used to circumvent the Equal Access Amendment in order to ban GSAs in schools could be applied to GLBT websites for instance).

I’d like to say that I don’t think that my “zombie apocalypse” concerns are anything but the ramblings of an overactive imagination. Unfortunately I can’t. For one thing, the Lady and Var have made several unlikely predictions over the past nine years that have come or are coming to fruition. I’ve learned that it is unwise to ignore the desires and instructions of the gods. For another, we live in a world where not only it is illegal for gays to congregate in some countries, but the religious leaders from at least one country that is horrifically oppressive to queers has won over many disaffected people here in the United States. Not to mention that three current candidates for the Oval Office have declared that they don’t believe in evolution (I know that point is a bit out there but it makes my brain hurt so I am mentioning it).

It is one of my dearest hopes that we will never find out first-hand how big the world really is in the way I’ve discussed. Just the same, when building one’s zombie apocalypse plan, it is vital to consider just how far away one’s friends and allies may really be if the planes aren’t flying, the cell towers aren’t routing, and instant messenger is once again as distant a dream as moon rockets once were.

As is immediately evident from my highly infrequent posting, my neurochemistry shit hasn’t been adequately worked out. I have a large file of uncompleted posts where my brain just gave out on me. I am leaving for the Pagan Kingdom of Asphodel’s Beltane weekend in just a few minutes but first I wish to share…

Our minds work in strange and unfathomable ways. Sometimes a great deal can be learned about a person from one or another unique personality quirk. Other times you can at least get a good laugh. I’m guessing this will be the latter, but if anyone has a deep insight into my psyche, feel free to share.

My partners have taken to calling me The Penis Whisperer, bet that’s not a sentence you hear everyday. The reason for this bizarre and social inappropriate nomenclature is this:

When I see a penis, whether in person (always preferred) or even in a picture, I immediately and involuntarily imagine in my head what its voice would sound like if it could talk. I realize this is probably a pretty weird thing. I should note that I am not actually saying that other peoples’ (or my own for that matter) penises talk to me, they don’t. All I am saying is that I have an idea in my mind of what they would sound like if they did.

For some reason however, this information seems to call to mind pet-psychics when I tell it to other people. I am not sure what the “talking to penises” and “talking to pets” connection is in other peoples’ minds, although I am confident that a psychology graduate student could do a thesis on the subject. Aside from the fact that I DON’T TALK TO PENISES (just really want to make that point clear).

Despite that key point, I give you a glimpse into the cable access show that will never be:

Imagine it in your mind: A bare stage set with two chairs and a plain backdrop. In one chair sits a twitching Wintersong (would need to suppress the vocal tics so as not to scare them into silence). In the other chair sits a nervous looking middle aged guy, maybe a bit rough looking. A construction worker would be ideal. He’s explaining his problem:

“I just don’t know Penis Whisperer. Lately the little guy just hasn’t been himself. I’ve tried getting him interested in things, but every time I try to play with him he just doesn’t seem interested the way he used to be. There was a time he’d be the one to get all up in my lap and make it clear that he wanted to play. Now I have to try to get him going and he is more and more resistant it seems. It’s even worse with my wife. Whenever she decides to play with him he just goes all passive and plays dead. I don’t understand what he is trying to tell me. Can you get me some answers Penis Whisperer?”

He would then unbutton his pants and drop them around his knees. The camera would zoom in for a close up of Wintersong examining the gentleman’s gentleman parts and making the “listening” expression made familiar to many by the work of legions of pet psychics and John Edwards (crossing over dude rather than presidential candidate) knockoffs.

The Penis Whisperer would then make some generic recommendations about trying new games, new toys, and switching over to silk underwear and the show would end for the week. Before long there could be a book deal and a popular syndicated show on basic cable. At first the right wing would be all up in arms, until some enterprising individual found a way to connect Penis Whispering to finding redemption in god and there’d be a new wave of religious themed generic genital talkers (“your inner labia say that you should have waited until you were married).

I have to head out to Cauldron Farm for Beltane, my bits and I hope you have a good weekend.

As is immediately evident from my highly infrequent posting, my neurochemistry shit hasn’t been adequately worked out. I have a large file of uncompleted posts where my brain just gave out on me. I am leaving for the Pagan Kingdom of Asphodel’s Beltane weekend in just a few minutes but first I wish to share…

Our minds work in strange and unfathomable ways. Sometimes a great deal can be learned about a person from one or another unique personality quirk. Other times you can at least get a good laugh. I’m guessing this will be the latter, but if anyone has a deep insight into my psyche, feel free to share.

My partners have taken to calling me The Penis Whisperer, bet that’s not a sentence you hear everyday. The reason for this bizarre and social inappropriate nomenclature is this:

When I see a penis, whether in person (always preferred) or even in a picture, I immediately and involuntarily imagine in my head what its voice would sound like if it could talk. I realize this is probably a pretty weird thing. I should note that I am not actually saying that other peoples’ (or my own for that matter) penises talk to me, they don’t. All I am saying is that I have an idea in my mind of what they would sound like if they did.

For some reason however, this information seems to call to mind pet-psychics when I tell it to other people. I am not sure what the “talking to penises” and “talking to pets” connection is in other peoples’ minds, although I am confident that a psychology graduate student could do a thesis on the subject. Aside from the fact that I DON’T TALK TO PENISES (just really want to make that point clear).

Despite that key point, I give you a glimpse into the cable access show that will never be:

Imagine it in your mind: A bare stage set with two chairs and a plain backdrop. In one chair sits a twitching Wintersong (would need to suppress the vocal tics so as not to scare them into silence). In the other chair sits a nervous looking middle aged guy, maybe a bit rough looking. A construction worker would be ideal. He’s explaining his problem:

“I just don’t know Penis Whisperer. Lately the little guy just hasn’t been himself. I’ve tried getting him interested in things, but every time I try to play with him he just doesn’t seem interested the way he used to be. There was a time he’d be the one to get all up in my lap and make it clear that he wanted to play. Now I have to try to get him going and he is more and more resistant it seems. It’s even worse with my wife. Whenever she decides to play with him he just goes all passive and plays dead. I don’t understand what he is trying to tell me. Can you get me some answers Penis Whisperer?”

He would then unbutton his pants and drop them around his knees. The camera would zoom in for a close up of Wintersong examining the gentleman’s gentleman parts and making the “listening” expression made familiar to many by the work of legions of pet psychics and John Edwards (crossing over dude rather than presidential candidate) knockoffs.

The Penis Whisperer would then make some generic recommendations about trying new games, new toys, and switching over to silk underwear and the show would end for the week. Before long there could be a book deal and a popular syndicated show on basic cable. At first the right wing would be all up in arms, until some enterprising individual found a way to connect Penis Whispering to finding redemption in god and there’d be a new wave of religious themed generic genital talkers (“your inner labia say that you should have waited until you were married).

I have to head out to Cauldron Farm for Beltane, my bits and I hope you have a good weekend.

Readers of BarkingShaman know that I am passionate in my beliefs and that many of my personal beliefs are not all that popular. It has not been a good several weeks for me on this front and I am finding myself quite prone to burning out.

First off, those of you who have read Ritual Mutilation and Discovering Normal know about my staunch opposition to routine male circumcision and know a bit about the road that led me to that position. I have done a great deal of research into the subject and history of circumcision and other male and female genital mutilation practices and consider myself quite educated on the matter. Several weeks ago national and international news sources covered the announcement that the United Nations has endorsed the practice of male circumcision (ideally removing as much inner foreskin tissue as possible if you read the research) as a method of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

This was an announcement that had become inevitable. There has been some research over the years that has shown that circumcised men have a reduced (some say as much as %70) chance of contracting HIV during unprotected heterosexual sex with infected women. This is far from an adequate level of protection to not require sex with a latex barrier and is only relevant in reducing one specific form of transmission (female-male heterosexual intercourse). Despite this, the New York Times proclaimed in an article on male circumcision “Last month, scientists invented the AIDS vaccine.” While the U.N. and the W.H.O. have only endorsed circumcision for high risk/low tech areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, there is clear evidence that the American Academy of Pediatrics will again be endorsing circumcision for all newborns, this time to prevent AIDS. Additionally New York City has announced a proposal for the city to pay for the circumcision of all gay men in New York despite the total lack of evidence of circumcision’s effects on HIV transmission during gay intercourse.

I could go on at length about the issue. Certain points jump out at me, such as the fact that these studies were halted early and that they have not been submitted for peer review. Or that there has been European studies that indicate that intact (non-circumcised) men are more willing to use condoms and are less prone to skin tearing during intercourse. Additionally, circumcision has been described as a cure in search of a disease. The list of diseases that circumcision has been claimed to “cure” or “prevent” is astounding (from the familiar such as cancer to the crazy such as club foot or lead poisoning). I do want to clarify that it would be completely hypocritical for me to criticize what someone chooses to do with their body. If an adult, male or female, wants to radically alter their genitals that is totally their business. My objections focus on children who cannot consent or people who are being presented with circumcision as an preventative for the contraction of HIV/AIDS by medical authorities that they have no reason not to trust.

I belong to several email discussion groups from the “intactivist” (anti-circumcision) community and over the last few months I have found that I have been just letting the emails pile up. I simply cannot handle the overwhelming ground that has been lost in this fight. Every time I hear about or talk to another parent who may have been considering leaving their son intact but now has been swayed to circumcision, or worse who has taken their child or young teen in for a circumcision in the face of this new “data” I just find myself feeling sick. Same goes for talking to circumcised men who know feel that they do not need to use protection for sex since they now “know” that they can’t contract HIV/AIDS because of their circumcised status.

Second off, I live in New Hampshire. In the last few weeks the New Hampshire legislature has been poised to pass legislation creating a civil union registry for non-married couples. As you might imagine, many vocal people in my area are more than a little upset by this. There have been many calls for the government to put the matter to a public vote. Given that the state also just legalized gay adoption statewide (it had been left to the counties) there is a groundswell of opposition to gay rights issues (and gays in general) in my area of rural NH. Each letter in the op-ed portion of my local paper proclaiming the hatred of society possessed by people in non-traditional relationships reminds me of the fact that my family is neither welcomed nor safe where we live. Every “destruction of family values” that I read reminds me of how we came to own a number of firearms and why I don’t like to leave the house without one.

Firearms are yet another of my buttons that are going to be pushed in the next few weeks. Following the grotesque tragedy at Virginia Tech the media is already afire with calls for tougher restrictions for the ownership of firearms. This ignores the fact that someone crazy enough to kill 30+ people isn’t going to care about buying an illegal handgun.

Since owning a gun myself I’ve become more conscious of other people carrying them and this has led me to an interesting realization. When I was in Washington DC recently, I noticed how many government people (such as security guards at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center) carried firearms. Normally this doesn’t bother me, but NH does not have reciprocity with DC (besides with no one can carry weapons on federal property). I was interested to see that I was uncomfortable being around so many armed people not because I wasn’t armed, but because I wasn’t permitted to be armed.

These are just three of the public issues weighing on my mind. I’ve ignored several issues closely tied to my spooky life deliberately. First and foremost I am a shaman and a magician. Recent events in my life have brought this more and more to my attention (not that I have given up on the business that I own, just that I recognize the realities of what my first “profession” really is). These issues are in varying degrees mundane ones. I find myself having only so much energy that I can devote to any one of them before it begins to intrude into my “real” work, be that the spooky stuff, the business, or my managing my health.

As I find myself “burning out” I struggle to maintain some involvement in the issues that matter to me. I know that I cannot let myself become consumed by the shamanism anymore than I can sit in front of my computer doing CAD work hour upon hour. Trying to make a difference in these and other issues helps me remember to distance myself from the shaman work in order to recognize that the mundane world is just as important as the spiritual one.

Once upon a time, I created a mental “rosary of belief.” This is a technique we teach our students wherein one makes specific mental note of incidents that reinforce their beliefs in magic or the gods and spirits in order to create a mental “rosary” to refer to when the rest of the world tells them that there is no such thing (if you are curious we modified the idea from something said to Shinji Ikari in Evangelion during instrumentality). Today, I find myself forced to do the same thing with issues that are important to me. I know that I cannot allow my faith or connection to matters of importance to me in the mundane world falter if I am to do my job adequately.

As a shaman there is an incredible temptation to focus on that part of me that is forever in death, but I have come to know that it is just as important to give equal energy to those parts of me that dwell in life or in the mundane world. Passionate beliefs, even unpopular ones makes that possible.

One of the more difficult lessons about growing into adulthood has got to be that nothing is ever straightforward when one is an adult. The layers of ambiguity that sometimes seem to smother the world were beyond my ken when I was a child.

This is a subject that I’ll be addressing in several BarkingShaman essays over the next while. Right now, foremost on my mind regarding this topic are the events of this evening.

Tonight was the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover and my mother asked us to come over for her seder. There was never any doubt that I’d be going. I try to go see my parents for holidays that are important family times. As a rule Fire and Summer come along whenever one or both of them can. After several years of awkwardness, my mother no longer asks me to attend religious services at her synagogue, but I go to her home at least for diner for most major holidays.

So it was with a minimum of hassle that Fire and Summer took early days from work and the three of us plus the dog bundled into the car for the two hour ride to my folks’ house.

Anyone who has attended at Passover seder however, can tell you that it isn’t just a meal. Rather, the seder meal is a ritual in itself. For a number of reasons, I have avoided Jewish worship services and rituals as thoroughly as I possibly can since leaving Judaism to serve my Lady. First off, a Jew by birth leaving the religion is a really big no-no, and not just from a community perspective. Judaic law is rather clear on the allotted punishment for idolatry, which for a Jew consists of worshiping any god but the god. I prefer to stay below the radar of the god of the Jews to whatever extent I can, and not just because I believe it to be the polite and ethical thing to do.

Additionally, my Jewish faith and identity was an important part of my life and upbringing. I do not regret my choice (such as it was) to dedicate myself to the Lady or to become a pagan. However, I would be lying if I told you that being forever cut off from such a pivotal part of my childhood and family life does not hurt, it does. I know that Judaism was not the right religion for me, and far more importantly, the god of the Jews was the wrong god for me for many reasons. On the balance, I would far prefer a devout life as a pagan than a secular life as a Jew, which was what would have happened given the disconnect between myself and the Jewish god.

Unfortunately (or perhaps inevitably, given its nature) Passover was always my favorite holiday in the Jewish calendar. It is also the only holiday whose ritual is traditionally done in the home rather than the synagogue.

The fact that my parents accept who I am so far as to invite both my partners (plus our dog) to their home for a family holiday is invaluable to me. Especially given my health situation of late, our lives would be infinitely more difficult without my parents’ support. At times like these though, it can be a challenge not to shove the complete reality of my life in their faces. I know that my religious path is a source of pain for them (especially my mother) and I try as best I can to minimize its impact on them. However, I do this to the best of my ability without diminishing who I am and what I do in my religious life.

For instance, I have two tiny “token” tanto knives that represent the two knives I carry in my shaman work. One token is polished and one blackened with cold-bluing to stand in for my full-sized polished and rusted knives that represent life and death. I usually wear the tokens on strings hanging from my belt loops. I am bound to tell anyone who asks what they mean, and I do not choose to leave them at home when I go to see my mother. Part of being Her shaman-magician is that I am forbidden to lie when asked about aspects of my spooky job. This means that I have explained to my mother the meanings of my shamanic tattoos, tools, and hair cut (for those who don’t know, I shaved my waist length hair off during my death ordeal cycle and have kept it shaved for over a year since).

As much as I value the fact that my folks have us all home for the holidays, it is hard not to resent it when they appear to be pushing me back into the broom closet, so to speak. It brings my mother joy, or at least peace, to pretend for the duration of the seder that I am still Jewish. Striking the balance between pleasing the mother who raised me and being true to my other Mother is an especial challenge during this particular ritual. The cautious dance of watching what words I don’t say during prayers to avoid swearing falsely to the god of the Jews doesn’t do any great wonders for my mental state either. An amazing number of Judaic prayers are some form of swearing of fealty: “you are our god” etc.

I imagine that the careful dance of balancing the reality of who an adult child is with how their parents might want to perceive them is hardly one that is unique to people who have departed as radically from their parents expectations as I have. I am also well aware that my parents are rather unique in how completely they have been able to accept those radical deviations in the course of my life. My parents and I have an understanding which applies most times: I don’t ask them to be happy with the path that my life has taken and they don’t try to change that path. The logical continuation of that agreement is that they generally don’t push their unhappiness with my path on me and I don’t shove the evidence of that path in their faces.

Just as adulthood is not nearly as straightforward as I expected when I was a child (imagine my shock to find that so far no one has given me a manual!), compromises feature far more prominently than the child I was could have imagined. When my mother asked me to read the four questions in Hebrew tonight (and with no transliteration no less) I could have refused on the grounds that it was not a terribly comfortable thing for me to do. However, that discomfort has led to me staying up late thinking and writing. Come the dawn it will be all but forgotten. The unhappiness that refusal would have caused my mother would have lasted far beyond the next rise of the sun.

I like to think that this decision is the sort of thing that distinguishes me today as my parents’ adult child rather than just their child.