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Connecting with the Land ~ Australia

Most of the folklore about witches and the practice of witchcraft originates from Europe.

The idea of 'witchcraft' wasn't a thing here in Australia until Europeans brought it with them. However, Indigenous Australians (as far as my research and interviews with elders have gone) follow what Western society would describe as 'animist beliefs' and 'magic rituals' were common practices.

Modern perceptions of animism, particularly in the Western World, are quite negative and viewed as "something hippies believe in." This perception is primarily caused by ingrained racist ideologies stemming from a colonial past (i.e., in order to justify subjugating people, you have to believe you're better than them) which perpetuated beliefs in colonised countries of the "primitive savage" and the "enlightened colonist." That's also not even mentioning the demonising of indigenous beliefs by missionaries of Christianity...

I find it ironic that in Eastern countries like Japan, where Christianity was not historically allowed to spread (banned in 1580s and hundreds of Christians were cruicified), animist beliefs like Shinto are now seen (in the Western world) as cool and mystical, and all the tourists want to visit the shrines of local spirits when they visit...

I'm getting off track, but hopefully you see my point: it is really hard to connect with a land on a spiritual level that is not yours, and was stolen from its traditional custodians on both a physical and spiritual level. I was born here in Australia, and so were my parents, but my ancestry is Scottish and British. I feel torn between two worlds that are so dichotomous from one another...

So, how do I connect with the spirits of the land?

Slowly, and with permission and guidance from local elders because there is a disconnect. I don't speak the language of the land and The Dreaming or 'spirit world' that accompanies our physical one. It doesn't help that much of the local language of the Gubbi Gubbi was lost due to the Stolen Generations, but there are general rules of thumb to follow when working with the Land:

We are a part of the land, and the land is a part of us. We are born from it, and so like our mother, we must care for and protect it. If you take care of the land, the land will take care of you.

Everything is about balance - never take more than you need and always give back what you can to ensure that the land is cared for for the next generation.

Ask first. Everything has a spirit, and you must ask before you take anything (I.e. like a branch from a tree). Thank the spirit for its gift / sacrifice (especially important if you have killed something).

Our ancestors watch over us our whole lives both from The Dreaming and in the physical world in the form of a totem (normally a whole family is represented by one animal). They are our guide, and your family must never hunt/eat your family's totem animal. It is your job to protect that species.

Many of the local landmasses and animals are represented by powerful ancestor spirits or creator spirits. Mooroo-kutchi (meaning red-bill, the name of the spirit of the black swan and an aboriginal girl from The Dreaming who transformed into a black swan searching for the spirit of her beloved Coolum who was killed by Ninderry.)

Smoking ceremonies are usually conducted as part of a 'Welcome to Country'. Each mob has their own traditional plant they use for cleansing the area of bad spirits and promoting healing and protection of visitors, but most use a species of eucalyptus or gum. The ceremony invites you onto the physical land as a guest and asks the ancestor spirits of that mob to watch over and protect you while you're there.

Corroboree (storytelling gathering) ~ knowledge of the land and its spirits are told through song lines and dances, and using the traditional language helps to connect better with these spirits.

Thank you to the local Aunties and Uncles for teaching me these and so much more over the years!

*'Uncle' or 'Aunty' does not mean we're related. Here, it is used as a sign of respect that recognises the age, wisdom, and knowledge of aboriginal elders. Though it's recommended that non-Aboriginal people ask the elder how they would like to be referred to as normally, it's not considered appropriate to refer to them as such unless a strong relationship has been established.

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While bushwalking I was commenting while walking through waves and waves of gold wattle that I have started to associate the blooms with Venus as they are striking in beauty and catch the eye easily. I have even started to ponder the use of wattle in glamour magic and compulsion magic.

After coming back to the car the radio turns on and I kid you not Venus started playing specifically this part: "Goddess on the mountain top Burning like a silver flame The summit of beauty and love And Venus was her name" I must point out that we on mountain and we walk within the mountains. Just something a little funny not long after I have been thinking of how I approach my work with Gods especially Venus /Aphrodite herself. I want to bring in more work that relates to my connect to Country as an Indigenous person so Venus in my mind has started to be termed Venus Yiray. Maybe this was conformation that I am slowly finding my way to the right path? What ever it is I feel that she walks along with me as I talk with the Grandfather Gums, Grandmother Eucalypt and ancient ancestors of the land that watch the Bush as my family walk.

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Sacred spaces

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Everyone should say hello and have a nice polite chat with the train station plants.

I am sure they enjoy the pleasantries.

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Musings of a land spirit worker

To be really blunt, the thing that made me into what I am wasn’t any kind of ritual or mind blowing spiritual experience, or some sort of astral travel where I completed the twelve tasks of Hercules, it was just…that knowing that something else other than working, sleeping and eating was out there. But it was more than knowing, it was a longing, a craving, to understand and to feel whatever it was out there that was teasing my soul . I don’t think you have to special to be a spirit worker. If you have that desire to talk with the spirits, to see the otherworld, to make magic happen, and you are willing to put in the effort and time and courage that requires, that’s kind of the key to everything.

This knowing for me became this understanding of the world as not just a work of art to be observed and possessed, but like a person, to be interacted with and to be considerate of. It’s just that, in order to interact with it, I had to use my imagination a little bit.

I don’t mean that I make up dialogue in my head, I mean have to use my imagination to get myself in the headspace of being able to communicate with say, a tree. I mean I’ve never been a tree, so I have to use my imagination to work on a way of dialoguing with one. I don’t literally hear trees answer my questions back to my ears like I would my toddler. And I think that has to be stated too. I feel like we in the magic/witch/spirit work community often downplay our use of imagination in our desire to be empirical and to present proof and to appear valid to other people.

For me, as well as using my imagination, a few things had to happen in order to interact with the land spirits. I actually have to be with them, or have been with them. It’s not a once a year kind of thing. I actually give up most of my free time to spend out here, when I’m not working, or parenting, or studying, or housekeeping, I’m out there, with my spirits. I also had to figure out what these things are and why they are where they are. So I started to learn about things like horticulture and ecology and biology, basically fancy words for what this thing is and why it does what it does. After I got a grip on all that “mundane” stuff about my space, and I had spent all this time, and I had this this idea in my head that these beings are here and interacting with me, to, I started to notice things, I started hearing things in my dreams, I started sitting beneath the roots of a particular tree and it felt like I was with an old friend.

I visit my spaces for the same reason I visit family, because I care about them and I want to know how they are doing. I listen and say “yeah, hi, I’ve just come to share this moment with you”. Then the magic happens… I start to get ideas in my head, ideas borne of my study, culture, and, I believe, ideas inspired by the spirits I’m interacting with.

Things like ‘if I knock on this tree, and ask it to send a message to the otherworld, saying “hey, my kid has a cold, could you help him get better” then something might happen and my kid’s cold might start to get better.’ Or ‘if I pick these leaves and put them in a pouch and hang them up in my bedroom, I might start to feel a bit better about my overall wellbeing’. And sometimes it goes further, and I sit there beside the river, and I kind of feel something pulling at me, and suddenly I get a sense of what the river is feeling, and I’m able to send a feeling back, and I realise I’m having a conversation with the river.

And then there are those times, where I sit there, and these thoughts kind of flow into my mind, about the life, the universe and everything, and they are so different from my normal thought patterns, that I just know in my gut it’s something else. And they may not even be thoughts I can describe with language, they may just be feelings, images, which absorb into my consciousness, but they alter how I perceive the world around me.

Sometimes of course, being a spirit worker IS about being able to go into a deep trance, and feeling the earth’s beating pull you out of yourself and going to these other realms, of power and thought and spirit, and doing the work you need to do. That’s something that can really only be described with the language used to describe the dream world, even though it is something different to that.

But I would say that 90% of my work as a land spirit worker is about coming to places, and being in them in a state of mind that recognizes that mine is not the only consciousness here, nor is it the cleverest or the most important. And giving them time to interact with me, and to see them and value them for who they are, as part of this living, pulsing, woven world, even if I don’t have the mundane language to communicate it with other people.

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the sun is a woman. it's called "broad daylight" for a reason

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A little excerpt from my new foraging zine that a lot of people seem to be resonating with. My favorite part of any foraging book is always getting to talk about why I find the practice so meaningful 🌸💕

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Your body is an ancestor. Your body is an altar to your ancestors. Every one of your cells holds an ancient and anarchic love story. Around 2.7 billion years ago free-living prokaryotes melted into one another to form the mitochondria and organelles of the cells that build our bodies today. All you need to do to honor your ancestors is to roll up like a pill bug, into the innate shape of safety: the fetal position. The curl of your body, then, is an altar not just to the womb that grew you, but to the retroviruses that, 200 million years ago taught mammals how to develop the protein syncytin that creates the synctrophoblast layer of the placenta. Breathe in, slowly, knowing that your breath loops you into the biome of your ecosystem. Every seven to ten years your cells will have turned over, rearticulated by your inhales and exhales, your appetites and proclivity for certain flavors. If you live in a valley, chances are the ancient glacial moraine, the fossils crushed underfoot, the spores from grandmotherly honey fungi, have all entered into and rebuilt the very molecular make up of your bones, your lungs, and even your eyes. Even your lungfuls of exhaust churn you into an ancestor altar for Mesozoic ferns pressurized into the fossil fuels. You are threaded through with fossils. Your microbiome is an ode to bacterial legacies you would not be able to trace with birth certificates and blood lineages. You are the ongoing-ness of the dead. The alembic where they are given breath again. Every decision, every idea, every poem you breathe and live is a resurrection of elements that date back to the birth of this universe itself. Today I realize that due to the miracle of metabolic recycling, it is even possible that my body, somehow, holds the cells of my great-great grandmother. Or your great-great grandmother. Or that I am built from carbon that once intimately orchestrated the flight of a hummingbird or a pterodactyl. Your body is an ecosystem of ancestors. An outcome born not of a single human thread, but a web of relations that ripples outwards into the intimate ocean of deep time.

Your Body is an Ancestor, Sophie Strand

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Following along watching two practitioners having a beef and now one has decided that I am in the firing line? Dude I just was watching :/ guess it’s warding time

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Etymological doublets

Source

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"Mother and Child (a.k.a. Madonna)", 1908, Egon Schiele

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Elli Zogia, Serendipity/Kismet/Coincidence

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The Birth of Venus (2021) - Guillermo Lorca