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Really, really basic stuff anyone starting out should know
After watching a few videos by Pagans and Wiccans–well-meaning people many of whom are devout—I realized that this generation of practitioners has no idea what they’re doing. I had thought this for a long time but seeing video after video I realize that even the most devout …they just don’t have the basics at all. I don’t quite understand this since we have well over a hundred years, if not more, of material on both generic Paganism, every branch of Wicca, and several decades if not more on contemporary polytheisms (and academically, I could actually take both back into at least the 18thcentury if I wanted to do it). Still, this generation seems to have come up in ignorance, part of a generation that has been trained to ignore the work of those who came before. Instead, they learn from their social media peers who may be well meaning but who are in the same boat. It’s stupid and dangerous and absolutely horrifies me.
I really don’t mean to be nasty. I’m genuinely worried. There are basic techniques that everyone should have to do this work well and to develop basic discernment and they’re just not being taught. Thus, this post. I’m going to give a few basics that can and should be taught across traditions and I’m going to give a basic reading list for psychic hygiene. I don’t care what tradition one practices, these are necessary basics.
First, some devotional basics:
- Set up a personal shrine and begin making prayers and offerings. The first thing to do is to learn how to cultivate reverence. Apparently, this is not as easy as one might think (and really, what in our modern world and media teaches humility and reverence before the holy?). Be consistent. Be respectful – you’ll make mistakes. That’s not a problem. The Gods, I firmly believe, understand and expect that. You’ll learn and grow in faith. That’s the first thing, and the most important. I’ve written a ton on it here on my blog – check the tags, Dver has written about it on her blog, and there are plenty of polytheists who can help online. I don’t keep a blog-roll but there’s good work being done across traditions. (I’m not saying that Wiccans and generic Pagans have no devotion. I’m saying I don’t have a list of useful Wiccan blogs because I’m not Wiccan! So, if you know of good ones, post in the comments).
I would also note that your shrine can be small. It can be portable. It can be as elaborate or simple as you want it to be. Don’t stress if it’s small. Just try to make it as beautiful as you can and don’t let dust collect. This is space you are giving to your holy Ones. It’s a place of connection and blessing.
2. Set up an ancestor shrine too. I didn’t know this when I started out and I was twenty years in before I really even started to get myself sorted out with respect to honoring the dead. I realize this can be difficult if one has issues with living family or comes from an abusive or neglectful family. Still, it’s important, oh so important. It provides a protective foundation like nothing else. One of the things that most horrifies me about today’s Pagan and Wiccan generation is that they have zero spiritual protections. They’re wide open in ways that can be very dangerous. Having the conscious protection of your ancestors is a good thing and can go a long way toward helping keep one safe and to helping one gain proper discernment. Our veneration restores and reifies our connection to them and allows them to work more fully for our good.
I’ve written a lot about ancestor work (including my book, “Honoring the Ancestors,” not to be confused with a more recent text by someone who took my ancestor course and without permission adapted it liberally for their own book of very nearly the same title and) on my blog so just check out the ancestor and ancestor work tags. The important thing about veneration is this: Be consistent. As to offerings, you don’t have to break the bank on offerings. WATER is ALWAYS a good offering. Share your morning cup of coffee with your dead. Burn incense. Bring whatever offerings you like. The most important thing is to spend consistent quality time in veneration.
3. PRAY. This is THE single most important thing you can do as a devout person. It’s the way we develop our relationships with our Gods and ancestors. It’s the way we solidify our reverence and build a good foundation upon which that may grow. It’s the thing that keeps our minds, hearts, and spirits clean and well-ordered in the sight of the Gods. It helps us with everything else. Like any relationship, the relationship with our Gods and ancestors is one that requires time and consistency. You can do this. It’s setting a habit and while you’ll not always be as engaged as you may wish, going back to the practice when you falter, working consciously to be consistent will help tremendously. Set prayers and extempore prayer both have their place.
Those are the three key things that I think everyone needs to know who does any type of devotion. Think of it as an art that you practice. We’ll all feel strange or awkward starting out, but with practice, one gets better.
I would add a caveat: please don’t get your info solely from Tik-Tok, Youtube, tumblr, etc. There are well-meaning people who post there but an awful lot of what’s posted there is just wrong, impious, sometimes even dangerous. Do your research – go to the library (don’t steal from authors via illegal downloads!), slowly build your own library as you can. Used bookstores are great for this. Always pray and do your devotions and make your own decisions about what you see and read. Also, don’t get your information just from your own peer group. These traditions have existed for generations. The work of those who came before us – even if their language is dated—is an essential part of a tradition’s foundation. Read and study, pray and learn.
The second thing that I’m finding lacking – and this is the one that really scares me – is psychic hygiene. Part of many of these traditions often involves developing psychic sensitivity, engaging with ancestors and good spirits (learning to tell the difference), learning to be aware of the energies and presences around us and how to safely tap into those things. That’s not bad but doing that without having any protection at all is dangerous. It’s the psychic hygiene that helps us develop discernment. There are a few simple basic exercises and practices that can be easily worked into one’s regular practice that will provide a good deal of protection.
- Learn how to center and ground. Learn how to do this standing, sitting, moving, driving. Learn to do it alone, and under stress. Learn to do it slowly and in seconds. The gold standard is to be able to do all this naked, alone, in an empty room at 3am and with no notice. Practice it until it’s second nature and then practice it some more. These two exercises are the foundation upon which all our other energetic and/or psychic work is built.
- Learn to shield yourself mentally, emotionally, and energetically. This is especially important if one is psychically gifted. As with grounding and centering, do this until it’s second nature and then practice it more. The protections we set on our energetic bodies, around ourselves, at any and all levels are carefully constructed processes and once they’re really rooted, they’ll run like a well-oiled clock. But, like a clock, they need to be checked regularly, cleaned, reset, etc. This is something we should all be doing regularly if not daily. There’s an awful lot of pollution and grossness in our world today and that can create miasma, and can really affect us emotionally/mentally, and spiritually. Get those shields up.
- Cleansing and purification techniques. I’ve written on this (“With Clean Minds and Clean Hands: Miasma – What it is and How to Treat it”), there are tradition specific techniques, and a good deal of useful information found in folklore. Everything we do to remain physically clean can be ratcheted up into the magical or religious register. Learn how to clean yourself, but also learn how to cleanse and ward a space. Ideally, learn how to create sacred and/or ordered space for yourself and others. Most traditions have various ways of doing this. Learn them. Likewise, learn to ward and protect a space.
Those are the basic things that I think one should learn in the first year, maybe two, of practice. As an occultist, I’d also add understanding of the elemental powers, and the LBP. I don’t care if one doesn’t plan on pursuing ceremonial magic, the LBP is a very, very effective protection rite and easy to learn. I know more than one practitioner who did only this (along with their regular devotion to their Holy Powers) for a solid year, before being permitted to go farther into their tradition’s esoterica. It’s really effective and builds on itself. The first form of magic I’d focus on is candle magic – because it will teach you to feel and move energy (and it’s just as effective as anything more elaborate).
Ideally, one is learning all of this within a tradition’s group and under guidance of a good elder or elders; but if that’s not the case and I know that for many, it may seem as though one is the only Pagan, Wiccan, Polytheist of any stripe in one’s immediate vicinity, at least try to make good contacts with those who’ve been in the tradition longer, and with a good, responsible, *well-trained* diviner. The internet is great for forging connections but that doesn’t take the place of regular, in -person engagement and learning. It is better to travel quarterly to learn from a teacher in person than to rely solely on internet contacts. Still, we do what we can. Divination is one of the greatest gifts of our traditions and can really help one course correct. After getting the basics under one’s belt, I would suggest that one establish a working relationship with a diviner and then at least twice a year, better quarterly, do a check in.
Now, I’ve written on most of these things on my blog so readers should feel free to search the tags. Here are some other recommendations that I also recommend. Many of these in the second category are classics (and though they may be more focused on ceremonial magic, the basics are the basics).
Recommended Reading:
On devotion and prayer
I’ve written a *ton* on this, which a simple amazon search will show so I’m not going to list my own work save for two texts. “Devotional Polytheism” and “Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner,” which I co-wrote with Raven Kaldera. While this text is specifically for Northern Tradition practitioners, the techniques involved can be (and have been) used across pretty much any religious tradition. Readers may also search the Tags here at my blog.
I’m also recommending “The Courage to Pray” by Anthony Bloom. This is an Orthodox Christian text, but just edit out the Christian emphasis and consider how what he says can be applied to our own work.
Now, there are tons of devotionals for various Deities, but that wasn’t the case in the 80s and 90s or even early 2000s. None of the books, with two exceptions that I list below existed for us. Instead, devotion was learned in one’s coven, iseum, kindred, etc. It wasn’t until after 2000 that I remember seeing books specifically about devotion appearing. To my knowledge, I wrote the first devotional in Heathenry, “The Whisperings of Woden” (which has since been incorporated into “He is Frenzy.” That was written in 2004 which gives you some sense of the lay of the devotional literary land. So, I haven’t included many books on devotion from the early days because as a genre that just didn’t exist, but these below – later texts — that I’ve chosen to list, are a few that will work across traditions. Again, for spirit-workers and other specialists, more is required and thus beyond the scope of this post.
“Dwelling on the Threshold” by Sarah Kate Istra Winter
(I also highly recommend her “The City is a Labyrinth” because we are largely animistic traditions and honoring and engaging with the spirits of place, land, city, etc. isn’t generally emphasized enough).
“Dealing with Deities: Practical Polytheistic Theology” – Raven Kaldera & Kenaz Filan
“Walking the Heartroad” by Silence Maestas
A special shoutout to “Polytheistic Monasticism: Voices from Pagan Cloisters” by Janet Munin, the first book on Pagan monasticism that I’ve seen.
The two devotional books that I remember snapping up in the early 90s were “Pagan Meditations” by Ginette Paris and “The Goddess Sekhmet” by Robert Masters. There were books by Cunningham, the Farrars, and of course since I was trained in FOI, the ritual booklets put out by that tradition. Then there were books of “Mythology” that we’d pour over. That was pretty much it.
On psychic hygiene and self-protection
(Please note, that what is required of a spirit worker, spiritual technician, etc. will be this and then some, but will also be largely tradition specific. I have only included texts that I feel are the basic things a beginner should know and master).
“Psychic Self-Defense” by Dion Fortune
“The Training and Work of an Initiate” by Dion Fortune
“The Cosmic Doctrine” by Dion Fortune
“The One Year Manual” by Israel Regardie
“The Middle Pillar” by Israel Regardie
(I also recommend his “The Tree of Life” and “A Garden of Pomegranates” but they’re very Kabbala heavy and not beginner texts. Likewise, William Gray’s “Tree of Evil”).
“Psychic Self-Defense” by Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips
“Spiritual Protection” by Sophie Reicher
“The Ethical Psychic Vampire” by Raven Kaldera
“Spiritual Cleansing” by Draja Mickaharic
“The Practice of Magic” by Draja Mickaharic
What you don’t understand, just put on a mental shelf and return to later when you’ve had more experience under your belt.
Basic Pagan and/or Wiccan History
I often find some of these books to contain historical inaccuracies, but they are an important part of Pagan and Wiccan history. These are just a few to get one started. None of these deal with the history and evolution of Heathenry. They are all Pagan/Wiccan specific.
“When God Was a Woman” by Merlin Stone
“Drawing Down the Moon” by Margot Adler (deeply inaccurate in the first editions re. Heathenry but she corrects in later editions iirc)
“In the Wake of the Goddesses” by Tikva Frymer-Kensky
“The Spiral Dance” by Starhawk
This is a good selection of the work that influenced the Wiccan and Pagan movements in the 70s-90s in the US. There were other books of course, but these are the stand-outs.
More recent historical works:
(just a couple – mine the bibliographies for more ^_^).
“Triumph of the Moon” by Ronald Hutton
“Stealing Fire From Heaven” by Neville Drury
“Women of the Golden Dawn” by Mary K. Greer
I also think one should also learn basic herb and stone lore but that’s a bit beyond beginner’s fundamentals! My favorite go-to herb/stone books remain “Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic” by Yronwode, “The Master Book of Herbalism” by Beyerl, “Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem, and Metal Magic” by Cunningham, Slater’s two-volume “Magical formulary/spellbook” (I can’t recall the full title atm), and the classic Culpepper’s Herbal. I already came into this though with some knowledge of herbs (both medicinal and conjure) and I think these things are best learned from teacher to student. I’ll stop here. These lists are good basic books and if one learns the techniques therein and moreover practices them daily it goes a long way toward building a sustainable practice of spiritual protection and cleanliness.
Questions, recommendations, horror stories welcome in the comments. Be well, folks.
WWII Ghost Army gets Congressional Gold Medal for Fooling Nazis and Saving Lives
May our military dead be hailed. May their stories be told forever. May they eat honey out of their own ancestors’ hands.
Read the story of the Ghost army here. I’m glad that at least a few were still a live to be recognized. I am grateful for their service.
A medal honoring members of the Ghost Army is pictured during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday (from the NPR article linked above).
Happy International Women’s Day
image from Montessori site here. I really like the image.
Today, perhaps take a moment to thank the living women who inspire you, and honor those who are now ancestors. I honor Ask, Embla, and the first named Holy Power in our cosmology: Auðumla. I honor first my Disir, and the mighty tribal Mothers of my lines — Lithuanian, Swiss, German, Scots-Irish, Huguenot French. I honor my mothers: my adopted mom, Fuensanta Arismendi Plaza (sancta), and my biological mother, Mary Ann Hanna Dabravalskas. I honor my grandmothers: Linnie Shoff Hanna and Ursula Blazis Dabravalskas. I honor my great grandmother’s: Edna Baldwin Armiger, Lucinda Heffner Schoff, Anna Aviza and Eva Dabravalskas. I honor my great-great grandmothers: the Lithuanian great great grandmothers whose names I do not yet know and Catherine Runkle Heffner and Mary Jane Adams, Jane Newhouse Baldwin and Elizabeth Johnson, and I honor my great great great grandmothers: my Lithuanian ones whose names I do not yet know and Elizabeth Oberlander Runkle, Harriet Frazer, Jemima Yokum and all the preceding generations in my line, all the mothers and all the women who endured.
I honor those dancers who inspired me and guided me in my first career, who have a place on my ancestor shrine now: Marie Salle, Marie Camargo, Marie Taglioni, Fanny Essler, Fanny Cerrito, Anna Pavlova, Olga Spessivtseva, Maria Tallchief, and more. I don’t mean to omit anyone, but I so rarely parse them out by gender! I give thanks to those writers who have given me comfort, especially Jane Austen, whose work I turned to when I learned my mother was dead. I know I’ve forgotten names that I would like to have here. I’m sure I have forgotten names amongst the living below but you are not forgotten in my heart.
I honor those living women who are fighting in the Ukraine and those who are not on the battlefield but who are fighting to sustain their families. Slava Ukraini. Always.
I honor those living women who inspire me, my teachers and in academia, especially Christine H. and Sarit KG, and Sue P. I honor my closest friends, Mary Ann, who always inspires me in my art and encourages me in my work (and who, though not a spirit worker herself is damned fine ground crew), Wyrd Dottir, whom I’ve known since she was in college and who always challenges and supports me in my work, and Tove, assistant, devout Freyja’s woman, and my sister-in-law.
I honor so many of you, my readers, who have inspired me. And…there are too many female friends and readers to count. Know that I hold you in my mind and heart on this day. ^_^
Finally, I honor my students, past and present: I pray daily that you have what you need to be courageous, that your thought-worlds ever be large, and that you find your joy and follow it. You inspire me, and teach me every bit as much as I teach you, and I thank you (this is true of my students regardless of their gender, but today is women’s day).
May you all be surrounded by love and gratitude today, by friendship, happiness, goodness and blessings.
I also remember those Goddesses Who have shaped and formed me: Sekhmet, Sigyn, Frigga, Freya, Oshun, Sif, Idunna, Ostara, Skadhi, Pudicitia, Pomona, Pietas, Eir and so many more, with deepest devotion and gratitude. Tonight will be a night of offerings and thanks.
This card is available here. This shop is just lovely and sells many prayer cards and other types of devotional art. I highly recommend it.
Honoring a Sancta: Fuensanta Arismendi Plaza 1950-2010
This weekend was the anniversary of my adopted mom’s death. I spent the weekend in prayer, meditation, and the making of offerings along with my House. I felt far, far more contemplative and really wasn’t in the mood to post online. It was shine time, which is always a good thing.
I have written about Mutti before, and all one need to is search her name here to learn about her and see the prayers and writings I’ve posted. Today, I ask instead that those who wish to honor her also make offerings to Sigyn. She was most adamant when alive that ever and always, Sigyn and Loki should have offerings and I know that such a thing pleases her far more than offerings made to herself. She was a deeply pious, humble woman of great virtue. I miss her every day. May she always be hailed.
A Day that will live in infamy
Today is the 82nd anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. This was the act that caused America to join World War II, fighting on two fronts: the European and Pacific. Here is information at the National WWII Museum on the attack, for those who may want to learn more.
Today is a day to remember our veterans and to honor our military dead. It is also a day to honor the civilians who died during the attack — at least 68 civilians died, though the bulk of those who perished were Navy, Marines, and some Army. Here is an interview from a navy survivor.
Today, oh our honored military dead, we remember you.
Sunwait Week 1: Sunna in Fehu
For those who don’t know, Sunwait is the period six weeks before Yule where we honor Sunna (our Sun Goddess) weekly and slowly make the descent into the rich, dark, liminal period of the winter solstice. This year we made the decision to also hold Sunwait before the summer solstice: as yule is a going down into the darkness, so the summer Solstice is a coming up into glorious light. There is a powerful parallel there that we intend to explore. This year is also the first year since our household has been keeping Sunwait that it fell on Remembrance Day (1). We honored Sunna but we also honored our military dead, particularly our WWI dead, but also all of our fallen soldiers. Their presence bracketed our rite and provided an honor guard for this Goddess Who shepherds them all into the ancestral havens.
We exchanged small gifts at the end of the rite, after the horn – representing Urda’s Well – had been passed and round after round of prayers made. In a formal symbel, (which we did not do tonight!) there is almost always an exchange of gifts toward the end of the passing of the horn. It felt right to do this tonight, even though it was not a symbel. This gifting set the tone for the season, one of love, care, luck, and generosity and the giving of gifts mirrors in microcosm the enormous generosity of the Gods at the moment of creation. It mirrors all the gifts that They poured into creation, and into the hands of the first human beings and every human after (2).
Here is the prayer that we offered tonight, a prayer for the first week of Sunwait, with Sunna triumphant in fehu.
Prayer to Sunna as She Comes in Fehu:
Fehu is light, strength, and luck.
It flows from Audhumla, the sacred cow,
partaking of the power of Holy places,
potentiality and the Gap.
Fehu crowns You, oh Sunna,
emanates from and around You.
It fills the heavens in wake of Your passage.
You soar across the sky:
scattering luck and dripping healing power
ever as the wheels of Your chariot turn.
Hail oh Gracious Goddess,
Glory of Mundilfari’s House.
You, Holy One, make Your journey across the sky
and then You journey too beneath the earth.
Your light, and fehu burning brightly,
guides the souls of the dead to their rest.
You take special care for soldiers,
especially those not claimed for Valhalla’s Hall,
especially those not heading for Folkvangr,
but to the loving embrace of their dead.
You seek out those most lost, hurting, or broken,
and no soldier waits for Your arrival.
Your gentle, healing touch is always there.
You are the great Psychopompous,
before Whom all doors open,
all bridges may be crossed,
in Whose wake, all darkness
turns to light.
Hail to You, Oh Sunna,
Protectress of our honored dead,
Guide and Guardian of our soldiers,
Mighty Power,
Shining Warrior of Mundilfari’s Hall.
Hail on this, the first night of Sunwait.
Notes:
1. Sunwait may be celebrated on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday – ironically I have never known any House to keep this day on Sunna’s actual day of Sunday. Our House chose Friday years ago, because it’s a nice way to end our week. I think, from everything that I’ve seen, Thursday is probably the most popular day for the Sunwait rites but ymmv.
2. In formal symbel, gift giving also recognizes and reifies the often hierarchical relationships and bonds between members of the House (and all the obligations and responsibilities therein), but that is not where we took it tonight.
The shrine about an hour before we began our rite — we did this one in our living room rather than the temple room.
Here is a close up of the shrine — the small glasses are for our military dead. I later added a bowl for them too (They got a huge bottle of vodka. We gave Sunna a nice bottle of wine). The horn here belonged to my adopted mom, as did the round candle holder in front of the six-candle Sunwait candle-holder.
This weekend is rich and full
Sunwait begins tomorrow (our household celebrates on Fridays) and I’ll post more about that after our ritual, and of course, Saturday is Remembrance/Armistice/Veteran’s Day. I’ll be attending my local ceremony (I’d go to all of them in the surrounding towns, but they’re all held at 11am, because the Armistice was signed at 11/11 at 11am.
This is a weekend to remember our WWI dead, and to thank our living Veterans for what they have endured, for all that they do, and for their sacrifices. I often donate to military charities this month and I will be doing so again. I recommend Paralyzed Veterans of America, Fisher House, the American Legion, and the British Royal Legion.
Many of us wear red poppies to symbolize our respect for and remembrance of the dead. This symbolizes the blood our soldiers shed in battle. It became such a potent symbol following the publication of a poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, a Canadian doctor who served and died in WWI.
How will you keep this day?
In Flanders Fields
Upcoming Online Class Offerings
I’ve gotten comfortable enough using Zoom over the last couple of years, that I’ve decided to offer a couple of workshops and classes via zoom. The first round will be in January. Here is the information for the upcoming January Class. I”m going to start with one class and see how it goes.
Class 1: Getting Started with the Ancestors
Dates: Friday nights, 6-8PM EST January 5, 12, 19, 26.
Cost: $150 classes are capped at 8 people, because in smaller classes we can really engage deeply.
This class will meet face-to-face via zoom and will explore everything one needs to know to get started in honoring one’s ancestors. We will look at
* ritual practices including setting up and actively maintaining the ancestor shrine,
* dealing with damaged, angry, or wounded dead, ritual elevations,
* the purpose of purification practices,
* the when, how, and why of venerative protocols,
* practical aspects to ancestor veneration like how to get started researching one’s dead.
* Finally, I’ll discuss potential pitfalls and important troubleshooting techniques.
This class will prepare the newcomer to our traditions to begin one of the most important aspects of polytheistic practice: getting one’s ancestral house in good working order. For those that already honor their dead, this class will help fill in the gaps.
I’ve already had significant interest in this class so if you’re interested, please register sooner rather than later. Email me at Krasskova at gmail.com to reserve your spot.
Over the summer, I’m considering teaching the following classes:
1. Introduction to Heathen Cosmology: Exploring our Creation Story
2. Developing Divination Protocols
3. Runemal: Working Through the First Aett
4. Exploring the Bacchae and the Mysteries of Dionysos (I did do my time in Classics after all and I live with a Dionysian. ^^ This is my favorite mystery play).
5. The Basics of Devotion
Please let me know which ones you are the most interested in. I will only be offering two over the summer and I haven’t yet decided on which two.
Preparing for Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day
November 11 is Veteran’s Day– Armistice or Remembrance Day in Britain. This began as a day to remember those who served and died in World War I. In the US, it has become a day to remember our living veterans of all our wars, as well as those who died in WWI. This is a holy day as far as I’m concerned. We live in the tatters of a world shaped and defined by what happened from 1914-1918, though in the US at least, there isn’t even a national memorial for that particular war. We didn’t lose as many people, not even as close as Britain and France (though we did send an expeditionary force to Europe under General Pershing over in 1917. My 1stcousin twice removed private S. Wesley Heffner (30 April 1898-June 1918) died in France of injuries sustained in battle. I remember him every November). In Britain, entire villages were emptied of men. It cost the UK an entire generation and devastated Europe. Young men tended to enlist together, and villages were posted in the same battalions together so when those battalions fell in battle, they took the men of entire villages and towns with them.
America doesn’t do anything approaching enough to honor this day. The president may lay a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Cemetery. Individual towns may have small ceremonies at their local American Legion halls but we no longer have large, city wide parades, or events. We have chosen to forget, and this is shameful. Maybe if we remembered and honored a bit more assiduously, we wouldn’t be so quick to go to war, or so slow to intervene when it is right to do so.
The UK is also having problems this year. In London, numerous Pro-Palestinian groups have decided to hold marches on Remembrance Day. I’m sure we’ll see the same type of garbage here. In this, I don’t care if a march is Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israeli, or Pro- anything else: it is inappropriate to hold such a thing on a day given to remember our honored dead, especially our WWI dead. Their ghosts still haunt London. You can sense them, feel them in the streets, right along with the ghosts of WWII holding us, their descendants accountable. To do this on Remembrance Day, to hold these pro-Palestinian marches (or any other kind of march that isn’t dedicated to remembrance) is disgusting and gross. Personally, if a group decides to march on Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day, I’d like to see forcible police action, arrest, and frankly, I’d strip the ingrates of their citizenship and remove them from the country. Or conscript them and send them to the front line of any pertinent war. Teach them a lesson about why we should be grateful to our military dead.
To insult the dead that gave their lives that we might live in freedom is …I don’t have words for how abhorrent that is, especially on Armistice Day. It’s utterly revolting and if the police won’t handle the ingrates, then I hope the people themselves do. That we allow any other type of march to occur on this day shows the utter lack of respect with which we hold our military dead.
I’ll close with a stanza from Binyon’s poignant tribute to the WWI fallen:
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
It is our privilege and our obligation to remember and with remembrance to carry in our hearts reverence. Always. If we can’t do that, what a pathetic generation of human beings we are.
Following up on World Ballet Day: Maria Tallchief
I made a post yesterday about World Ballet Day and Wyrd Dottir was kind enough to note in the comments that America’s first Native American (Osage) ballerina, Maria Tallchief has just been commemorated by the US Mint with a quarter. You know I’ll be buying a couple for my ancestor shrine!
Readers may learn about Maria Tallchief here. She was very lucky – the article accurately describes her early training, which she had to unlearn when her family moved from OK to CA. Her first “teacher” (and I use that word loosely) put her on pointe at five. That is obscenely and dangerously young. She herself noted how lucky she was not to have sustained permanent injury.
As a ballet dancer, Tallchief traveled and worked with the ballet Russe and, as the article rightly notes, her partnership with Balanchine revolutionized American ballet.
Here is a signed photo of her from my personal collection. She is garbed for her famous role as “the Firebird” in the ballet of the same name:
One thing the article above doesn’t note is that her family was deeply impacted by the events depicted in the historical movie “Killers of the Flower Moon”: Maria’s cousin’s family died in a firebombing perpetrated by ranchers who wanted rights to the land and its oil.
Read more about that here.
As an aside, when I was still dancing, I read a story about her and the prejudice she faced while dancing for the Ballet Russe. At that time, to be taken seriously as a ballet dancer, one pretty much had to have a Russian name. She was pressured to change her name to Tallchieva, to pass for Russian. She was proud of her Osage heritage and refused. That stuck with me, because I changed my last name from a very long Lithuanian last name (Dabravalskas), which always perplexed my directors, to Krasskova. I remain ambivalent about it.
I haven’t found many clips of her dancing, but here can see a clip of her in Swan Lake. (Her style and technique is that of the 1950s. Today, in part thanks to her and the other dancers of her generation, technique has evolved significantly. Always keep that in mind when watching the great dancers of the past).
Maria’s sister Marjorie was also a famous dancer in her own right. Both women have statues as part of a display: “The Five Moons” sculpture in Tulsa. The sculpture shows five leading Native American dancers: Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief, Myra Yvonne Chouteau, Rosella Hightower, and Moscelyne Larkin. In 2022, Marjorie Tallchief’s statue was stolen, and cut up for scrap metal. The statue has happily been replaced.
There were American ballet dancers before Tallchief, most notably, Augusta Maywood, who, unusual for her time, formed her own ballet company, but none achieved Tallchief’s height of fame and it was partly due to Tallchief and her first husband, choreographer George Balanchine, that a distinctly American school of Ballet exists, one that can hold its own (like it or hate its style) with the great companies of Europe.
Gangleri's Grove 