January 13, 2003

Dear Drummers,

A note about this Friday’s drum:

We will continue to work with the Celtic Wheel of the year, the direction north, and the theme of battle. (Again, I use the word battle because it fills me with such uncomfortable feelings. You are free to modify the term how you wish).

I want to tell you a weird, true story about the Benandante, European shamans whose work appears in copious written records from the Italian (Catholic) Inquisition during the mid 16^th Centuries. The Benandante went out to the fields four times a year (always on Thursdays) to engage in battle with the witches and warlocks whose sole occupation is to steal the seeds, piss in the wine caskets, and make the cattle and children sick. The Benandante fight to get the seeds back so the harvest will be plentiful, they fight to keep the witches from pissing in the wine (no matter how you say it, this is just an incredible image!) and they fight to protect the animals and the children from being grasped by the witches and having their life-force sucked from them. This information is drawn from Carlo Ginzberg’s awesome book “Night Battles.” He’s a wonderful scholar who has made some unique contributions to the study of witchcraft and agrarian cult worship in medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Please keep in mind that this term “witch” is not the same as what we would call “wiccans.” Witch is a derogatory word used by the religious powers of the time to describe the powers that are against the GOOD. I use the term to be consistent with the world of the Benandante—because it is the term they used. In this context, “witch” is a euphemism for “the forces of anti-life”—it has nothing at all to do with the earth-based spiritual tradition of Europe.

Then I want to teach you a technique for protecting yourself and summoning strength when going into battle. The technique springs out of cross-cultural shamanic traditions, but was taught to me as a technique used by Tibetan shamans. You can adapt it in your own way. I think this is a good thing to learn regardless of what kind of battle (or struggle, or tension, or confrontation) you may be experiencing (or expect to experience).

So, in the time leading up to Friday, you can muse on this theme: What are the “forces of anti-life” today? What secret, spiritual force is loose upon the world—the force that threatens our harvest, threatens to suck the life from the animals and the children? What force pisses in the wine?

As always, you have the choice to muse on this as an individual (my personal life) or as a member of a community (what is the anti-life that threatens all of us) or cosmic (what is the force of anti-life on a universal scale). And, as always, the forces of anti-life can be psychological, mythic or “real.”

Please wear comfortable clothes on Friday—we’ll be experimenting with movement (as always, to your own comfort level.)

See you then!

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