Spirits

The concept of spirits guiding us through our lives is an ancient one. Whereas now we are infinitely more comfortable with the idea of "guardian angels," our tribal ancestors were not interested in comforting themselves with such saccharine promises. These were men and women accustomed to the role of such creatures, and they rarely fulfilled such a lovey dovey function as making us feel better. Our earliest, most primitive shamanic ancestors were the ones doing the looking out for, after all. Their cosmology, therefore, was one of a world where such looking after was not only helpful, it was necessary. The spirits had a function in society, every bit as pivotal as that of the hunter, or the farmer.

They were the early warning system, everything from bad weather to the neighboring village witch cooking up trouble was their purview. It was with their help that the medicine men and cunning women of the stone age kept bellies full, and bodies safe from harm. Sometimes this harm was in the form of OTHER spirits, bent on destruction of the land, or the clann. It was then that the relationship between shaman and spirits was the most crucial. It was the responsibility of these magical practitioners to form as many relationships with as many spirits as possible. The more powerful, the more dangerous, the better. It was only when the shaman actually risked sanity that they were capable of facing down and defeating any possible threat to the community.

As a tribal people, we must also cultivate the necessary relationship with the spirits to ensure a world which looks out for us. The most important part of that, of course, is to develop a cosmology whereby we are looking out for the world. Our ancestors understood that to live in an animated universe, we must all look after each other. And, while that may indeed make us feel better, it was never meant to be the point.

Roan

indigenous

There are indigenous tribes of the 21st century; roaming the world like wild things in the wood, tending to the sidewalks of the crossroads and winking back at electric eyed gods as they drive past, beating internal combustion hearts. Openers and closers, warriors and chiefs. Speaking the hidden names of new powers, they go forth into the future through the door of their own pain and insecurities. When they emerge again, as whole people, this world responds to their touch. Sharing its own visions of change with these new priests and oracles of a frenetic, newborn century.

Men are awakening to old truths. They begin to take the first, stumbling steps toward the power within, instead of perpetuating the myth of power over. Women, at long last, are beginning to take up their sacred duties as proprietors of that infamously first of professions: priestessing.

The Tribes are gathering. City streets teem with shaman dancing the world awake. The primal echos of drums, techno, Renaissance flute and electric guitars serve as their clarion calls. "The world awoke us, that we may wake the world," is all they will say if asked. This is part of their Mystery. The packs are running again, shifters bringing luck to the streets of the forests and paths of the cities alike. New prophets of Christ are arisen, preaching another way, instead of a better way. Honoring the words and deeds of a simple man, in simple ways. Daring to speak the true Name of God.

This is the map of the 21st century, and the Tribes are gathering. No more will this world operate by the applied consent of sleepwalkers. Now it will be directed by individuals manifesting change and care for our planet. We are such awakened, the first tribe, moving in the world again, awake in this century.

Stories abound about the Ursa Tribe, The Bear Ones...

Ainshe Ursa, who shook the island to prove her sovereignty, and stilled it again, with a gesture. Becca Ursa, who fought the Dark and lost, but won her power from it nonetheless. Roan Ursa, who walked out of the world one day and never quite came home again. Eth Ursa, who strode forward into the unknown, and nearly lost herself. Who returned stronger, and stranger from the hidden places of the world.

Folk perpetuating consequences across the fabric of reality at the behest of the gods of the new world. For, alone among the tribes of the earth, only the first tribe is privileged to weave the future from the spun out possibilities which exist between. And nor can that be our only goal. Our ultimate effect must be to guide through journey work, rigorous honesty and ordeal a next generation of tribes and shaman to take up the role of weavers alongside. Only then can we call ourselves wise.

Only then will it be true.

Roan

Wild

What is it that whispers out of the wild for us to follow? What are we that we listen? If there was an ideal, beyond the special significance that LAND has for us (that dark, loamy stuff of legend, the bones of the tribe, soul of our children's, children's, children made flesh on the sloping high hill of a mountainside), we are fast approaching it.

We are the wild. It grows in us in riots and gouts and runners, the feel of home. And Home is Tribe. Home is the loud, laughing, barking mad run of you all, digging into each others business with more flare and deception than a village full of fishwives and cunning men.

How could we ever have wondered that the LAND would be so great in the tides of mystery? Like with like, and two by two. Were we ever wild enough for the Land? Are we even now? Did we ever ask any questions beyond our own desires to manifest what we have decided to require for ourselves?

But the land is manifesting something as well, and we must be ready to meet it...

Roan

Self

Self is one of those indefinable things that we search for. Who are we? What is our place in the world, our role in the tribe? It all comes down to self. The realization that we are different than those around us, and are looking to connect to what we truly are, is the impetus for our inner journey.

We place great attention and care in the development of who we are as individual people. Many students of other traditions would find this jarring. Hell, many students of our own tradition do. We put more effort into bringing ourselves into alignment with the divine and the land and each other, than we do in learning things like the elements, or the deities. But really, how hard is it to understand that everything in the universe is made up of these four elements, and the fifth is what we call upon to alter that very mutable reality? Who we are is more important than all of that. Being right within your self, meaning right action, and right thought, is the entire point of the exercise of magick. And tribal magick in particular.

Don't get me wrong, it can be fucking great to hear the whispers of the wind, the language of the crows. To feel in the most tactile way possible the song of the trees, and the moon. Or just the simple knowledge that you have helped a friend with your craft. But in many, many ways, these are just the side effects. The real Mystery is what it does TO YOU. How you change utterly and irrevocably in the face of the beauty that you find waiting in the darkest corner of your own heart. That, my people, is fucking magick, and it's a damned magnificent thing.

Roan

Ceremony

Ceremony is necessary for the health of the community. It allows us to connect on a meaningful level with each other. We aren't sitting about talking, and we aren't at church, observing the ritual. We are part of it.

A ceremony doesn't happen while you watch, it happens with you, to you, around you. It makes you part of something deeper and higher than yourself. A ceremony requires you to slip free of your normal persona, and acknowledge a new way of observing the world around you. To take part in a ceremony is to catch a glimpse of your piece of reality, and to change it, when necessary.

The spirits are all around us. A ceremony is a way to honor their aid in your development, and also a way to ask for aid if you need it. In a tribal culture, ceremony is one of the very few hinges of the social structure surrounding us. The others are the elders, the chieftain, the warriors, the shaman, and the individual family.

Our way of life is about service to the spirits, the earth, and each other. Most of all, ceremony is a way to reaffirm that connection.

Totems

A totemic lifestyle is a primal one. To believe that the spirits of the land and the wind and the waters are speaking to you through your experiences is a primitive belief. Our ancestors knew their place in the world through communion with an animal totem. Many Celtic families believed that the clan was guided by a fetch, the spirit of the tribe, the living representation of the people. And so we know the bear. She guides us where we must go as a people, and as individuals. She stands between us and danger, and appears when times are dire.

Many Ursas have seen her. Obsidian and Lightning Star encountered her at the manhood ritual of Lightning, when he formally took his place among the men of our people. Obsidian told me of it, afterward. His eyes were wide, and his face white. He spoke of a large bear which shadowed them across a field as they walked, and suddenly they found themselves in a different place. It was said by the elders that perhaps Lightning Star would become a great leader of our people one day, and that this was an omen. The oral history is full of tales such as this. Our people are her people, that is all we can know. She shows herself when and how she will.

My totem is the raven. He sits on my shoulder and whispers to me the gossip of the spirit world. This one has moved on, that one is being watched over by the ancestors during a rough time. Raven is a part of me. He is wind through the trees, bringing wisdom and knowledge to me time and again. I have never minded the company.

I often wonder how our oldest ancestors perceived this particular Mystery. They did not have the distraction of television, or ipods, or the drive home from work after a long day. Home was hearth, and mate, food, and storytelling. Did they ever struggle to hear the voice of the animal part of them? Did they ever need to wonder at their place in a modern world? Given that THEY are OUR heritage, do we?

Becoming Tribal

The thing about being tribal, is that your life tends to revolve around the tribe. You feel something missing when there aren't all of these people trying to talk over each other, kids running past you asking you to look at something, or cooking for ten people. As a medicine man, or tribal shaman, or whatever term you're most comfortable with, it's my job to try and remember above all else what we are about.

It's easy to say that we DO one thing or another, it's a completely different thing to be aware of who we are as a people. There is something about being Ursa that is above and beyond a practice, after a while it becomes a way of life. The gods guide us in odd directions, sometimes.

So who are we? A ragtag group of misfits? An ancient family line steeped in tradition and values which are pagan at their core? A FamTrad depending on each other to move into the wilderness and work our witchy ways? Who is it you are?

Roan Ursa