Perdita finn biography of martin

Do they vanish into oblivion, their molecules assumed back into soil and strata? Or do they ascend into heavenly realms beyond our comprehension? Do they lurk in graveyards as vampires and zombies, ready to reach their bony hands up through the soil and pull us down into unspeakable horrors? My father decreed in his will that he wanted written on his tombstone the Latin wordsUbi Sunt.

Ancient tradition has it that a veil separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. We still speak of the times of the day and of the year when that veil feels thinner than usual and the dead come close. The gray days of autumn. All Hallows Eve. As a child I spent hours happily doing embroidery alone in my room. I loved how on one side of the fabric would be a tangle of threads—threads that led nowhere, threads cut too short, knotted threads, all of it a jumble of mismatched colors.

But turn the cloth over and there on the other side would emerge a picture of flowers in a field or trees in a forest. Every thread made sense on the other side; every thread was part of the design. What if our souls were nothing but threads piercing the veil first one way and then another, sewn back and forth eternally? And there's this corner up near the town where I live that there used to be a gas station and like many former gas stations that left a polluted toxic area, and nobody wants to grow anything.

So now it's just a lot of broken cement and graffiti. But all these plants have moved in, Ailanthus and Chicory and Dandelion. They look at this mess and they say, okay, what are we going to do here? What are we going to grow? Let's get going, gang. And how do we play with the mess? Nature is messy. Nature is not pure. Nothing grows from purity.

And civilization has been obsessed with purity from the get-go, right? Because purity is about control and it's about that, the body is so messy, and usually it's women's bodies that are the messiest, right? I mean, one of the things I've been doing a lot of research on lately is when human beings first begin to create art. It's clear that the first art comes when women, when they're menstruating together, would go, they'd separate themselves from the community.

They'd all be menstruating at the same time. And they'd take themselves away from the community so they wouldn't attract animals with their blood. And we find the first artist, those wonderful ochre handprints and the tectiforms of dots. The male scientists coming in couldn't figure out why there were all these 28 dots on the walls of the case. They were surprised to discover that the handprints were mostly women's hands.

And so those women, their menstrual blood, we treat menstrual blood like it's the worst waste of all, right? It's an unmentionable. And it was our first artistic substance. We knew that it wasn't making babies, so let's make a world with it. And we took it and we painted our bodies and we painted the cave walls and we began to paint worlds into being, made magic happen with that blood.

Eventually, and this is fascinating, I just discovered this, it seems like when they stopped using menstrual blood and started to use stone ochre, vultures would paint their eggs with ochre, that is red clay, to camouflage them. And so, I suspect that perdita finn biography of martin the vultures, who are, very symbolic, one of the oldest symbols of that kind of Kali goddess energy, creator destroyer, they began also mixing their blood with red ochre to create cave art around the world.

So, the messiest substance, the substance that's considered the most impure is where we learn to make things from. I sometimes I am obsessed with the horrors of our penal system and of what we do to prisoners to torture them and put them into solitary confinement. One with the lights always on which drives people mad. It's the worst torture.

And then the other is that there is no nature, right? And frequently when people are put in that situation, they'll say, oh, they took their feces and smeared them across the wall, as if somehow that justifies torturing these people this way because they're sort of barbaric or monstrous. But I sometimes thought, I have this idea like, no, they're trying to make life happen.

They're trying to make dirt happen. They're trying to make something grow in this awful sterile environment. And that impulse is not a sign it's their reaction to the horror and the torture to try to figure out how can I make dirt to make something grow here where nothing is growing so I am very pro shit and pro blood and pro mess and pro-growth pro compost.

Something that honors our intuitive and spiritual senses. But what does magic mean to you and how might it offer us guidance or remembrance, especially during these troubled and difficult times? Perdita Finn: Well magic to me is completely organic and completely natural. We think of magic as technological, right? It's going to be something it's going to be some 3d techno exciting thing out of wizardry that happens, our communications are magic our airplanes and our transportation our magic our health care is magic, but the truth is that we have forgotten what real magic is.

I'm so fascinated by the fact that placebos work something like 50 percent of the time, and yet we don't study them. That's magic, right? Sugar pills work. My father was a country doctor, and he used to keep sugar pills because they worked. He would say to someone, this has been in the old days, the pre-bureaucratized days. He'd take them out to someone and say, 'I shouldn't give them to you, but I'm just going to.

And a lot of trust-building. We had real relationships with these people. And he'd pass them the sugar pills. And two weeks later, they'd come and say, doc, those were amazing. I'm all better. And they would be all better. Eventually, the communication systems are going to fail. The technology is going to fail. There aren't going to be airplanes and cars and the drugs are already failing.

And we'll need to remember the old ways of collaborating with the plants, collaborating with the unseen world to make magic happen. When I say magic, I see magic, and miracles happen to people every day. Or it might be something as simple as I don't think I can solve this problem. Offer it to the dead. See what happens.

Perdita finn biography of martin: Invoking ancestry, magic, and a deep

And then tell me whether magic is real. Don't believe me. Try it out. Kamea Chayne: Perhaps this is part of the problem, but I find it difficult to see people at climate conferences or political meetings or decision-making spaces talking about magic or intuition or our relationships with the dead or taking anyone who brings these invitations up seriously.

So, what would you like to share regarding how we talk about things that are difficult to conceptualize and intellectualize because they do exist more so in intuitive and spiritual realms that we don't even fully understand ourselves? And that might be embodied differently by different people as well. And that also may not be able to be fully put into words.

And our best thinking has brought us to a world on the brink of extinction. And I sometimes think that the entire natural world, the plants, the animals, all the other beings that are, look at us and go stop for Christ's sake, just stop. Stop everything. And I think we are going to be stopped. And I pray we are, I align with them with that.

I often ask people, what are you praying for? Are you praying to reform and fix this ecocide catastrophe? Are we praying for it to collapse? Because that may not look like we imagine it looks. Sometimes you pray for healing, and you get very, very sick indeed. Sometimes you must know that life isn't a straight line.

Perdita finn biography of martin: Title, The Reluctant Psychic: A

It's a great circle and those circles are regenerative and merciful but sometimes the short story looks very different than we imagine. I don't think any policy is going to prepare us for what's coming and I do think they're marvelous people doing marvelous things and collaborating with the natural world in ways that are surprising and beautiful I pray that we get set right as a species.

I mean, and I think we will very soon. I think there are forces much bigger than us underway that we, and we need to be a lot humbler. I don't see civilization stopping of its own accord. I want to collaborate where I am with the natural world and know and be ready for enormous changes that are coming. I talk about learning to ask for help from the dead.

But I learned to ask for help from the dead when my daughter was diagnosed with an incurable genetic disorder. And when you're a parent and the medical system has failed you and there is no hope then you learn about prayer and you learn that you can walk through the darkness of a minefield and find your way to small daily miracles that make a difference.

I always say: you want to learn how to survive climate change? They're living in garbage dumps; they're living in refugee camps. And believe me, they believe in magic.

Perdita finn biography of martin: Perdita Finn is the

Kamea Chayne: Well, we are ending our main discussion here, but I would love to hold space for you to share anything else that's presently lingering on your mind that I didn't get to ask you about, as well as your calls to deeper inquiry or sensing for our listeners. Perdita Finn: Well, we got very serious here, but I think one of the things that has happened when we begin to collaborate with the unseen world is we also begin to have more fun.

I don't think we have a lot of fun anymore. And the dead are tremendously fun. And I think one of the things that will make a difference is pleasure and to not feel so anxious and not feel so alone and not feel so frightened. I hope people can know that their mothers and their grandmothers and the trees and their pets are there for them each day in very small practical ways and that that can transform everything to know they're real.

Kamea Chayne: Well, Green Dreamer, we are ending here, but we will have references and resources from this episode linked in our show notes at greendreamer. And for now, Perdita, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It's been an absolute pleasure to explore. Yeah, a lot of these topics that should be explored more. For now, though, what final words of wisdom do you have for us as Green Dreamers?

Perdita Finn: I always like people to find their wisdom from within. You have more wisdom within you than you know. You've had more lives within you than you know. You've had lives as plants, as animals, as other beings, and each of those lives has collected and composted wisdom within you that you can access when you begin to access your relationship with the other side.

Perdita Finn: Sitting with the wisdoms of darkness, death, and decay ep Apr 17 Written By kamea chayne. Seeds grow in the dark of the earth. We can only see the stars in the dark of the night. People [talk] about walking towards the light. To support our show and tap into our extended and bonus episodes, join us on Patreon today! Because talk of such things can elicit fear and ridicule, she initially shared her experiences only with confidantes, particularly her husband, with whom she wrote the much-admired The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary Random House, Today, Finn no longer keeps quiet about her experiences with the unseen.

They feel they have no meaning or purpose. A thread of forgiveness runs through Take Back the Magic. The heart of the book is a series of warm letters from Finn to her dead father, perdita finns biography of martin breathtaking in their grace and magnanimity. Finn seamlessly interweaves these communiques with captivating memoir combined with tips to help readers petition the dead for everything from a parking space, to relief from chronic illness, to just company.

Take Back the Magic helps readers tap into these phenomena, and provides instructions on how to use them to expand and deepen their current lives. Most of what lies behind our lives is a mystery to us. I ask people: how many days do you remember of 1 st or 2 nd grade? A moment of bliss, a moment of drama, of horror… The same is true of our past lives.

Odd little bits and pieces. Our past lives are like the maple leaves falling off the tree that turn into the soil that grows the tree, and grows our lives, who we are now. No one is ever lost. That is very consoling. I ask people: what prayer is big enough to carry you from one lifetime to another? What do you want so badly, so deeply, you dedicate lifetimes to it?