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*** The island, visiting the shaman.
In the summer of 2021, I found myself visiting Olkhon Island on the
lake Baykal in Siberia. I was not alone, and we would spend a few days
on the island and then visit the mountain regions in Buryatia. But
Buryatia was closed because of the pandemic, and we stayed the whole
week on the island instead. Olkhon Island is home to breathtaking
landscapes that are second to none. Surrounded by the largest
freshwater lake in the world, the island is a beautiful place with huge
cliffs and pine trees. Many people refer to Olkhon as a magical place
or a "place of power." It is also a sacred place for the Buryats, an
indigenous people in Siberia closely related to the Mongols. If you
talk to the locals, you will hear many stories about the power of
"Grandfather Baykal." You can speak to a Buryat or a Russian. Both will
describe Baykal as a living, intelligent force that does not like "bad
people." Many stories refer to the wintertime when Baykal is covered in
thick ice and constantly makes strange noises as if trying to talk to
you. A shopkeeper, an old Russian lady, sitting under Christian icons
and who also mentioned that she is a parishioner of the local Orthodox
Church, instructed us how to go to the serges (ritual poles) and make
an offering for luck and protection. And she sounded like combining
Christianity and the pagan rituals is the most natural thing to do.
Olkhon is a beautiful and interesting place to see, but please don't
expect high-level services. If smooth transportation and fine dining is
your priority, you may not like the place. The locals also complain
that Chinese tourists, for whom the place is relatively close, hoarded
the island when the border was open. And that the local authorities do
not help to preserve the sacred land.
It was not my idea to visit the shaman. But after a few days on the
island, we felt we had already seen most of it. The shaman was not
impressive. His shaman clothes were worn and dirty, and the rituals he
performed looked like he was doing them half-heartedly. I was sceptical
but tried to be respectful and just sat there in silence.
"Look at you!" The shaman suddenly paid attention to me. "Your posture
is wrong! You are sleeping not well! I will massage you!"
Without asking permission, the shaman attacked me with his rough hands.
It was brutal and painful, and at one point, my spine sounded like it
was going to break. But to the shaman's credit, my posture visibly
improved, and I was to sleep much better over the next few weeks. He
gave me his rough "massage" and scolded me for not taking good care of
my body. Finally, the shaman took my hands and touched my palms, and at
that moment, his facial expression suddenly changed.
"You are a shaman too!" he cried.
"Excuse me?"
"You are a shaman. You need to go through initiation!" He said sounded
agitated. But I shook my head and smiled, amused.
"I may be many things, but definitely not a shaman!" I replied.
"Look, I know who you are! You are not here, not there!"
"What do you mean?" I asked as his Russian was not perfect, and I was
unsure what he was trying to say.
"All your life, you are trying to be someone, but you can't because you
are a shaman!" He said, looking at my eyes, and my smile died.
*** My upbringing, the conflict
One of my earliest childhood memories was playing outside with the
girls. I liked to play with girls. Some of the girls were older than I
was, and at one point, they started to talk about pregnancy and having
a baby. I was too small to understand, but I sensed that it was
something important.
"Mom, what it's like to have a baby?" I asked when coming home, and my
mother offered some explanation that she seemed to be fit for my age.
"I want to have a baby too! When I grow up, I will be pregnant and will
have a baby!" Mother didn't reply to me, but the silence felt awkward,
and I understood that I had said something wrong.
Another early memory is of envying the girls' dresses and bows in
kindergarten. I especially liked the bows. One girl's big white bow
came undone, and she asked the kindergarten teacher to help her tie it
again. There was something magical about this process, and I stood
there with my mouth open.
"Look at him! He wants a bow too!" the teacher said, pointing at me,
and everybody laughed.
I am not sure if that particular event with all the kids laughing at me
for wanting a bow was the turning point, but I understood very early on
that I could not tell the others that I wanted to be a girl. I tried to
bury that part of me, and a decades-long inner conflict began. And the
older I got, the more intense the battle became. To this day, I am not
sure what my family knew. Surely they suspected something. Every time I
was alone I tried on my mother's clothes, jewellery and makeup, and
once there was a big scandal when my mother discovered that her clipon
earrings had disappeared. But I felt that I would rather die than allow
the secret to be discovered. I felt ashamed by my "perversion." Why do
I have to be like this? Why can not I be like all the other boys? Life
is so much easier for them! The place and time I was born did not offer
any acceptance for trans people. And the hormone therapy was out of the
question. I think it is still highly problematic in Russia, but it was
simply impossible at that time. Therefore I was trapped in my body and
was afraid to even talk to anyone about it. I thought I was sick and
tried to "cure" myself with willpower. Once I took a knife in my hand
and wished that I could cut "this perversion" out of me and literally
kill the part of me that wanted to be a girl. If I had been sure that I
could stop the desire by cutting off a finger, I would undoubtedly have
done so. Looking back on my life now, I wonder how much energy and
willpower I spent trying to look and act "normal" and trying to
suppress a big part of my soul.
*** Early adulthood, life struggle, the gift
The inner conflict of rejecting a part of my personality became
routine. I tried hard to look manly and cool. If someone made jokes
about gays, I was the first to laugh. I even started dating girls. It
was easy for me to get aroused when I touched their soft, delicate skin
and beautiful long hair and felt their bodies react to my touch. My
life as a "deepfake" became even deeper. But somewhere inside, I
understood that I could not go on like this forever. Death by overdose
was the most likely destination, and I felt terrified about my future.
To save my sanity, I have tried to find my calling. Perhaps I could
find happiness by occupying myself with something meaningful? But that
was not easy as well.
To make matters worse, I am also dyslexic. And the teachers at the
local school had no idea and just proclaimed me stupid and lazy. So I
reacted by withdrawing and trying to avoid school as much as possible.
Dyslexia and my school grades limited my career choices. And I had
great difficulty in making myself useful. I tried many professions
without success. I worried that I would never find my place. I read a
lot, though, because that was a form of escapism. And Fictionamania
simply saved my life. I read for days, learned English and got the warm
feeling of not being alone in the struggle.
It was out of desperation that I discovered that my effeminate soul
could offer some practical gifts. For many years I tried to reject and
suppress everything that seemed unmanly, including my feelings. I
wanted to cry, often, like a girl. Or giggle happily, as girls do. I
learned to suppress my emotions by holding my breath and pretending I
did not care. Only later in life did I discover that this part of me is
also a power. I am an empath, a powerful empath. As this part of me
matured, it is enabled me to read people's emotions, even the hidden
ones. Once I was sitting on a suburban train admiring a beautiful girl
my age in front of me. She was dozing, oblivious to my staring at her,
and I felt safe, for it is nothing unusual for a boy to admire a girl.
But my admiration was different.
I did not imagine having sex with her; I imagined being her. She was
slim; the tight jeans hugged her legs. Her small breasts under her
blouse moved a little with each breath. What is it like to be her? The
lipstick, the earrings, the long hair. The chest was rising and falling
with each breath. The girl seemed peaceful, but suddenly there was a
sense of tension as if she was afraid of something. The trouble with
her boyfriend? A difficult exam? I'll never know, but the feeling of
anxiety was real. I later learned that it is possible to "read" other
people's emotions by "feeling" them. Once the connection is
established, it is also possible to influence their feelings. And this
is a valuable skill when dealing with people. Developing this skill has
enabled me to finally find employment with some degree of efficiency
and satisfaction.
*** The Icon
When I stopped to smile, the shaman tilted his head to one side as if
listening to someone and then instructed me to find an icon of Our Lady
of Kazan and pray to her every day. It was difficult for me to imagine
how I should pray to an icon. The last time I tried to pray at all, I
was a teenager. I knelt on my knees and prayed to God with tears in my
eyes, asking him to forgive my sins and heal my "illness." There was no
answer, and I decided that there was no God or I did not deserve an
answer because I was a pervert. So I concentrated on trying to cure
myself through willpower and never prayed again.
"There is no contradiction with Christianity or other religious," the
shaman told me, seeing my confusion. "I can have a conversation with a
priest and with a Buddhist lama, and there is no conflict."
"And find who of your ancestors was a healer. Then it will all come to
you."
Back in Moscow, I checked the icon of Our Lady of Kazan. More out of
curiosity than expectation, I scrolled through the pictures of the
different versions of the icon. But one of them caught my attention.
The icon was made in the 19th century and was not canonical. The artist
took some liberties with the icon's design. The deep, dark eyes of the
Holy Mother looked at me without judgement but with acceptance and
love. The icon was also wounded and violated by someone who removed the
jewels and left scars on the surface. Closing the browser and trying to
think of something else did not work; I bought the icon the next day.
"You are wounded, but so I am. Please make me feel accepted and in
peace!" I was praying the very moment I was left alone with the icon.
There is something special about a man praying to a female image,
something humbling but with a high degree of acceptance.
Finding the icon and my emotional reaction to it can be nothing but a
coincidence. But anyway, I decided to learn a bit about shamanism.
*** Transgender Shamans, Transgender Gods
Shamanism has become a popular subject. There are tonnes of material
devoted to it. But a lot of it sounds completely fake to me. Some white
people in funny clothes are ranting about "connection to the earth
spirit" sorry, I am not impressed. I found that the most authentic
material was in publications written by anthropologists. It was in a
lecture by a female anthropologist that I first heard about this. The
male shamans of the Chukchi always dress in women's clothes during
their rituals. After their work is done, they can dress male again, but
some live full-time as women, have a husband and have foster children.
The explanation for wearing female clothes is that the male form is
transient. All souls are female, and one must be a woman to enter the
realm of the gods.
"What?!" I cried in amazement. I had never heard of transgenderism in a
religious context. But it only got more exciting from there. Shamans
were, and in some places still are, a crucial element in the lives of
tribes living far from civilisation. A shaman moves his consciousness
between the worlds, seeking help from spirits. Imagine an artic tribe
whose livelihood depends on the herd of reindeer. When a storm comes up
at night, and all the reindeer have disappeared, and all traces are
covered with snow, the shaman's job is to point in the right direction.
And it is the shaman's job to look after the sick, to act as a
counsellor and priest. And the shaman cannot afford to be wrong too
often with his advice because the tribe might think he is possessed by
an evil spirit and kill him. But what if there is no shaman? The old
shaman has died without preparing a successor. What can the tribe do
then? The Chukchi have an answer to this question. They choose a boy
and a girl, dress them one over the other and treat them as members of
the opposite sex. Then, when the boy and girl reach puberty, they will
be married and are expected to become a shaman couple.
Inuit people believe there is another sex between man and woman:
"When a man with a moustache is dressed like a woman, we are careful
not to make fun of him, as instructed by our elders. The elders would
say that such people were protected by the Maker of All. So to laugh at
him would bring a curse to the thoughtless ones. So when we see a man
dress like a woman, he is showing respect to his nature, and we are not
to laugh at him or hurt his feelings."
And there is an Inuit legend about a "strange man" who liked to dress
in a woman's clothes and didn't want to go hunting. He/she acts as a
mediator between gender roles and a mediator between peoples and god's
realm. He/she is capable of talking directly to Sila (the Great
Spirit), which is a shamanic gift. And special consideration for
transgender people is not confined to the Artic tribes, but is found
all over the world. Korean male shamans wore female clothing. In pre-
Islamic Indonesia, there were transgender shamans. The shamans in
Borneo wore female clothing after initiation. Some of them leave full
time as women and take a husband. Transgender shamans have also been
observed in North and South America. Shamanic transgenderism is usually
explained by the need to combine male and female elements. Another
explanation I have come across is that God is female, and the shaman
must be the one to have access to the highest of worlds. This reminds
me of Alan Watts" joke about an astronaut who replied: "Yes, she is
black" when asked if he saw God.
The theme of transgenderism is found not only in shamanism but
everywhere in the religious landscape, from the Egyptian gods
Shai/Shait and Hapi to the Greek Dionysios and from the Aztec
Tezcatlipoca to Baron Samedi in Haitian voodoo. However, the theme is
most prominently portrayed in Hinduism, where many deities change
gender or even combine both genders at the same time. Shiva himself is
often depicted as half male and half female. This form represents
"totality that lies beyond duality". And there is a version of the myth
in which Krishna takes female form. And there were lines of religious
practise that encouraged male devotees to "become women" by wearing
female clothing or/and inwardly visualising themselves as a woman. I
say "were" because, according to the authors I was reading, the
reformist movement in the 19th century classified these lineages as
"deviant" and "corrupted." As I understand it, now you have to travel
to some remote rural areas to find Bauls and Fakirs (unorthodox
Muslims) still practising traditions of religious transgenderism.
These lineages are based on tantric belief systems. Practitioners
reject any discrimination based on religion, caste or gender. The human
body is a reflection of the universe. The normal process of sexual
intercourse is seen as a process of fragmentation and descent. The aim
of the Baul couple is to perform a reverse process and impregnate the
male practitioner by absorbing the feminine secrets and drawing them
upwards in his body. The perfect male practitioners are said to be able
to replicate female conditions, become pregnant and produce milk. The
foetus is created without birth, which corresponds to the idea of the
creation of the "golden embryo" in Taoism. Bauls and fakirs in Bengali
say: "First become a woman and then unite with a woman."
There is an example of Bauls" religious song:
"The only lord (or husband) of the universe is Krishna and all the rest
is feminine. Being a woman worship the woman. Only then will you
receive protection from the gop? (cowgirl). If you do not act by taking
shelter in the role of the gop? then the worship of the guru is not
performed correctly."
***
You know that English is not my mother tongue? And although I enjoy
practising it, it's still not easy and takes a lot of time, especially
when I am trying to improve the quality of my writing. And yes, I know,
"a story must have an ending". That's my most frequently received
review; thank you very much. I know you hate being left hanging like
that. But there has to be some kind of energy exchange. I spend a lot
of time writing, and my only reward is that you reviewed it. So if you
would like to read the second part of this story, please let me know.
To be continued?
Annalisa
- 02.05.2022
- 19
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