When I am working with students I am often able to spot those with potential, for they draw strength to make changes in their lives without necessarily drawing attention to themselves. Failure is neither frowned upon nor feared, and is seen not as the end of the world but as a necessary stepping-stone along life’s path. Perhaps learning how to fall down and get up again is one of the marks of the true gypsy Chovihano and how he can inspire. He will never mind falling down and looking the fool himself! In fact he may often be the first to do it! Of course it hurts and he is as hurt as anybody else, but he also learns to take all problems light-heartedly without holding them too sacred to deal with.
Here we come back to the real meaning of sacrifice, or the art of letting go, for few of us are prepared to sacrifice the many ideas, thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves and the rest of the world. The true Chovihano learns to understand the need to accept that one is hurt, but also the need to let go of what we don’t need.
One of the biggest blocks on the indigenous shaman’s path seems to come when a student believes that he or she is eligible to take the place of the shaman. Some who set themselves up as shamans in order to train others may not always have taken enough time to study the craft in any detail and may therefore begin healing or advising others a little too soon in their education. I used to believe, many years ago, that some could be trained in the craft of the Chovihano, but now I know that this is not possible. What people can do, however, is to learn as much as they can and be honest and up front with the way they support indigenous shamanism. Support it; don’t exploit it for your own ends!
When I lived in Germany I began training a group of people in Otherworld education, many of whom had excellent ability to perceive the Otherworld and who desired to learn in an honest way. Running this group proved to be an interesting exercise, as most of the members were German and Dutch and could not speak English, so the odd evening would arise when we only had one Englishwoman attending who was able to interpret what was going on! When I returned to England I had to leave the group behind. The members decided to carry on alone and although I gave them guidelines on how to conduct Otherworld travels and work with their ancestors and spirit guardians themselves, one English lady in the group rose up above the others and believed she was now ready to take over as their adviser. She had already been practising healing, and over several days just after my leaving, she made predictions that during their next meeting the telephone would ring at 8 o’clock and it would be a message for them all from someone very special - me!
Of course this didn’t happen - because I knew absolutely nothing about it. The meeting began and the group sat watching the telephone. First 8 o’clock came, then 9 o’clock, and there was no telephone call from that person whose message they were all waiting so eagerly to hear.
Because this young lady felt so foolish about her prediction not coming to pass, she chose never to speak to me again and whenever I saw her in London afterwards, she turned her nose in the air and began visiting many healers for help on the grounds that a gypsy had misled her and had introduced her to the ‘black’ side of his craft and she now had many health problems as a result!
This is one of the first, and often most painful, lessons for would-be seers and healers: confidently voicing a prediction, which doesn’t come true! When people first go on to the shamanic path they are very much the same: full of excitement and often boosted with a new confidence to succeed, and moreover, to shine, and this can make everything seem all too rosy when they are learning about their own visionary and healing abilities. With a need to produce something astonishing to impress people, especially their teachers, and to be loved, the pain that results from this very necessary kind of experience is rarely seen as part of apprenticeship, into life, and instead becomes a clear sign to the individual that the role and path of the medicine man is not to be trusted - and the medicine man who is a teacher is to be trusted even less! The whole experience can become an embarrassing memory, which the individual, who has neglected to learn the first lesson of life, would rather forget.
Needless to add, it is the person who asks questions, who studies the imagination as a science and who uses that tool of self-discovery who achieves success. The ego takes a battering at a time like this, which it is meant to, and that is why it is always important to have a good teacher, one who will not only encourage the learning of the mechanics of Otherworld science and indigenous shamanism, but who will also support the individual all the way through his or her experience. Then, any skills and abilities will be recognised and more importantly developed in the proper age-old way. Often, the person who overcomes a hurdle of this kind can become an excellent seer, with a good deal more balance and insight, so if you want to learn about magical crafts, you might as well do it well.
A sacrifice of pride is certainly one of the most fundamental lessons for us all at the beginning of this kind of journey. If you are loyal to your craft, you must learn how to sacrifice some of the habits, beliefs and expectations you have, which may not serve a purpose to what you are learning to do. It is useful to think about the true meaning of sacrifice, on its many levels, for you’ll be bound to come across it in your life at some time or another.
Not everyone, of course, has an experience like mine with the young lady. The apprentice of life moves along his or her path in many different ways and lessons will come in many forms. Nowadays it can, unfortunately, be common to accuse a gypsy of being a bad influence. In earlier days it was very much the reverse; it was considered lucky to meet a gypsy along the road, but it was even luckier if a Chovihano crossed your path, whether you were a gypsy or gaujo. You might benefit by spitting three times on your hand to seal the luck as you passed this revered medicine man!
The gypsies’ associations with the ‘black arts’, as we might understand them today, are still quite new to me. I usually find myself having to confess to pupils that I don’t actually have the foggiest idea what ‘black magic’ is! This is because, for my own people, the elements of ‘black and white’, in magic, were unknown. Gypsies have, of course, long been labelled as sorcerers and Chovihanos have often described themselves as such. To the Romanies there might be good and bad sorcerers in the sense that an individual considered to be a sorcerer will try to manipulate a situation for selfish purposes, and he or she will either do this well or badly! In our modern times this word has been greatly misinterpreted, although it has always, in my view, been used to manipulate people. I will illustrate its differences in ancient and modern times in a future chapter.
Similarly, the idea of the gypsy curse can bring mixed reactions - not to mention shivers down the spine - to people today. Some are sceptical and laugh at the curse, believing it has no power whatsoever, while others still fear it quite strongly. In either case, the power of the curse is something they feel they don’t understand, but if I describe the act of cursing as a healthy means of saying ‘no’, many people see it in a surprising new light.
I have laid curses in my adult life, and as a child I watched Jack Lee and my grandmother laying curses. When growing up it was normal for me to think of returning malevolent forces to their original homes - it was normal to say no to them! But I cannot say that any member of my family ever used the craft simply to impose their own will upon another person or to create negativity simply for the sake of it. A people who live by borrowing all things on Earth are hardly likely to make an exception to this very sacred rule.
The mechanics of the curse are therefore important for an apprentice to understand. When broken down, the curse is actually instrumental in helping to lift us out of the numbing inertia we may have fallen into in our personal lives. Here we are vulnerable and in danger of becoming the victim in somebody else’s game, and we cannot always summon the energy to use our wits and senses to help ourselves, so we will need the help of the Chovihano to put things right for us.
When a curse is being laid we’re being given permission to reject certai
n things if we wish to and to make choices. On a lighter note we might say that today the curse would meet with approval from agony aunts and psychologists alike who are constantly telling us that it can be, after all, appropriate to say no!
Of course, when laying a curse, many are concerned for the aggressor. Does a curse mean that that person will be damned forever more? If so, isn’t this somewhat unkind? Two wrongs might not necessarily make a right. These questions are asked frequently.
First, there is no way that a curse can damn someone forever. The Romani Chovihano will need to listen to the story the victim has to tell, with discernment, in order to judge whether he thinks a curse will ultimately help the aggressor to understand the crime he or she has committed. When we are cursing we are not simply talking about ‘tit for tat’, which is probably how the majority of people view this ancient practice. For the Chovihano, the curse is introducing karmic retribution at an extremely high level, which means that it will cause events to turn into a learning/healing process for the aggressor, inviting challenges to enter his or her life, which will cause him or her to ‘think again’. The Chovihano who is a master of his craft is something of a spiritual interior designer, if he works at this process in the highest way. For at that more detailed level he is designing life experience for those who need to understand what living on Grandmother Earth is all about. And at the end of it all, the aggressor is likely to become the victim only if the experience has not succeeded in altering his or her path.
So ‘cursing’ and ‘sorcery’, both grossly misunderstood aspects of the Chovihano’s world, are, in their original forms, very different from what we might expect them to be. There is no doubt that with both, we may be able to witness a significant method of healing being unfairly ‘Satanized’.
An important question can arise for many on life’s magical path: when is an unpleasant experience the result of personal testing on the part of nature, and when is it personally induced? We always want to believe that we are under the influence of the first, that nature herself is testing us because we are already fit to walk a magical, healing or shamanic path. Nine times out of ten I have found this to be true. We feel we are somehow already equipped to work as ancient tribal shamans of old might work, when we’ve no idea what their psychology is all about and we really have substantially different personalities which themselves don’t attract nature’s tests. Personally-induced unpleasant experiences are, in fact, extremely common in human beings today. Some may call this misfortune or bad luck. I call it karma.
Karma in old Romani gypsy society can occur when we have repeated experiences, which tire or trouble us in some way. ‘This is always happening to me,’ is a common statement from many people, or, ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ A ‘karmic reaction’ to things can be caused by any number of reasons, mainly not learning the valuable lesson of ‘letting go’, which few people actually understand.
Over the years I have advised students to ‘let go’ of old habits, like the habit most can have of saying ‘yes’ when they mean to say ‘no’, repeatedly getting into quarrels or not having the courage to tell someone you don’t like the way they treat you, only to find that most people don’t have a clue what I am talking about.
‘It’s all right for you. You can do this easily,’ many have said to me.
‘Can I do it easily?’ I reply. ‘Is it really all right for me?’
Changing patterns of behaviour aren’t easy for anyone and I have my own difficulties with these, but if we discuss them with a view to going home and taking some action we might reap the benefits of using a little courage to change what we find difficult. This is what I call a ‘karmic reaction’, and this is also what I call ‘letting go’ of a karmic reaction, so that you don’t have it in your life any more. It is easier than we think to change things, and let them go, harder to hang on to them and remain the same, for hanging on and not changing things heralds a karmic reaction that could last for a very long time, perhaps your whole lifetime, and beyond.
This is another reason why the Chovihano must be strong and very skilled at his craft; he must understand the mechanics of human nature and a student’s psychology - in fact, the psychology of the human race - without bringing any of his own troubled psychology into the picture. He is obliged to develop great insight, so that he sees things as accurately as possible. He will therefore need to be tested far more than the average person, usually by a great many spirits, shadows and experience. Some spirits, not necessarily bad, may deliberately mislead him to see whether they can catch him out, while others will be more direct with their lessons, but all nature spirits have the Chovihano’s interests at heart and these will invariably be the ones who are teaching him. Only if he strays from his path or starts to expect too much too soon will he be tested in perhaps a more firm fashion, because then it will be justified.
The Water Spirit, Pani, and the Air Spirit, Bavol, are two very strong spirits in Romani lore and they can be both supportive and devious with those they choose to put on trial. The Fire and Earth spirits also test us, but these are more often than not direct with their lessons and are therefore somewhat easier to work with. All gypsies in earlier times went in fear of Pani and Bavol, and often gave offerings to them to appease them.
Bavol reigns over matters of communication and how we choose to fight the personal battles we have, whilst Pani reigns over our emotions and how we choose to express ourselves. These two great spirits govern major events in our lives today where battles are likely to occur and where our feelings are likely to be stirred or hurt. My own relationship with these two spirits has been a challenge indeed, but as a Chovihano I have worked very hard on developing a rapport with them and they have graciously shown me much of what they’re about, in their classic devious way, teaching us never to repeat the same mistakes twice!
When I first began practising work with the Otherworld my biggest tests came courtesy of Pani and Bavol, who made sure I started walking a path where I was deprived of friends and money. These tests have recurred at various intervals throughout my life, bringing me to the edge of poverty on more than one occasion, and starving me of the affection of closer relationships. I experienced homelessness and also the death of someone close to me, at a time when there was very little support from my family. These were very difficult experiences to live through and tested my limits to the extreme.
In earlier days there were many occasions when I slept rough and wondered what would become of me. I remember lying on Brighton beach on a summer evening, watching the stars and feeling very alone, wondering why I didn’t just walk into the sea and get it all over with. I saw no purpose in being alive in such difficult times as we were living through in the world, and certainly no purpose in learning the ways of the Chovihano, because there was no need for such a role anywhere in society. My culture and traditions were, after all, completely out of rhythm with the modern world. It sometimes felt as if I had stepped from AD 1000 into the twenty-first century in one giant leap! But although it was hard making social adjustments, because of being separated from gaujo society as a child, my earlier training had also equipped me to become a survivor in a gaujo world, and the more time passed, the more I was able to realize that I was in fact surviving amazingly well, which I think, in retrospect, is because I had learned how not to take gaujo rules to heart. I didn’t believe in the world that was going on around me day and night. It seemed somehow fictitious - or perhaps I was fictitious! Deep down, I was still with my people, in earlier times where earliest traditions prevailed, still in a place which no one really talked about in gaujo society, a world that didn’t seem to exist for anyone else, somehow wedged between this physical world and the Otherworld. Whatever world it was that I occupied at that time, it certainly kept me alive during that very difficult period in my life.
Bavol and Pani, I knew, were behind these lonely times, testing me and reassuring me, sometimes over and over again to the point where I thought I could take n
o more. It is strange how much we can be tested and how much we believe we can’t take, and although I suffered a breakdown in my earlier life, with no one to care for me at the time due to my immediate family disowning me, I was forced to pull myself out of a desperate situation, completely alone.
I remember lying on a park bench, shaking, calling out to my long-dead boro dad to help me. Tears rolled down my face and I felt that this was the end. There was no more I could do to put things right in my life and there was certainly no more that I could take. I thought at the time that I would just lie on that park bench and keep lying there until I died. Who would care anyway? They would just pick up this useless body and carry it away, and there would be an end of it all.
I lay there curled up in a tight ball on the bench for what seemed like an age. I was cold and tired, but managed to slip off into a sleep, which produced a strange dream in which I was walking through a nearby wood, crying, ‘Help me! Please help me!’ But as soon as these words had been spoken, everything around me seemed to change.
As I stood in the wood a wind blew across my face, tousling my hair and stirring the tree-tops above, a strange, briefly forceful wind that seemed to come out of nowhere. I knew it was Bavol, the Air Spirit, and therefore also the Spirit of the Wind, and that he had a message for me. I stood still and soon an eerie stillness had come over the wood. Then a man appeared, walking towards me. Although I wasn’t within range to hear what he was saying, I could hear the words that he was speaking, as he said, with an equal amount of affection and impatience, ‘We thought you’d never bloody say those words! We’ve been waiting for you to ask for our help for so long. Why did you believe that you could get better all by yourself? Don’t you realize that it is sometimes as noble to ask for help as it is to help others?’
Bavol was speaking all the time as he walked towards me, coming closer and closer, until I was able to see him more clearly. For a fleeting moment I seemed to be looking at Jack Lee. But it was then that I realized that it was, in fact, my beloved ancestor, using the guise of Jack Lee to reach me. He had brought the Spirit of the Wind with him. He was carrying daffodils. ‘When the daffodils come,’ he told me, simply, ‘you’ll be better.’
We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture Page 20