This is part 1 of a series of write-ups I’m doing to explain my spirituality, and where I am.  Additional documents will likely follow as I update them. Check “About..Spiritually Speaking” on my website for additional articles as they are written.

Recently, I found myself in the situation of having to explain to somebody I haven’t talked to in.. well, over 15 years.. the whole angelic thing  Partially as a way of explaining it to this friend (who will likely be the first person to read it), I figured it was a worthwhile thing for me to finally sit down and write a short document about the whole thing.

I view myself as being something other than human, spiritually.  While I’m not 100% comfortable with the dogma the word carries (more on that in a bit), I identify this non-human “soul” as an angel.

History

So, when I was a teenager, I always felt the presence of something, a “guardian” of sorts, who watched over me and “protected” me.  I had a number of strange experiences when I was a tweener that lead to this.. visions, voices, and other just plain weird shit.  This “guardian” was female, and many times manifested as a blue-ish sword.

As I matured into an adult, and started exploring my own spirituality, I wandered through a number of spiritual paths, eventually finding myself being intiated into a Wiccan coven.  This particular coven gives you a spiritual name that is divined using a couple of techniques, and the name they stuck with me contained “Angelchild” as part of the name.

I didn’t know it at the time (and it wasn’t revealed to me until I attained my second Degree some years later) that the reason I was stuck with this name was because two of the elders in the group saw me as having these very pronounced wings, just like the stereotypical Christian image of an angel.

As I started down a number of magickal pathworkings, I started to discover that the “guardian” seemed strongly tied to me in ways that didn’t seem quite correct.  When I was sick, her signature changed.  When I was energetically low, she was “depressed” as well.

The most disturbing thing of all is I was presented with a series of dreams that had her dancing around me, and also attempting to bring me into the dance with her.  I didn’t understand these dreams, but the more I tried to communicate with her the stronger the dreams became.

Around 1998, as a result of trying to track down my biological parents, I stumbled across some Native Americans who knew my bio-mom when she was living on the reservation.  They shared with me a lot of local tribal lore and tradition, and I learned some of this and began feeding it back into my magickal workings.  One of the things I learned was a couple of Southwestern tribal dances that (while not part of my tribe’s traidions) seemed to speak to me.

Meanwhile, part of me was feeling empty.  I was desperately trying to work through some of these feelings, when somebody suggested I do a “spirit quest” and set me up to meet a shaman friend of theirs in central California, not far from Bakersfield (where I was living at the time)

The Descent into Madness

I met with the shaman, and we talked a lot.  I shared with him the “guardian” and a lot of my experiences as a teenager and young adult, and he did the thing that most shamen do: he quietly listened.  He then guided me through a couple of brief vision quests, gave me a comfortable place to sleep the night, and suggested we talk more in the morning.

In the morning, over a breakfast of some fantastic bacon and frybread, the conversation drifted back into the spiritual, and the feeling of emptiness.  At some point in the morning, he suggested that perhaps I needed a fresh perspective.. and suggested that I do peyote.

Understand at that point in my life, I hadn’t even so much as smoked a cigarette, let alone done pot or anything else.  I had dropped acid once as a young adult, but the experience was not exactly pleasant, and I didn’t have any reason to follow in those footsteps.  However, in this environment, with somebody I trusted, it actually seemed like a “good idea.”

Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea.

I wasn’t ready for what I saw in that experience.  I saw myself standing across the room, and started talking to “myself”.  At first, the conversation was goofy small-talk.  After a few minutes of that, the “other” me said, “why won’t you dance?”

“What?  I don’t understand,” I weakly replied.

The room we were in was plainly furnished, and there wasn’t much in there (intentionally, after all the last thing you want on a peyote trip is lots of distractions).  There was a small mirror in the room, and right about now I noticed the mirror, and my image in it.

At this point, I saw.. her in the mirror.  Where I was standing, with the “other” me across the room.

“I’m sick, we’re not whole,” the ‘other’ said.

I stood there, looking in the image in the small mirror.  I felt the wings on my back.  I felt muscles, bones, cartilage, tendons.. even individual feathers in the wings.  My head hurt a bit, what I now know was my “halo” on top of my head.  I was confused, and I hurt all over.

The ‘other’ started to dance around me.  As he did, I felt very afraid, and just said “no, not now, I’m not ready.”  He stopped, walked up behind me, embraced me from behind (being very careful of my wings in a way that was quite conscious of their presence) and whispered in my ear with the “guardian’s” voice, “I understand.  In your time.”  I then collapsed.

I awoke, apparently some considerable time later (it was evening, and we had started in the late-morning), to my host offering me a cup of tea and a simple hug.  I had apparently just spent the last 45 minutes quitely crying.

The shaman said to me, “both of you are in pain and you need to heal.  Grow in strength, and you’ll be ready.”  He later revealed to me he didn’t understand what he was saying (to use his words, “it was what Bear told me to say”), but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

The Dance

Fast-forward a few months.  The dreams continued, however unlike in the past they had a certain “clarity.”  I was being shown exactly what to do in this “dance” through the dreams, and I understood that.  I tried to remember in the morning.. some days i would, some days I wouldn’t.  That wasn’t important, though, as I was realizing that it wasn’t any particular series of steps I needed to learn.  It was intent that mattered.

The day I decided to go through with it, it was almost anti-climatic.  I was driving in the Central Valley outside Fresno when the full implications of not only the dance but the events of that peyote trip.. and of two decades of my life.. caught up with me.  I simply pulled over along side California State Route 43, powered off the vehicle, took a swig of water and closed my eyes.

“I am strong.  I am whole.  I am one.”

The Path Forward

Since that day, a lot has been clearer to me.  It hasn’t been easy.  Since that day, I’ve had to reconcile a lot of memories and redefine events of my life in the context of myself not only as a human being, but as an angel.  Obviously, one of these issues is the reconciliation of life in a physical body quite different than my spiritual one.

I’m not walking this planet with wings and a halo.  Worse, the angel is feminine (and that is a whole book’s worth of ‘splaining to do, Lucy) and I’m most certainly male.

I understand that, at least psychologically, I’ve gone through a transformative experience similar to (if not exactly like) what a multiple personality sufferer goes through when their personalities merge through drugs, therapy, or trauma.  I’ve changed as a result of it, that’s for sure.

I now catch myself walking sideways through narrow doors when I’m not thinking about it (so my wings will fit through).  My halo sometimes makes itself known, not only to myself but other spiritually-sensitive persons in my presence.

That’s the brief story.