The Spiritual Uses of Illness: Disability as Power
⚡️✨🕸“The…disabled woman at Dolní Věstonice is mirrored by the man at Brno, who suffered from the bone disease periostitis, and also by…
⚡️✨🕸“The…disabled woman at Dolní Věstonice is mirrored by the man at Brno, who suffered from the bone disease periostitis, and also by other burials at this time, which contain individuals who were disabled in some way. If these people were singled out for special treatment (and, from their burials it is clear that they were), it was despite their terrible disabilities or perhaps even because of them. Shamans from more recent times are often disabled or are otherwise distinguished through an initiatory illness and it is possible that this attitude has roots that stretch back into the Paleolithic.” — Prehistoric Belief by Mike Williams
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I wept when I read this passage the other night, still suffering deeply from an inflammatory reaction as a result of my second COVID infection. I was progressively disabled by un/misdiagnosed chronic illness for over a decade, almost died, healed in late 2018, spent a year in excellent health only to catch COVID in April of 2020. My journey since then has been symptomatic, reactive and challenging. It is nonlinear, no two days the same, any relief is temporary. I heal, then have a rare allergic vaccine reaction that lasts for months. I heal, then am exposed to pathogens that inflame my COVID damaged lungs. I heal, then catch COVID. Again.
Telling a story of empowerment around these embodied experiences has been essential to my work, and this passage about disability as a corollary for power affirms what I have been feeling and thinking for a long time. When I went back to school — briefly, I had to quit again due to complications from my disability — I was dreaming on writing my dissertation on disability as a path of spiritual connection. My preliminary research suggests that ancient perspectives on disability were aligned in such a way. Here are a few more examples:
“The so-called shaman’s burial from the Upper Palaeolithic cave site of Hilazon Tachtit (Northern District, Israel), in the southern Levant, should also be mentioned. The grave was constructed and specifically arranged for an elderly disabled woman, who was accompanied by exceptional grave offerings. The grave goods comprised 50 complete tortoise shells and selected body parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot (Grosman et al. 2008).”
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“Moreover, although pathologies are not universally characteristic of shamans, there are numerous cross-cultural accounts of physically disabled individuals being ascribed healing and spiritual powers (26, 27).”
From the Mesolithic burial at Bad Dürenberg:
“The pathology of the cervical spine is said to be an indirect argument for the shamanic interpretation of the burial (Porr 2004, 292–293).”
In addition to archaeological evidence of physical manifestations I have also found documentation of illnesses, both mental and physical, as indicators of spiritual power.
This research is rough, done in accord with my own physical and mental health issues, the practices necessitated by my own disability journey.
I should note that all of the authors speak to the problem of the word shaman as an all-encompassing title for spiritual leadership.
And to clarify, I think that everyone is magic.
The social stories we carry about chronic illness and disability have deepened over the pandemic years. Friction rises at the edges when folks mention the “immunocompromised” or elderly, the vulnerable, when we talk about post-COVID or vaccine reactions.
And in my own journey, a return to hours in bed and endless doctor visits after a year of health freedom breaks and rebreaks my COVID dysregulated heart.
Chronic illness has at its center, in our culture, a litany of endless loss.
These ancient stories of disability as connected to spiritual power help make meaning of that loss.
By changing my story I am able to grieve in power, to hold at the heart of this struggle something connected. In my ancestral animist lineages there are sacred stories about we people of the wyrd, folk of difference, close to spirit, sacred and whole.
Disability has been my invitation to deepen and expand my magic, including these ancient ancestral relationships.
It has created an environment where I can’t pretend to be anything other than exactly what I am, which is, in itself, a gift.
By seeing illness as an initiatory process I have the opportnity to be empowered in these transformations instead of consumed by guilt, loss and grief. This is personal. But it is also universal.
Most of us will transition out of this life as the result of a chronic health condition.
At some point, should we live long enough, we will experience — even temporarily — the powerful initiation of physical disability.
What if we honor it?
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By this and every effort may the wyrd be repaired, may the ancestors be honored in our miraculous bodies, may the balance be regained.
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All book citations and quote references from Prehistoric Belief by Mike Williams
Living Ancestral Connection
Connect with your earth-based spiritual history through embodied ancestor work.wildsoulschool.teachable.com
Dark Goddess Coven Online Journey
When does the course start and finish? This self-study course begins on enrollment and is available for one calendar…wildsoulschool.teachable.com
Moon Divas Guidebook | Lara Vesta
This handwritten, illustrated book is an interactive toolkit for women/femme identifying folks in all phases of life…www.laravesta.co
Wild Soul Runes Book | Lara Vesta
"Anyone interested in European mythology will find Vesta's philosophy and method refreshing." --Publisher's Weekly…www.laravesta.co