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Monday, October 8, 2007

DOR DAY!





In honor of A(lfred) Irving Hallowell
(source)
Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al.



October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask?

A day of respect, or DOR DAY!
OK... so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice... I guess it depends on you!
But here is the idea...
Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too...
by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens.
It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc... but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were!
This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones...deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place... its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect... communication, acknowledgment, and celebration!
Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well... hmmm....), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists.

Have a Happy DOR DAY!
Thanks Irving for opening a Door...