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Author Topic: Experiences with Genius Loci?  (Read 3475 times)

Hildeburh

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #15 on: March 28, 2017, 12:41:13 am »
Quote from: Nightwind;204181
Basically I'm wondering what other people's experiences are and how they interacted with the deity?

 
Genus loci have a powerful presence in Australia, they are an integral part of the Australian Aboriginal belief system. Travelling around this land its hard not to feel their presence in the landforms. To the Australian Aboriginals these are ancestral beings, responsible for creation, fertility, they even governs relationships between tribes, and kinship groups .

During our travels, we have been fortunate as we have had Aboriginal guides who have told us their stories, sung traditional songs, taught how to be safe in their land. We follow their advice by acknowledging the presence of these wights, we ask for their safe passage when swimming or bush walking and make small offerings. We are respectful when near their sacred sites, never take anything away from the site and don't physically touch the ancient rock art; as these actions they say can make you ill.

I treat the local land wight in the same manner, with respect and small offerrings. We did a long trip around Australia, whilst we were away we had house sitters who kept free range chickens in the yard, needless to say they destroyed the yard, killed many plants, decimated our population of water dragons and native geckos. The land wights anger was palpable, it took a good deal of gardening and respectful offering before the garden felt like a peaceful haven again.

I believe it punished me, as I started having episodes of sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations again, which settled down as we repaired the yard and the native flora and fauna regenerated.

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #16 on: March 28, 2017, 12:56:38 am »
Quote from: Hildeburh;204305
I believe it punished me, as I started having episodes of sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations again, which settled down as we repaired the yard and the native flora and fauna regenerated.

 
Seems a bit unfair to punish you when you weren't the one with the chickens, but what're you gonna do, eh?
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Nightwind

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #17 on: March 28, 2017, 02:05:13 am »
Quote from: Altair;204287
That makes so much sense, considering everything*, that I wonder why it never occurred to me before. (Probably because Verdanus feels so specific to the four corners of my garden--a true genius locus--that my thoughts never made that leap.

 

Very similar feeling here, that the title I've given Her is just accepted since I need something to call Her and she's accepted it. She's the Dark Mother of the Roots and Thorns because the hill directly behind my place is covered in blackberries. I ended up drawing a picture of her today and I feel... really good. Like I did something good if that makes sense?

Hildeburh

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #18 on: March 28, 2017, 06:34:45 am »
Quote from: Jack;204306
Seems a bit unfair to punish you when you weren't the one with the chickens, but what're you gonna do, eh?

 
Exactly, they can be random.

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #19 on: March 28, 2017, 08:25:20 am »
Quote from: Nightwind;204181


Basically I'm wondering what other people's experiences are and how they interacted with the deity?

 
Old Europe is known for its local deities. I know of a few from around my area. One that is linked mostly to me is Rura. Not much is known of her apart from an altarstone found in the Maas or Meuse (a major european river nearby) on which a Roman soldier gave thanks to her.
Rura gave her name to a tributary of the Meuse, the Roer, and through that gave her name to the town Roermond, meaning mouth of the Roer as the city is located where the Roer flows into the Meuse. The Roer flows from the city I work to the town I live. The fields behind my house were historically the overflow of the river at high water.
At the city archives where I work there is an 18th century depiction of her and mother Meuse above the fireplace which I love.

I have never worked with her. Maybe I should as she links my work to my home.
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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #20 on: March 28, 2017, 01:43:07 pm »
Quote from: Vixen;204323
Old Europe is known for its local deities. I know of a few from around my area. One that is linked mostly to me is Rura. Not much is known of her apart from an altarstone found in the Maas or Meuse (a major european river nearby) on which a Roman soldier gave thanks to her.
Rura gave her name to a tributary of the Meuse, the Roer, and through that gave her name to the town Roermond, meaning mouth of the Roer as the city is located where the Roer flows into the Meuse. The Roer flows from the city I work to the town I live. The fields behind my house were historically the overflow of the river at high water.
At the city archives where I work there is an 18th century depiction of her and mother Meuse above the fireplace which I love.

I have never worked with her. Maybe I should as she links my work to my home.
Ohh, that's really neat. As someone who works with the rivers and creeks in his backyard, I highly recommend trying it.

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #21 on: March 29, 2017, 08:35:58 am »
Quote from: Altair;204287
That makes so much sense, considering everything*, that I wonder why it never occurred to me before. (Probably because Verdanus feels so specific to the four corners of my garden--a true genius locus--that my thoughts never made that leap.)

*Fun facts: My neighborhood, Manhattan's East Village, is well-known for being studded with little pocket gardens on nearly every block (mine has two); it's one of the things I've always loved about being here (and in fact, when a former mayor threatened to destroy them all in the name of "progress," Bette Midler swooped in with a charitable trust that protected quite a few of them.)


Perhaps Verdanus is so site-specific precisely because your garden is so recent, in the same way that a doorway limits access to the other side of a wall in a place where, until recently, there was no wall at all. Please permit me to ramble:

I served for three years aboard the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63). I know that ship, especially the engineering spaces, intimately. Even today, thirty years later, I believe that you could drop me at random at any location below decks and I could find my way directly to any engineering space and place my hand on any major piece of equipment you name, and even many of the individual valves. As long as you outlined hatchways and ladderways with luminescent tape so that I didn't break my neck, I honestly believe that I could do this with the lights off in the pitch dark.

In the years since I left, I have had several dreams about that ship. But those dreams have not been anything like precise. I remember one which was like walking through a very long, narrow shopping mall (we did have three "ship's stores" aboard for the crew, if you include the "gedunk" snack bar, plus vending machines and a library). Everything was only very vaguely defined, and made little logical sense, but I knew that it was supposed to be my ship.

I have elsewhere mentioned my belief that reality is taking shape in "layers", and that those layers are only very loosely related to chronological time. I think my God is telling me that this dream is how he saw my ship, and by extension much of the rest of our world, at the point in "the process" when he was starting to really track in on me. It is only very recently (and may still be in the future, chronologically) that the actual details began to become clear.

Dreams are notorious for being amorphous and changing. One particular vista which seems appealing may, only "seconds" (does time really flow that way in dreams?) later be tantalizingly but ever after out of reach. Perhaps one of the features which draws spiritual entities to our physical world is its permanence.

Consider your Verdanus from the standpoint of a spirit who has found this world as an island of stability in the maelstrom. He latches on to one particular locale, becomes familiar with it, and grows to love it. His focus is mainly on the green and growing things, but he is versatile enough to establish relationships and work with those transient creatures known as "humans". Suddenly, in the blink of an eye (comparatively speaking), everything he knows is "developed". The green disappears; buildings rise left and right with no design or plan (that he can fathom), coming and going much faster than the individual trees he knew. He's on the verge of losing contact completely...when an island of green erupts in the area he knows and loves. Is it any wonder that he might choose to attach to it, tiny and precisely limited as it is?

In my own system of belief there are multiple predictions that the form of this world is to pass away and will no longer come to mind; Revelation 21:4 is perhaps the best known. In my best estimation this was to happen through a "split"; my God would take those personages who chose to follow him and fashion an entirely new realm and new reality while this present reality would be left to go its own way without hindrance and a barrier thrown up to block access between the old and the new. To those in the new reality, this present world would seem no more real or memorable than a dream. The people you knew from this world? Forgotten, unless they came along into the new; relationships and families would be restructured so that the "holes" would no longer be visible...crotchety Aunt Bertha would become an unperson.

Frankly, that sounds horrifying to me. But, at least in earlier stages of the process, they saw connecting with all of the people out there...remember, we're just one planet in just one universe in just one three-dimensional reality...as an unreachable goal. And, from what they could see of our world (remember, no detail), it seemed like no great shakes compared to what they had in heaven. But at some point in the process...probably, in my mind, when a young Jesus was learning to use a chisel on a piece of wood...they really did break through, all the way, and see this world in detail. And they began to think, "Y'know, they really do have something here...."
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Something

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #22 on: March 29, 2017, 04:08:06 pm »
Quote from: Nightwind;204181
Has anyone had experiences or a relationship with a deity who is specific to one particular area? Maybe one that doesn't have a name anyone knows or remembers or something like that?

There's a Goddess of the mountains around my house and she's become more 'awake/aware/powerful' or something lately. I really don't know how to explain or describe it.

I've made offerings to her and had some experiences tonight especially - actually tonight has been extremely active and I'm not the only one who experienced it. The veil feels really thin around here right now.

Basically I'm wondering what other people's experiences are and how they interacted with the deity?

 
If you are taking about the norse jotun deity Loki then be very very wary and well protected by negative energy, if you must work with this being use as much protection as possible and use plenty of obsidian, but the spelling is different so it might be a different being altogether...

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #23 on: March 29, 2017, 06:51:27 pm »
Quote from: Something;204393
If you are taking about the norse jotun deity Loki then be very very wary and well protected by negative energy, if you must work with this being use as much protection as possible and use plenty of obsidian, but the spelling is different so it might be a different being altogether...

 
Genius loci is not the same as the Norse Loki. Genius loci is a term for a being (some people see them as deities, some as spirits or other kinds of being) associated with a particular location, especially as a protective spirit of a location.

The original use of the term was from ancient Rome, and focused on protective spirits, but it's used a bit more broadly these days.

In general, if you aren't sure (even in a thread with a reasonable number of posts in it) what something is, someone is likely going to be glad to help explain. Magic and religious topics - as I'm sure people know! - have a lot of unusual terms, names, and concepts, and it can definitely be confusing if you come across one you haven't met before.
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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #24 on: March 29, 2017, 11:57:46 pm »
Quote from: ehbowen;204381
Perhaps Verdanus is so site-specific precisely because your garden is so recent, in the same way that a doorway limits access to the other side of a wall in a place where, until recently, there was no wall at all. Please permit me to ramble:

 
Intriguing. I'm going to have to re-read that a couple of times and ponder it.
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The last song echoes through the ages / to ask its question all night long / And close the circle on these pages / These, the metamythos songs

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #25 on: March 30, 2017, 12:06:29 am »
Quote from: Hildeburh;204305
Genus loci have a powerful presence in Australia


I'll say! When I visited Australia back in '96, I had the good fortune/good sense to visit Uluru--not quite the same as genius loci, but since every nook and cranny of that giant monolith has a myth and deity attached, there's definitely an attachment of the divine to a very particular physical space.
The first song sets the wheel in motion / The second is a song of love / The third song tells of Her devotion / The fourth cries joy from the sky above
The fifth song binds our fate to silence / and bids us live each moment well / The sixth unleashes rage and violence / The seventh song has truth to tell
The last song echoes through the ages / to ask its question all night long / And close the circle on these pages / These, the metamythos songs

Something

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #26 on: March 30, 2017, 02:57:00 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;204398
Genius loci is not the same as the Norse Loki. Genius loci is a term for a being (some people see them as deities, some as spirits or other kinds of being) associated with a particular location, especially as a protective spirit of a location.

The original use of the term was from ancient Rome, and focused on protective spirits, but it's used a bit more broadly these days.

In general, if you aren't sure (even in a thread with a reasonable number of posts in it) what something is, someone is likely going to be glad to help explain. Magic and religious topics - as I'm sure people know! - have a lot of unusual terms, names, and concepts, and it can definitely be confusing if you come across one you haven't met before.

 
Thanks for that information wasn't quite sure as I have never heard of this entity or spirit called loci but had to warn just on the off chance it was a spelling mistake..

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #27 on: March 30, 2017, 03:48:15 pm »
Quote from: Something;204427
Thanks for that information wasn't quite sure as I have never heard of this entity or spirit called loci but had to warn just on the off chance it was a spelling mistake..

 
"Genius loci", not "loci".  "Loci" just means "of the place".
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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #28 on: March 30, 2017, 11:57:10 pm »
Quote from: Something;204427
Thanks for that information wasn't quite sure as I have never heard of this entity or spirit called loci but had to warn just on the off chance it was a spelling mistake..

 
Why do you feel as though you have to warn people about Loki? All my interactions with him have been relatively friendly, so I must admit I'm a little confused.
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Something

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Re: Experiences with Genius Loci?
« Reply #29 on: March 31, 2017, 05:22:58 pm »
Quote from: HarpingHawke;204459
Why do you feel as though you have to warn people about Loki? All my interactions with him have been relatively friendly, so I must admit I'm a little confused.

 
That doesn't suprise me if you have only had friendly dealings with him, but if you do some research you will find that any who have spent any real time with him in their lives always suggest strong protection against negative influences and in some cases even working with a second deity in case things get out of hand... If you have these things in place then there shouldn't be any issues..
But it certainly suprises me that someone would have to ask why Loki should be worked with cautiously as even his most devoted followers use caution....Iam glad that you have enjoyed your interactions with him thus far..
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