Hi all
I just found this forum so am a bit late here...
I've been an animist for a year, before that was an atheist.
I've been freediving for 2 years. In early 2011 during a flesh hook suspension I had a vision that I was to spend time in the sea, then travel very far to a 'council of spirits' where I would represent the ocean spirits. The other members represent the other spirit communities: earth, air etc. I had the vision again the next day. Before that I had never experienced a vision in my life! A friend suggested that I should follow the vision, so I ended up on a sailing voyage, which ended with us nearly sinking and the crew preparing to die, at which point I told the ocean spirits that they are in control and that I'm ready to die but if they let me live I'll certainly help them out. Circumstances changed and we got safely to land.
Since then I've been training for freediving because I believe that is the way I am supposed to go speak to the spirits.
I've always had 'divine experiences' while freediving, you know, 'talking to god' or 'seeing the gods' whatever you want to call it.
So I guess you could say I freedive because my gods commanded me to.
Any comments/ideas on this would be greatly appreciated, it's all very new to me and I'm still trying to understand it and what to do next.
Thanks
Viv
I can't remind if any other forum member ever was pushed towards freediving after a flesh hook suspension (Podge maybe? Oh never mind)
But your story is very interesting, and very religious.
Corporal mortification and self inflicted pain as a form of penance, or a means to spring-up someone's spiritual essence and get in touch with the upper entities, is a marked feature in early Christianism. :duh
Not to mention that 33 old guy who ascended to the house of the father after getting floggered all over, pierced in his flesh and tied up. :blackeye
Then the part of your story about your
ex voto salvation from an ocean storm sounds like coming straight from the Lives of the Catholic Saints.
It clearly reminds, between many, a story about the three brother Saints Cantius, Cantianus and Cantianilla, proto-martyrs of Christianity who fell under the emperor Diocletian in the IV century.
Legend tells of a ship crew, caught in a hopeless storm, who appealed to the three brother saints and promised to spread their cult in exchange for a lifesaving celestial intervention. The crew made it safe to firm land, and established a town that's still devoted to the cult of Saint Cantius, Cantianus and Cantianilla.
Now Vivian I don't want to make it long, but If i were you i'd ask myself what the spirits expect from me to do exactly....