Spirit and Matter as One: The Slaughtering of Sweets the Goat
The following is a personal story of an experience that I had about re-awakening the animistic nature of the earth. I have had many experiences that have re-awakened my connection to this world involving a variety of different modalities from dance, to sound, to active imagination, to meditation. There are many ways to cultivate the skills to engage the living cosmos. The follow experience I had recently, and I feel that it is an experience that brought me instantly into the animistic earth. I have been discovering that by just working with materials from the earth (such as bone, leather and fiber) and engaging the non-human world intimately, my way of perceiving transforms drastically from a disassociated way of being to an intimate relational reciprocity with the living earth.
The Experience
I was presented with the opportunity to be a part of the slaughtering of a goat buck in the Sonoma area while at a primitive skills gathering earlier this year. At first I came up with reasons why it was not the best time to be a part of something like this, but then I felt my body decide it was going to participate, even though I felt a rush of fear. I knew it would be an intense experience, and I did not know how involved I would be, but I walked over to the group. I had never killed an animal personally for its meat, even though I now occasionally eat it. I honor it when I’m about to eat the meat and thank it for its life so that we may live. But I never had killed the animal myself. I felt that that was an important experience to have, and was stuck by the strange reality that I was 28 and had still never directly killed an animal for meat that I would be eating.
We are in a wooded glen, a cleared space, and held by the trees in a canopy above our heads. It is cold, in the shade, and I can’t help but shiver. We are in a circle. Sage is passed around for cleansing, and the facilitators speak about Sweets’ life. Sweets is the goat that we will be killing shortly. He is a radiant and glowing, brown and soft goat, with fresh wild eyes. Sweets’ caretakers approached this process with reverence, intention and sacredness. We all go around the circle sharing why we are here and anything we need to express before the kill. We decide who is going to wield the fatal knife into the jugular of Sweets, and start the process of his death. We also decide who will hold Sweets down, for he will kick and fight to stay alive. I am one of those people who will hold him down. I know I need to do this, but the dread in my heart is strong, I hold fear and excitement that churn inside my gut. Life becomes suddenly very real and alive, as we approach death.
We prepared in sacredness for a long before the kill, deciding and digging the hole for where we will place the bowl to collect sweets blood from his throat once it is cut. People sing and touch Sweets, calming him and loving him.
But then it is happening. All of a sudden we are grabbing him, and holding him down on his side, trying to get his neck over the bowl- all of us clustered in. I feel confused, like time is happening too rapidly. Then I see and feel the knife go in deep, all the way through Sweets neck to the other side, and then it is pulled out severing his main arteries and esophagus. I first hear the wheezing of the lungs that now try desperately to get oxygen, and fight for life. Once the blade went in, the blood starts to quickly leave his body. I feel my cells bond to him through my touch on his leg, thigh and gut. His fur is rough, his body warm and dense. I feel my blood leaving, rushing, in an expansive, futile pushing to survive. Wait stop, go back, wait stop, go back… my body panics and pounds into my cells, I start to cry and shake, forgetting I am suppose to be holding Sweets down, for we are one and I am dying too, and it feels all too soon, all too much. Stop. But it is already over. It is too late. We just have to wait, and let our body slowly shut down, second by second. It takes an eternity. I think he is passing and then he starts fighting and writhing again underneath our gripe, as the tears stream down. Breathing is hard and shallow. People start singing, it is the only thing that gets me through, our voices unified, someone else’s hand holding my back, stay here with this, with us, we are together. Hours seem to pass. “When will this end? The rush and loss of the body’s form?” I feel the spirit twisting and writhing to hold onto the sinew bond that we had broken to this physical body. I am so light headed, as I am giving in to the end, to all this loss, water rolling down the river, it keeps rolling, my energy keeps streaming away, no turning back, no solid ground, we are leaving, all this leaving, trailing away, to never return.
Finally he is still, and does not move again. I remember to breathe, I can breathe. Am I breathing? And I notice my body is completely altered as we hold his body in our gaze, motionless, this part of the process over, a silent clearing remains… I am not sure where I am.
Intuitive, this next moment, I become aware of the group again. My energy is spread out all over this forested glen, into the branches, I have to urinate, I am cold, I need a sweater, but I can not leave this place, because this is where we died, where we were born. I cannot leave, this is home, and this is my prison. I am broken, but still here.
And now for the skinning- for we cannot be idol- but must process this gift.
I cannot move, I cannot cut, not yet, I must stand next to my new companion, moments ago a stranger, he was across from me on this journey, this man who held sweets down on his back side. We now know each other so intimately. I look at him and feel him, and it feels like were ancient lovers. We stand next to each other, and my body is reassured, it is alive, he is alive, our lungs are filling. I then stand up against, and in a tree, and lean against her trunk, feel her life force, she holds me and reminds me my body it is still alive, it can come back into itself.
This journey was as strong as any Ayahuasca journey I have been on. It is strong medicine, it is death, and it is complete connection with earth, her density and her form. The Bee Keeper, near by, I catch a waft of the sweet smell of warm bees wax. I wander over to him and steep in the sweet air honey, to balanced my heart, to find a lift, to remember I can breathe and find a light inside.
After this honey rich in my cells, I can skin, cut the bones and meat. Sweets turns into parts we will work with and consume and transform, we will use everything. It is an intense, hard and long process. It is very difficult to skin a goat-the skin does not give way easily to being peeled back from the muscle and fascia.
As we work, everything is alive, pulsing, glowing; I am still inside every moment and seeing, truly seeing what is with me. My senses are naturally, simultaneously perceiving everything around me. I am completely in the present moment. I finally feel that I may be able to eat, and can feel what food is alive and will sustain me, and feel what clothe would hold my skin. The synthetics I cannot get close to, I cannot put them next to my skin without cringing. Life is vibrant.
While Sweets was dying, and I was touching his warm body, heart beating and struggling, a part of me recognized the feeling of death and the blood leaving the body. I was using all of my senses and simultaneously, my imagination was engaged deepening the experience to more fully understand and process what was happening. This sensation of death through blood letting, I knew it some how from before and remembered, I am not sure from where. But it was in me, and my body knew it fully. As intense as Sweets death was, it was strangely familiar.
This death was an engagement with life, and the earthly form, and it connected me to the living animism of all things. The same connection occurs when I work with leather, and bone, and to a lesser extent fiber, wool and wood. These direct connections with the materials and beings of the earth, and how we can engage with them, creates a slower simpler pacing that allows for stronger perception of our connection to the living animism of our surroundings. It produces a visceral sensory experience of spirit in matter. In indigenous societies, individuals would need to engage the natural earth and work with their bodies to make things from her form. Just by this act alone, an immanent perception of the world is produced.
By touching and connecting with direct matter of earth in respectful ways, and being a part of the process entire of creation of a tool, item, or what we are ingesting, we connect with the earth. We no longer treat them as dead and a resource for our disposal, but ask and give in exchange for the living material we are working with and are working with us. Through this work it is clear that spirit is matter and matter is spirit, they are woven in with each other, here on this earth and through our bodies.