Complicated Offerings

I would like to preface this with, I love my mother. I am grateful for the gift of life that she gave me, that she ushered this body to the best of her ability from conception to mid-teens, even though many of the details were’t ideal. For the specifics of this piece, I have/had a complicated relationship with tobacco. I basically grew up in an ashtray, my mother a chainsmoker. Cheap menthols burned like incense every minute of the day she was home. She worked entirely too hard and found solace in the things, but to me, they were a source of anger. I hated the smell. (Still do.) I saw from a very early age what a financial drain they were to her and therefore the family.

The first day of kindergarten, my items were tossed from the locker and onto the floor because my locker mate couldn’t stand how they smelled. That happened again in almost every grade through elementary. I would’t mind forgetting standing there in the hallway of Anchor Bay Elementary School, a fourth grade student, experiencing my stuff strewn across the hallway floor, left to be stomped on and kicked around again, and the subsequent hurt and helpless feelings. (This is very much a feelings thing.) Feeling lost, I tried cigarettes to see what the hell the appeal was, and in short order verified my disgust. I and my brother tried in vain to get our mother to quit so so many times. Because I regularly smelled strongly of this odor, my paternal extended family thought that even though I was a small child, I too was a smoker (of which I was NOT except for that briefest of experiments). My little kid brain put meaning together as tobacco as the source of my shame and not belonging, my mother the agent of delivery. I was angry, embarrassed, and had no say in the matter. I just had to keep showing up everywhere in the cloud of stink, shame of poverty (cigarettes burned our household income), shame of not belonging (school, family), shame of powerlessness (I cannot control my mother’s choices). That is an awful lot of feelings and baggage to bring to the single entity of tobacco, but there it is. Social rejection is the ultimate ick.

Anyone who has began down the road of developing relationships with anything knows that gifting, or bringing offerings to the person, place, pet or Spirit that you want to connect to is a great way to start. You want to try at friendship with someone? You offer them the brave action of a hello. You get invited to a dinner party? You bring a nice bottle of wine or a dish to pass. You want to make a place your home? You fill it with the things you love. You want your friend’s dog to befriend you? You sneak him phat snacks under the table. Same goes with Spirits. One thing that is always worth considering, and shows your investment into said relationship is the ask - what would that Other like? Note if your friends don’t drink, or a couch is too big for a room, the ancient dog can no longer digest cheese, whatever. The art of exchange is a way to get to know someone, and let them know they are (or are not) seen.

So as I continued to develop a relationship with one of my primary Spirit teachers, Grandfather, he “asked” for tobacco as an offering. At first I was like well, how about cloves? How about this? That? His “reply” was in kind, but kept pointing back to tobacco. This whole mess of feelings and Mother Wound came pouring out behind it. I encountered it again when sitting in a Lakota sweat lodge, and again am presented with tobacco as something sacrosanct. How on Earth could something I found to be so loathsome be a gift? I would never give something I found foul to a friend or loved one, is that not an unspoken rule of the Art of exchange? Of course I will give it because that is what is asked of me, but please, help me with the why. One thing about me that you should know, is when I get stuck on a thing I will research the hell out of it, enneagram 5 wing, activate. So. Why tobacco?

I quickly found out, here in the Americas, tobacco is one of the oldest offerings to Spirit known to man. Please consider the following passage. Pardon its archaic and horribly biased language and position of the author - written by an early 16th century Spanish navigator and natural historian, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo upon encountering the native inhabitants of what is now Haiti/Dominican Republic: “ there was an old Indian who answered them according to their expectations or in accordance with a consultation addressed to him whose evil image was standing there; and it is to be thought that the Devil entered into him and spoke through him as through a minister; and as an astrologer, he told them the day on which it would rain, and other messages from Nature. The Indians greatly revered these old men and held them in high esteem as their priests and prelates; and they were the ones who most commonly consumed tobacco and the smoke mentioned above … they did not undertake or carry out anything that might be of importance without considering the Devil’s opinion in this way.” (Narby) What we have here, though the language did not directly use the term directly because it had not yet migrated from Siberia, is an accounting of a shaman or medicine man who used tobacco as part of his ritual of working with Spirits, and travel in the Spirit realm to retrieve information for mostly practical, work-a-day knowledge. There are many and more missionaries and later anthropologists who write of encounters with shamanic like practitioners using tobacco as offering and mind medicine, in long established communities.

Alright then I thought, lets try and find that sacred type of tobacco. I wasn’t about to pop down to the local gas station for a pack of cigarettes, though if its your thing, go nuts I guess. I had encountered pipe tobacco before that wasn’t half bad. Talking with friends and doing a small amount of searching around, found a place that sold Indigenous art, books, herbs, tobacco, and was aptly named Grandfather’s Spirit. Not the same Grandfather spirit that I’m in communion with, but thought the parallel was a thing of joy. (Shout out HS for the recommendation.) I found what sounded like the most pleasant of the varieties and it arrived as described. When I tell you the scent of this plant sent me, wow. It has changed my whole experience of tobacco. It smells like cherries and leather and honey and leaf. It is sticky in the hands and so pleasant in essence. I now offer it with reverence, as one should, when the situation arises to do so. In this process of making peace with tobacco, I discovered what a gift it was in return, to be able to do just that. I learned a great deal about the medicine (and dangers) of this plant, and have a new found respect for it. I have been able to make progress into a larger wounding from a stronger place. This is a beautiful thing, and am grateful for the challenge as it was presented to me. I won’t take up smoking anytime soon but will hold every ceremony I am a part of with gratitude, knowing a little piece of little me can rest into a new way of living through me. It smells nice here.