Decrying Gravity

The picture above shows Tiresias coming upon two snakes copulating and shaking a stick at them to separate them.  The first time ze did this, ze was punished by Hera and transformed into a woman.  Seven years later, zecame upon another pair and did (or didn't do) something, depending on the source, granting zem zes masculinity back.

Tiresias's interim state was considered something of a blessing and a curse.  It gave zem a distinct perspective on life, and ze was even called to answer a dispute on which sex received more sexual pleasure between Zeus and Hera.

Another place in Greek mythology involving snakes and staffs is the rod of Asclepius, the Greek healer god.  Snakes are compared to medicine both for their ability to "shed their skin" and be born anew, as one does when healed, and  for their simultaneous connection to poison and death, the other side of the scale that the healer balances.  It's a potent symbol, still used by many medical organizations today.

It's interesting that snakes are associated with healing here, but the skin metaphor seems apt enough (and the poison probably reflects early medicine's potential to be as deadly due to its unrealibility as well as a tendency in medicine to treat disease using part of that same disease).  This "shedding of skin" metaphor also seems to work quite well with Tiresias's transformation.

Just for the sake of clarity, the caduceous is commonly confused with Asclepius's rod, and is used by many medical organizations as a result (even though it is the symbol of Hermes and bears little connection to healing).

So there's a snake-healer-trans connection.  It's a bit coincidental, I know, but I still found it interesting.  It's somewhat ironic, given my fear of snakes.  Hell, I've even decided my Patronus (or animal I identify most with) is the mongoose, which is famous for fighting snakes.  It's small, clever, useful, and is often portrayed as being specialized for a very distinct kind of war.




There's another trans connection to healing, found in Native American traditions.  Of course, there are so many Native American traditions among the various tribes that such variance is bound to spring up, but there is the idea of the "two-spirit," an individual who has two spirits in one body.  Sometimes these people are considering blessed/holy, sometimes they're considered men or women who can transcend their born gender role (as in, an ftm warrior), and sometimes they're derided/cast into lower tiers.

In fact, some Eastern religions which are, in some ways, more tolerant of transgenderness, maintain the notion that being transgender is a karmic punishment for discretions (such as adultery, incest, pedophilia, etc) in a past life.  Since it is the result of a past life, it ought to be pitied instead of maligned.  So, you know, there's that.

But if we go back to Tiresias and the healer, the analogue in Native American culture is the shaman.  In church a few weeks back, we learned about David Paladin, a Native American who was derided for being a half-breed (neither fitting with whites or Native Americans).  He ran away, was eventually in the army, was put into a work camp at Dachau, survived but was crippled, came back defeated and bitter, and was singled out by the elders of his tribe as a potential shaman, a "wounded healer" due to his experiences.  His pain and separation gave him an insight into suffering that made him a perfect candidate to be a spiritual guide.  He eventually became a Unitarian Universalist minister and worked in prisons while engaging in various artistic pursuits.

As stretched as all this may be (and yeah, I'm somewhat pulling a Glenn Beck), it's reassuring (in the same way Myers-Briggs is).  I want to be a counselor, a healer.  I'm also transsexual.  I've not endured nearly the hardships Paladin has, but I think there's some legitimacy in the notion of the "wounded healer," of the person who's experienced pain and draws from it to help others.  Just like Tiresias, I'll have a unique perspective on gender, just like Paladin I've been stuck in a limbo of neither fitting with male or female.  The snake is a symbol of transformation (including the aforementioned gendered transformation) and it adorns the healer's staff.  I'll know more than many what it's like to "shed a skin," to engage healing through transformation.  And I've an intimate familiarity with pain (anorexia, depression, gender incongruence, the effects of alcoholism, etc).

Is it fate? Hardly.  I searched "transgender shaman" and soo many Wiccan sites came up.  I couldn't read through most of them, the mysticism was lathered so thickly (which is not a slight against Wicca, just a personal preference).  You can find connections and coincidences when you look hard enough in most things.

But there's precedent.  Transness as a widener of experience, a conveyor of wisdom.  Transformation and shedding skins as a metaphor for healing.  Pain and darkness as an asset in the fight against pain and darkness.  And they all tie together, the transness informing the pain through virtue of the dissonance between common experience and my own and the healing as I gradually inch towards living authentically via transformation.  Lacan would get a kick out of it, at least.

In short, I feel suited to be a counselor.  I feel I have traits that lend themselves to empathy and to healing.  Not command, certainly, but a kind of... spiritual support.  My writing ability and breadth of knowledge would seem to almost point in the direction of the ministry; perhaps in a different life.  In this one, though, I feel like I could be a counselor.  I feel that my challenges turn into strengths via counseling.  And I want it.  Here's hoping I can find it.

Tiresias's presence in my favorite poet's best known poem is a good note to end on.  Ze's an unfortunate, unwilling truth-teller in Oedipus Rex.  In Eliot's "The Wasteland, " we find Tiresias "throbbing between two lives,"  the dominator and the dominated simultaneously (a quintessential and "integral" representation of humanity).  Ze distinctly feels the emptiness both parties feel, all the moreso for having a universal spirit.  Ze is empathy, and when the world is a wasteland that's a huge burden to bear.  I'm rather looking forward to it.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back	215
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives	220
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,	225
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.	230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,	235
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;	240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall	245
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows on final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;	250
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,	255
And puts a record on the gramophone.