The War For Christmas had raged on my Facebook feed, among those who wanted to put the Christ back in Christmas, those who want the other score of celebrations in December to get equal recognition, and those who believe that the public expenditure on trees and lights could be better spent on education and health care.
Being on several mailing lists for First Nations culture, I was also inundated, at American Thanksgiving, with reminders that the festival celebrates the invasion of North America by English colonists who rarely kept their word. The word 'genocide' popped up a lot. And I got into a hating mood, which is rarely good even if it's for a real cause. I got to hating the celebrations and symbols of the dominant culture here, which is very WASP; got very sensitive about the visible presence of Christian groups on my campus, of the churches I go past on my daily bus route, of the stoopid Christmas music, of the presence of Christmas trees and nothing else but the occasional token menorah. There is a place for that sensitivity, but it was just being... well, hate. I was even glaring at the pretty tree set up in the foyer of our apartment building.
I had also spent quite some months worrying about the outward forms and names of things, and about 'doing it right'. If I'm going to look into Pagan religions and I'm interested in this and that culture, I should research carefully and learn everything I can, right? So I don't become one of those unintentionally irreverent New Agers who act very learned but are actually hanging up decorations that read "idiot foreigner" in Sanskrit or something. I 'chameleon' far too easily - mirroring what I hear and read, unconsciously thinking that I must obey whatever I come across if it seems to be from a good source - so by reading and enjoying a Recon source uncritically, I was absorbing the idea of doing it right, not as a personal choice but as the only way to be. This is no fault of said source! I can't even hear an accent without having that accent flavour my own speech for the next fifteen minutes.
Thankfully, I'm back to myself now. And there's something I have to do. This is the point where you commit me to the loony bin if you're ever going to...
Everyone, this is Nix.
Well, this isn't Nix. This is the best-seeming picture off of Google of a red wolf, a sub-species thought to derive from an intermixture of grey wolves and coyotes. But it seemed to capture him reasonably well, as well as a photograph realistically can.
Nix is my daemon, as in Philip Pullman/Golden Compass daemon. I'm even fighting with myself as I write this, firmly telling myself that you don't have to have read the books to understand, and I don't have to link you to anything, because my interpretation is the one that's important right now, and not anyone else's, because no one but me can explain what I believe. And what I believe is that Nix is my daemon, which is somewhere between a Jungian animus/anima other-half-of-the-soul and a spirit guide.
I do not believe that there is a physical wolf tagging along behind me, as there would be if I lived in the world of Golden Compass (although that would be AWESOME). But a few years ago, maybe 2008 or so, I was poking around and found a forum where people had expanded on the idea from the trilogy... and turned it into a surprisingly believable thing. And I thought about it for a while, and I did some research on different species... and I found Nix, stepping fully formed from a corner of my mind that I'd never looked in before.
'Nix' as a name is nothing incredibly significant. It's the last name of Garth Nix, who wrote The Ragwitch, a book I didn't even finish. Yet somehow the name stuck, like glitter. I've asked Nix about it, and he seems to like it well enough.
Nix is a male red wolf. The traits of red wolves generally mirror mine: they run in smaller packs than grey wolves, eat smaller prey, and so on. They're a #2, something I've always known I am; this isn't a self-esteem issue, this is a realistic fact. I am not big and powerful, and I cannot take down an elk. The species... fit.
As well: my second roleplay character ever was a Harry Potter character with the Animagus form of a wolf - except I always pictured him as turning out very leggy and lanky, with more brownish than grey fur. Lo and behold, this is what red wolves look like... So Nix had been hanging around for a lot longer than I thought. I just hadn't looked for him yet.
Nix has a wry sense of humour, can be a little snooty on occasion, and says smart-ass things I want to smack him for sometimes. But he is a guide: when I need him to be serious, he snaps to attention immediately, and almost always says what I really needed to hear when I ask him something. Sometimes his responses surprise or startle me; other times I already knew the answer, I just needed to hear it from somebody else. He kept my spirits up during my shifts at the Book Depot, which were pretty cold and lonely sometimes; he'd curl up on a stack of book boxes nearby and watch me work.
Now, when I use the word 'say', I do not mean speaking. I don't hear a voice through my ears, or even a voice in my head. If I were to try to write it down, it wouldn't have quotation marks around it, not even italics. I only know that it's not me because the response will sometimes interrupt me halfway through my question. Because I do not, otherwise, argue with myelf. And because, as I mentioned above, the responses will sometimes surprise me.
When I speak of some action by Nix, I do not mean - as I said before - that there is a real wolf in the room with me. That would be absurd. But I have a... sense of where he is, if I think about it; I could point, and it would be pretty consistent. He doesn't suffer the limitations of a physical form (although he complains about the rain anyway). I don't see anything, and rarely even get a mental visual; but I know that it is happening, in the same way that when a dream begins, I know the starting premises rather than having to puzzle it out along the way. In the same way that I know where my feet are even when I can't see them.
I've just listed some pretty weird things. Like I said, this is the point where you lock me away for life if you're ever going to. But the funny thing, especially after I've made so much noise about trying to find a path to follow for so many months, is that I don't believe in Nix. I know that he's there. He's not intrusively there; I have to ask him to come out (and sometimes, if I'm moody, he refuses), and concentrate on him to keep him around. But he's there.
What is he exactly? I could spend a very long time trying to figure out if he's some projection of the under-used parts of my personality, or an adult-sized imaginary friend, or some other psychological figment. I could spend even longer trying to fit him into this or that belief system; an awful lot of systems could handle something like Nix in theory, although in practice he doesn't usually act that other-worldly. ...He just started laughing at the very concept, although he won't (and can't), of course, tell me where he is from, besides that he is 'from me and also from elsewhere'. Helpful, hm?
He's certainly not the only Being I feel is out there. There is Something that I am lighting a little oil lamp for, in the kitchen, with nothing more than vegetable oil and string for a wick; but despite the tininess of the outward form, the sense of putting a little something out there to honour... well, Something.
That's as far as I've gotten. I'm open to more if and when it happens. I won't push; pushing will, if anything, make it happen slower.
