On 19 September I had a very strange experience. At first I had strange thoughts that I was experiencing some premonition of an earthquake. . . as if deep subterranean gases  had been released by seismic activity to give me bodily disorientation. I felt a wierd vertigo with some mild nausea. Mostly I had a disturbed equilibrium with a very strong sensation that the level plane of earth was no longer set at 0 degrees but at about 27 degrees. What should have been level then seemed tilted.

I felt I needed to lay upon the earth. I went to the most comforting place in my entire world. I went to my garden and lay on the sods just below my "bile". It was womb-like comforting to  spread by body against the earth and surrender to this strange convulsion of gravity. I went into a trance that apparently lasted about 45 minutes. During the trance I watched a goddess image form in waves of energy that rose from the four branches at the top of the bile. When I came out of the trance I was watching the red-tailed hawk circling slowly directly over the bile. For some reason his tail feathers glowed so bright that I watched tongues of flame fly off his body.

Then I was completely clear in mind and body. I was returned quite gently to the earthly plane, which now felt perfectly level. I was to quickly learn, however, that I had been very much changed. The earthquake never happened. Instead I suffered a Birth-quake. I was transformed in a very visceral way. At first I only noticed sensual quickenings. Colors were brighter, bird-speech a little more clear. Then I noticed that I was sensing certain odors. I smelled things like tobacco smoke, or Jasmine perfume, orange peels, ship tar. I'd smell these odors way out in the field where I would be working. There would be nothing within hundreds of yards that could possibly be causing these odors. I began to associate the odors with certain "personalities" who seemed to visit me with some undecipherable pattern.

Several weeks later, I was making butter in the house, when suddenly some force clutched at my biological heart. It very literally felt as if someone was snatching at that organ as a lifeline. The clutching came in successions. There were three distinct moments when I could have told myself that I was having a heart-attack. I didn't register this thought because something inside me said, "Someone needs you. You don't have to help. You can stop this at any time." I felt that it was Earth speaking to me, and I wanted to trust the Mother at any cost, so I didn't stop the use of my body for someone's need.

I then felt a very real burning in my throat as if something harsh was being forced into me. After a while I went through a highly anxious state of mind. It was followed by a dreamy, peaceful state, the surrendering state. But the surrendering state wasn't perfect. It was flawed by an unfulfilled desire, a soul-based need to fulfill some family obligation. I felt the depth of that desire even though it wasn't mine, and instinctively surrendered something in me that felt like a rope of energy.

The whole thing last two hours. After it, I was extremely depressed in spirits and exhausted in body. I got very sick. I lost my voice and couldn't sing. For weeks afterward I had no physical energy. Since I'm a farmer I am quite a work horse normally. I still had to carry on work for there was wood to cut and split, animals to care for, a ditch that had to be dug before frost. I remember how frightened and helpless I felt picking up a splitting maul or shovel and feeling as if I no longer had force to work these implements. I felt as if I had lost my strong peasant man's body and now had someone else's body.

During that time of weakness, I found out that a woman living about 1 mile away had overdosed on beer and sleeping pills. At the moment I felt the cardial cluctchings, she went into cardiac arrest. They used defbrilators on her three times. They shoved a tube into her throat to pump out her stomach. She had been dead at some point but they brought her back. After two hours they were able to stabilize her condition enough to life-flight her to a hospital. She survived.

In time I recovered my masculine strength. I got back to work and prepared for the winter as best as I could, but I'm now aware that something not-man, not-woman has been awakened in me. I know her as my somasin.

I share this story with gay pagans, because all my life I've been trying to understand my sexuality. I have a very masculine body and persona. I hadn't seen any physical reason why I shouldn't form sexual relationships with women, but all my life my emotional body kept me from doing just so. It's been a long, long growing process, and there's not space to talk about it now, but I've come to realize that my "emotional body" requires me to form my most important relationship with a man. I have come to think, since the Birth-quake, that the somasin always within me has been forming my sexual body in this way. But to be honest I have a very hard time understanding her. I suppose I don't need to, even now as she's claiming my energies and my body for some intense sort of healing work.

I guess I want to open up a conversation with people who understand their healing guides with more experience. I want to converse with people who understand as well how their spiritual calling has called them to gay sexuality. I think that most people by nature are bisexual but most find it important to embrace one expression or the other, and yet I've had intimate friendship with men who have always clearly known themselves to be gay. They never felt that there was a choice in the matter. I would almost say that I've always had choice, but every time I tried the conventional choice, I ended up with spiritual/emotional asphyxiation. I don't think my somasin really gives me a choice unless it's to simply deny her in my soul. I don't at all like that choice.