We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture Read online

  I spent very little time at school. While other children played truant to avoid specific lessons, I could simply go home, as my parents did not consider truancy to be a problem. The old gypsy attitude towards education is that you can do it if you want to, but don’t necessarily have to if you don’t feel you need to! It is a good philosophy because it cuts out unnecessary pressure. It took a long time for gypsies to accept the education system and in the past many deliberately kept their children away from school. The gypsies in North Wales referred to it as ‘weekday church’, as for them school was always connected with religion and was therefore a means of indoctrination.

  Jack Lee had not been formally educated and my father received very little schooling, because, in his own words, ‘I was never long enough in the same place to attend school!’ Some people have found it difficult to believe that I have not been educated through the normal channels either. But true Romani gypsies are not unintelligent and, like children of many native peoples all over the world, gypsy chavvies (yes, this word is actually a Romani word meaning ‘gypsy children’) are encouraged to have fun and gain experience by experimentation, which is always put before education, and which involves free and open emotional expression and use of the senses, something other children rarely know because gaujo discipline is usually too full of restrictions. This doesn’t mean that Romani children are spoilt, however. Within the gypsy home environment there is a very fine set of rules, or more correctly, a respect for others that is instinctive, because it is demonstrated by the adults and not imposed by them.

  My own family’s attitude towards gaujo discipline was that it was simply best to keep a sense of humour about it. Thus, following in Great-grandfather’s footsteps, we all laughed a good deal at the way people - both gypsy and gaujo - tended to behave. This valuable philosophy has helped me through many difficult phases in my life and has enabled me to laugh at both good and bad situations.

  Learning that I was - and still am - part of a large network came quickly to me, when we chavvies became true ‘children of the wind’, riding some of the horses belonging to some sedentary gypsies who lived on marshland. We rode bareback, which is a wonderful experience to have with a horse and it is the way many gypsies ride. Maintaining contact, you became part of the horse, just as the horse became part of you. If you fell off, or encountered a problem with your horse, it was more than likely your fault, and not the fault of the horse, for you built a special bond with your animal, which spoke volumes about who you were. ‘He wants to do something in a different way,’ another child might say when a horse was suddenly giving you a hard time. What this usually meant was that the child was interpreting the signals your horse was giving you, signals that you were probably unable to interpret for yourself.

  At this time in my life I was learning to hear many animals speak, learning to delve deep down into what they were and to know not just what they were thinking but what was going on in their very souls, a necessary education in any life training.

  This education also extended to trees. I spent a lot of time in my earlier years alone in the garden talking to an apple tree. I was encouraged to do this by my elders. In fact, I was encouraged to communicate with all spirits, from the spirits within people to the spirits within my colouring pencils! Everything could talk to you, and everything lived, so much so that I still find myself talking to inanimate objects a good deal of the time today, with no embarrassment whatsoever. The spirits in ‘things’ can reply to you in a simple childlike way, and can give you a wealth of omens, providing you understand it all in the right light.

  When I reached puberty, I spent hours sitting alone in a darkened room, thinking, travelling about in my imagination, which today most people would know as ‘shamanic journeying’. Again encouraged by my elders, I went to all kinds of wonderful places, from fairy-tale castles to ‘real’ places that were near to my home. I often visited the nearby park in these dreams, and also flew and walked about at the bottom of our garden where I normally went to play during the daytime. The journeys were always vivid and I felt as if I was physically in these places, even though I knew it was also a dream. This became an important lesson about the strength of the dream and the imagination, and the part this kind of understanding played within what we call ‘reality’.

  We adults are sometimes very confused about and afraid of our fantasy worlds, so much so that we prefer to dismiss just about everything if it cannot be explained in a rational way. Part of life’s challenge, particularly today, is learning where thoughts of various kinds fit into our personal quests, and this begins in early childhood. By shutting the imagination out in our childhood years, which most of us are invariably taught to do, we shut out a vital part of ourselves. This does not happen when a child is taught in the old Romani gypsy way. Self-belief is of prime importance and involves believing in the whole of yourself - including your own imagination - so the dream does not die but becomes a valuable learning tool. Thus, a fairy-tale castle is as real as the house next door, because when you visit it you can learn just as many things.

  I used my imagination extensively during my own early years. I remember pedalling up and down the garden on my small tricycle wondering what was at the end of the sky. My mother told me that I constantly drew a circle with a dot at its centre and attempted to instruct her on the nature of life in my own small way.

  Today, most people would find it strange that a young teenager should be left alone in a darkened room - for up to four hours at a time on the odd occasion, but I was not disturbed and my elders were not being cruel. My grandmother, who was extremely psychic, always monitored my progress. She would enter the room to ask me if I were all right. I would reply, ‘Yes. I can see quite well in the dark.’ I can remember her nod of approval before she left the room again. Along with all the other adults in the house, she knew that I was following in the footsteps of Great-grandfather Lee, taking the path that all Romani gypsy Chovihanos had taken before me down through the ages. My ‘visualizations’ eventually led me to have some interesting out-of-body experiences at a later date. But it is somewhat sad to think that just 100 years ago I might have been sitting out in the forest having this kind of experience and taking instruction from the birds, animals and trees.

  I still use my imagination for visualization in the same way today, especially where I need to find answers to problems or resolve ongoing issues in my life. The times I spent in the darkness when young also taught me a lot about the nature of darkness. The darkness is something I have never been afraid of, when it is in its natural context: i.e. the darkness caused by night, or the darkness caused by a darkened room, cave, or other natural enclosed area. I consider the darkness inside ourselves something that is very different, and something we need to fear, rather than revere. We have to investigate unnatural darkness wisely and not be lulled into a false sense of safety if told that inner darkness is a natural phenomenon. Some people’s inner darkness doesn’t feel too ‘safe’ when it is shaped by insecurity, or when it is packed full of intense fear or resentment. We have a lot to give thanks for if we do not encounter such darkness in our inner lives, and if we do, we need to find help and healing.

  Puberty was a most powerful time for me, as it can be for many youngsters, and I was suddenly presented with a new kaleidoscopic dimension within, brimming over with pictures and sensations, colour and dramatic experiences, which, so I was told, were all considered to be a natural part of development. I believe there is no harm in encouraging youngsters to deal with these inner changes alone, so long as adults are standing by in support, and so long as those adults are ready to listen and perhaps even interpret what that youngster is experiencing. A natural-born Chovihano, or medicine man, will need to pay attention to this imaginative inner life at this delicate time.

  While I was undergoing this vital transformation, sitting in my darkened room allowing my spirit to fly, other youngsters around me in the gaujo world were busy doing what all adolescents do in
our modern society: listening to pop music, flirting or just hanging around on streets corners, getting bored and frustrated with their lives.

  I was not to know at that time that I was going through a quite ancient process, which had been practised in Europe for many thousands of years, but which is now extinct in Britain.

  My elders considered this ‘rite of passage’ - which to me seemed like a great internal explosion - quite normal. They had anticipated something rather dramatic taking place because of Great-grandfather’s predictions, but also because another gypsy had forecast it too. This was Marie, a woman who gave me the name Jasper, which began as ‘Jazzie’ because of the bright colours I used to wear at school. She had also foreseen the development of something special - or ‘something unusual in the future with the gaujos’, to use her words.

  At the time she gave my mother this message I was indeed unusual, because I was having something of a fight with the school authorities regarding my clothing. The school uniform was dark blue, but my mother sent me to school wearing a bright purple jumper, with the result that I was constantly being reminded to attire myself in the appropriate colour. ‘Just tell ‘em I’m still knitting you one,’ my mother would say, laughing, whenever I brought home a complaint. She was still knitting that blue jumper four years later and I ended up being the only child in the whole school wearing a bright purple jumper for the whole of that time. This was amusing to the psychically gifted woman who called me ‘Jazzie’ who remarkably, so long ago told my mother what I would be doing today. It is thus in Marie’s memory that I still use Jasper as my name. I consider it to be lucky.

  A Romani gypsy child is quite often given a private or secret name as well as a public or pet name, and this secret name is never uttered to outsiders and acts as magical protection against bad spells, or in today’s language, negative influences. The theory is that if a harmful force is denied knowledge of all your names, it cannot possibly cause you much harm. This has a very positive therapeutic effect, for by attaching a private name to an inner part of yourself that you love and respect, you keep that part untouched and sacred, and this helps to keep you strong. This is indeed old magic; it dates back many thousands of years. My own private name is known to only a few. It is possible to create a name for yourself and to associate something good about yourself with that name, but take care never to tell anyone except those you truly trust what that name is.

  My grandmother, Gladdy Lee, the Puri Dai (this literally means ‘old’ or ‘ancient mother’), was very much a guide to me throughout these dramatic and exciting years. She was one of the strongest women I have ever known. Only just over five feet tall, with thick dark hair and grey eyes, she had been a beauty in her youth and was formidable in her old age, for she not only cursed people in the old gypsy way but could also deliver them a neat upper-cut - which some gypsy women are not afraid of doing!

  Gladdy Lee was something of a character. She had laid a curse on a woman’s hairdressing shop when I was a child, after the hairdresser had verbally abused Amy Lee for no apparent reason. The business fell to ruin just two months later. And when the vicar at Jack Lee’s graveside made the mistake of advising mourners to think of my great-grandfather’s remains as little more than a bundle of rags - presumably to console them - he had cause to shiver when my grandmother silently threatened him with her darkened powerful eyes. Few people can remain at ease when a gypsy stares at them in such a way and the Reverend is said to have always avoided Gladdy Lee after that occasion.

  The Romanies developed an ambiguous relationship with Christianity during the centuries they travelled in Europe and this was certainly reflected in my own family. Romanies who remained loyal to their ancient traditions felt they would earn more respect from the gaujo community they were living with if they were married, baptized or buried in Christian churches. A highly persecuted people gained more credibility if they had the Christian seal of approval. Jack Lee, like many old Romanies, always taught his family to laugh at religion, or at least to take it lightly, and yet, he, like many, was buried in a Christian graveyard. When I was young I was taught that you gave just enough to religious authority to procure respect. You could then be left alone. Fortunately, it is no longer necessary to do this, but it was considered by my elders to be better to conform half-heartedly rather than not conform at all, for that might bring you far too much attention. Romani gypsies have never been rebels who go all out to attract attention to themselves. Their way is to work quietly, unnoticed, in the background.

  So when the vicar uttered those disrespectful words beside the grave that day, my grandmother’s attitude was, ‘I’ll conform to your religion enough to keep our Chovihano’s body safe and respected, but don’t ask me to wear your Christian shoes.’

  My grandmother set me many such examples. Her hardy character, robust health and wicked sense of humour reflected her unique spirit, which remained strong up until the day she died. She taught me a great deal on an everyday level. Strange as it may sound, some of the most important training for my traditional magical work took place at the local supermarket checkout, where my grandmother advised me to dik ta shoon - watch and listen. This mostly involved reading the body language of others, for if you observed the way people behaved you could get to know more about their inner lives. Many times whilst queuing with our groceries my grandmother would nudge me, drawing my attention to the person in front of us. ‘This one’ll be an awkward bugger!’ she would whisper softly. Usually it was true.

  My brother and I sometimes camped outside in the garden at night and often shared our experiences with the Puri Dai. This may not seem too unusual for gypsies, but by that time my grandmother was around 70 years old and most people in our neighbourhood didn’t camp out in the garden at that age!

  I have vivid memories of us all lying on the grass and looking up into a summery starlit sky, my mother and grandmother relating what they could see up there in the big wide dome of heaven. It was sometimes as if a stairway stretched up to the stars.

  This was where I learned to see visions in the sky. You just lay there flat on the grass looking up into the velvety darkness in the same way that you might gaze into a crystal ball, staring until a kind of milkiness blinded you and you saw pictures in the stars or around the moon. We regularly saw animals and faces and objects, reeling them off to each other and fitting them into our lives as guiding forces of change. This, I still believe, is a wonderful and most constructive exercise for children - and adults - of all ages.

  During these ‘games’, I was also told about the pictures Jack Lee would see when he practised this exercise and how he would read omens from just about everything he saw. Before he died he said that in civilized communities we spent too much time in artificial light, which prevented us from seeing our visions. Street lights and car lights now blur the screen where visions once played for gypsies and all earlier peoples. Because of this, we all miss out on one of the most spectacular and natural playgrounds for our dreams, and actually increase our fears of darkness.

  It was through this heavenly game that I was also introduced to the different worlds that exist: the Upperworld, the Middleworld and the Lowerworld. It was easy for me as a child to stitch all these together, for they made such sense, and I can remember comparing such a concept with the religious idea of Heaven and Hell, which I thought particularly confusing, for it seemed rather severe and unjust. It didn’t allow you to go anywhere, either up or down, without being good or bad. When you travelled up or down in the gypsy way, good and bad didn’t come into it. You just went, if you were able to. The Upperworld, unlike Heaven, was a place of fairy-tale castles and fantastic daring adventures, and the Lowerworld was a place of mystery and great challenges.

  At school when I started to learn about religion and about Jesus, I found this very powerful religious figure intensely frightening, because I was told he lived in the sky - or the Upperworld. One night, my cousin and I, who were sharing a bedroom, were looking up at th
e clouds through the window to see what shapes we could see and in the fading light a particular cloud took on the form of two large feet. These had to be Jesus’s feet. He was such a big person in the gaujo world, my cousin said, that his feet were over our heads whilst his head was over Australia. Terrified, we giggled at this and I dived under the bedclothes for quite a few nights afterwards, whilst my cousin, who was a little older than me, and a little less scared, slept soundly.

  Fortunately, my family laughed at this - as they laughed at anything to do with religion. At that time I decided that I didn’t like religion and I didn’t like Jesus. My great-grandfather said that religion was full of traps and that it could ‘trap’ the spirit and hold it prisoner, and as I grew, I learned to understand what he meant by this. In truth, he also said, all life was a mirror, all things reflecting all things. This sounded far more sensible to me.