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A rough draft of the spiritual autobiography of Joseph B Wilson. The history that lead to Toteg Tribe.
Copyright 2003 by Joseph B Wilson
Daisy stayed behind and lived with my parents while went through basic training and went through
an administrative process to keep from being discharged due to my fraudulent enlistment. On
March 22nd, 1962 she gave an easy birth to our first child, Marian Sue. A day later I won my court
case and was allowed to stay in the Air Force. In April I was transferred to Amarillo Air Force
Base, Texas for technical training.
In May Daisy joined me with our new baby. We lived off base in a furnished one bedroom duplex
apartment in a cheap housing area which had been erected as "temporary" family shelters during
World War II. Our rent was $35 per month and included utilities.
As a 20-year-old Airman Third Class, I was assigned to McConnell Air Force Base, Wichita,
Kansas for my first permanent duty assignment in the Air Force. In the autumn of 1962 I auditioned
for a part in the base little theater's production of Bell, Book, and Candle. The play is a comedy
about a modern family of witches in New York City. I was cast as Nicky, the mischievous brother,
(played by Jack Lemon in the movie). The person who played the lead male was Sean, who
claimed to be half Cherokee and half Scots/Irish. He was a political science student at the
University of Wichita. Sean was about eight years older than me.
During the first few rehearsals I pretended to knowledge that I didn't have. I hinted that I knew the
play was just for fun because it didn't have any real information about witches or witchcraft, and
that I knew "the real thing". Basically I was your typical obnoxious smart assed know it all kid just
like others we find around us today. Sean just grinned at me and said we'd have to talk about it
some day.
Sean came over to our apartment a couple of weeks later and we talked all night. It didn't take him
long to discover that I didn't really know anything about what he called the Old Religion. He didn't
seem to see any problem with that and with his own active, if lax, Roman Catholic faith.
Sometimes I think he went to Mass occasionally just to get holy water for some things he and
Siobhan did. He was a rather romantic character, dashing, short, and not quite handsome. He told
some interesting and believable stories of his adventures as a solder of fortune in South America.
I idealized him and believed everything he said. Looking back on that time I'd be surprised if more
than half of his stories were not stretchers, as Mark Twain would have said. Still, enough of his
stories had sufficient element of truth in them, so that I believed him. He became my role model.
Over the next few years Sean taught me how to shoot a pistol, how to defend myself with gun and
knife, surveillance methods, survival techniques, and similar skills that a sensible and sane person
does not need. Within a couple of months after I'd met him he talked me into buying a pistol and
carrying it with me at all times. He claimed that certain South American factions were after him and
that his friends were not safe. Turns out a bullet hole did appear in my car windshield while I was
driving once, but I never returned fire. I was taught not to shoot at something I can't see clearly
enough to hit. Anyway, those were foolish, romantic and exciting years.
I told Sean I wanted power. He told me that if I wanted power I should go and make a lot of money
because people with a lot of money have a lot of power, and that was a lot easier than gaining
magical powers. He also said if I wanted something important I'd have to choose another path than
the search for power. Nevertheless from time to time he'd have his wife show me how to do things
with roots and herbs to cause things to happen. Old fashioned magic spells.
Then he recommended some books. The three I remember best are The White Goddess by
Robert Graves, The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain by Lewis Spence, and The Golden Bough by Sir
James George Frazier. From the first I learned something about poetry, the feminine aspect of
divinity from various cultures, and the relationship between nature and ideas. And from the second
I learned something about Irish, Scots, and Welsh mysticism and mythology and it's relationship
between poetry and nature, and magic. That last gives an overview of ancient
religious/spiritual/magical customs worldwide. No matter how much theory I learned from those or
any other books it was all worthless in the end. Sean taught me a lot -- but it wasn't so much what
he taught as how he taught that has had lasting importance for me.
Without any conscious effort my Fundamentalist Christian focus simply dropped away from me. I
did not consciously renounce it or decide that I was no longer Christian -- it just left. This shocked
Daisy (my wife), since she remained devoted to her religious upbringing, and created a barrier
between us that was never fixed.
