Likes2Read wrote:darklordmidnight wrote:Well, I find the best way to learn about the spirits is just to talk to them, the little things that pop up in conversation can be very telling.
I am fascinated by what, in our realm, THEY find fascinating. Human technology inspires as much interest with some of them as their magick inspires in us. Computers. Smartphones where we can look up any info right away. Airplanes and helicopters. Running water. Air conditioners.
I had one convo that amused me not long ago, with an unbound whose culture has a saying that, basically, translates into "No one knows everything" or "Not everything is knowable". The expression itself is, "Who has seen the tops of clouds?" Well, having been in an airplane, I can honestly answer that question in the affirmative. But I wanted to be respectful, so I my response was more along the lines of, "Ummm, wellll, actually...", lol. Which sparked discussion of what it looks like to be IN a cloud (like fog), and what the tops of clouds actually look like. I even live close enough to an airport that if the weather conditions are right, cloudy and relatively low cloud cover, you can see a departing airplane ascend until it penetrates the cloud layer and disappears from view. And it was a point of interest that once the plane breaks through and is above the cloud layer, it's sunny and clear up there.
And that's just the kind of conversation that can happen when we are explaining our culture to them. We can also ask questions of them about their lives and their culture. Asking how they would have handled situation X, for example, would be one thing. We solve problems one way, and other cultures would approach the same issue from a different perspective, and possibly have an entirely different solution. Maybe if their way would work even better than ours, we can examine it to see what lessons we can take from it.
