SHAMANISM VS THE DOOMSTERS AND GLOOMSTERS

I was watching with grim fascination the head of a Buddhist Order that I used to be part of. He was emphasising what a terrible state the world is in. He said the world has always been in a terrible state, but that it is particularly terrible right now.

My view is that the world just is what it is, it is humans doing what humans do and always have done, and there are good things and problematic things within that. We kind of need the challenges of the problematic things. As Dostoevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov, if humanity ever did create a utopia, it would destroy it, if only to assert its own free will.

So what is it about religions damning the world? We see it in Christianity, where the world is the creation of the Devil, and humans are tarred with Original Sin. And we see it in Shamanism also: it is almost axiomatic that benighted, greedy humanity is destroying the natural world and that we know better.

There is an unconscious dishonesty here that goes deep: the worse the world is, the more spiritual we are with our 'enlightened' attitudes; the more virtuous we become when we go about saving the world from itself. Another term for it is 'spiritual bypass': when we imagine a good, identify with it, and see 'bad' as out there instead of where it truly lies, in our own hearts. This is what all these Buddhists, Christians and Shamans are avoiding in their condemnation of the world. Muslims too, no doubt.

The western world is having a particularly bad dose of 'everything is terrible' at the moment. I doubt people in China, one generation out of rural poverty, see it that way!

I think it is our responsibility as shamans to oppose this pessimism, to repeatedly point out that which is good in the world, and for that basic optimism to shine through in the way we are. Because if we feel close to Spirit - and that, after all, is the point - then we feel joy, and we want to embrace this brief period called life while we can.

So enough of this climate apocalypse stuff, enough of this condemning humans as thoughtless and greedy (most people are just trying to get by!) Instead, rejoice in human brilliance and ingenuity and adaptability: it is what we bring to the table of life, and Spirit is cheering us on as our technological inventiveness increasingly races forward. Of course it brings imbalance, but that can and is being addressed.

To condemn humanity as a cancer, as many do, is itself a disease. Love humanity.

Things are at a stage where to you are liable to be attacked if you point out the good trends in the world, as though that is a denial of the bad things which, we are told, constitute an existential crisis.

Here are some of the good things: Hundreds of millions are coming out of poverty as the East industrialises; vast areas are greening over due to higher CO2; agricultural yields are at an all time high, and we are starting to give land back to nature; the world is net being reforested; as the world warms, so do far fewer people die from cold, well outweighing the extra heat deaths; fewer people are dying from climate incidents because we adapt; we live amidst unprecedented peace and prosperity. (Look up Bjorn Lomborg for a fuller, referenced account of these trends.)

Will that do? It is our responsibility to be informed of these positive trends as a counter-balance to the problems of the world. It is our job to help people out of the slough of pessimism into which they have sunk. As healers, where else do you begin?

Of course, people are attached to their slough of pessimism: it gives them a group identity, it makes them feels like they are on the side of good, and it protects them from their own misery. So it's not easy, and you won't always get thanked for it. You will lose a few friends. Some people will think you are unhinged and in denial. But that is always part of the shamanic territory, for we can only help and heal to the extent that we have stepped out of herd-think. That is an ongoing task, for the collective pressures to think in particular ways are powerful and alluring, however wrong-headed.

OPEN TO INVITES...

I'm not a great advertiser of myself. But I reckon I'm good at running workshops of many varieties. It's something I love to do. I've been at it for nearly 40 years in one way or another. In my youth it was Buddhism. After a major revamp that turned into Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Pipe Ceremonies, Sweatlodges, Trance Dances and just general chewing stuff over: maybe my favourite 😎 I do astrology and tarot too. I prefer not to plan too much, and let things unfold in their own way.

The point of a teacher is to edge you in the direction of your own inner guidance. That is why I say cherish the things you don't agree with me about. If you've been reading this blog for a while, I will almost certainly have said some things you don't agree with 🤣

I have 2 books as a sort of CV (pictured), published by Moon Books in 2022. I'm not that inclined to set up workshops myself, but if you would like me to come and do something for an evening or a day or even a week, I will probably say yes, enthusiastically. Anywhere in the world! As long as I don't lose money on it. Happy to sleep in a tent. Or my van  😊

OF COLONISED INDIANS

A traditionally-trained Chippewa Cree guy who used to stay with me said that 'Native Americans' refer to themselves as 'Indians'. It was just the white people who call them Native Americans. So now I refer to them when I can as Indians. And sometimes you will get taken to task for that by whites who think you are being disrespectful. It happened to me recently, from someone has a bit of Indian blood in them, but is very identified with that, even though they had never met an Indian until recently. No discussion was possible, she was fierce about it: saying 'Indian' was like using the 'n' word about black people.

Personally I'd rather call people by the name they call themselves, rather than one invented by guilty whites, and then adhered to dogmatically by an imaginary Indian.

Another word I'm wondering about is 'colonised'. In this case it refers to the dominant, conquering culture taking away the identity and culture of the conquered people and telling them who they should be in terms of the values of the dominant culture. Any process of telling people who they should be at a formative age is 'colonisation': an Indian teacher told me I had been colonised by my early boarding school experience.

Indians often need to go through a process of 'decolonisation' to reclaim their original culture. The word brings in the connotation of 'colonialism' as an unmitigated evil. There was nothing good, for example, about the British Empire in modern discourse, and academics who look for the good as well as the bad get shunned. As did Nigel Biggar for writing the book pictured below.

This may sound harsh, but 'colonisation' is where Indian-as-victim meets modern woke culture, which turns any number of people into victims, and demands that we as privileged oppressors bow down before them. Some Indians are in victim mode, some are not. The Dalai Lama could easily be in victim mode, but he never has been. He gets on with life, and does not attack the Chinese. It is not some form of 'denial'. He just refuses to bear a grudge and complain about what was a huge injustice, when to do so would be futile.

My Chippewa Cree friend told me it is often the warrior cultures amongst the Indians who go on and on about what happened to them, for it is a matter of wounded pride that they have been conquered.

But isn't colonisation what has happened throughout history, when one people conquered another? You'd better adapt to their culture - allow your mind to be colonised - or you will not flourish, you will be squeezed out. If Indians want to flourish, they had better adopt the white man's ways. It doesn't mean they can't also hold on to, and reclaim, their traditional ways: the conquering culture of the US is unusually liberal in that respect, by historical standards. It is great they can do so, for there is much in the traditional indigenous ways that we have forgotten, to our detriment in the modern world.

Even if you are not part of a conquered culture, you will be colonised: your culture will tell you, as a child, who you are. It may do that with greater or lesser degrees of liberalism, but tell you it will. It is not a victim thing, but a necessary thing that suits most people. Some of us may eventually find it to be a cage that we have to struggle our way out of, because we have something deeper of our own to find. But that is a minority thing, and that struggle for our own values, with opposition from the mainstream, can be exactly what we need to find them.

So yes, all of us may need to 'decolonise' our minds in some respects. The reclaiming of a sense of the sacred, for example, denied as it is by materialist atheism. But don't get into blame mode about it, or you will perpetuate the colonisation: victimhood easily becomes a religion in itself. That is why I think the current narrative about slavery is as much about stirring up ancestral grievances - from something that ended generations ago - as it is about justice. Think Dalai Lama.

SOUL RETRIEVAL and the DAIMON: REMEMBERING WHO WE ALWAYS WERE

I'm trying to get my head around the idea of soul retrieval, as it is taught in so-called 'core' shamanism. It is a concept that is fundamental to becoming a 'shamanic practitioner', which is what many people call themselves these days. I've never been able to bring myself to use that epithet, and I trust my reluctance. After much thought, I decided a while back that if anything I would call myself the ‘flatpak helpline’. That is, I will do my best to help you decipher and live whatever vision it is you have for your life - what it is that you love, I will align myself with that.

As for your traumas, I really don't feel it is my job to sort them by bringing back the soul parts that allegedly went missing as a result. That is just a modern western psychotherapising of the human as victim of their childhood, and the healer as the person who will sort that for you - with the help, of course, of their spirit guides.

No. We need to heal ourselves. And your traumas, your demons, however awful, have their part to play in your destiny. You have my full sympathy in your tribulations, but I'm not going to take them away from you, even if I could. You may think they came about because your father was like this, or your mother was like that. We never know, and in a way it doesn't matter. All we can ever do is come into good relationship with our demons. That is something we have to do to become a full human being, and it's like everything else will take care of itself if we do that. And it is a lifelong process.

I don't think psychotherapists do anyone a service when they encourage people in the invention of creation myths of their own demons, based on their childhoods, however plausible. It is an easy, facile thing to do. We don't know where these demons come from, and there's a good chance our parents were just familiar mirrors for the challenges we came in with anyway. So don't blame them, which is all we are doing when we invent stories that seem to explain who we are in terms of how they were.

I am banging on about this because the soul retrieval paradigm I was taught back in the 90s, that goes back to Michael Harner, had clearly been crafted to fit the modern childhood victim paradigm. We were taught that soul pieces often went missing as the result of trauma in childhood, and our job as whatever strange thing we were being taught to be - certainly not a traditional shaman - was to bring those pieces back, along with a story about what had gone wrong.

Now I'm not saying there isn't some kind of truth in all this, but I am also saying to hell with it. I am not sure why I am putting it so vehemently, but I trust it.

There's a whole modern way of looking at the world behind my reservations. There is human as victim and human as autonomous. Those are the two underlying ideas that I am protesting against. Indigenous peoples did not see themselves as victims - as results, if you like, of genes, environment, of childhood. No, they were born unique, with a destiny, which if they were lucky would result in a vision of what their life would be. And humans were relational: you did not separate yourself from your people, you were not the lone hero, carving a place in an unforgiving world. As an adult, you had responsibilities more than you had 'rights'.

So where does that leave the work I sometimes do for people that shifts things along, or the work I have had done for me? Being able to do work for others that moves things along is a gift, it is beautiful, it is special, and I am grateful that I am able to facilitate that through whatever it is that works through me. I will always say yes if I am asked to do something, it is what I am here for. Why I end up doing what I do when I do it is a mystery, necessarily. It is always about a much bigger picture than the presenting problem. Maybe that is all I can say.

It is not something I advertise. I have never been able to bring myself to do that. I can just about bring myself to advertise my astrology readings, but even then I do my best to keep them informal and to let them run on as long as they need to so that the spirit can do what it needs to. Healing isn't just about me shapeshifting and letting the animals take over. It is also about me feeling aligned with myself, and the other person as a result being drawn into a deeper alignment with themselves, maybe just through conversation.

For myself, feeling out of sorts for years at a time, feeling disempowered and lacking has pushed me to struggle and to find gold in myself. What we call ‘soul loss’ can be a necessary thing. I spent many years with childhood explanations. I refuse to use those facile explanations, which are so easy to invent, any more. I prefer the old idea of Plato that

“the soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here; in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny.

 

"As explained by the greatest of the later Platonists, Plotinus, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity. This suggests that the circumstances, including my body and my parents whom I may curse, are my soul’s own choice – and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.” (James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, p8)

In this sense, ‘Soul Retrieval’ could be seen as helping people to remember the presiding image of who they always were. That, in Norse mythology, was woven by the Norns. It is about this bigger picture, rather than a remedying of pathologies.

THE BAD TEACHER

 I think we all have a bad teacher somewhere in us. By which I mean we all have a self-serving shadow-side that we're not always in good relationship with. It loves praise, it does not like being contradicted, it wants to have its way with some of the women who come along. It's a rat's nest of trouble. 

 

There's only one thing worse than having a shadow, and that is not having one. By which I mean denying it. If you feel you have a position as teacher to maintain, if you feel you have to give an appearance of knowing something, then the shadow is ready and waiting to seize on that. So being any kind of teacher requires an ongoing struggle, not to control the shadow - that just makes things worse - but to be honest about it, firstly with yourself, and then, to the extent it is appropriate, with others. Then you are a good teacher. For you are showing others how to be in good relationship with themselves.

The shadow will always be there, and I think it has mysterious purposes of its own, like Gollum, without whom the Ring would not have been destroyed in Mount Doom.

I think we can learn as much from the bad teacher as we can from the good teacher. Every teacher has a bad teacher within them, and if you keep your eyes peeled you will see it, for no-one is perfect. Heaven help us from anyone who is perfect.

What do you do with what you have seen? Many people reject the teacher outright once they have seen his/her faults. That is because they feel betrayed. They were expecting perfection. Don't get me wrong, you may need to just walk away. They may be seriously bad news. But teachers usually also have some genuine gift that also needs appreciating: they'd maybe rushed in to teaching early, before they were ready. Or maybe that was always going to happen.

I've yet to see anyone teaching who is young (and that means from B4 middle age) and plenty older than that, where the shadow side isn't playing a significant, and unconscious, part. I've previously been unfriended by teachers for making this sort of general statement, which I think proves the point. My first port of call with teachers is can I level with them, will they talk to me man to man, so to speak, or are they always having to be teacher, always having to know better? And on a feeling level, are they allowing me close to them, or is there a protective wall there? And maybe I do feel close to them, but is that just their charisma?

 

It's easier to be a good teacher when it is one-to-one. A group situation has its own dynamic in which the teacher becomes the 'special' one who everyone treats differently, and there's not much to be done about that. Except keep giving people their power back by being honest and natural and not trying to sound too authoritative.

 

Not only does the group give power to the teacher - and this is something that can be difficult for the individual to resist, for we are relational creatures - but the bad teacher will want it, need it. You will find yourself becoming diminished, a different and less free person than when you are around friends and family. It can be subtle, and it can take a while.

 

I think this is one of the greatest lessons we can have. You may be able to look back and see that losing some of your power, your autonomy to that teacher was exactly what was needed in order for you to properly claim it. Because if it can be given away, you never truly had it in the first place. The bad teacher doesn't truly have their own power either: they need your praise to feel sure of themselves.

 

'Power' is an overused word in this context. What I mean at bottom is our own ability to guide ourself, that lies deep within. It usually takes unearthing, because it is not something humans naturally have, though we find that hard to see and admit to. Everyone thinks they are their own person. This is why we have religion: we usually need to start with considerable guidance from without. Or from your spirit guides, though that is more complex, because in a sense they also are that deeper self.

I covered some of this in my last piece, 'The Good Teacher', who is always guiding us to find our own answers. A bad teacher will always claim to be doing that too, and think they are doing that. Which they may be to some extent: it is complicated. But their own personal needs will also draw you into a place of submission to their authority, along with the rest of the group.

Just as Gollum had his part to play, so too do the bad teachers, for they expose the ways in which we are not sure of ourselves. Breaking away from them can be a drawn-out crisis. There is a voice in us we need to listen to, but we are uncertain of it. Things do not seem right when we do not listen to it. But the price of listening to it can mean leaving the metaphysical and social security of the teacher and group we are around. And there are good things about the group, so we try to put the doubts aside. But they keep coming back. It is a warrior thing. It requires daring, courage, self-confidence and ruthless honesty. There is a new centre waiting to emerge, around which your whole being will re-arrange itself.

THE GOOD TEACHER

A friend was telling me what he liked about my book The Medicine Wheel. He began by saying that it had helped him gain confidence in his own spirituality. That hit the nail on the head for me, I was very pleased to hear it. Because that is the best sort of teaching: it's not so much about imparting information and practices and traditional wisdom (though that has its place), as it is about bringing people to the point where they trust the guidance that comes from within: we have all the wisdom we will ever need within, if we listen to ourselves - or to the spirits, depending on how you look at it.

That is what humans find so difficult. We tend to rely on authority for our guidance, though few people will see or admit that. It is a big transition, even a crisis, when we let get of the stabilisers and begin to put our own wisdom above received wisdom. It can feel like chutzpah: who am I to think I know better than these elders who have been around since the year dot? I don't mean this in a blind, rebellious way. It involves listening and taking in what others have to say, but making your point of reference your own genuine response to whatever matter it is. And you will always have your own response: listen to it, take it seriously, and hone it against the views of people who think differently.

It is not just about views. It is, probably more importantly, about knowing what to do, and feeling confident you are doing the right thing with your life. A limited teacher or astrologer or tarot reader will give you answers and tell you what to do with your life. A good teacher will ascertain what it is you want to do, and support that. I think we always know the right thing to do in the moment, that is congruent with how we are within, even though we may have no idea about the long-term. This is a difficult training, but it is about living your own life and not someone else's idea of how you should live. The good teacher always backs that. The only purpose of all the practices and ceremonies and teachings is to steer us to this point, repeatedly, with all our fallings away, until it becomes the way we live. It is a deep thing, and it takes a lifetime to build. It is why, in the Far East, you get the shamanic illness: ordinary humans often do not want to live from this sort of depth. But, if we are lucky, life will not let us away with living superficially.

 

Above is my other book, on Astrology. Treat yourself for Christmas, or treat your friends and relatives. They are a feast, though I say so myself. And very readable. I defy you to read the numerous reviews on Amazon and not be sorely tempted 😎

 

TALKING TO TREES

Plants, and particularly trees, are the life-form that stays in one place, that has physical roots. They are at home to themselves. If you are feeling out of sorts, talk to a tree and you will come back to yourself. That within you which has yet to unfold will be given the attention it needs.

I recently planted a Japanese Snowbell tree in my garden. It brought the fairies with it from down the road, and I spoke to them, and my prayers were quickly answered in the usual tricksy way the fairies have, where you learn something. The fairies have always taken care of me, which often means leading me by the nose into a difficult situation that acts as a wake-up call.

The top picture is my tree as it will look in summer. Below that is how it is now. 

 

This picture is of another fairy tree that I visit on my walks over Butterdon Down.

SHAMANISM AT THE EDGE

 I just saw an ad for Contemporary Shamanism - Safe Practices. Harrumph! Is the Sundance, where you dance until you are exhausted and your breast torn open, 'safe'? Is a Sweatlodge, where you struggle to bear the searing steam, 'safe'? Is a Vision Quest, where you are exposed to the elements for 4 days, with no food, 'safe'? Is a trance dance that takes you to the point of possession by the spirits, writhing on the floor and speaking in tongues, 'safe'? No, the whole point of these things is that they are not 'safe'. Think of the young Siberian Shaman, called by the spirits to his vocation, and ill until he accepts the calling. An illness that may kill him unless he yields: an offer he cannot refuse.

The whole point of this shamanic path is that it takes us to the edge, it dismembers and rebuilds us. There is risk involved. And in that process we find gold, a source of guidance and connection that comes from deep within - or without - that can be trusted, that renews us, and that serves the world. If your shamanic practice is 'safe', it will remain superficial. The role of teacher is often safe too, they hide behind it.

Enough of this coddling and safety. There will be trigger warnings next, and a #metoo group for anyone who has had a fierce power animal. We have been prosperous for too long, we have cast out the warrior instinct as toxic and patriarchal, and little that is real can happen in that context. Though the groups we attend may serve our social needs and award badges of shamanic attainment: everyone's a winner. Good luck with that 😎

SPIRIT PLAY

Don't take your spirits too seriously. That is religion. You don't need to know what they look like, what they are. They show up in a light sort of way, sort of sideways on, not through any kind of demand. They are happy to dance around your life. But they are nevertheless powerful. They are involved in the main currents of your life, and they can be sensed.

Our modern wisdom is literal: we want to know who our spirit guides are, and almost what they have for breakfast. But it isn't like that. The spirits are very real, they can be experienced as more so than this everyday world. And that is because they are very real: this world is a pale reflection of how things are, as Plato's Cave illustrates. The spirits are real in the way that powerful dreams are real. And we always have a choice about how much attention we pay to them.

So there is a dance to be done. Don't get too religious about this thing. We will forget about the spirits, and we will forget about the natural world, because we are human. We need to forgive ourselves for being human.

There is always that wider pattern at work, for which the spirits are intermediary. Don't think that anything major happens in your life without that decisive influence. It is reassuring: we can trust there is something in it for us, that we are taken care of, even if it is bitter.

Trust what is not happening in your life, as well as what is happening. You may have notions about what you want to be happening, or that you think ought to be happening. But that is a merely human perspective, which is a tiny slice of how things are. Have patience, for there is often a deeper alchemy at work that takes time. Let Spirit hold your hand, and feel her presence as you make your choices. Choose gladly that which you have to do.

NOT A TALKING HEAD

I've recently created a video course for Watkins Books, as a companion to my book The Medicine Wheel. There are 11 sessions, and I had a fun time doing it: it brings something out in me that writing alone cannot. I think you'll find my style engaging: it's more enthusiastic fireside chat than polished talking head 🤣

 The intro is free and you can find it here

 The course itself can be found here.

 

While you are about it, I did a talk with Aquarius Severn Astrology group in early October, and you can find that here.

 

Happy Watching!

CRAZY SHAMANS and THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

Who am I to criticise anyone's crazy beliefs, when I talk to rocks, leave offerings for fairies and seek guidance from imaginary animal friends? But I think Shamanism does for that reason teach us to hang loose to all beliefs, especially those rigid ones that ironically stop our vast collectives from going completely insane. It used to be religious beliefs, nowadays scientific and political beliefs are used in the same rigid way.

 

We don't really know anything about the important stuff, like where the universe came from, who we are and why we're here, how life started..... we console ourselves with the idea that science will one day tell us, or maybe God is the one who has the answers.

 

Embracing the uncertainty is the way to go. But that isn't an intellectual position. It's about spending years doing the spade work so that you can tolerate yourself. Then there becomes no need to cling convulsively to those collective beliefs and the massive sense of authority behind them. It becomes natural to be open and fluid. And here's a thing: it means you can afford to think honestly and logically, because you no longer have anything to lose by doing so.

A SHAMANIC MANIFESTO

“God is Dead,” declared Nietzsche over 100 years ago. Who is this God who has died - or who, rather, according to Nietzsche - we killed? I think he was the corrupt invention of a desperate people.

 

It goes this way. The Great Spirit is everywhere in nature. All is sacred. This is the universal experience of early peoples. It is how things are, and far older than God, the new kid on the block. The Jews, a slave race, flee the Pharoah, and spend years wandering in the desert wilderness: this is the book of Exodus. They have fled a tyrant, but tyranny is what is familiar to them. And so, in the absence of a tyrannical worldly ruler, they create a tyrannical Otherworldly ruler. It is the psychology by which adults replicate painful family situations from childhood, because that is what they know.

 

This tyrannical God is abstracted from the natural world, he dominates it from above. The Jews were living in a harsh, unforgiving reality in which the people's survival was at stake if they did not follow strict codes of behaviour. So there was a practical as well as a psychological reason for an authoritarian God. He is for the same reason jealous of the pagan god Baal. What eventually arose were the monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which treat the Old Testament as a holy book.

There is, of course, the New Testament, which has a less authoritarian flavour. But even there, right at the start, you have Jesus saying you can only reach God through him. So it is there also. Christianity hit the big time when the Roman Empire, which needed an authoritarian religion to unite it, adopted it. And the rest is history: crusades, inquisitions, witch burnings and so on.

It has been said that monotheisms are desert religions, because their context is just one reality: the desert and the sky. In a jungle, by contrast, there are many realities, which therefore lends itself to polytheisms. Lots of spirit animals! It is why you got saints as Christianity spread beyond the desert.

So good riddance to God and his authoritarian ways. It has left the western world floundering in a sea of uncertainties. Politics has taken its place. Extreme right and left wing politics are a substitute for religion: they give the sense of certainty and belonging, and the prospect of redemption, that religion once provided. We see it too in the causes that young people take up - it is natural to them to do so - but with a religious dogmatism that brooks no disagreement. You are, for example, quickly labelled a 'climate denier' or a 'transphobe' if you question the mainstream narratives around climate and gender. People get 'cancelled'.

Into this brew walks Shamanism, which represents a return to that which was universally true before the corruption of the monotheisms. Shamanism is not true in a rigid sense: it has no holy books or founders. It is nevertheless perfectly possible to become authoritarian about it: you see that on the internet, where some people are quick to correct others about what shamanism is and isn’t. That is just a power thing, that is people wanting to stand above others, and there will always be people like that. You can learn a lot by watching them.

Shamanism, in a way, begins and ends with the experience of the natural world. In that is everything you will ever need to know, but you have to find it for yourself. We are a part of nature, neither above it (as God would have us believe) nor below it, a kind of plague (as many environmentalists would have us believe). The latter is an example of what Jung called enantiodroma, in which one switches to the psychological opposite: from above nature to below nature.

 

For the Chippewa Cree, we do indeed have a special place: the new-born ones, because we are the only animal that does not know who it is. And so we can learn to know who we are by observing nature – as part of it, not as separate to it – for animals and plants and rocks and streams all know who and what they are, and get on with it.

The loss of our traditional religion has been a mixed thing, and its influence persists: in, for example the scientific quest for truth, with its unspoken implication that the truth will redeem us. It is this passion that drives research scientists. It will indeed redeem us, but not very much if we are using the narrow scientific definition of truth alone. I think the hatred of humanity often found within environmentalism has reverberations of Original Sin, in this case our sin against the Mother, the Earth, for which we must pay by dismantling our whole way of life. I think it is important to look at the mythological roots of what drives us.

The collective needs a new mythology to live by, or it will continue to treat politics as religion, as a philosophy that can set us free. We saw how disastrous that was with Communism. (The far right is as nothing compared to the far left when it comes to mass murder.) We can only ever free ourselves individually. Trying to change the world is usually an avoidance of the responsibility we have for our own souls.

Whether our huge modern collectives of people can have a mythology that is not to some degree authoritarian and crazed is something to which I do not know the answer. When there are fewer people, a tribe can govern itself more through relationships than rules. And that keeps things human, and keeps the mythologies softer. Most people will always want a simple belief of some sort about the universe and how it came to be; you need people who are listened to who can dance around that, in the knowledge that really we know nothing about how the universe came to be, and never will. The healers and medicine people, if you like. Or, in our context, the poets.

I think Shamanism does provide the necessary basis for any society to be healthy. The modern world needs Shamanism. We have a big mission on our hands, we have a whole world to convert! But I don’t mean that evangelically. It is more like a spirit we can convey in a natural kind of way, without actually trying to, simply by being ourselves, and letting people come our way rather than seeking them out.

We do nevertheless have some ideas to convey: for example, that the whole world is alive, inspirited, and why would it not be? That we belong intimately to the natural world, there is nothing in us that is outside of that. And the simple, but world-transforming, idea of regularly expressing gratitude to the earth for her bounty.

THE BATHROOM SWEATLODGE

The purpose of the heat in.a Sweatlodge is to melt you out of your rational mind, and into your heart. Failing that, I find a hot bath helps. One that is sufficiently hot that it takes a while to get into. And you just lie there and let the heat have its way. Occasionally hold the back of your head under the water so your brain gets it too. It will set you up for the evening, bring you close to yourself, which is what we are really seeking when we reach for the alcohol, or whatever our self-medication is. Just before bed is good for deep sleep. Just before work in the morning may not be so good: the left-brain has its claims and its uses. 

 

 

Above is the view over Moretonhampstead and Dartmoor from my bathroom window.

RELIGION: MEDIEVAL AND MODERN

 People used to be required to believe in a guy who died pre-emptively for their sins 2000 years ago, or they would burn in hell forever. 

 

Nowadays we are required to believe that unless we dismantle our whole way of life, there will be an apocalypse in which the world itself will burn. 

 

There's maybe not a lot of difference. Both are redemptive religious beliefs, and no doubt the collective needs them. Given the choice, I'd probably stick with what we used to have. The most I hope for is to be able to gnaw at the edges of dogma and foster islands of sanity. Meanwhile, the planet will carry on as before, oblivious of our attempts to save her

THE SHAPESHIFTERS TRILOGY

My next book, The Shapeshifters Trilogy, is available for pre-order on Amazon. It is a fantasy novel that gives expression to my experience of working with the Spirits - Shapeshifting. It is also a world-transforming myth that addresses the old cultural clash between spirit and reason. If you buy it and leave a genuine rating on Amazon, I will give you not one but two free astrology/tarot readings, as it's a substantial, albeit page-turning, read. 

From the back of Shapeshifters: "In a world where dogmatic science has replaced tyrannical religion, the Shapeshifters – those with the ability to take animal form – are ruthlessly hunted down by the ruling Logos. Janwar is a teenager with a nascent gift for Shapeshifting, whose ambitious father is appalled by his son’s proclivity; Alicia is a rebel daughter of the aristocracy, unashamed of her affinity with the animal world. Together with their Shapeshifting friends – Diana the intuitive Dwarf, William the magical adept, Rowena the Rhino and Francis, a mole in the Logos - they must find and rescue Queen Elfina, who has been spirited away because of her Otherworldly sympathies. 

Elfina in her turn has a larger destiny to fulfil: reconciling the forces of science, led by the diabolical Roger Bacon, and resurgent religion, led by the charismatic Zeus Messiah. She has the ancient elemental powers of the Earth at her disposal, along with the help of the Shapeshifters, but will that be enough to pacify these old enemies? 

A page-turning drama that addresses a central mythological theme of our times, Shapeshifters is also a real-world exploration of the larger humanity that emerges from embodying animal spirits."

ST JEROME AND I

It has been occurring to me that in writing my book The Medicine Wheel, I took the spirit, the essence of a tradition and reinvented it for our culture. Not only did I reinvent it, I added to the tradition. The Medicine Wheel is now something we can claim as our own, and not because of my book alone.

The book is easy to read and understand, yet addresses the underlying themes in their complexity and profundity. It is a book to be lived, as the Medicine Wheel itself always has been. The ideas are fully embedded in western culture in a way that only someone from this culture could achieve.

Gosh, this is a bit of a paean to myself, very un-English of me, and I hope you'll forgive me 🤣 There is worse to come!

In writing the book, the archetype of the translator was breathing through me. Not literal translation of one language to another, but the translation of the spirit of a tradition into a form that can be readily appreciated in another culture, so that it does not seem foreign. It is a weighty responsibility. I began writing under a New Moon in Capricorn, which has that kind of gravitas.

St Jerome is the archetype of the translator in our culture. He translated the Bible from the original Hebrew into Latin. Up until then, translations from Greek into Latin had been used. OK, he didn't reinvent a whole tradition, but even in translating words you need a poet's mind, you need to grasp the spirit of what is being said and find an equivalent. Which cannot be literally exact, and adds new meaning, as well as losing some of the old.

So in this sense St Jerome was reinventing a tradition. Moreover, he undertook his translation next to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built on the spot where Jesus was said to have been born. Shamanically, you could say, the original essence of Jesus was flowing through and informing him as he did his work.

For me, there has also been a strange synchronicity. St Jerome had come to mind recently in relation to my work. The Medicine Wheel was published on 30 Sept 2022, which is the Feast Day of St Jerome. I couldn't believe it when I found that out. Yes, I am being told, we are both translators of something deep. And my book was published 23 years after attending my first course on the Wheel, and having been with it, one way or another, ever since. This was exactly the amount of time Jerome took to complete his translation.

I am not boasting when I write all the above. I have a reluctance, but there is a particular gravitas and significance to The Medicine Wheel that needs to be articulated. It enables us to claim this shamanic thing for our own, without the endless deferring to indigenous people that we often engage in, when it can be like the Pope has walked into the room. We can stand on equal terms, and that is something we need to do for our shamanism to reach maturity.

There are various depictions of St Jerome. I chose the one with the lion, that references the popular belief that he tamed a lion by healing its paw. The union of animal and human, as well as healing, are central to the Shamanic endeavour.

NB If you buy my book and leave a (genuine) rating on Amazon, I will give you a free astrology (or tarot) reading😊 The same goes for my astrology book Surfing the Galactic Highways.