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.