THE GREAT FORGETTING and THE GOD-SHAPED HOLE

The first task of Shamanism is to address The Great Forgetting in European culture, that we belong to the natural world. It began several thousand years ago with ancient Greek rationalism, and continued with the Old Testament dominion over nature given to man, along with Christianity's assigning of the world to the Devil. 

This divide was inherited by Science, and remains with us today in the form of the mind-body split. Its resolution is not so much an intellectual problem, as an experiential quest. Sheer time in nature is one way. Trance Dance, in which the body yields ecstatically to the spirit, is another way. Sweatlodge, that immersion in the elements in the context of community and prayer, is another.

 

CORE SHAMANISM and THE GOD-SHAPED HOLE 

There are a number of criticisms of the use of the word 'Core' in 'Core Shamanism', which you can find on ChatGPT. My criticism is that it tends to reduce Shamanism to a set of techniques, because there is no supporting cultural context, no deeply rooted mythology in which it would find its place. Such a mythology is centred around ultimate realities, around the Great Spirit, ‘the holiest of everything’, as Frank Fools Crow translated it.

We do not have such a mythology. But we can still come into deep relationship with the Great Spirit, with the Chaos, through paying attention to what gives life meaning and having the courage and resolve to live it. It is this that is truly ‘core’. Without this foundation well in place, your healing work will be superficial, and you will tend to try to create an identity out of being a healer, to fill the ‘God-shaped hole’ in your life.

IF YOU MEET YOUR SPIRIT GUIDE ON THE ROAD, KILL HIM

I try not to be too hard on so-called 'Core' Shamanism. It is where many of us begin on this hard-to-define path, whose meaning we consequently argue about. Some people insist they know what Shamanism is and what it isn't, and they are probably best left in their happy bubbles. Other people insist that whatever Shamanism is, it is not a religion. Well of course it is, don't be daft, religion is what happens whenever you get more than one person together in a room, you get unspoken rules and hierarchies and all that, it is just what humans do. The point of religion is eventually to step outside of it. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. That sort of thing. When you meet your Spirit Guide on the yellow brick road, kill her too. If you are ready, and she doesn't kill you first. You always know what you need to know, if you are listening to the multiverse, because you are the multiverse.

But I began this piece with 'Core' Shamanism, and not wanting to be too hard on it. It was my own way in, in 1997, after 17 years of a rather fundamentalist Buddhism that did not consider the Earth to be sacred. Well, I can't say Core Shamanism did either, not particularly: the emphasis was on journeying and the magical things you can do in that realm. Which worked for me. Over a period it changed me deeply, and catalysed a complete change in my life. Though my journeying quickly moved outside the paradigm I had been taught. And into something the teacher 'had never heard of', suggesting it was somehow wrong.

Be that as it may, this 'Core' Shamanism (and 'Core' is one hell of a claim that I could spend a whole post unpicking) got many of us going, and needs credit for that. That said, it is merely a minimalist method, scientifically stripped of cultural context and richness. Maybe that is what the word 'Core' really means. It would give it a kind of validity in the academic context in which its originator Michael Harner lived.

Anyway, I asked Chatpgt what it thought were the limitations of Core Shamanism, and this is what it said. It seemed fair enough to me, apart from the use of the term 'cultural appropriation', which I think is loaded and political and in denial of the natural process by which cultures have always freely taken from each other.

So here is ChatPGT, with its latest installment of AI Shamanism:

Limitations of Core Shamanism

Core shamanism is a modern approach to shamanism developed by Michael Harner in the late 20th century. It is based on cross-cultural shamanic practices and techniques that are believed to be universal to all shamanic traditions. While core shamanism has gained popularity in recent years, it also has some limitations, including:

Cultural appropriation: Core shamanism claims to be a universal approach to shamanism that is not tied to any specific cultural or ethnic tradition. However, some critics argue that this approach is a form of cultural appropriation, as it cherry-picks practices and techniques from different indigenous cultures without proper understanding or respect for their cultural context.

Lack of lineage and cultural roots: Core shamanism is not grounded in any specific cultural or ethnic tradition, which means that it lacks the depth and richness that comes from a long lineage of shamanic practitioners. This can result in a superficial understanding of shamanism and a lack of connection to the cultural and spiritual roots of the practice.

Overemphasis on individualism: Core shamanism tends to focus on individual spiritual development and personal empowerment, rather than on the collective well-being of the community. This can lead to a self-centered approach to spirituality that neglects the social and political dimensions of shamanic practice.

Limited understanding of the spiritual world: Core shamanism tends to view the spiritual world as a kind of psychological projection of the individual psyche, rather than as a complex and dynamic reality in its own right. This can result in a reductionist and simplistic view of spiritual experience, which fails to appreciate the depth and complexity of shamanic cosmologies.

Lack of traditional training and initiation: Core shamanism is often taught through workshops and seminars, rather than through traditional apprenticeship and initiation processes. This can result in a shallow understanding of shamanic practice and a lack of respect for the traditional ways of learning and practicing shamanism.

Overall, while core shamanism has its benefits and can be a useful starting point for those interested in shamanic practice, it is important to approach it with awareness of its limitations and to seek out more grounded and culturally rooted forms of shamanism

'EVERY POWER ANIMAL IS TERRIBLE'

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The words came to me the other day, that most people, if they encountered a power animal for real, would run a mile. What do I do with that? I'm sure I would have to include myself. When an experience is truly visionary, you do not know you are having it. It is just as real as this reality: there actually is a big cat standing in front of you. And it shouldn't be there!

I don't want to sound like a certain person that many of us know through Facebook, who likes to say that our modern shamanism has no power compared to indigenous traditions. And he, naturally, is the authority on it, and the channel to it. It's a power trip, and he attracts disciples seeking the authority and certainty he provides.

Unfortunately, there is a partial truth in it. Here we go: I think it is equally true of most indigenous people, that they would also run a mile if they had a full-on encounter with a power animal. Phew, got there.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead similarly describes how normal humans shy away from the white light of reality after they have died, and flee in terror to their next body. Again, it is a religious power trip, a way of controlling the masses through fear. It is saying we are born out of fear, rather than for the beautiful experience of being on the earth, which is the more indigenous attitude. But it also contains the same half-truth, for what are power animals if not intermediaries between ourselves and the Great Spirit? As the poet Rilke said, “Every angel is terrible”. And as T.S. Eliot said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality”. Marianne Williamson: “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

 

It's a glass half-empty, glass half-full thing. I am glass half-full, I want people to feel they can do this thing. It begins by being open to yourself and to truth in all its forms. Humans believe what they want to believe, about themselves and about the world. If you can be agnostic, more than that, dwell in the Great Mystery of things, and let the truth be what it is - and it is a fluid, complex thing - then you may encounter a power animal in its full reality, instead of a helpful reflection, who may do a few good things, but you're not going to deeply heal anyone, it'll just be bits and pieces. If you are building an identity, a name around being some kind of shamanic practitioner or teacher, then that is the opposite of what I am talking about, you are creating an ego-barrier between yourself and the free flow of Spirit.

That said, the most unlikely, dysfunctional people can have superpowers. The Native American Chipps family was well-known for this, a bunch of thieves and alcoholics whose head guy would switch into being a powerful healer when called upon. But the long-term path of truthfulness to yourself and to your spirits is definitely the way to go, without any thought of the healing powers or reputation that might accrue.

Your body knows, it has animal power and knowing. We humans are traditionally the new-born ones, because we do not know who we are, we are afraid of who we are. Animals know who they are. In this sense they are aligned with the Great Spirit in ways we are not. So we can learn from animals. Hence Power Animals. And Power Plants.

Core Shamanism is perfect if you want to keep it safe. I know one teacher who adds in all sorts of protections before you visit the Spiritworld. It amounts to a way of controlling his disciples by appealing to their fear of the unknown, and making it seem like the 'responsible' thing to do. Nonsense. The Spiritworld is to be trusted, deeply and wholeheartedly. That is where the real power lies. 

This teacher also plays the 'I'm super-intuitive' game, so you'd better believe him, because it comes from 'Spirit'. 'Intuition' does not give you a special pass into the Spiritworld. Apart from the fact that what you say is unverifiable by ordinary means, all temperaments have their equally powerful connections to Spirit. You may be a 'thing' person, or an ideas person. Or you may be illuminated by Spirit by direct transmission, by 'intuition'. That has much value, and you can feel the weight of it when it is genuine. But it is not a free pass. It can be, needs to be, subject to evaluation by others. This, in my experience, is not taught in our courses. It needs to be. Intuition is a subtle art. It is objective in nature, but unexamined is easily a conduit for personal bias and emotion.

I have a theory about Michael Harner, the originator of 'core' shamanism, as if there is such a thing. There can be no method that is core, because shamanism is an inner thing, it is essentially about being true to ourselves and to the spirits that guide the wider course of our lives. Be that as it may, Harner's formative experiences were under Ayahuasca, amongst the Amazon peoples. And the shamans there (see 'The Spears of Twilight' by Philippe D'Escola) are well known for sending black magic each other’s way on a regular basis, to a degree I have not read about elsewhere. Maybe there is an extra level of paranoia issuing from the regular ingestion of Ayahuasca, whatever its other benefits may be. My view is that psychotropics are an initiation, and that the real, unglamorous work comes later. Treating psychotropics as foundational, rather than as an occasional inspirational reset, leads to imbalance, and to a vulnerability to entities that do not mean you well. So Harner comes from a tradition in which you'd better protect yourself, cos there are dark entities and a jealous shamanic mafia out there. This does, incidentally, drive home the point not to idealise indigenous people. They are just like us.

 

So the possibly slightly paranoid indigenous tradition that Harner comes from, issuing from the overuse of psychotropic drugs, has influenced the emphasis he places on protection in the Spiritworld. We do not live in a culture where such a level of protection is necessary, and it comes at a price, which is that wholehearted trust in the Spiritworld, which in a way we have as children, and need to re-learn in a less naive way as adults. Anyway, it's just a theory about Harner, I may be completely wrong.

An experience of a power animal can take many forms. It may not be obvious. It may be the hidden power behind an idea, such as when I am writing my fantasy shapeshifting novel, which seems to have a wolf presiding. It may be a general sense of something guiding your life, which may have the raw, direct visceral quality that typifies a power animal.

And it may be present very directly, very fully, in doing healing work. This is where I particularly relate to the idea of power animals as something we might shy away from. There seem to be ways in which I seem to be quite deeply open to myself/the spirits, I am not hiding behind some kind of identity as a shamanic teacher. That has never worked for me if I have tried (thank you, universe.) The way I work is by embodying and surrendering to whatever it is that wants to show up. I Shapeshift. I do not need a name for the spirit, and often it is others who tell me what they experienced - a woman, a bear, a dinosaur, whatever. In a way it doesn't matter, but I also honour whatever those presences are. They come from a deep, direct, raw place in me: my root chakra, if you like. They may be a very delicate feminine presence, they may be a roaring beast, while often expressively vocalising in an unknown tongue.

 

When I work in this way, it is like a good actor on stage: people experience the presence of what is living through me. Deep and tangible healings seem to happen, they may take a while, but they address long-term underlying issues. I am trying not to be boastful, I am trying to say that when you embody the spirits, and you have been at the coal-face of who you are for enough years, then the Great Spirit has a more open channel through which to work. There are no shortcuts, no shamanic trainings. I am not saying at all this doesn't happen for other healers, of course it does. But it can also be that little happens, it is not the real deal, but we're not supposed to say so. Well I am saying so. I can often tell: this person has all the certificates, but they do not have a deep relationship with themselves, the power is not there. There is a degree of fakery to what they are offering. These things need saying.

 

So the way I work takes me over. It has the presence of a good actor channeling a character. I am fully present, yet surrendered to the spirit. This is how the Siberian shamans work. The power of it is natural and free flowing, and of a different order to that which 'core' shamanism teaches. This is quite a claim to make. Maybe some will see it as arrogant or judgemental. But it is the truth of the matter. And it does not preclude people experiencing that sort of spirit presence and power within, or maybe despite, the 'core' shamanic paradigm.

And it is why some people might run a mile from a real power animal. It is what happened around me a couple of months ago. Some people found the way I worked 'wrong' or 'sexual' or they could not look at me. They were all people who had been indoctrinated with the teaching of needing lots of protection in the Spiritworld. Lots of fear. It goes back to Harner. 

Let's look to Siberia instead. And let's look above all to ourselves and to our Spirits with courage and honesty. Let's not listen to the voices of disempowerment in whatever form. We can do this. It is the point of this Shamanic path. We need to bust out of Shamanism as religion, those little cults of personality that spring up all over - and which do provide a necessary starting point for many of us - and trust that voice within, that we maybe think is wrong, because it disagrees with the teacher; it is maybe undisciplined and 'lazy', but it is where our yearnings are. It is the tantalising voice of our soul, which keeps coming back. And it guides us, if we have the courage, and the chutzpah to ignore others, especially some 'elders', into something that is uniquely our own. That is what the Animals want for us. And that is why they are terrifying.

SOUL-RETRIEVAL AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

I am good at teaching myself things. All I need is a book and off I go, or a pen and I will work it all out myself from scratch. I've sometimes felt swindled when I pay a lot of money for an event, and realised I could have read all that myself in half an hour. I felt a bit like this about the 'core' shamanism course I was on in the 90s. It was probably a fairly standard one. I did most of the journeying on my own, intensively, back in the room where I lived, and I came to understand its transformational power in my own non-verbal way. The actual teachings seemed to me to be just a few simple techniques, spun out over nearly a year and surrounded by mystique. 

 Of course journeying with others was helpful and necessary. But still, the teachings themselves were spun out. And the teacher himself was anxious to be seen as the authority in the Spiritworld, and that's not the way to go IMO, even though it's very common. In fact, he was so egotistical that I thought nobody could fail to spot it and be misled by him! 

 I like to put all the labels aside for what it is I am doing when I do healing work, and just do what I do. All this extraction, soul theft, depossession and soul retrieval is for me just so many words we apply to a process that is beyond our knowing, and maybe better left unnnamed. The possession idea I am particularly wary of, because it can create a paranoid universe that lacks personal agency. 

Nevertheless, I want to say something about soul retrieval. I was taught it in the context of the psychotherapeutic paradigm, the idea being that a piece of you goes missing as a child due to trauma, and the healer's guides find the soul part, which generally takes the form of the child at the age it went missing, and persuade him/her to return to this world. 

All well and good. The Spirits are very adaptable to whatever stories we tell ourselves about how things came to be. But it is a particularly modern thing to see who you are as being a product of your childhood and how your parents treated you. I read a book recently called The Nurture Assumption, in which much more shaping agency was given to children's peer groups and much less to parental influence than we tend to assume. 

Are we the first culture in history that thinks it has to go digging around in a childhood it cannot remember in order to become a balanced human being? For many indigenous people, if you suffer from say extreme anxiety, then you don't go digging around in childhood for the cause, rather the healer would say that the spirit of anxiety - which belongs to the wider universe rather than to you - has come to visit, and you need to form a relationship with that spirit. I love this, I think it's brilliant. 

Another angle came to me last week when doing what looked at first like a soul retrieval. There was clearly stuff to be brought back, the spirits were waiting with it for me to collect off them just a yard or two away (when I journey, the spirits come to me physically, and I move around, embodying them.) 

What I was given was a stone cross, with a sunstone in the centre, and a sword. There were particular reasons behind these 2 objects, but more broadly they belonged to the West/Earth and North/Air directions of the Medicine Wheel respectively. They were to help this person achieve balance with these directions/elements in her life. And that is the whole purpose of the indigenous way: to become a balanced human being - balanced within yourself, and in balance with the world around you. That is the point of the Medicine Wheel. And that is how the spirits had decided to present this healing to me.

I thought this was brilliant. A whole new angle on soul retrieval, which sidesteps the psychotherapeutic paradigm, giving a way of looking at it that is probably very traditional. You don't necessarily need to know the reasons for why you are imbalanced. Such reasons can only ever be partial, they are like a bone thrown to the rational mind to shut it up! Why we are the way we are is a deep mystery, and a huge perspective is needed.

What matters is that the imbalance here and now has been identified, and the energies needed to rectify that have been made available by the healer.

SOUL RETRIEVAL: TO DO OR NOT TO DO?

The big question for me is whether it is best to do Soul Retrievals for other people, or help them to do it themselves. And I'm coming down on the side of helping others find their way themselves. Then they keep the power in the relationship and in the process, and they learn something. And if it takes months or longer, that is fine. There is no hurry. This is a slow-burn path.

And what is maybe sometimes missing in our culture is the place of prayer and ceremony also. And that leads on to the part that community can play, maybe needs to play, in healing. Imagine how much more powerful a healing is, if you have a load of people praying for your well-being at the same time as the shaman-guy is doing her wizardry. That is how Sweatlodges often work. Traditionally, you don’t do them just because it is Sunday or whatever, it is for a specific reason, like someone needs healing.

I used to do Soul Retrievals and other Shamanic bits and pieces up until the early noughties, and they were effective. But then people stopped coming, completely. Apart from once a few years ago, someone I knew had been sectioned, I turned up at their request and my helper put them back in their body, and a few days later they were released.

The stoppage wasn't personal, because people were turning up for astrology readings, where my primary function seems to be able to help people through transitions, how to BE in those confusing times where your old life doesn’t work anymore and you think maybe you’re going nuts. Which maybe you are, from a conventional point of view – rather like in American Beauty – but from a real point of view, you’re getting sane at last.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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Anyway, it was energetic - something in me switched off, and has remained switched off, even though I have changed considerably in the meantime. However, if I have led people on their own healing journeys, great things have happened. And that can be through formal journeying, or just talking, and maybe using the directions/elements of the Medicine Wheel ceremonially as places to talk from.

So for me it's been a big message from Spirit not to do Soul Retrievals. (I’m not legislating for others here!) My early experience of journeying in 1997 was of my soul being 'retrieved', or uncovered, spontaneously, with plenty of dismemberment and reconstituting, and it changed me deeply in a short period. So I was doing it myself, in conjunction with the Spirits/the forces of the Unconscious. Even though the guy teaching me this ‘core shamanism’ tried to discount my experience, saying that others had to do it for you. Cojones! But these early experiences are formative, and if someone representing a tradition tells you something at that point, it can take years to fully convince yourself otherwise.

What comes into consciousness in Soul Retrieval isn't necessarily just missing, or repressed, pieces of soul that should never have gone missing. It can also be tied up with the stage we have reached as a human being, it can be also about a further stage of consciousness emerging.

A recent experience of Soul Retrieval was massive for me. This was last June, and it was after 2 Sweatlodges in one weekend. Sweatlodges are often a catalyst for me. I experienced an accession of a feminine side to myself, and it’s probably partly an age thing. I am still processing it 7 months on, in fact it will take years to unfold.

But one of my reflections is that part of it has been yes, stuff to do with childhood, where there was no room to be anything but a one-sided male. But another part of it has been a woman with an earth-power and the sort of wisdom that only comes with age. And who is to say that the piece that went missing in childhood wasn't also part of some necessary bigger picture? Like being part of a family line in order to bring some healing? Or having something difficult to push against?

So 'retrieval' isn't necessarily the right word. The way I was taught it had this emphasis of something having gone wrong that shouldn't have, and that being remedied. And there can obviously be truth in that, but it is also more complex. Our woundings are also a path to our soul, in a strange way we can need them to grow – the cracks where the light gets in - and it can be almost like they were planned. Sometimes. Or it may just be time for a new bit of our soul to come into consciousness, a new round of balancing on the Wheel. The ways of the Spirit, and the pattern of its unfoldment, is a mysterious and long-term thing, and it needs a big perspective.

FINDING MY OWN WAY TO THE SPIRITS

I've been of the opinion that in my journeying work, I am good at shifting energy but not so good at receiving information. And the reason I thought that is because all these years later I am still conditioned by my first experiences, which were the methods of 'core' shamanism. I don't want to knock them, because they helped me profoundly. But really we need to vigorously drive that word 'core' from the description, because it is nonsense and so misleading. It creates a very narrow perception of what Shamanism is, within the incredibly rich and multi-faceted landscape of what it actually is: this very broad approach to becoming a balanced human being.

Anyway, even my 'energy' work does not happen from 'formal' journeying. I embody the spirits, I move around with intensity and purpose, and there is added power: the involvement of the body allows the Spirits to incarnate more fully than they would otherwise have done. This seems to be fully traditional, and I view our lying down version as a compromise to keep it 'safe' for cerebral westerners. The work I do is fierce and uncompromising, it really deals with what needs to be dealt with.

But as I say, all these years later and when it came to info, I was still trapped in the methods of core shamanism, which of course work very well for some but not for me. So I'd do a journey and wait for a spirit helper to turn up and give me some info about the matter in hand, and it just never happened. Maybe I'd get the odd image that I'd work with to get some meaning from. Meanwhile I also trained myself as an astrologer, and I've become pretty good at it. And of course I'd regularly be saying stuff that hit the nail on the head for people....

And I realised what I was doing with journeying was that before the journey even started, I would immediately have a sense of what I wanted to say to the person, it takes no time at all, though it takes a few minutes to unfold once I start talking. And I was putting that to one side and waiting for a spirit guide to turn up and tell me something. OK, you can laugh at me now for my daftness . But there you go, it shows how much a method, put in a narrow way, can conceal us from Spirit, rather than guide us towards it.

So now I know I can get info for people, and usually I use the planets as an intermediary, but really the sense of what to say is just there and always has been, and it is usually pretty immediate.

The Lower World

The Lower World is what gives us our power, our cojones, our ability to take this shamanic thing and make it our own rather than someone else's version. In astrology, we have Pluto, who is Lord of the Underworld, and one of his main meanings is 'power'. So same thing.

PLUTO

So when you see a teacher trotting out the teachings of 'core shamanism', that is all well and good, it helps people, but if you watch you'll probably see that they haven't yet fully found their own way. And that is not a criticism, because it is a deep thing that I am talking about, that usually takes many years and is ultimately a gift from Spirit.

But I think where I will venture a comment is over the denial of the Lower World. And this is usually unconscious. And it often expresses itself in an over-emphasis on the Light, on heavenly visions of who we could be and a proselytising spirit, the need to bring others with them. But you can't just deny that authentic power, because it will then come out in its shadow form. And that usually means either having someone else on a pedestal, as the embodiment of all that is good; or putting oneself there as a messenger of the Light, as an advanced being, who will bounce back any feedback while maintaining a facade of openness to it. In both cases, the position is well-defended.