SHAMANISM: AN UNSAFE SPACE

From my book-in-progress

Shamanic practices are not ‘tame’ or ‘safe’. They are not an add-on to a respectable urban life, where you become a ‘shamanic practitioner’ alongside being a well-boundaried therapist and respectable member of the parish council. No, they take you somewhere raw, primal, beyond the normal controlling ego.

This is on the one hand threatening, and most people will not want to go there. But it has a delicious, ambrosiacal, irresistible call too, for it is what we are here to do: to transform, and to transform deeply, and unless we can relish that call from the Otherworld, and abandon ourselves to it over many years, that deep transformation cannot occur.

It takes courage, and it takes persistence, and you may not have much obviously to show for it, and we have to learn to live with that, because it is not about that. We may appear to be some kind of ‘loser’ on the world’s terms. But really that does not matter. It is about who you are, and continually being with that on a deep level, together with its occasional periods of crisis – with or without the Sweatlodges and Vision Quests - and other people will pick up on that, they will sense that there is something about you that is deeply alluring, but they may not quite know what it is. They will recognise, however, that you are simply being yourself, you have found the courage to claim that freedom, and this is what they want too, though they may not fully know it. That is what they find appealing. By who you are, you give others the implicit permission that it is OK for them also to be who they are. This is the best kind of teaching, and it is unspoken.

EGREGORE and THE MEDICINE WHEEL

(another short extract from my book)

There is a mysterious way in which symbols and ceremonies acquire power over time. The word ‘egregore’ describes this phenomenon. You may sometimes feel this with stone circles, that tend to be located at spots that have a certain power anyway, but the combination of ancient and modern ceremony at those places adds another layer of power that one can feel.

For myself, this also works with astrology and tarot. They are both symbolic systems that are used for divination, to help unpack who we are. And their ability to do that lies not just in the divinatory ability of the reader, but in the fact that these symbols have been used for centuries or more in the same way. Reality is not just the visible, tangible material world. It is not even fundamentally that.

Consciousness is primary, matter secondary, as quantum physics also reveals. And it is as if when we sit with say the planet Mars, we are also sitting with all those thousands of astrologers from the past and present who have also directed attention to that planet and allowed it to speak through them, it has grown as a gateway to meaning over time. And you find yourself being able to say something to the person having the reading that is true about them, without the prior knowledge one would normally require. And this is magical, it is like the universe already knows you. It enlarges and enchants the spirit of the other person.

And it is the same with the Medicine Wheel. It is also a tool of self-knowledge that has a divinatory aspect. When we use the Wheel to understand ourselves better, we are plugging in to the power it has developed over time, through all the people who have used it in this way. The Wheel has its own power, it needs to be approached with that kind of respect, and any contributions we might make to that tradition need to be done advisedly.