SWEATLODGE

The most important thing to remember about the Sweatlodge is that it is a way for humans to give back to the Creation some of the energy that they are always receiving. 

The Earth Mother constantly gives us two-leggeds a surface on which to place our two feet; Father Sun warms us, and Grandmother Moon brings dreams. The element of Earth gives us a place to grow food and the ability to make homes and tools. The water keeps us alive. The fire warms our homes and cooks our food. The air gives us the sacred breath of life. Through ceremony, we learn how to give back.

- Sun Bear, Anishinaabe Nation

SHAMANISM IS MUCH MORE THAN TALKING TO SPIRIT GUIDES

I have this instinct that a traditional shaman was someone who worked from a broader base than spirits who turned up while in altered states of consciousness and gave advice, or who did what we might call energetic work. Would any of you confine what you have to offer in this way? No, I'll bet you don't, and I'll bet it was no different for them, because we are all fundamentally the same. Indigenous cultures are not as 'other' as our projections might lead us to believe.

I have, furthermore, a hunch that this narrow description is a creation of western academics, caged within a one-sidedly rationalist framework, and enamoured by that which bust open the bars of that cage. What is so special about Siberian indigenous traditions that does not apply to the rest of the world? I don't believe it. Indigenous ways are fundamentally the same, wherever you look. That is what gives me faith in them: they all tell me the same story about what it is to be a human being. 

 

Eliade's foundational book, 'Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy' gives the game away by its title. As any of us who have done this work know, the ecstasy is a side effect, it is incidental to what this work is really about, which involves healing and meaning in the lives of individual people. Ecstasy is exactly what tame academics do not experience, and it misses the point.

There are also linguistic/metaphysical differences. Our notion of the self emphasises autonomy - with its concomitant language of rights and freedoms - whereas an indigenous notion of the self is more relational, and would think more in terms of collective responsibilities. So where a shaman would speak the language of spirits telling them things, we might talk about the intuition. My personal preference is for the indigenous framework, but I won't let that stand in the way of standing up for what we call 'intuition'.

If the Shaman didn't know the stories, the wisdom traditions, the ceremonies, of his or her people, then who did? If you didn't go to them for advice, then who would you go to? When I am responding to people who come to me, I draw on my knowledge of our culture, I draw on my hard-earned experience, and I draw on that which presses on me to be said. Where this world ends and the Otherworld starts, I cannot say, and it does not interest me because I do not make that distinction.

Like the Two-Spirits in the Native American tradition, who are really One-Spirit like the rest of us, but call themselves Two-Spirits to help us muggles understand them, so are Shamans less of a separate, narrow category than they maybe describe themselves, or as the anthropologists would have us believe. They - we - function along the broad range of human experience, in which what we call the Otherworld is not so separate or remote or exotic as modern rationalism projects.

So let us be done with this tussle about the meaning of Shamanism, which sometimes vitiates our attempts to reignite indigenous ways of experiencing the world, in a culture that has forgotten its belonging to Mother Earth. Yes, Shamans, formally speaking, intercede on our behalf with the Spirit world for our benefit. But that is just part of who they are, and it is speaking a particular language. It is a definition and an emphasis created by a very narrow specialism, namely western academia, of which Michael Harner was a fully paid-up member. We are, and always were, something much broader than this.

OF BOOKS, WOLVES AND OVERTURNING THE GOD OF REASON

January through to March this year I was writing a book on the Medicine Wheel (for which I think I’ve found a publisher.) Then April and May I was writing a book on astrology. Both books took me by surprise, but were in a way straightforward, because all the thoughts were there in my head waiting to be set down. Half way through the astrology book, a wolf turned up, an alpha male, who wanted to be written about. But in the form of a fantasy novel. Not so straightforward. I think I will take time over it. I want to be true to my shapeshifting experience. I want to take up where Philip Pullman left off, and overturn the successor to the God of the Old Testament, the God of Reason (who I think Pullman has too much regard for), and free the Spirit of the Earth. And I want people to know that your daemons don’t get fixed when you grow up (as Pullman indicated), in fact the opposite is hopefully the case.

The wolf doesn’t just want to be written about. Operating in conjunction with Sophia, an inner lady who turned up a couple of years ago after appearing in dreams for some years, I think he is giving me the wherewithal to go and get a physical place that people can come to. I’ve been getting quite out of sorts for some days, and today I realised it was about insufficient purpose, now that the main book-writing is over. My foot is still in plaster, but nevertheless I walked 5 miles on Dartmoor today. It is so good after 4 months not being able to walk far. And then I did some press-ups and pull-ups. I cannot be stopped! I am starting to feel fit as a butcher’s dog. Tomorrow I will massage a rhinoceros…..

So yes, this thing I have written about occasionally for some years, buying a place with a bit of land that people can come to. It was always not the right time. But now I think it almost is. The financial hurdles that appeared are almost gone, and I am in a better position than I was. And I may have a book or two published that will make people want to come.

And seriously, I am not ambitious. It is some years since I stopped caring very much about how the world saw me. I was never very good at it anyway. This is just something I want to do, and I will trust whatever does and does not happen. Ambition has been replaced by trust. But I’m good at what I do. For now, it’s me heading off as a lone wolf to do this. But as an Aquarian with Moon-Saturn in the 4th, the sense of home and community in strong in me (and in wolves) and I’m sure that will happen too in its own good time. And it would be great to have some sort of summer shamanic gathering under canvas, mainly based on just being together and allowing things to happen, rather than too much in the way of programmes and teachers. It is time to shine 😊