YGGDRASIL MON AMOUR

Here's a late night one. First of all, despite modern attempts to reduce gender to just a social construct, it remains a real thing for most of us. To some it is genuinely (rather than ideologically) fluid, and I salute you. On an inner level, it remains a real thing for all of us. That is why the Pipe is masculine and feminine, stem and bowl respectively, and achieving a balance of that gives you wisdom, it gives you both perspectives, and the right to lead ceremonies. So men, you need to have a felt sense of everyone in the room, passing on your 'insight' is not the only thing, or even the main thing. And women, you need to know what you want and to be prepared to piss other people off in the process. Then we become balanced, and it is a deep thing that is generally second half of life. It is much more than those active, psychological qualities, though. It is about finding your soul, and you can't hurry that, because you can't hurry Spirit.

 

 

Anyway, that wasn't the main thing I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about Yggdrasil, the tree in Norse mythology that held up the heavens, which is also the tree I planted 10 years ago at Lowton Farm, my old place on Dartmoor in Devon that has 5 bedrooms and several barns and 27 acres of land to die for, views over half of the county. I left there 4 years ago, but I think I'm going to be getting it back, and I will weep on the land when I do so, because it has held my dreams for so long, but they have been nascent, and needing a long journey to know what they are and to feel ready to live them.

Yggdrasil has become a bit of a corny idea, because we overuse these things, but what else do you call a Coastal Redwood from the West Coast of the USA that is the tallest tree in the world? It has to be Yggdrasil. I ordered 5 of them by post about 15 years ago, and they were meant to be Giant Redwoods (the largest trees in the world) but instead they were Coastal (postal) Redwoods, the tallest. Then when I moved to Devon, I planted the 4 that remained, and they are all still alive. But one has really thrived, and is now about 20 ft tall, and that one has been guarding the place for me.

I put most of the money into buying that place, but when it came to it my ex said she wouldn't let me do my shamanic stuff there, she didn't like shamanic people, the place was for her horses only. How could I have not seen that coming? Well I didn't, and I ask you which of us has much wisdom when it comes to the real natures of the partners we are with?

So I left her to it in 2017, what else could I do? But I still owned 1/2 of it, so it wasn't an issue that would just go away. On a personal level, I dropped it, I can do that. But on a magical level, even though I didn't know it, this place still had me. The fairies that had brought me to owning Fenny Castle near Glastonbury in 2000 (known locally as The Last Refuge of the Fairies) had passed me on to the fairies of Lowton Farm (who live mainly in a bit of woodland near the top, which is not human territory!) They moved me on from Lowton, for the time being, and found me a great place in Moretonhampstead, the local town, where I have felt looked after and protected and where I have relished being with me like never before.

But then, in March last year, as lockdown was beginning and as I decided to live the East of the Medicine Wheel (inspiration, new beginnings) for a month, it came to me out of the blue: "You are going to get Lowton Farm back." It was a jolt, a bolt. I thought I had let go of that, that it was all in the past. But no. So over the next few months I crept in there from the top, where no-one would know I was there, and began with some serious magic. I created a giant, yet hidden, Medicine Wheel, and spoke to the land. It was so good to be back, and so good to see the 7 white horses that live there again. And maybe the best magic of all, I took care of the land, because it wasn't being properly cared for. I cut back all the blackthorn and brambles that had been allowed to encroach on the fields, and that took some months.

Then, because of what a psychic reader told me, I decided I had taken what had come to me too literally, and I left the place alone for a year. In which time I led 2 long Zoom courses on the Medicine Wheel, and then wrote books on the Medicine Wheel and on Astrology, both of which will be coming out next year. And I am currently writing a fantasy novel which will, I hope, do justice to our forgotten ability to embody our spirit guides, a raw, primal energy that has a lot of power and that is in a different league to the tame, albeit valuable, method that Harner has bequeathed to us.

But then, back from leading a Medicine Wheel course in Wales last week, I felt pulled to visit Lowton Farm again. The magic of the place was very strong for me, and I knew I wasn't going to find another place with that kind of power in its land, not for me, anyway. Then the next day it was coming to me strongly "Claim it back!" Such a simple message, and so strong. Writing this makes me cry. And so I did, and my ex, having held out for 4 years, is willing to let me buy her out. She wants to move back to Scotland with her horses. Thank fuck for that. The place had never been meant for just her and her love-in with her horses. There were much bigger reasons we had got the place, and now it looks like she will be moving before too long.

I had never believed this would happen. The Spirits told me to leave, and I thought that was that, then they told me I would be getting it back, then I lost faith in that, then they told me to claim it back, and against all my expectations, it looks like that is what will happen.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity to do great things. We pray for what we want to the Spirits, we give thanks to the Great Spirit even for that which is yet to come. It is born out of this thing in me which I am prepared to live, which makes demands of me like writing books that I don't think I am capable of, but which I do nonetheless, and the Spirits are proved right, as usual.

So I don't know what I will be doing there or who with, I will be turning up on my own, but I know I will get help, it will not be the struggle I may imagine, Spirit will provide, and we will do great things. I have things to do, things to contribute to this Shamanic World. On a philosophical level, so to speak, I have worked through the Medicine Wheel in a way that is both simple yet substantial in a way that has not been done before. On a 'trance' level, I know how to journey in a way that is embodied (and thoroughly traditional), and all the more powerful for it, that is not currently taught. And maybe above all, I know what I am talking about: for 15 years something has held me back from teaching shamanism until I could talk fully from experience. This may sound a bit above myself, but it is time to shift this shamanic paradigm in our culture. Give it a philosophical and experiential depth that it hasn't yet had. Know that we can do it just as powerfully as indigenous people can, that we can make these teachings our own and even add to them. And move to something more embodied in our trance work (which is one part of shamanism, rather than its 'core'.) And do it all in a way that is easy and natural, where the teacher is not someone above and separate, but just a part of things. This is my vision of where I want to go and what could happen at Lowton Farm. Where a bunch of us can hang out in yurts and tipis in the summertime, without a programme of events, and go where Spirit guides us, in an easy sort of way. That is also deceptively profound, precisely because it is easy and natural :) And there can be so much joy in that.

INITIATION AS PROCESS

Initiation is not a one-off event that occurs in a particular ceremony, although it can appear as such to our modern eyes. A ceremony may act as a focus, but initiation is essentailly about a new way of being, a new element entering consciousness, around which everything has to be reconfigured, and which generally takes some years to digest and complete.

I see this in astrology readings all the time. An outer planet comes along - which is basically Spirit in one form or another - and the person gets taken through this kind of transition. This is where elders come in in a traditional society, for they can guide us through these testing times; they can help reveal the meaning of what is happening, that we are not going nuts, we are not mentally ill, rather something new and of great significance for our whole life, and indeed of significance for other people too, is being born, which does not fit the usual simple categories that most people need to live by. This does not happen just at puberty, but at any age.

If the poets and such likes are respected voices within society, then we are in with a chance of being helped rather than pathologised. Initiation is something that happens naturally in life. It involves a deep change from one paradigm to another. This is something that a large society, which is inevitably governed by rules rather than relationships, cannot do justice to. In this way, initiatory processes become harder for us, but by the same token demand that we develop a firm belief in ourselves, in order to navigate the simplistic and often negative judgements from our collectives. I like to quote the film American Beauty in this respect, where everyone thinks the main character has gone nuts, but one can see that it is he who has gained some sanity, while everyone else continues to believe in the fantasy of the American Dream.

Above all, do not think that indigenous people who still have their initiation rites necessarily have something you don't. This is a common way we modern shamanic types disempower ourselves. What matters is that we stay at the coal-face at least some of the time during these challenging times, that may go on for years, and find the courage to go with the change that is being asked of us. Not many people can do that. If you have done so, you are the real deal, and you have something to say.

TWO SPIRIT and TRANSGENDER

The Native Americans understood this transgender thing through their Two Spirit traditions. You'd get eg men living their whole lives as women, because that was their calling, yet they would be buried as men. We have forgotten what it is to be called by an archetype, or rather a Spirit, which is a gift: instead we want to possess it and literalise it, and that easily turns the gift into a curse. We literalise it through surgery and hormones. We have to be one thing or the other.

 

Transwomen, as Germaine Greer dared to say, are not women. And nor are transmen men. There is a much more interesting journey to be had if we can trust nature instead of trying to 'correct' her. Nor is it indigenous to insist that others see us the way we decide, instead of the way the collective decides. The self is relational amongst indigenous people, rather than autonomous, as it is in our world. This is where we can learn from indigenous attitudes.

And here's another thing: for some people, gender is fluid. For most, it is not. Their gender is simply the biological sex they were born, and they are happy with that. This is observable, it is a pragmatic truth. Yet recently I ended up in a wrangle twice with people who wanted to insist that gender is fluid, full stop. That is ideology, it is not pragmatic, nor is it the 'progressive thinking' that they think it is. And I don't appreciate the dogmatism either. That alone makes them wrong. Gender is fluid for some people, but not for most people. If you grew up on a farm like I did, you see biologically determined behaviour first hand.

SETTLING THE MEANING OF 'SHAMANISM' ONCE AND FOR ALL?

Going to a retreat at Cae Mabon with Dr David Luke on 9th Sept. He is an academic psychedelic researcher, and below is a diagram he uses when talking about the traditional roles of the shaman. 

 As you can see, there are a lot of roles. It is not just the direct work with the spirits that the modern narrow definition of shamanism reduces it to. How could it ever have been just that? A shaman is necessarily an orchestra rather than just one instrument. You get this impression too reading Jan van Ysseltyne's book Spirits from the Edge of the World, about modern Siberian Shamans. I'd like to think this settles the debate once and for all about what shamanism is, but I'm sure it won't! 

 
Here is the event I'm going on: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exploring-ecology-cosmos-consciousness-tickets-168428164173?fbclid=IwAR3GOtiOQxxkswCq1Z2hMf_aj7e-pxe0GD6ozBTKYm2eGgeChT2v1wTtdeE