MY BOOK

The perfect Christmas present for yourself My book on the Medicine Wheel won't be in the shops till next autumn, but you can purchase from me (signed) for £14.99 plus £3.50p&p. Paypal at BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk. Email me.

 

SPIRIT ANIMAL ANCESTORS

This is where I am writing my shamanic fantasy novel. 50k words so far. It is my Medicine Wheel Room, which has the most natural light. I happen to sit in the Southeast (the red and yellow stone) - the place of the ancestors. Yeah, that's a picture of a mouse on the wall behind the computer. And that tiny black thing on the left of the red stone is a flattened roadkill frog.

 The story is about people who can shapeshift into their animal souls, but they have to live with prejudice in a society ruled by a cult of tyrannical reason. They are seen as mentally ill, and treated accordingly. The book is full of magic you can actually do. It is both way out there, yet close to experience. And it is a polemic.

Anyway, because it is about our animal helpers, and because I sit in the Southeast, I thought maybe they are also ancestors. Sure they are, I'd just never thought of them like that before. The ancestors I see as whatever it is that supports us from the past. And that is literal animals because we are animals and have been living with animals for millions of years. But also our spirit helpers, they come from somewhere deep that is not just defined by this life. Maybe they have been helping us and our people for many lifetimes. But even that is too literal: they come from somewhere outside of time, because they are our gateway to Spirit. Our literal ancestors too, are no longer in a world bounded by time.

MY MAGICAL THING

Julian Vayne recently got me talking about 'My Magical Thing', a series he has been doing. I talked about the Pipe Ceremony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4NOuSwAqvU

PS You can also find my astrology writings at https://astrotabletalk.blogspot.com/

ON JOURNEYING AND HEALING

The Spirits are all around us. We just need to tune in and they will come to us. We don't need to travel miles down rabbit holes to go and find them. That notion suggests they are remote from us, and they are not. They are more powerful when we embody them, and they want to do this. We don't always have to know who or what our helpers are - feeling their presence is enough. The Spirits take us to a deep, sensitive place, from which we need to come back slowly, without the disruptive harshness of the so-called 'call-back' signal.

When we do healing work while embodying the Spirits, a raw, visceral, vocally expressive quality can emerge, a bit like you might imagine a witch doctor to be, and it is all the more powerful for that. The real qualification to do the Spirit work is our relationship with ourselves and with Spirit - same thing - which generally takes years of being honest with ourselves and being willing to go through difficult transformations.

It is generally better that the Spirit work is carried out in the context of having got to know the other person well over time. It is the relationship that is the main catalyst for change, and it needs to be genuinely two-way: psychotherapy is sometimes not very good at this.

SHAMANISM, CLIMATE CHANGE and THE MADNESS OF COLLECTIVES

Shamanism begins not by talking to a power animal, but by remembering that we are part of the natural world. A natural world that is alive and inspirited. This is particularly necessary for us moderns, who have been forgetting that belonging for thousands of years.

It is natural that we Shamanisers might feel as acutely as any the deleterious effect that humans are having on the natural world. We can never return to how things were: we have too much technology, and are too inventive, ever to do that. But nevertheless, new balances need to be found.

 

What can we do individually? It maybe depends on temperament. Some people like to take part in protest. Some like to pray, and don't underestimate that. We of all people know its power and its necessity. Prayer in the sense of a heartfelt conversation with the natural world.

But the one thing we do need to be aware of is the madness of collectives. Collectives have always been prone to madness, and probably always will be. They over-simplify, they get it wrong. And they set up an enemy, a shadow projection: it can be capitalism, politicians, climate deniers, transphobes or toxic masculinity. Or, dare I say it, the vaccine. Even, maybe especially, philanthropists. The list goes on.

Our primary job is not to support causes, even the so-called liberal ones. Our job is to be conscious. Very few people are conscious, though many think they are, just because they support the right causes: hence the ironic term 'woke'.

Being conscious is difficult. Spirit shows us how, often by leading us into difficult situations that force us to see things differently, that separate us from the group values around us. A Medicine person takes his or her authority from Spirit, not from what everyone around them thinks. That is what sets them apart and gives them wisdom, which people instinctively recognise.

Coming back to climate change, large parts of the collective are currently in a state of alarm, like a herd of frightened horses. They genuinely think that humans are faced with extinction, and there is an undercurrent of feeling that it is because humans are bad. Because it is part of being 'liberal', many shamanic people have become part of this frightened herd. But Shamans are not liberals, they are not anything. They are just attempting to be conscious.

The collective at best finds it hard to think straight, and certainly cannot do so when it is in this state of alarm. Yes, there is some genuine science behind it. But there is also the news, which exaggerates the bad side of things - that almost seems to be the nature of news - while inconvenient facts get ignored. Like, for example, that polar bear numbers are increasing: the problem was not lack of ice, but people hunting them. Or that vast areas have greened over due to increased CO2. Or that we are now giving more land back to nature than we are taking from her. And that unprecedented numbers of people are emerging from extreme poverty. The list goes on.

There is good news as well as bad. If you are trying to be conscious, balance is needed. It may not make you popular. It may get you called a 'climate-denier'. Not minding what others think is an excellent warrior training, an inevitable one if you want to be conscious.

Meanwhile, if you want a more rational and balanced view of what is happening with climate, the environment and the future of humanity, you probably won't do better than read the book below.

 

 

 

I have spent the last year extricating myself from environmental alarmism. I felt trapped by it, like I was meant to have this gloomy view of humanity's future. I was caught in the collective madness. But there is a more rational and optimistic position to be had, simply by examining the evidence in a wider and more disinterested way than is generally presented to us. I would say this is true for all collective issues.

MAMA'S LAST HUG

I'm halfway through this book, and it is moving. 

 

 

 

The Bible gave humans dominion over the earth, while in recent times we have had Science putting us at the top of the evolutionary tree - same difference, really. Mama's Last Hug, written by a long-time research scientist, persuasively demonstrates that other species experience the same emotions that we do. For us moderns, Shamanism needs to begin with the experience that we are a part of the natural world - a corrective to the last 1000 years and more. This book gives that sense of belonging.