In Greek Mythology, the 3 Moirai determine our Fate. One spins the thread of life, the next allots its nature and length, and the next cuts it, determining the time and nature of our death. After death, we are judged not on our deeds but on how well we have responded to the challenges the Fates sent our way - or, in later Christian mythology, how well we have borne our cross. Very Saturnian theme, if you are an astrologer. Behind the Fates lies the goddess Ananke, Necessity, who cannot be circumvented.
What I like about this mythology is the sense of our life as a pattern that is already there to be lived out. We may in dreams or in moments of vision get a glimpse of this larger pattern. Or another person may be able to read it for us, much as an Elder might read the life path of a young person returning with a vision from a solitary time in the wilderness. Jung had this ability: Robert Johnson (whose books I recommend) brought a dream to him as a young man, and Jung laid the future pattern of his life before him, including the injunctions to never marry and to never join anything. It never worked for Johnson if he attempted to go against these injunctions.
I think we can get a sense of this fated dimension of life at moments of major change. Someone close to us dies, perhaps, or an opportunity presents itself that we cannot see the full implications of, but we know we have to do it. Or a person shows up who we get a sense we are meant to be around. Fate, a living thing, is that which we have to do, and Free Will is the willingness to do it gladly, as Jung said.
With this perspective of life being in a sense woven for us in advance - though outside of time - life becomes a series of gifts and opportunities to seize, and crosses to bear. It is the Moirai - the Norn's in Norse Mythology - who make us what we are, far more than our parents ever did: they are but a light overlay.
'Know thyself' was written above the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi. Thy 'self' is a pattern inextricably woven in with the patterns of others. It has a part to play in whatever it is that the universe is up to, which we can never know, but it is nevertheless the Mystery we need to live close to.
In the Shamanic traditions, we have the idea of spirit helpers, who act as intermediaries between ourselves and the Great Spirit, the Great Mystery in which resides our living Fate. These helpers may be clearly defined, or we may have just a general sense of help being around us. It is important that we have this sense of being helped, that we are not the truncated lone hero of the Protestant tradition, carving out his place in a hostile wilderness.
In core shamanism, one is taught to have a clearly defined sense of helpers. But because it is a system, it doesn't always have the necessary nuance. You may feel you are wanting or inadequate, because you do not have a clearly defined sense of who your animal or human helpers are. But if you can pull back from that, it may be that your general sense of being helped by a benign universe is stronger than someone else's, who may have a very clearly defined set of spirit helpers. Trust whatever way that Spirit/the Spirits appear to you.
What about the shamanic idea of soul loss? When I learnt core shamanism in 1997, I was taught that soul loss is often indicated by someone's life not working very well in certain ways, or at all. This was, I was taught, usually the result of some traumatic incident earlier in life, in which part of the soul had fled for self-protection. The job of the shaman was to bring that piece of soul back so that the person could become whole and their life could work. This description of soul loss seems to have been tailored to fit the modern western psychotherapeutic model, which places much emphasis on the idea that who we are is fundamentally shaped by our childhood.
If we have the sense of the larger Fate around our lives, then this childhood emphasis appears to be simply not the case. It contains a certain amount of truth, but Fate, not childhood, needs to be the first port of call in healing ourselves and in acquiring self-understanding. What we most need is not reductive stories rooted in childhood, but mythologies that tie us in to cosmic dramas. "Trailing clouds of glory do we come," as Wordsworth wrote.
It is always important to stay close to experience. What we do experience are our tribulations: suffering is one of the most real experiences we have. What we do not experience is the cause of that which torments us: attempts to do so are speculative. Explanatory childhood stories may seem very persuasive, they may even contain some truth, but truly our demons are a mystery, they are part of the Fate woven for us at birth. What we may view as traumatic, and as something having 'gone wrong' that needs repairing, is not necessarily how the Spirits see it.
What we call 'soul loss' may be precisely the difficulty we need in order to get us to seize our Fate. I am not saying soul retrieval does not work - of course it does, it can be a profound thing. What I am arguing around is how we see it.
I think soul retrieval is best seen not as healing something that went wrong in childhood, but as helping someone find the wherewithal to seize their life. I once had a Jaguar put in me, that gave me the resources to undertake something that I previously experienced as beyond me, because it would have caused me too much anxiety. It did not involve any childhood explanation for my anxiety. It was a nudge to help me live in alignment with the deeper patterns of my life.
Why we have our demons is a mystery. Did they come in with us, did we choose a childhood that would mirror them, so that they would be 'in our face'?
So yes, sometimes we do soul retrievals, and it can be beautiful work. But I think the emphasis on any explanations that come with it needs to be geared towards the future rather than the past. What it is that we can now dare to do or to be, rather than correcting some past 'mistake'.
So soul loss can be a necessary thing. It can give us precisely the struggles we need to claim our destiny, the deeper currents in our life.
The primary emphasis also needs to be on bringing our own bits of soul back, for there is a claiming that only we can ultimately do. I think when soul retrieval through the agency of a shaman occurs, it is because sometimes we get too bogged down in our own stuff to see the way forward. And in either case, the context needs to be here is a part of you whose time has come to be lived, rather than here is something you should have been living all along if not for your dysfunctional parents.
There is always a bigger theme around soul retrieval, that may take time to emerge, but which I think is its real meaning. There may well sometimes be psychological explanations that help, but the context needs always to be the 'big-picture', which I think the Spirits are usually happy to provide. Both science and psychotherapy can be very reductive of the human being, and it is important that we do not concede to that reductionism - as core shamanism easily does - but rather make Shamanism a means of reclaiming a larger vision of existence.
