SOUL LOSS, SOUL RETRIEVAL and MULTI-DIMENSIONAL REALITY

Here is a piece by Leo Rutherford from his website at Eagle's Wing:

"Soul Retrieval is one of the most well-known and effective practices to restore or recapitulate lost life force.

To understand how recapitulation practices work, we need to look at the multidimensional nature of reality and move away from a linear sequential perspective. From this expanded perspective, ‘anything which has ever happened to anybody, anywhere; is still happening somewhere’. If a traumatic event occurred ten, twenty or so years ago, it is still happening for that person somewhere in the matrix of the eternal reality of ‘now’ and is likely to be still influencing that person’s life.

Shamanism does not dwell on ‘past’ events; there is only this vast awesome ever-moving great moment of ‘now’ where there is no separate past, present, or future. It is possible for a practitioner to journey outside of linear time and go to the place where that energetic event is still occurring and find and bring back that person’s trapped life force. When this has been carried out, the therapeutic healing of the event and its consequences can truly begin.

The lost life-force, known as soul-loss, can take place when we have an accident, experience overly strong emotional exchanges with a loved one, separation from a partner, death of a loved one or go through a pervasive period of difficult circumstances. When we undergo a severe trauma typically a part of our vital nature goes away, so that we can survive whatever is happening to us. Problems develop when the soul part or fragment does not return.It may not want to come back, or may not be able to return due to the nature of the trauma.

There are a number of symptoms of soul-loss. For example, when people feel that they are observing life as an outsider rather than engaging and being fully involved or when feeling ‘spaced’ out a lot of the time, not really here. Other symptoms are life-themes such as a pervasive fear, inability to trust people. Severe depression can also be a symptom as can chronic illness, ME and lack of energy symptoms. This directly relates to Personal Power. In the shamanic worldview, power and maintaining health go hand in hand. If the body is power-full, there is no room for illness or disease, which are regarded as an invasive force."

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I used to do quite a lot of Soul Retrievals myself years ago. These days I am somewhat ambivalent about them, because I would rather help people find their own bits of soul themselves. Then they learn something.  So for me the jury is out!

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I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

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ON NOT JUDGING

When we stop judging ourselves, the shadow can reveal itself, and we become more whole and more at ease. And then we stop judging others, and people start to feel instinctively that they can trust us and be open with us. And then when you can stop judging politicians, particularly the ones you don't vote for.... now that seems to be the biggest ask of all, for 'spiritual' people at least as much as for anyone else. But when we can stop judging politicians, then we can start to understand how the world works, and let go of unrealistic expectations.
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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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The Bad Professor

In 2014 Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor and well-known evangelical atheist, described fairy tales as pernicious, and said that children should instead be taught scientific rigour. In response I wrote this short story:

THE BAD PROFESSOR

There was once a bad professor who didn’t believe fairies existed. And if they did exist, well they oughtn’t. And all the children in the land were afraid, because when the Moon was growing bigger in the sky and the stars were out and if they were unlucky, there would be a knock on their bedroom window while their parents were asleep, and there would be the face of the professor with his helpful smile.

In he would come without so much as a by-your-leave, and he would rifle through their books – again without so much as a by-your-leave - and he’d take out all the fairies, as well as anyone else he didn’t believe in. And into his jam-jar they went, and they got stored, so it was said, in the shed at the bottom of his garden.

And the jam jar got so full, and the buzzing of angry fairies became so intense, that one day they burst out. And they headed straight up the garden, with Santa, a bit out of breath, bringing up the rear. The fairies made a beeline for the bad professor’s study where they found him vivisecting an elf, a pool of elvin tears glistening at his feet.

Now no-one knows exactly what happened next. But the screams were unearthly and terrible, and they reverberated throughout the land, and all the children instantly knew that their books and the fairies who lived in them were once again safe, for the bad professor was no more.

Fairies are not always nice.

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I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

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SPIRIT AND ARRANGED MARRIAGE

Did some astrology today for a Romany couple who had an arranged marriage. And it has gone very well, for 17 years. They hardly knew each other at the start, and they seem very good together. I looked at the chart for the marriage, and there was a strong outer planet emphasis. The outer planets, which are invisible to the naked eye, describe the influence of Spirit in different ways. And this marriage was decided by Spirit, not by humans. That much was clear from the chart, even though it was the respective Romany parents who had set it up, who I guess knew how to listen to Spirit.

And I thought well why not? Isn't this interesting. Are we necessarily the best person to decide who is right for us? Unless we can listen to Spirit, and very often that will require someone else's help, or considerable maturity on our part, our desires will get in the way.

But maybe, when we are younger, it needs to be that way. Relationships are often a necessary long-term working out of shadow projections - 'shadow' having a broad remit here. But maybe we also often go through far more mess than we need to, because there are no wise elders to arrange this business for us, at an age when we hardly know anything about anything.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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'Normality' is both people maneouvreing until what each unconsciously wants is satisfied. Then you have 'love'. We edit ourselves to suit the other, and generally we stay edited until - and if - life decides it is time for us to move on. And then, yes, we learn, and Spirit may well have played its part in setting it up to start with.

I'm not sure I know anyone who has been able to say to me that they are a good judge of who to get involved with. A lot of people I know are washed up on the beach in middle-age or later wondering what was all that about? And living with the cultural brainwashing that you are less than adequate if you are on your own, that there is something wrong, instead of right, because you've never been able to make this often crazy thing last.

My own standpoint is that I'm not going near anyone unless Spirit unmistakeably shoves me. I have been happily on my own for a few years, in a way that I couldn't have been when I was younger. And I can have a great time being friends with women, and there can be a lovely buzz there, a dance between us. But these days I feel fairly whole in myself, and I don't feel driven to turn that into something else.

Singledom is much underrated, there is a whole world to be discovered. And there is a considerable sense of freedom in it. For myself, let marriage and relationships be arranged by Spirit. And if nothing is happening, I will trust that. Like I am learning to trust all the other things that aren't happening. That sort of trust gives you space to tune into the bigger picture. Read those last 3 sentences again :)

Here is a Navajo take on the business, which I published here some time ago.

THE WISE MADNESS OF TRANCE DANCE

Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, asked "Which will you have: wise madness or foolish sanity?" What we usually call 'sanity' is foolish because it creates a pretence that reality is a certain way, and that everyone living according to that certain way is sane. (Unless they are from a foreign culture, in which case we probably secretly think they are insane, but being good liberals, we maintain otherwise).

This sort of pretence is necessary for all of us, at least to some extent, or we would fall apart psychologically. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." (TS Eliot) The path of the healer involves letting go of these false foundations - life will do it to us, bit by bit - so that Spirit can flow through us unhindered. This is the 'hollow-bone' principle, that is a lifetime's work. The power of the healer comes from the ability to stand apart from the necessary foolishness we call sanity.

Trance dance is like the ocean washing away our foolish rigidities. It is not any view or value in particular that is foolish, it is the way we hold on to them that is foolish, the rigidity behind them that creates an illusion of a solid identity in this temporary dream of life. Give me an open-minded flat-earther over a fundamentalist climate scientist any day!

In Trance Dance we surrender to the Spirit that wants to flow through us, that wants to take us over, that wants a few moments of incarnation. This is said to be especially precious to the Spirits. And yet for 1000 years we have denied them this chance, ever since medieval Christianity banned dancing in churches. You can see why. If you let the Spirits dance through you, then you have your own connection to the divine, you have your own metaphysical authority, and that simply won't do.

But it is on its way back, through rock and roll, through Pentecostal Churches, and of course Trance Dance. It is a madness in the sense that we let go of the controlled behaviour that makes us 'sane'. That is why we wear a blindfold: we are such social creatures, and so fragile, that we are always on the lookout for the approval of others to give us our sense of who we are. In Trance Dance we take a risk, we let go of that and let in what, from a conventional point of view, is madness. Madness because it has thrown over the authority of social norms and given authority to Spirit.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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For myself, after a dance I feel deeply aligned with who I am, I may be in an altered state for some hours afterwards. If called on to do healing work, I am in the same place instantly, without the drums. It is never far away, because this world and the 'otherworld' are one and the same place. They are deep, wild, subtle, beautiful energies that want to course through us, that want to be part of this dream too.

'Possession' is when they take you over completely. When that happens, it is a sacred moment, for magic has entered the village. I have heard of it happening in our Trance Dance, but very very rarely. You need to let go of the ego completely, and that is like a death. Embodying the Spirits as a healer, that is what I would like to see more of, it is something I want to teach. And Possession, that is an aspiration of mine. (Be careful what you wish for!)

Above is a recent picture of me in my madness, and below is a picture of Leo Rutherford in his madness. He introduced me to the dance 20 years ago. I'm wearing a blindfold. Some of my strongest dances are without one, for then the Spirits can have me flailing from one end of the room to the other. They are so expressive. And yes, those are superheroes on my pyjamas. You can just about see Captain America on my right thigh 😂

 Thanks for pics to Lisa Bridge of www.seventhrayarts.com

A STORY ABOUT THE WORLD

Shamans talk to Spirits. This may be direct, or it may be through divination, using guinea pig entrails, bones, stones - or the stars. That is how my passion for astrology fits in with this shamanic thing I also do. It is all the spirits talking through us in different ways.

Astrology is not a science. There are any number of ways of reading the heavens. The inexplicable gift of the astrologer is to hit on a story that means something to us, that startles us: how the hell could you have known that? And in that way we are enchanted, we are connected to a mysterious bigger something that seems to know something about who we are.

On 12th January Saturn, the worldly taskmaster, and Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, will line up in the sky. This happens once every 40 years and begins a whole new cycle for the world. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto cannot be seen with the naked eye. They are, each in their own way, that bigger something that we cannot control, that is more powerful than this puny self that likes to think it is in charge. Life works when we yield to, and co-operate with, these outer planets.

Saturn allows events to happen, in fact he demands that they do so. And Pluto is the raw power of new life wanting to emerge, and destroying whatever stands in the way of that. He is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’, nor is not the job of the astrologer to judge in this way. Pluto describes survival, and what we need to survive. He therefore describes, amongst other things, the economy. In Roman times, he was a god of wealth.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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The last conjunction of Saturn and Pluto was in 1982. It is like a deep seed being planted, and takes some years to be visible. One meaning of this conjunction was the new era of free market economics. The conjunction occurred in the sign of Libra, a sign that concerns balance. The world economy had, in a way, been balanced since the 1930s, when the Glass-Steagall Act was introduced to stop further crashes and depressions. This balance was torn up under the new Saturn-Pluto alignment. As the economist Ha Joon Chang has shown, these ‘free-market economics’ have, since the 80s, led to more boom and busts, less overall growth, and eventually resulted in the crash of 2008.

So this era, with the new Saturn-Pluto conjunction upon us, is coming to an end. The coming conjunction is in the sign of Capricorn, a sign ruled by Saturn that describes the establishment, government, institutions and big business. Exactly what will happen is beyond my ken. But maybe something about the shape of it isn’t. One theme will be the power of the multinational corporations. Even the mighty US government cannot get Amazon or Google to pay their taxes. Nor can the EU. These corporations are starting to rule the world. That said, the US government is in the pockets of the big corporations in ways that are hardly believable to us. Congressmen are all sponsored by them, and they see nothing wrong with that. China, however, is not so susceptible. And the UK will soon be in more of a position to write its own rules. So one theme is likely to be the increasing power of these corporations, and the attempts by governments to control them. As well as a new era of protectionism. We have been taught that protectionism is a bad thing. But is it so terrible to make things yourself, rather than rely on cheap labour thousands of miles away? I think Saturn-Pluto also describes the new world order that is coming into being, a world of 2 economic and military superpowers instead of one, the US and China.

The last time Saturn and Pluto lined up in the sign of Capricorn was in 1518, 3 months after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg and began the Protestant Revolution against the pan-European power of the day, the Catholic Church. This is fascinating and spooky in the light of Brexit, but maybe more on that another time.😊

I also have an astrology blog at https://astrotabletalk.blogspot.com/ which, like this blog, has a free email subscribe button top right.

TO ALL THE ODD UNCLES and AUNTS AT CHRISTMAS

The Jungian psychologist James Hillman talks about the importance of the odd uncle or aunt. We may not know them very well, we may only have ever met them once or twice, but they can nevertheless occupy an enduring and important place in our psyches. What they stand for is the possibility of a different life, a different way of being amidst the particular set of values with which our parents have brought us up. The possibility of living by the call of the outer planets.

It is inevitable, I think, that there will be rigidities and narrownesses in our parents, because that is the human condition. And, as we grow up, we may feel restricted by those values, because they do not reflect who we are. So the 'odd' uncle or aunt, who does not fit in very well with society, says to us by their very presence that there are alternatives, we do not have to be like our parents. And this is a powerful thing, we will probably remember that odd uncle or aunt strongly for the rest of our lives.

If you are on this site, the chances are that you too are an odd uncle or aunt :) So remember the unspoken impact that you have. And that the black sheep is often in reality the white sheep.

And that we probably have our own journey to make around feeling OK with our families. I think the main point here is to stop being critical of them, stop needing them to be something other than they are. Once I accepted that my Dad was essentially a simple materialistic guy, and couldn't help but see and judge things the way he did, then that freed me to become happier with who I am. When we are younger, we may need to fight our way out and be very critical. But then I think we reach a point where we need to let go of all that and just let them be who they are, and that enables us to be who we are. It is a relief. That took me until my fifties, but it was very easy once I realised all I had to do was accept him for what he was.

Meanwhile my Dad had an older sister who had a degree in literature. She had some education in the real sense, she knew things and was interested in things for their own sake. I grew up with money around me, and with a lot of pressure to be like that myself, but it was at the same time a cultural desert. This aunt was also quite troubled, but when I was talking about her at another relative's funeral a couple of years ago, I found myself in tears, because what she stood for to me when I was a child was very important. I was hungering for something richer and more cultured, and she embodied that possibility. And as an adult I have repeatedly put myself in situations that starve me, because that was what was familiar to me as a child, I do what I 'should'. But then I listen to that voice of something else in me, that my aunt stood for, and I get out, and I am one more round up the spiral of finding the centre of my wheel, of living closely to my Spirit - which is what this whole thing is about.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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I think in a saner society there would be more elders around to take by the hand the children who have something else going on, so they don't have to go through so much of a journey of self-doubt. It is maybe the inevitable result of a large society that we end up living by rules instead of relationships. And that way tends to be more rigid. Though we do also have our freedoms in our current society.

So give yourself credit for the struggle you may have been through to become who you are. Yes you have a shadow side that maybe feels like a miserable worm, but we need that shadow: value that as well, it keeps our feet on the ground, keeps us humble and human, and keeps us learning. It will always be there. In your 80s you will still have sides that are problematic to you.

Meanwhile, don't undervalue what you stand for to others, not just nephews and nieces. The possibility of escape from the self-imposed strait-jacket (there is no evil conspiracy forcing us to be like that) that large societies seem to need to give its members a sense of certainty and security. We are the shamans, the medicine people, because we serve the outer planets. We do not need those certainties and rigidities. And because of that, Spirit can flow freely through us. That is where our power to help and heal comes from. And remember, we are not truly the 'odd' ones, we are the sane ones.