THE BATTLE AGAINST 'TERMINATION'

Louise Erdrich writes on Native American themes, and is of Ojibwe descent. She is one of my favourite novelists. She combines the nitty gritty of daily life on the reservation, with a closeness to her characters, endless original storylines, magical events and an exploration of some of the bigger themes around being native. Very few novelists have this range of gifts. And she keeps producing a new novel every year or two, often being convinced in the interim that she will never write again.

The bigger theme in the Night Watchman (which won this year's Pulitzer Prize) is the 'termination' of many of the tribes that was taking place in the 50s and 60s, and the successful attempt by her grandfather Patrick Gourneau to petition Congress to put an end to one such attempt at 'termination': it would have taken away all their special rights and protections, and resulted in them losing their land and ending up scattered in the cities. To illustrate what was at stake, Erdrich describes particularly vividly the lives and stories of 2 families on the reservation who, for all their poverty, are very close knit in a way that we whiteys can hardly conceive of: rather, it resonates deeply as something we have lost.

The policy of piecemeal 'termination' (which suited financial interests) decimated 113 tribes. In 1970 Richard Nixon called for an end to it (I like it when right-wingers do liberal things, it messes with our heads 😅). As Erdrich says, "Five years later, a new era of self-determination for Native people began. Indian rights conflicts made their way through the court system, building Native sovereignty, case upon hard-won case."

ESOTERIC SHAMANISM

Any teacher will tell you that Shamanism isn't a religion. Except that it is. In its essence, of course, it isn't. It is about our own direct connection to Spirit/the Spirits. But that is true for any religion. In its essence, any religion is about that direct connection to whatever is seen as of ultimate value in the universe.

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality," as TS Eliot said. Yes, we can take a bit of Spirit. But only so much. We want our solid ground and our certainties, mainly in the form of the teachers and the teachings. Look what happens when an indigenous teacher walks into the room: almost universal deference. We all start behaving a bit differently.

Now I'm not complaining about this. It takes a long time to own your own East (Spirit), out of which we can work on the Shadow (South). Religion is the route in for many of us. And I reckon it's always been like this. Every religion has produced its 'heretics' (a word meaning 'free') who talk to God or whatever directly, and whose source of authority is no longer the teachers and holy teachings. Christianity has had them, Islam has its Sufis, Buddhism has its yogis and forest saints. They are the guys with the real power and inspiration, and their sayings may last, but they often have a tricky relationship with the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

We have the same kind of thing. If you say that such and such an established teacher made up their memoir, or that so-and-so is a pompous git who is always pulling rank, or that we shouldn't defer to indigenous people, you are liable to get slated for it in certain contexts, and even expelled. You gotta leave the holy people alone, people need them there. It was part of my impulse behind starting this group: I wanted somewhere I could speak such things.

I expect shamanism-as-religion always to be the majority thing. As I said, it's often our way in. It has been for me, to a degree. Such shamanism is exoteric: it is about that which can be spoken and followed. And I expect most people to deny that is what they are doing: everyone thinks they are metaphysically autonomous.

The essence of any path is esoteric, it is inner and ineffable. Esoteric Shamanism, which relies solely on one's own connection to Spirit, which re-makes for itself all it has been taught, and which sees through all the holy bull, will always be a minority pursuit. It cannot be organised. It can be a lonely place. It involves being truthful to who you are, at all times, in a deep way that is prepared to take risks and sometimes to be unpopular. But others pick up on that truthfulness, which has a natural and free quality, and move towards it in themselves. This is the esoteric teaching that is energetic, wordless.

There are two emphases I would like to see more of in our Shamanism, that will move it in an esoteric - or more real - direction, but I don't expect miracles:

(1) Don't think that it is indigenous people that have got the goods, and that ours are lesser by comparison. Don't even compare. Yes, learn from and respect indigenous teachers where they merit it, and not all of them do. But we need to make this earth-path our own, and to make our own contributions to it. There is a place for passing on what you have been taught: but even better is taking the years necessary to embody those teachings. Then you become your own tradition, you have the real goods.

(2) There is too much nonsense and ego in many of our teachers. The real qualification to be any kind of teacher or healer is not the courses you have done, but the relationship you have built with Spirit, probably over decades. It is a slow thing, and too many people are in a hurry to be a teacher or a healer. And then it becomes who they are. And then you get a mess, and yes that is often how students also learn, by our example of how not to do it.

I taught Buddhism then Shamanism between the ages of 28 and 47. I did OK, but as time went on, I became increasingly aware that I didn't really know what I was teaching, so I stopped. And spent 15 years waking up in new ways, and doing shadow work. Now I feel I have a solid basis. I know, within a certain range, what I am talking about. But that is just my story; like anything, it doesn't do to be too prescriptive.

MEDICINE WHEEL IMMERSION

MEDICINE WHEEL IMMERSION

A 5-Day Retreat in the wilds of North Wales with Barry Goddard and Emma Edgington. 14th-19th Sept 2021

Over the main 4 full days we shall be immersing ourselves in the Elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air: Initiation, Healing, Incarnation and Wisdom.

Aligned on the Wheel with East, South, West and North, the Elements show us who we are, and how to live in a balanced way. Simple and immediate to our experience, yet containing the whole universe.

We will be connecting with the Elements and the Spirits through circle work, journeying, ritual and ceremony. There will be plenty of free time to dream, and to explore the magical and jaw-droppingly beautiful eco-retreat that is Cae Mabon, a fairy-tale village hanging on a steep hillside, with stunning views across to Snowdon.

Barry Goddard lives on Dartmoor, and is in the process of having his books on the Medicine Wheel and on Astrology published in early 2022.

Emma Edgington lives near London where she teaches shamanic journeying and healing and is the creative director at Knowing Healing Hub.

Prices vary from £279-£349 p/p with the option to camp or book shared accommodation. A 50% deposit is required to assure your booking. Prices include food and accommodation.

For all enquiries and bookings please email Emma at emmaknowing@outlook.com

THE BEST WAY TO BE A TEACHER

I was watching a guy on Youtube a while back, who opens his latest book with the statement, "I am a Shaman." Well that's a dead give-away. But anyway, he talks about the shadow, and more than once owns up to having one himself. Thank heavens for that 🤣 But that is an easy thing to say, if you are not specific about it, and why would you even think it necessary to say something like that?

And this leads on to my main point: I think the best type of teacher is one who talks quite straightforwardly about themselves as part of whatever it is they are teaching. It can be a natural temptation to think you have a responsibility to set some sort of example. I guess that is true, but only if it includes being open, in a specific way, about the usual human difficulties that we all struggle with. The self-doubt, the guilt, the anger, the anxiety, the grief, the envy towards other teachers. And all this in a spirit of self-observation rather than judgement.

You do people a great service, if you are the teacher, when you can include quite naturally all this sort of stuff about yourself, in a specific way. It is saying to people look this path is not about becoming a higher being, it is about being true to yourself in an open and everyday way. There is nowhere else to go. This is about the most powerful teaching there is, and it is dead normal. But also extraordinary.

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 😊