BECOMING 'INDIGENOUS'

When we talk about indigenous peoples, we usually mean the guys who got there first, who've been there forever. It was first used in this sense in the Americas in the 1600s. But technically it means native to a land, and that applies to most of us. So that can create confusion.

Take your pick, because I want to talk about what the word connotes as well as denotes. Its connotation is suggested by the etymology, coming from the Latin 'indigene' meaning 'sprung from the land'. What's not to like about that?

That, for me, is the real meaning of indigenous. You can be born in England and have lived there all your life, and yet not be 'sprung from the land'. Indigenous in this sense suggests a belonging to the land and to the natural world. It is the reclaiming of that felt belonging that I feel is at the heart of our modern shamanic enterprise.

In this way 'indigenous' becomes a universal attribute of being, that reflects the common world-view wherever you find indigenous people. And here's the thing: indigeneity becomes a way of relating to the whole natural world, such that if you transplant an Australian aborigine to North America, he or she would remain indigenous. They would not be indigenous 'to' North America, but they would embody the indigenous way of being nonetheless.

 

In our multicultural, globalist world, I think indigenous also has to mean sprung from the earth herself, so that you carry it wherever you go.

This post came out of a video course on the Medicine Wheel that I am constructing for Watkins publishers. I said that the purpose of the Medicine Wheel, and Shamanism more broadly, is to learn to relate to the world and to yourself as an indigenous person would. Which means living in balance with the world, and it is that which keeps you in balance within. Which is why going for a walk in nature can sort everything out. Mother Earth heals us and brings us back into balance if we expose ourselves to her, feel her with our hearts, give thanks to her, enjoy her.

Certainly the Medicine Wheel helps us find indigeneity, how could it not if approached through all 4 directions? As for the shamanic journeying side of things, to which some people try to narrow down the word shamanism, does that help make us indigenous? It can certainly fill us full of spirit, that same spirit that courses through nature. So yes. But it has its pitfalls, in that it emphasises just 2 directions: East and West, Spirit coming into matter. It does not, for example, involve much of the North, the Mind, objectivity and rationality: indeed, it can encourage a prejudice in favour of intuition over rational thought, and when you do that, your intuition soon stops being intuition.

I wasn't expecting to write that last para! Don't get me wrong, I love the journeying side of shamanism, which for me is like dance. But it needs the context of something like the Medicine Wheel to find its place in the scheme of things. The Medicine Wheel, which asks us to build a relationship with the elements outside of ourselves: Sun, Rain, Soil and Wind - will gradually make of us indigenous people. And you can do it in your back garden. Just a few minutes a day, done with intention, is a powerful thing.

WHY I DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD

I don't know how many of you watch Jordan Peterson's interviews. He's helped me think my way through the current apocalyptic woke mess that we find ourselves in. And, shamanically, to appreciate the bounty that the earth offers us and the prosperity it gives us.

What tends to be missing in our world is gratitude for this bounty. As a result it is easy to be shamanic and to separate off from the modern world, to condemn it in comparison to a lost ideal, to see nature as fragile, and to dislike humanity. I love humanity: I think it crucial that we do so. I love our technological genius, I am sure we are here to continue unfolding it. It is part of nature, not separate from it. And nature is robust. She is red in tooth and claw, as well as pristine and benign.

One area I do not agree with Peterson is over God, specifically the way he puts pagan, polytheistic religions below the vengeful Old Testament God, who he seems unwilling to criticise. The guy who destroyed the god-fearing Job in a bet with the Devil. The guy who says that gays should be stoned to death.

My view is that indigenous peoples from time immemorial understood balance and gratitude and the sacred. Which doesn't mean they didn't also slaughter and do terrible things to each other and view other peoples as less than human. But for them the natural world was inspirited and sacred, and if you bring everything back to that, then you can always find balance.

The Old Testament God is the new kid on the block. He arose amongst an oppressed people living in the desert, and he reflects the harsh reality of their lives, and the strict, unforgiving rules that can be needed to survive.

The reason Peterson puts God above 'pagan' religions (a word that for him has pejorative undertones) is because he thinks that one God reflects a deeper understanding of reality than having many gods.

What he seems to overlook is the underlying unity of Spirit within pagan religions. Amongst the Native Americans, you have the Great Spirit. In Norse mythology you have the Web of Wyrd that connects everything. Spirit helpers are a lens through to the Great Spirit. Just as are the saints a reflection of God in Catholicism.

Peterson isn't stupid, so I think there is something unconscious in his attitude, a blind faith that needs Yahweh to be The Man. As a very rational, scientifically-trained guy (but not lacking in humanity and empathy) he is searching for a deeper metaphysical underpinning. The solution he has found has been, in a way, what was nearest to hand, and authoritarian: that to me says something about the level of his unmooring, brilliant as he can be in other ways. In this respect, he is a man of our times.

The reason I am Shamanic is because I believe - I experience - the world to be alive. It arose from deep within me, irresistibly, 30 years ago after 11 years of a Buddhism that had made me ill, and it changed my life completely. Both Buddhism and Christianity have a tendency, each in their own way, to separate off spirituality from the natural world. It serves the interests of organised religion to do so, because then people lose their power, and will give it instead to the religious authorities. It is a dark 2-way deal that is pretty normal, and often a stage along the way for people.

But unnecessary. If you begin by remembering your connection to the natural world by putting yourself in it, and if you have a teacher who has been dismembered enough not to need pupils, then I think one is off to a much better start. And essentially a teacher is nudging you towards your own wisdom. There is not really much to teach. All you need is your sense of belonging to, and love for, the natural world. Everything comes out of that, and we can find it ourselves.

The Christian God died for a reason. He arose in the context of an oppressed people, and gained currency through military means (Islam) and by becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire (Christianity). He was always corrupt, always out of balance. Away with him!

THE CENTRE OF THE WHEEL

The Medicine Wheel begins from its Centre, and unfurls from there in the 4 directions. The Centre is the point of alignment, of balance. It is a dynamic place. What do you feel called to do, to be? It concerns who you essentially are, but is also mysterious, beyond you.

I think we always know that place, if we are honest. It is specific and practical. For me, it concerns a number of things: putting my thoughts out on social media; writing books; doing astrology readings; putting my medicine wheel stones in the garden; following through with personal connections. It is abundant, and I can't ignore any of those things.

It can require courage. It is creative, and therefore self-doubt comes with the territory, because there is nowhere that can give you a certificate in your own genius: etymology - spirit attendant from birth. What you were born to do. It gradually reveals itself, as long as you keep doing the next thing. Don't worry about the long-term plan, Spirit has that taken care of. Or Fate, a living principle for the ancient Greeks. And Vikings.

The 4 directions of the Wheel are a way of coming closer to the Centre, our genius. What is your body telling you, your mind, your heart, the natural world, and those guides that live somewhere over your shoulder, slightly elsewhere, yet intimate, knowing you? 

 

If you are being true to those things you know you have to do, then there will be a sense in which you feel your life is fundamentally on track, that it is working, whatever the extraneous and inevitable difficulties that crop up. If you are avoiding what you know you should be doing  - and only you can know this - then the opposite will be the case: your life will not feel right, even if you have everything you have been told should make you a happy person. What gives you meaning can be something outside conventional values. Meaning is the thing, it is what keeps us here.

The Centre is a diamond to be forged from the coal-face of yourself, from the pressure of living with your own contradictions, year after year. It is what the universe wants of you, which is why it is also a point of balance. And abundance.

GENDER and THE SACRED

If something occurs that is unusual, then for indigenous people it is sacred, because it takes us out of the ordinary and the everyday. So lightning is sacred, dangerous animals and poisonous plants are sacred. And so are the Two Spirits, those unusual people who feel themselves to be both genders, though being of one biological sex. For Native Americans, it has always been accepted that some men want to live as women, and vice-versa. These people are looked to as leaders and healers, because they have both gender perspectives, each to a high degree.

We have reduced this sacred phenomenon to a biological mistake, that needs correction by surgery, which is why we have the term 'transgender'. And attempts to question this approach are frequently condemned as hate speech, as 'transphobia'.

 

It seems to me like such a mess. We have taken a gift from Spirit and turned it into a curse, and an epidemic amongst teenagers who do not yet know who they are. And we have also reduced it to sexual orientation, when it is about something much broader: 'gay' is a wholly inadequate term for what I am talking about.

 

There is maybe a lesson here in what happens if you try to make the sacred ordinary. There is a difference between a man living as a woman, and a man claiming he has become a woman. The former has an element of the sacred, the latter is a violation of nature, of what is possible, and people are not necessarily prejudiced to feel repelled by it.

 

The quest for the other gender is natural in both men and women in the second half of life, if not earlier. I deal with it regularly in the astrology readings I do. Men are seeking Venus: learning to listen, to themselves and to others. And women are seeking Mars: no more people-pleasing. It is a cliche because it is so commonly the case. And it is not just about adding on new pieces to the personality. It is a soul journey to the divine feminine or masculine. Mars in a woman does not look the same as in a man, it is not about becoming like a man, it is about something different and bigger: there is an archetypal, sacred dimension to it. And the same for Venus in a man. It is a compelling journey of the Spirit. We find these opposites on the East-West of the Medicine Wheel, the Blue Road, the road of Spirit, that is not under our control. It is about gifts of Spirit that become our inner path.

 

People for the most part need simple categories with which to understand the world. The sacred moves us out of this black-and-whiteness, but it needs to be approached with caution, or you'll frighten the horses. With our transgenderism, we are trying to make the sacred normal, and it has resulted in dogmatism on one side, and revulsion on the other.

 

I am thinking out loud here, because I don't think there are any easy answers. But I think there is a case for doing away with surgical transitioning, which I think is the literalising of a spirit gift. And for people who want to live as the opposite gender to be seen as part of a sacred calling, as monks and nuns are. We have, by and large, done away with the sacred, and that is perhaps a big part of the problem.

MEDICINE WHEEL

I finally put my Medicine Wheel out today at my new house. The garden had needed a load of work first. Where the Wheel is, had been a metal climbing frame for kids, which I had to hacksaw through. But the Wheel starts with the East, the Magical Child, so it is fitting.

 

I have had this Wheel for about 8 years. It sat outside the caravan I was in 2 homes ago and carried my dream, carried me out of a long term relationship that was slowly killing me. Then it was at my old house for 6 years - it had its own room. 

 

I wasn't quite sure what to do with it here until Watkins publishing asked me to run a video course on the Medicine Wheel, based on my book. How could I say no? What a delight. And now this sacred object is coming back properly into my life, and it is making me happy. And holding me up to the mark, because how can I teach it if I am not living it?

 

In the book I managed to put in just about everything I think about everything. The Wheel is that big, it has that many dimensions. It uses the 4 Elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water in ways that we recognise from our own ancient culture, which means that it translates well as a complete guide to existence. If you buy my book and leave a genuine rating on Amazon, I will give you a free astrology reading

The Shapeshifters Trilogy

Been writing some blurb for the back of The Shapeshifters Trilogy - a shamanic fantasy that has take me the best part of 2 years to write. Here it is. Does it sound appealing?

In a world where dogmatic science has replaced tyrannical religion, the Shapeshifters – those with the ability to take animal form – are ruthlessly hunted down by the ruling Logos. Janwar is a teenager with a nascent gift for Shapeshifting, and an ambitious father who is appalled by his son’s proclivity; Alicia is a rebel daughter of the aristocracy, unashamed of her affinity with the animal world. Together with their Shapeshifting friends – Diana the intuitive Dwarf, William the magical adept, Rowena the Rhino and Francis, a mole in the Logos - they must find and rescue Queen Elfina, who has been spirited away for her Otherworldly sympathies. 

 

Elfina in her turn has a larger destiny to fulfil: reconciling the forces of science, led by the diabolical Roger Bacon, and resurgent religion, led by the charismatic Zeus Messiah. In their struggle for supremacy, they are tearing the world apart. Elfina has the ancient elemental powers of the earth at her disposal, along with the help of the Shapeshifters, but will that be enough to pacify these old enemies?

A page-turning drama that addresses a central mythology of our times, Shapeshifters is also a real-world exploration of the larger humanity that emerges from embodying animal spirits.

NATURE AS PRISTINE, OR RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW?

I've been thinking about the contrasting mythologies about the natural world that we have in our culture: as pristine and benevolent, or as red in tooth and claw. I think both mythologies have their place. The Darwinian model, with its mechanism of the survival of the fittest, over-emphasises tooth and claw. Shamanism, with its tendency to idealise indigenous peoples, perhaps over-emphasises nature as pristine. Certainly the environmental movement tends towards this latter imbalance, as a reaction to the modern attitude towards nature as a mere thing to be exploited.

The imbalance in each direction creates its own problems. An instance of the two working in harmony is the traditional way that Native Americans hunt: after the animal has been killed, they pray over it, and give thanks to the animal for giving it's life.

How to reconcile the two attitudes - nature as something to be grateful to and appreciative of, and yet as something we have to struggle with, that can put us in personal danger - is not obvious, at least on a rational level.

As ordinary humans, we find living with apparent contradiction difficult. It can be almost an existential threat. We want to know what's what, and who the bad guys are. Either we are left wing or right wing, either we understand the climate emergency, or we are climate deniers, and so on.

But the natural world defies such categorisation. It is the human 'rational' mind that demands such simple certainties. The medicine person, the healer, has the spiritual strength to live outside such certainties, and thereby become a hollow bone for Spirit.

So here's what I think we have to offer the world, in respect of these two mythologies: to big business, do some ceremony, and give thanks for the rare earth metals you are about to mine. Mother Earth understands our need for them as we unfold our human inventiveness. She understands our inevitable hubris, gives of her bounty, and is waiting with a full heart for us to come back into balance.

And to those of the opposite persuasion, at the extreme end, the environmentalists who glue themselves to the road in horror at humanity's disregard and ingratitude towards the natural world: remember that to be human is also natural, humans have always changed the environment, it is not in itself something to be opposed. A new balance needs to come from within. Work with, not against.

And the urgency of it, the threat of human extinction that worries so many? I think this is the time to rest in the arms of pristine, benevolent nature. She is far vaster than this one species called human, she is older than the hills, and she knows what she is doing. Trust in her.

We live at a difficult time, for humanity is going through a great transition, there will be loss of species along the way, and we cannot help but grieve that. And we cannot see through to the other side. But what we need above all is mitigation of the polarisation that such transitions, which are very stressful, produce. Rather than exacerbate it, I think that wise shamans understand the two sides to the natural world, and can see the world in those terms, and can alleviate it, can contribute towards a new balance: that is what we do.