BELIEFS

Here's something on the Mind, the North of the Medicine Wheel, a place that the counter-culture is wary of. It's gut instinct that we trust, not the head. But that's just a reaction to the one-sidedness of the mainstream culture. It's just as imbalanced.

The mind is a wonderful thing, for it can help reveal whether our gut instinct is genuine intuition, or prejudice, or maybe a mixture of both. The great strength of the mind is its ability to be detached, its lack of personal investment, so that it can weigh things up. This is something most of us find very hard, which is why you find it in the North, the place of the Elder. It is something that takes most of our lives to be able to do.

What matters is not what we think, but how attached we are to our ideas. What matters is not whether you think 2+2=4, but whether you can live with other people not agreeing with you about it. In this case, you know they're wrong, but can you leave them with that? It is something I struggle with. It is a good learning for me.

The chances are that the people who say that 2+2 is something other than 4 will be very attached to 5, or whatever they think the answer is. Reason isn't going to make any difference. As William Blake said, "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinon still." The last couple of Covid years have seen an intensification of strongly held collective opinions about what is 'really' going on in the public sphere. As if there can be that kind of certainty.

 

 

This rigidity - which is emotionally-based - results in no-go areas with friends. This is something I also find difficult. Once you've known someone for a while, you may well find there are subjects that you can't go near with them. It is too loaded. It is a limitation on the friendship. But it also seems quite normal. An example might be someone who was a QAnon follower, convinced that the US election was stolen. You would end up in a fight if you pushed it, because that belief is part of who they are. They would have all sorts of self-serving 'evidence' that it was in fact stolen.

Beliefs. We all have them. It takes courage to examine them disinterestedly. It is the capacity to do that that matters, rather than what you may end up thinking as a result. Strongly held opinions are a barrier to thinking. They set who we are in stone, and of course the whole idea of this Shamanic thing is to be able to stand out of the way so Spirit can do its thing, or so I'm told :)

SHAMANIC JOURNEYING CIRCLE EXETER

I'll be holding a group on the 3rd Tues of the month, beginning 16th November. 7.30pm. Exeter Natural Health Centre (83 Queen St, next to Boston Tea Party). No experience needed. No need to book. Bring blindfold, and drum or rattle if you have one. Money: by donation. Future dates (so far): 14th Dec, 18th Jan, 15th Feb.

 

 

My CV: I've been doing Shamanic things for 25 years, and Buddhist things for 16 years before that. I have books on The Medicine Wheel and on Astrology coming out next year. I also do individual astrology and shamanic healing sessions. Picture © Ali Broughton (the cover of my Medicine Wheel book.)

APOCALYPSE NEVER

Just been watching this critique of the apocalyptic environmental narrative, which depresses many people, and which is not based on rational considerations. I particularly liked the analysis of the psychology behind this narrative - its religious element, and the way it often forms an unholy alliance with people who are anti- the system, and prone to seeing the world in terms of victims and oppressors. Extinction Rebellion is cited as an example.

 

The rational solutions are often the opposite of what we think: You want to stop the land being degraded? Then draw the subsistence farmers into work in the cities, which is what they'd prefer anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLxZF_EWaLE

 

 

TEACHER PSYCHOLOGY

This is the point I am leading up to: if there are things in ourself we don't want to get close to, our relationships with pupils will tend to reinforce that.

 

I don't always recognise it when people are seeing me as someone they can learn from. It's not just English modesty - a much over-rated, and sometimes hypocritical, virtue - but also an unwillingness just to stand up straight and say to myself this is who you are, you've been round this block enough times: if you haven't got something to say, then who has? 

 

It's not just to do with having been around the block. It's also something I came here with, that has always been natural to me, and yes I've had to stand back for years at certain points to round it out and clear some s%$t out the way, but it would be false of me not to own that. So my first point is if you've got it, own it, it is not a virtue to deny it. You will see it in people's responses to you.

 

Coming out of that is my second point. People will love you and they will give some of their own power to you. This is a natural thing: most of us are not fully living our own connection to Spirit - the East of the Medicine Wheel. They may raise you up beyond where you are yourself. Never mind. Projection is usually a necessary thing, to some extent. First we see it out there, or we imagine we do, and then we claim it for ourselves. The pedestal is something we have to learn to handle, and to honour it, for we are holding something precious for the other person till they are ready to embody it themselves. It's a delicate thing. Often people's way to their own power is the painful one of betrayal by the teacher. But it doesn't have to be like that, not if the teacher has been around the block enough times and learnt from that.

 

And what I'm referring to is the teacher's shadow work. The places we are needy, or concealed from ourselves. It has perhaps been the place I have learnt most from myself: giving others my East, then having that betrayed. It is a valid path, albeit rather protracted and painful. To some extent, it is inevitable, for no teacher is perfect, we are all human.

 

There is this gross level, where the teacher really should be back in his or her cave for a decade, sorting their stuff. The teacher who needs everyone to think like they do, and if they don't, tells the pupils they are 'confused'. The one who creates a love-fest centred around them at the end of the workshop, because they need to be loved. The one who has their issues with authority, and draws the pupils into their own conspiracy views of how the world works. You can often tell when there is something funny going on, because the people around the teacher will tend to reflect the imbalance or woundedness of the teacher.

Then there is the more subtle level, which is where I really wanted to get to. The people who come to your workshops aren't going to challenge you in an intimate kind of way. Challenge is the wrong word. It's softer than that. It's more like they won't relate to you like a good friend will. It's an energetic thing as much as anything. They won't move in on you personally, they will hold you at a respectful distance. By and large. You are the teacher. I'm not quite sure how to put this. I know. They are not going to come near the stuff in yourself you want to keep a distance from, whereas a friend may do, if you're lucky. Or a family member, that's what they're for

 

The astrologer Liz Greene talks in her Mythic Tarot book about the psychotherapist as someone who can protect their own woundedness by creating relationships in which they always have the power. I think this is really what I am getting at. When you have pupils, there is usually a relationship based around you carrying the East, and initiating them into it. That is a powerful thing, and it creates a powerful relationship. But it also hides you from the things in yourself that you aren't very comfortable with, or are unconscious of. There is an unspoken agreement not to go there. And this is what we need to watch out for, even if we have done a considerable amount of our own shadow work. 

 

Put it this way: if there are things in ourself we don't want to get close to, our relationship with pupils will tend to reinforce that. So we also need people we don't have that kind of relationship with.

 

BE TRUE TO THE UNIVERSE

If there is any way that you are not being true to who you are in your life, do not overlook it for the sake of not causing trouble for yourself or others. It matters, and it will eventually bite you, hard (if you are fortunate.) It cannot be smoothed over or wished away. You may get seriously ill if you try to skirt around it. It is where the cutting edge of your soul lies. It can take courage, it can take those close to you thinking you have lost it. It can take a lot of trust in the bigger design of things, and that you are being taken care of.

 

 

It is not just ourselves we need to be true to, more accurately it is the whole universe we need to be true to, because that is what we really are - the whole universe. It is about being true to the Great Spirit that runs through everything. That is what we are here to do

THE RAW, VISCERAL ANIMAL SPIRITS

There is a raw, primal place this journeying thing can go to. It may take a while, especially with our 1000-year background in the relegation of the body - it used to be Spirit-Body, now it is Mind-Body. The 'client' (from the Latin, 'someone who heeds', I can go with that) may not be ready for that primal interaction, or even need that. But, and this could be an indictment, nor may the 'practitioner' be ready for that.

What a word, 'shamanic practitioner', as if this thing is some kind of practice. It is real, it is raw, it is not a 'profession'. 'Health and Safety' would do well to steer a wide berth. You may vomit, you may speak in tongues or be uninhibitedly animal, a bison bellowing or a big cat roaring; you will not have control of your body, and you will certainly have surrendered beyond that which is acceptable and 'civilised'. This is the territory where the spirits come into their own. And the healing work you do will be real. You won't have words for the main part of it. 

 

This is the healing territory I have wandered in for a long time, not sure what to do with it. Well, I thought I did to start with, many years ago. And it worked, for a while. But it was the in-the-door-out-the-door method. I now know it involves a lengthier process than we are maybe accustomed to, like God forbid actually getting to know the person over time and letting some Spirit sense of what is needed settle. I also know I need to physically move like some primeval presence, or it needs to move me; just having a chat with some being in the lower or upper worlds won't fully cut it, much as I respect those worlds.

Maybe that is all I have to say for now. But it is something I want to explore with others. I'm just not quite sure when or how. It's probably tied in with getting my realm back before too long (I hope), after a 4 year absence, my 5 bed house with barns and 27 acres on Dartmoor. A place where we can fully shapeshift into our animal souls and roam free across the moor. Moving back there will be an archetypal event, all sorts of things I cannot now foresee will become possible.

YGGDRASIL MON AMOUR

Here's a late night one. First of all, despite modern attempts to reduce gender to just a social construct, it remains a real thing for most of us. To some it is genuinely (rather than ideologically) fluid, and I salute you. On an inner level, it remains a real thing for all of us. That is why the Pipe is masculine and feminine, stem and bowl respectively, and achieving a balance of that gives you wisdom, it gives you both perspectives, and the right to lead ceremonies. So men, you need to have a felt sense of everyone in the room, passing on your 'insight' is not the only thing, or even the main thing. And women, you need to know what you want and to be prepared to piss other people off in the process. Then we become balanced, and it is a deep thing that is generally second half of life. It is much more than those active, psychological qualities, though. It is about finding your soul, and you can't hurry that, because you can't hurry Spirit.

 

 

Anyway, that wasn't the main thing I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about Yggdrasil, the tree in Norse mythology that held up the heavens, which is also the tree I planted 10 years ago at Lowton Farm, my old place on Dartmoor in Devon that has 5 bedrooms and several barns and 27 acres of land to die for, views over half of the county. I left there 4 years ago, but I think I'm going to be getting it back, and I will weep on the land when I do so, because it has held my dreams for so long, but they have been nascent, and needing a long journey to know what they are and to feel ready to live them.

Yggdrasil has become a bit of a corny idea, because we overuse these things, but what else do you call a Coastal Redwood from the West Coast of the USA that is the tallest tree in the world? It has to be Yggdrasil. I ordered 5 of them by post about 15 years ago, and they were meant to be Giant Redwoods (the largest trees in the world) but instead they were Coastal (postal) Redwoods, the tallest. Then when I moved to Devon, I planted the 4 that remained, and they are all still alive. But one has really thrived, and is now about 20 ft tall, and that one has been guarding the place for me.

I put most of the money into buying that place, but when it came to it my ex said she wouldn't let me do my shamanic stuff there, she didn't like shamanic people, the place was for her horses only. How could I have not seen that coming? Well I didn't, and I ask you which of us has much wisdom when it comes to the real natures of the partners we are with?

So I left her to it in 2017, what else could I do? But I still owned 1/2 of it, so it wasn't an issue that would just go away. On a personal level, I dropped it, I can do that. But on a magical level, even though I didn't know it, this place still had me. The fairies that had brought me to owning Fenny Castle near Glastonbury in 2000 (known locally as The Last Refuge of the Fairies) had passed me on to the fairies of Lowton Farm (who live mainly in a bit of woodland near the top, which is not human territory!) They moved me on from Lowton, for the time being, and found me a great place in Moretonhampstead, the local town, where I have felt looked after and protected and where I have relished being with me like never before.

But then, in March last year, as lockdown was beginning and as I decided to live the East of the Medicine Wheel (inspiration, new beginnings) for a month, it came to me out of the blue: "You are going to get Lowton Farm back." It was a jolt, a bolt. I thought I had let go of that, that it was all in the past. But no. So over the next few months I crept in there from the top, where no-one would know I was there, and began with some serious magic. I created a giant, yet hidden, Medicine Wheel, and spoke to the land. It was so good to be back, and so good to see the 7 white horses that live there again. And maybe the best magic of all, I took care of the land, because it wasn't being properly cared for. I cut back all the blackthorn and brambles that had been allowed to encroach on the fields, and that took some months.

Then, because of what a psychic reader told me, I decided I had taken what had come to me too literally, and I left the place alone for a year. In which time I led 2 long Zoom courses on the Medicine Wheel, and then wrote books on the Medicine Wheel and on Astrology, both of which will be coming out next year. And I am currently writing a fantasy novel which will, I hope, do justice to our forgotten ability to embody our spirit guides, a raw, primal energy that has a lot of power and that is in a different league to the tame, albeit valuable, method that Harner has bequeathed to us.

But then, back from leading a Medicine Wheel course in Wales last week, I felt pulled to visit Lowton Farm again. The magic of the place was very strong for me, and I knew I wasn't going to find another place with that kind of power in its land, not for me, anyway. Then the next day it was coming to me strongly "Claim it back!" Such a simple message, and so strong. Writing this makes me cry. And so I did, and my ex, having held out for 4 years, is willing to let me buy her out. She wants to move back to Scotland with her horses. Thank fuck for that. The place had never been meant for just her and her love-in with her horses. There were much bigger reasons we had got the place, and now it looks like she will be moving before too long.

I had never believed this would happen. The Spirits told me to leave, and I thought that was that, then they told me I would be getting it back, then I lost faith in that, then they told me to claim it back, and against all my expectations, it looks like that is what will happen.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity to do great things. We pray for what we want to the Spirits, we give thanks to the Great Spirit even for that which is yet to come. It is born out of this thing in me which I am prepared to live, which makes demands of me like writing books that I don't think I am capable of, but which I do nonetheless, and the Spirits are proved right, as usual.

So I don't know what I will be doing there or who with, I will be turning up on my own, but I know I will get help, it will not be the struggle I may imagine, Spirit will provide, and we will do great things. I have things to do, things to contribute to this Shamanic World. On a philosophical level, so to speak, I have worked through the Medicine Wheel in a way that is both simple yet substantial in a way that has not been done before. On a 'trance' level, I know how to journey in a way that is embodied (and thoroughly traditional), and all the more powerful for it, that is not currently taught. And maybe above all, I know what I am talking about: for 15 years something has held me back from teaching shamanism until I could talk fully from experience. This may sound a bit above myself, but it is time to shift this shamanic paradigm in our culture. Give it a philosophical and experiential depth that it hasn't yet had. Know that we can do it just as powerfully as indigenous people can, that we can make these teachings our own and even add to them. And move to something more embodied in our trance work (which is one part of shamanism, rather than its 'core'.) And do it all in a way that is easy and natural, where the teacher is not someone above and separate, but just a part of things. This is my vision of where I want to go and what could happen at Lowton Farm. Where a bunch of us can hang out in yurts and tipis in the summertime, without a programme of events, and go where Spirit guides us, in an easy sort of way. That is also deceptively profound, precisely because it is easy and natural :) And there can be so much joy in that.