ON THE RUN IN SIBERIA

Rane Willerslev was a young anthropologist doing field work in eastern Siberia soon after the collapse of Communism. The people were the Yukhagir, who are few in number, and hunt and live in ways that are still quite traditional. Their main source of income is the sable, which was at the time being bought up by a state corporation at a very low price. Willerslev decided to help the Yukhagir by selling direct to Europe. The corporation did not like this, murdered his business partner, and arranged to have him arrested. So he had to go on the run in the wilderness for 18 months, and live by hunting with the Yukhagir.

This book is very readable, with well-described characters. Importantly, it brings us into an indigenous way of seeing the world. There is one incident where the hunter is dressed in elk furs, and a female elk and calf are approaching him. What he sees are a young woman and child dancing towards him, beckoning him to go with them. At that point he shot them both. He said that if he had gone with them, they would have killed him.

 

For the Yukhagirs, animals are persons like ourselves and have our attributes. As he becomes part of their lives, the author starts to experience the world as the Yukhagir do. He starts to accurately dream the animals he will kill the next day. There is a tree covered in all sorts of offerings. An old woman says it is her spirit counterpart, and if she is getting ill, she asks the tree to get ill for her. The tree is old and falling down. The woman says that when the tree falls, she will die.

 

Willerslev was brought up by his parents to base his life firmly on reason. He began his research on that basis. His time among the Yukhagir changed that. He says that if he had put reason first, he would not have survived. For indigenous people, the visionary/spirit dimension comes first.

 

In Beyond Nature and Culture, Philippe Descola suggests this is a common experience among anthropologists: they do some field work as young researchers with an indigenous people, and their way of being in the world has a profound effect on them. They spend many years afterwards reflecting on this different way of seeing the world. Descola's early experience was with the Achuar in the Amazon. I read his account of that time, The Spears of Twilight (recommended), many years ago. On the Run in Siberia is vividly written and will give you a taste of one of those worlds. Best buy is secondhand from abebooks.

SOUL-LOSS, DEATH AND THE DREAMING

Maybe there are many different planets we could have been born on. They are probably not the discrete places we think. The Earth is the dreaming that we live in for now. This resistant material reality, that appears so fixed and external to ourselves, is fluid, it is dreamed. It is a flux of overlapping dreamings. It is mysterious and unknowable. Science can only ever give us a very thin slice of reality, on a 'let's pretend' principle that the universe is real and external to ourselves.

Maybe there are different planets according to the different dreamings that they are expressions of. This planet is not an easy one. It seems to me that we are here not so much to be happy, as to learn stuff and transform. Otherwise why do so many of us seem to spend our lives recovering from our childhoods, like something went wrong and, so it can seem, our real life will begin once we have sorted it all out?

I'm not saying that things don't actually go wrong in childhood, it is horrendous for some people. But it can also give us something to struggle with, that may take most of our lives, and it makes us who we are. It is a warrior thing. We are here to struggle to become who we are, and life will present the discomforts that can push us to do that, if we choose. Or we can self-medicate, as it's called nowadays.

Whether people make that choice, and to what degree, is a mysterious thing. Our job can be to help people make that choice more deeply, but we can't do it for them. So you're ill? Do you really want to get well? Why? What is it that gives your life meaning?

'Soul retrieval', as we have come to call it, is something that people usually do for themselves. It is not just about bringing back bits that went missing in childhood. A load of other stuff comes with it. It is about the next stage in our overall unfoldment too. From this point of view, soul loss can serve a purpose, it can be a necessary thing, giving us something much greater than we would have had when it eventually returns, and giving us something to struggle with along the way.

I'd much rather spend time getting to know people and in some way help facilitate them finding their own bits of soul, than engage in what I reckon can sometimes be a fantasy that we, or the spirits, are doing it for them. Sure, we can nudge things along, it's a beautiful and mysterious thing when we do, it's part of our job description. But I think our bigger job is being part of, and witnessing, their lives over a longer period, and providing that reminder of, and connection to Spirit, when needed.

 

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I offer Zoom astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk. My books, The Medicine Wheel and Surfing The Galactic Highways, are available for pre-order on Amazon (or by post from me now.) You can also find me at www.astrotabletalk.blogspot.co.uk and www.shamanicfreestate.blogspot.co.uk

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Maybe the most important part of the service we provide is like an initiation, it is energetic. Something of who we are rubs off on the other person, our connection to Spirit opens up a deeper connection in them, just by them being around us and paying attention. It changes us, too.

I think it can sometimes feel like we've bitten off more than we can chew in this lifetime. Maybe some of us have. I think there has to have been an element of choice, conscious or unconscious, in the lives we were born into. Maybe we just went with what felt familiar, which is often how life itself gets lived. Whether it was that New Age 'contract', where you almost sign on the dotted line with your spirit guides, is another matter. But there is a point in that, it can give a perspective on our difficulties and struggles as something we signed up to, in order to learn from.

Death. We are only here for a short period. As we approach death – in the sense that we may only have 20 or 30 years left – I think the dream-like nature of this existence starts to become clearer. Those things that seemed so important to us when we were younger no longer have the same hold over us. Death can need to be unreal when we are younger, for the living of our naïve dreams is often predicated on that.

What happens when those youthful dreams have been lived, what gives our life meaning now? That is almost a definition of the mid-life crisis, which can begin at any age, and go on for the rest of our lives. Maybe we will just get ill and die. Or maybe our values slowly shift. The sense of being alive is itself meaningful, and maybe that is how it ends up. There is nothing to be deliberately achieved, just life to be a part of.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t still be struggles. In a sense, more can be demanded of us as we age. We are hopefully more aligned, more in balance with life itself, which is a deep thing that flows through us. Life can therefore do more with us. There can be deep renewals as we age, a sense of youthfulness that we didn’t have to the same degree when we were physically youthful. We are a part of life, we do not own our lives: realising that makes things so much easier.

We still may not always be happy. But that isn’t the point. The point as we age is to stay at that coal-face of ourselves, the difficult places, that we learn from. There is a deep sense of meaning in that, beside which the pursuit of ‘happiness’ pales. And it’s not for that much longer, either. We know how quickly 20 years passes.

This earth-dreaming is a special place, where we have the opportunity to learn deeply, to transform. Maybe not all dreamings are like that, maybe some are easier, and maybe we will have earned a break for the next lifetime. But make the most of this one while you are here: stay at that meaningful, life-giving coal-face.

SHAPESHIFTING IN WALES: JUNE 22-27

I guess I'm not particularly visual, so get me journeying in the usual manner and I'm not desperately convinced by what happens, though it's real enough. Get me moving with a rattle, though, and something powerful and very nuanced happens. It immerses me. Though I usually have absolutely no words for it. And it is joyful. I guess I journey kinaesthetically; that is, it's all in my body. If I'm doing some work for someone, I'll be moving or dancing around, delicately and very precisely, speaking in syllables in no known language, but which are replete with healing intention. Or I might be standing on one leg making whistling noises. Love and tenderness for the person I am working for flows through me.

I know something of significance has occurred, but not usually much more than that. And it may be some time before the other person experiences the full outcome. With this work, if you like, we are planting seeds, making deep shifts, on the dream level, and they take time to unfold on this level. Prayers work in the same kind of way.

Anyway, allowing the spirits to embody us - which is one language for the way I work - is very traditional, and has been lost along the way for all sorts of cultural reasons. Myself and Emma Edgington will be exploring this way of working at Cae Mabon in Wales from 22-27 June. We don't quite know what we're doing, but that's maybe the best way. Details below in a previous blog if you want to come along. There are still a few places. We will have a good time.  http://shamanicfreestate.blogspot.com/2021/12/embodying-spirits.html

SHAMANS DON'T TAKE SIDES

I think that what has perturbed me most about the 'vaccine wars' is that they have drawn so many shamanic people into them. I think we need to be standing apart from such battles and promoting an appreciation of both sides, which I have always argued for: of both conventional medicine and alternative medicine, in this case, instead of pitting one against the other. It is an old war, it is so destructive, and there can be no good outcome. Otherwise we are behaving just like the rest of the world does with nearly every issue.

The whole point of being 'conscious' (an overused word) is an appreciation of all sides. That is why Shamans are seen as people with wisdom. It is the same with the gender wars too, where one side tends to get the blame. And left-right in politics too (left is good, right is bad, so we are told.)

Don't get drawn into these things. There is an energy around them, it is collective and powerful and very seductive. It can make you feel like you are on the side of right against wrong, and accordingly full of purpose. But that in itself is always 'wrong'. With all issues, I think it is best to take the attitude that we are all in this together, humanity the world over, trying to make it work, and not beat ourselves up too much for the things that don’t work. I think there is also a kind of laziness in finding people to blame for those things.

We need to stand, in an energetic sense, outside of these human whirlwinds and thought patterns. The spirits will help us do that, because they do not want us taking sides, if only because we can't to that extent listen to the spirits properly. And our job is to listen to them and act accordingly, not anything else.

THE DREAM OF LIFE

The older I get, and the closer to death, the more I can see the dream-like nature of existence. It seems like a natural process. Of course it was always a dream, but when we're younger it may not serve us to see it like that. The dream needs to be compelling at that point: the things we want to do need to really matter, or we would not incarnate.

But all these decades later, it is like the wallpaper over the cracks, and the cracks are starting to show themselves. They allow for the infinite consciousness that we always were to start seeping in. Space and time do not exist, they are just useful ideas in this contingent existence. We contain the whole universe.

CRAZYWELL POOL

Crazywell Pool on Dartmoor today, and the open moor further on. Crazywell - now that's a good name for what some of us are, 'cos you'll never be well if you're what the world calls sane. And it's what we do also, we help people become well in crazy ways. 

 

And then when you're up on the open moor on your own in that big silence, you can lie down on the big heart of Mother Earth, your true mother, and give her all the stuff that has built up that bothers you, she has all the healing you will ever need.

THE REUNION OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY

The Reunion of the Soul and the Body is the name of William Blake's etching (below). It vividly portrays the beauty and ecstasy and sensuality that can be experienced, for example, in so-called Trance Dance, when the Spirits embody us.

The separation of Body and Soul began in ancient Greek times, and Medieval Christianity furthered this process They banned dancing in churches, because it gave people their own connection to Spirit, it gave them too much of their own power. The Body and its desires became demonised. The Body is at best 'lesser', a mere vehicle for something more important.

This is why Blake created this etching. And it is why Shamanism, with its foundation in our belonging to the natural world, and belonging therefore to the Body, is exactly the kind of cultural remedy needed for this ancestral soul-loss. Or could be.

The methods of Core Shamanism go half-way there, inasmuch as we are introduced to animal helpers. That is a major shot across the bows of our historical religious conditioning, which we are part of, whether ot not we believe in it. But it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't go in for the kill. Remember it was created by an American academic, and the body was safely excluded.

There may have been some wisdom in that at the time, because many people really are afraid of that animal, out-of-control power of the body. It can seem like a dark, primitive thing, instead of the path to Spirit that it truly is. It can seem threatening, and that is because it is indeed threatening, to the safe, civilised personality that is an inevitable part of being part of a large society: let's not diss it too much, many people would have a psychological breakdown without it. It is where we start.

I am also talking about the return of the Dionysian element. We need both the rationality and control of the Apollonian, and the raw, bodily surrender of the Dionysian. I think we have an odd relationship with the Dionysian in our Shamanism: we can over-value it, at the expense of the Apollonian, and yet not take it far enough, not dare fully surrender to it.

The Dionysian is there when Shamans in Siberia dance their encounters with the Spiritworld. It is only partially there, for the most part, when we do our lying down journeys. That does not mean a lot of value does not occur. But that full-on spirit encounter via the body needs reclaiming. I don't entirely know how. For some, it is easy. For others, it is incremental. Myself and Emma Edgington will be exploring this at our event in Snowdonia in June: http://shamanicfreestate.blogspot.com/2021/12/embodying-spirits.html