When we die, we become what we always were: everything. That is why Taliesin, the original Celtic Shaman, sang:
SHAMANIC FREE STATE
Tuesday 12 March 2024
LOVE AND DEATH
Tuesday 27 February 2024
FATE, SPIRIT HELPERS and SOUL-LOSS
In Greek Mythology, the 3 Moirai determine our Fate. One spins the thread of life, the next allots its nature and length, and the next cuts it, determining the time and nature of our death. After death, we are judged not on our deeds but on how well we have responded to the challenges the Fates sent our way - or, in later Christian mythology, how well we have borne our cross. Very Saturnian theme, if you are an astrologer. Behind the Fates lies the goddess Ananke, Necessity, who cannot be circumvented.
What I like about this mythology is the sense of our life as a pattern that is already there to be lived out. We may in dreams or in moments of vision get a glimpse of this larger pattern. Or another person may be able to read it for us, much as an Elder might read the life path of a young person returning with a vision from a solitary time in the wilderness. Jung had this ability: Robert Johnson (whose books I recommend) brought a dream to him as a young man, and Jung laid the future pattern of his life before him, including the injunctions to never marry and to never join anything. It never worked for Johnson if he attempted to go against these injunctions.
Saturday 17 February 2024
SHAMANISM AFTER THE NHS
Here's a thing I'm mulling over. Much of the traditional shaman's work would have been the physical ailments that were afflicting people. In the UK, we have the NHS for that, and other countries have their own arrangements. So where does that leave the healers? By and large, with people's psychological ailments - which, as Jung said, invariably comes down to what it is that gives meaning, that is not being lived. So, in Shamanic terms, it comes down to people having a good relationship with their Spirits: they are our connection to meaning and to the Great Mystery.
I don't think our main job is going into people's Otherworld and doing extractions, retrievals and depossessions. That will happen occasionally, and that has its own beauty. I think our main job is relating, one human being to another. If our Spirits are around us in this reality, without having to bang a drum and head off somewhere else - which they bloody well ought to be - then that will bring the other person closer to their own Spirits: closer to themselves, in a deeper sense. That is, ultimately, all we are here to do.
Tuesday 13 February 2024
WILD GEESE
I've been learning poetry recently. It's a wonderful thing to do. It gets deep into you, entwines itself in your being, and gives a wonderful vehicle for expression. It occurred to me that it is also about the ancestors: absorbing the best of the past, standing on the shoulders of those who came before. (That's me in the video, just in case you're wondering 😂)
Saturday 3 February 2024
STORIES
I get a lot of useful ideas about the world from watching Jordan Peterson and his interviews. But his attempt to resurrect the bloody Bible as a unifying narrative for the modern world is desperate. Its stories no longer speak to us - if they ever did, if indeed they were not largely forced on the population. That is why no-one goes to Church.
Saturday 27 January 2024
SHAMANISM AND HUMAN DESTINY
Shamanism needs to be part of where humanity is headed, rather than part of the opposition - in this case a fantasy of what the remote past was like.
Shamanism reminds us to water the roots of the tree, reminds us that we belong to mother earth, who is alive, and that we are nothing but her. At the same time, there is a glorious destiny unfolding in the branches of the tree, humanity's cultural and technological inventiveness, which is only gathering pace. How do we remember the roots as we soar into the sky? That is our great shamanic task as humanity re-invents itself as an interplanetary species.
Friday 12 January 2024
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Maybe all I mean by the word Shamanism is that the universe has a soul, the world has a soul. It's not an intellectual position, it is something felt. And that's all there is to it. Keep it simple, keep your eye on what is real.
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'Core' Shamanism complicates the Otherworld. It is simple: stuff works through you. That is our gift, and that is all you need to feel. Thinking you have to know what it is, and what it is that you have done, can make you doubt your experience. It can take you away from the Great Mystery that lies at the heart of everything, from which we draw whatever powers we may have. Those gifts are not ours, they belong to the universe and are there for everyone. There is not even an Otherworld, for the Spirits are always with us.