Shamanry vs Shamanism

Lets look for a moment at then suffix after the world shaman.... ism... this designates that the term shaman is a belief system. Indeed is is not a belief system and there never was of will be a real shamanism. Which is quite the thing to say in the face of multiple books, workshops, and new age mystics talking about it, even college text books... but there is no such thing as shaman'ISM'. There are animists and there are shamans... but I want to get to that in a second...
The etymology of the word shaman means some one who knows... whats the difference between one who knows about basket weaving and the one who knows about say spirits and the cosmology of their people. They are both ones who know... but the basket weaver is not going to be called a shaman. So what do we mean when we say that someone is one who knows? What we are talking about is that someone knows perhaps more then us about life as an animist.
the term shamanism has in some ways really held us back. It has prevented us from seeing the forest from the trees... we see shamans instead of the cultures and belief systems they emerge from. We see them divorced from animism. In honesty we cannot have shamans with out animism, for an shaman is one who knows much or enough to be said they know some something ( and any one that knows more then you is an expert) about being an animist!

In some ways this demystify's the role of shaman a bit, it also rids us of the notion that the role of shaman is a belief system and redirects our attention from the bells and bone whistles to the actual belief system that shamans participate in.it also places animism as well as knowing much about animism into our laps... this to me is empowering, and takes us out of the fraudulent messiness we have found ourselves in with silly new age neo-shamanism and disjointed psychotheraputic practices. We can all be one who knows as much as we motivate ourselves to know, and those that know more become teachers, guides and helpers. Knowing this allows us to cultivate our own relationship dynamics with nature and spirit, life and death, and inspires creativity, co-creating new emergent forms of being in "relationship" with life. We can find inspiration from other animist, learn from those that know more then we do about their own relationship, but seeing full well that our relationship is ultimately very much up to us to create, cultivate, and nurture.
This also places the relationship in our hands... and right "smack" in front of us, as they say. If animism is a relational ontology and shamans are those that know much about relational ontology then we can see that there cannot be a lack of relationship between this cosmology and its integration in how we live our lives... weekend warriors and office space practitioners of shamanic arts in the middle of the urban landscape don't make as much sense as they once did, the relationships seem unstable and shaky and ineffectual.
You start want to have a relationship with your food, with your housing, and clothing... all of the other than human persons that give you life and a sense of meaning and purpose have a relationship with us... taking the 'ism' out of shamanism forces us to take a deper harder look at those relationships.
It is perhaps the need to do just that that draws modern western minds to shamans and animists, and why we find people rediscovering that one can just be an animist by developing respectful relationships with life again. They don't need to culturally appropriate or imitate the relationships of others to be an animist. They do not need workshops and sage burning gurus and they don't need to line the pockets of coyotes to establish these relationships if they don't want to.
Some academics have pointed at shamanry as being a better coinage for the work of a shaman or "animist that knows much about being an animist". I prefer this word. It makes a good point... since when has there been carpenter-ism, teacher-ism, dentist-ism and doctor-ism. Because the word shaman is etymologically unknown to many folks... it would only make sense that we would botch this one up fairly good. My hope though is that we begin to see the difference between shamanry and shamanism, the interconnected relationship between shamans and animists and we start being able to cultivate a more grounded and integrated shamanry and animism then what the new age profiteers and misled academics have provided us...
http://backyardshamanry.blogspot.com/
http://www.bioregionalanimism.com/

Synergy

Synergy is Shamanry

syn·er·gy (snr-j)

n. pl. syn·er·gies

1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

2. Cooperative interaction among groups, especially among the acquired subsidiaries or merged parts of a corporation, that creates an enhanced combined effect.

---

[From Greek sunergi, cooperation, from sunergos, working together; see synergism.]
[New Latin synergismus, from Greek sunergos, working together : sun-, syn- + ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots.]

Years ago, sitting in my bedroom with my very good friend Eric, we passed back and forth Eagles and crows feathers... and we discussed the relationship between Law and Freedom. At one point I handed Eric a handful of eagle feathers... over a dozen I believe. They were to many eagle feathers for him to hold so he handed them back to me. I sat above him for a moment, and I wished that he would understand how to hold and work with an eagles feather. Spirit moved through my words at that moment and eagle filled the room as well as wolf. I told Eric that when he smudged some one with an eagle feather he was not "using" the feather, controlling it, but instead the eagle was there still a part of the feather and that all he must do is hold the intention in his mind to cleanse with the feather and smoke. The feather started to move his hand and arm on its own, and his face turned to a look of pure amazement. I could feel the insight and the excitement that comes from realization, at that moment spirit and I shared with him that shamanry is not using nature or spirit to our own end, but holding a larger intention that nature holds as well and WORKING WITH NATURE to accomplish what is truly needed. Eric bowed and was grateful to learn this, and I sat down next to him on the floor once more, just as much a holy fool as he.

Tonight I discovered that the definition of the word synergy is what was being communicated through me from the whole that evening. It was eagles message and wolfs message to both of us that night. I had never known that that was how I worked or the insight that spirit was gestating within me for so many years until I had had an opportunity to teach it to my beloved friend. This point of view on shamanry and animism is what I try to share so much in my work... SYNERGY... In so many ways animism is the spiritual practice of natural synergy.
I will be contemplating synergy through out this winter time... this long cold deep dark in the PNW. I will contemplate synergy and ask bear to help me to understand the role of synergy in relationships more deeply as we dream through this long winter.

the importance of communion

Many years ago now, I moved my friend to New Mexico. He was a buddy, brother and a cohort, a teacher to me in many ways, and when he left it was a big transition for me to be with his friendship and guidance. I drove all his worldly possessions, his dog and his cat and his soon to be future wife and mother of his child from the PNW to New Mexico in a U-haul and before I left him there to start his new life in a new bioregion, I felt some what over whelmed, like a cloud was surrounding me and I couldn't see past it... I kept thinking, now what am I going to do with out my best friend? He called me up stairs and held out in front of him a hawk feather ( hawk being one of his personal medicines) and handed it to me say. " What your going to do now is go back to the PNW and teach people about the importance of communion."
So since that day this is what I have been doing via bioregional animism. If I could further simplify what bioregional animism is to some one I would perhaps say it is communion with nature, or perhaps it would be the art of conversation with nature, or communication with nature where you live for mutual benefit. WOW I could just keep going... but really its communing, its communion, or as Graham Harvey would say a relational ontology which is place based or locally-centric.

What is communion? What does it mean to commune?

- sharing thoughts and feelings
- a sharing of thoughts, emotions, or beliefs
- communion with strong feelings for: private communion with nature
- a religious group with shared beliefs and practices
- the act or an instance of sharing, as of thoughts or feelings.
- religious or spiritual fellowship.

as well as to commune... from Old French communer, to make common, share...
- to be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity, as with one's surroundings
- to experience strong emotion for: communing with nature
- to talk intimately with
- communicate intimately with; be in a state of heightened, intimate receptivity; "He seemed to commune with nature"

and ironically...

Noun
1. a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities
HAHA!

For me these words commune and communion are KEY to really being animist. Quite possibly the very foundation of cultivating animist relationship dynamics. They were certainly

Recently I posted a short piece on a ceremony I had with my partner and my friend and I spoke about the communing people experienced with other than human persons. This has felt like the real basis and focus of Bioregional animism. Having respectful relationships with the living world requires communication and not just communication but communing with each other... to talk intimately with another, with an open heart and an open mind so that we do not harm each other out of carelessness. It takes real communing to have that authentic respect for the living world we seek to manifest through our being animist.
To commune with other than human persons and many time each other it often requires an approach I have called transrational or an intuitive approach that may require some slight shift of awareness or a drastic shift in awareness via an altered state. Animist people traditional embrace some form of transrational practice. For me personally and the people I generally associate with this is done with the aid of visionary plants and substances, though not relied upon to do so. This communion with these visionary people aid in communion and communing with other than human persons, just as any altered state of awareness will do so, though in some times subtle and not so subtle ways.

So how are you communing, how is this communing shaping how you live your life? Who have you been communing with and what messages have been received and given?

Being a bioregional animist I have focused on communing with the land I live upon and those that live around me so that we might live well together. Currently my life ha been changing in very big ways because of this communion and I am in awe of it.
I would love to hear from others who have been changed by such communion.
blessings
LLB

Green man

I had a dream of the green man the other night... its a classic image the green man being driven out of a village out of fear of his wildness by the people... it was a sad scene...
it makes me wonder about deforestation, habitat loss, the destroying of large areas of land to create housing developments.
People do not build or create their communities with nature or with any mindfulness to the wild... natural communities, wild communities of other-than-human-persons are destroyed to make room for homo-domesticus. The green man is most definitely driven out of these areas.
I was also thinking of a faun that comes and enters into my body from time to time... it often feels that Cernunnos, the green man and the faun share a common ethereal body manifesting as either or depending on what is needed of them. The faun was of a large wild wooded area near my home I had given offerings to him and asked for him to share space with me so I could learn from him... and he did... it was an amazing process... at any rate his level of mischievousness was intense... bordering on a sick sense of humor, and a wrathful sense of justice. What made this faun sick? The forest was nothing compared to the size it used to be that he was one with. The level of respect payed there was higher then most however trash was to be found all over. The forest itself was chopped up into islands with pavement roads and developments tearing it apart.


The other night my grrrrl friend pointed out how dangerous and mischievous forest spirits can be, I know to well how much this is so... and she pointed out how much more mischievous and dangerous they are when threatened, we discussed how important it is to make them our allies if possible, to be wild and a part of the forest again in our communities and ways of life.
I look at the forests destroyed by housing developments and i see that none of it is necessary at all! That its all poor planning and life style decisions as well as ecological and social apathy brought about and perpetuated by those first colonized European Christan’s driving the green man from the village.

How can we invite the green man back into our communities again? What offering and ritual action is needed to invoke him into our communities? What will bring the faun back to health, to make him seem less of a demon to those who see him as such out of ignorance? How can we honor the horned god where we live?

We can start by looking at how we consume the bounty of nature, how we live our lives daily, where we get our food. We can invite the green man back into our village by including the wild into the village again. Creating bio-swales instead of draining street water into the sewer system, creating green roofs on our houses, building with natural materials like cob, straw bale, and renewable resources, getting rid of pavement and the need for mass transit by re-designing our communities around COMMUNITY, so we can walk to all the places we need to go. Or we can create our own villages as a permacultured part of the wild forest... human beings have the ability to actually aid ecosystems with their presence as well as bio-remediate the areas that have been damaged. What would the psyche of a people be like if they lived not in civilization but in and with the wild again, not beside it but a part of it?
The joy of the green man and the growth and balance of his dancing feet would be in our hearts, the masculine stereotypes and gender roles would change and no longer would men be seen as symbols of oppression. Art and beauty would be just another natural expression like a birds song, simple and humble and to be found in the artifacts we create for daily living.
To invoke these beings of nature, these spirits and powers the ritual is a change in the way we live our lives. The new magical training is skill building in eco-design, whole systems design, permaculture, renewable resources, sustainability, and alternative energy. The circle that is cast is the recognition of our interdependence, and the chants are the affirmations and oaths that we will change the way we live and no longer participate in this driving of the green man from our village. We invite him back and give offerings to him, by create the pace for him to exist in our village and in our actions.

This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY!

In honor of A(lfred) Irving Hallowell
(source)
Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al.



October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask?

A day of respect, or DOR DAY!
OK... so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice... I guess it depends on you!
But here is the idea...
Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too...
by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens.
It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc... but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were!
This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones...deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place... its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect... communication, acknowledgment, and celebration!
Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well... hmmm....), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists.

Have a Happy DOR DAY!
Thanks Irving for opening a Door...

Community Medicine

Years ago, right before my initiation as a healer, during a VERY dynamic time of change... I had a dream.

In this dream the home of my birth was an Animist village of people living close to the earth. On top of the well box in the middle of my back yard man appeared dressed in black buck skins and bone jewelry.
The man was holding a sack and every one in the village turned to see him speak.
"I have stolen the collective medicine of your tribe. If you do not all give me your own personal medicine I will destroy the collective medicine of your people, dooming you all. You have until sun down."
The people knew what to do they went and gathered up their personal medicine and dressed in their finest regalia and set out to give this man in black their medicine.
I was outraged that my people would just surrender to this mans demands! I went into the house painted my face and picked up my ceremonial knife, took it from its sheath and ritually stalked the man...
As I walked around the out side of my house I saw that every one was preparing to give their medicine or had already done so. this fueled my rage. Not only was i enraged at the man who saw it fit to threaten my people, but I was enraged that they had allowed him to do so.
I was met at the back side of the house by a member of my own people sitting at a small table covered in cards. He was busy cataloging peoples personal medicine. Behind him was a room with another man in it, and the room was filled with box's of peoples medicine.
" Come to drop off your medicine?" the man asked.
"Yes...." I said, lying to him.
"What is it?"
This stopped me dead in my tracks. "I... I don't know."
"Oh well life is run by chance, so just pick one of these cards and that's your medicine."
I gave him a skeptical look and picked up a random card turning it over. on the back side was a picture of a wild rose.
"OH wild rose! That's allot like hawk medicine, wild rose medicine is wild love, that's a good one! Go ahead and drop it off inside."
The rage drained out of me completely... If my personal medicine was wild love then how could I kill this man in black. I walked into the room full of medicine in a daze, I was confused. Before me stood the man in black but now he was in a tie-dye T-shirt arranging boxes. He said to me while piling them up happily, "Oh just set it any where I will get to it in a minute..."
"I can not harm this man," I thought, " my medicine is wild love..."
I walked out of the room, muttering my medicine is wild love over and over again to my self, and out of my dream into a half waking dream, where information about what medicine was and its relationship to man and nature filled my now lucid mind.
I was shown what medicine is, and how one finds it within themselves through ones relationship with nature. I was shown that we all have a medicine to help heal all of the sickness in the world.I am currently in a college program about growing community. I took this coarse as a way to further my community development skills so that I could further assist in the development of bioregional animist communities. The night after my first class I could not sleep... the memory of the dream entered into my head and I could not stop thinking about it... I was exhausted but the memory would not leave me alone to sleep.
I had always felt the dream would make a wonderful community ritual there was so much meaning in it...
I saw that the dream could be made as a ceremony to teach about the collective medicine of a community. The man in black represented adversity and how adversity can threaten community. Every one had to give of their personal medicine to protect the community. Those that did not know what their medicine was would not understand this and would have to find out what their medicine was.
We all have medicine and our personal medicine is to be given away for the benefit of the community, not just the human community but the other-than-human community. Because all other-than-human-persons benefit from the authentic wellness on another, the other-than-human community gives its medicine to the larger community as well including human persons, it does so in such a way that shows us that our personal medicine also lays in nature that what is within us is also out side of us in the natural world and it show us this so that we can give of our medicine wisely to aid the whole of life.
As I lay awake trying to sleep fitfully I saw how small communities of human persons could enact this dream, and how it could teach them bioregional animism as well as about their responsibility to give back to life as life for the benefit of the community. I saw how it could teach about how communities can work WITH adversity, and the things that threaten community, and I saw how they could learn how ways of doing this could come from trans-rational ways of knowing, learning and problem solving, in ways that lead them to a deeper understanding of themselves through relationship with their larger community of human and other-than-human-persons.
As an example, if I was to do this with my class I would take a bag of stones for every member of the class and I would pass the stones out asking them to have an intention for the wellness of the community they are a part of in that class ( just as an example) and then blow their intention into the stone as a way of symbiotically putting their life force, their breath into the intention, animating it the intention, Giving it a life of its own...
Then I would ask the community leader to hold onto the pouch of stones and put it some where safe. At some point much latter down the line I would call the class together for a community "event" in which I or some one unknown to the class, to arrive dressed in black holding the pouch of stones. What would happen next would be an enactment of the dream. Many of the participants may not know their own personal medicine and the actual concept of "medicine" might be out side of their world view. So for ease, and to go along with the dream. Cards could be made covered with plants animals and forces of nature as well as types of places in ecological systems ( streams, lakes, ponds & mountains etc..) with their symbolic attributes added to them. Sources for making these symbolic cards could be taken from both Ted Andrews books as well as Jamie Sams. Though I don't fully approve of other-than-human-persons being viewed strictly as symbolic vehicles for human experience, other-than-human-persons can be related to symbolically, which does not make them symbols themselves. Something about this could be placed on the table with the cards. The participants could then give their cards the man in black who is now wearing colorful non-threatening colors and style.
After the last participant has given their personal medicine the community could gather and talk about their experience. After the discussion the dream as well as my interpretation of the dream and the foundation of the event could be shared to further show the importance of trans-rational cognition in the process of learning and growing and maintaining health in community as well as within ones sense of self.
This community ceremony empowers its members to find the medicine within themselves through the natural world, through trans-rational means. Showing them that they were all born with medicine to heal the sickness in the world, to mend that which is broken.
I participants were interested in pursuing this concept of personal medicine and community medicine deeper they could be encouraged to go out into nature and develop relationships with the other-than-human-persons in their larger bioregional community, and seek out their personal medicine or medicines through their relationships with

the ecological world. Through this relationship dynamic they could utilize various trans-rational methods comfortable to them to discover that the medicine is within as well as out side of themselves, seeing how trans-rational forms of cognition dissipate dualistic notions of inner and outer reality as well as self and other, cultivating altruistic action int he process as well as deeply grounded and centered personal growth based on place and the physical world.
I might add that the process of finding ones personal medicine as well as giving it to the community is an act of self healing as well as personal discovery, it can be painful as well as liberating and joyous, ultimately life changing
and requiring deep commitment and is not to be done with a half hearted attempt. This work I call a medicine quest, or medicine seeking. Often times one finds that the medicine they are seeking is in some way connected to the pain they hold within themselves and is one with adversity itself, that they might find it to be the poisonous parts of themselves or the world around them, and that they must actively transmute that poison into medicine before they can give it away... this can be a path of deep personal healing and growth. Thus requiring a deep commitment to wanting to help. Actively seeking this medicine themselves could be encouraged after the public event.

Animist Manifesto

An animist manifesto

By Graham Harvey

All that exists lives

All that lives is worthy of respect

You don’t have to like what you respect

Not liking someone is no reason for not respecting them

Respecting someone is no reason for not eating them

Reasons are best worked out in relationship – especially if you are looking for reasons to eat someone – or if you are looking for reasons not to be eaten

If you agree that all that exists is alive and worthy of respect, it is best to talk about ‘persons’ or ‘people’ rather than ‘beings’ or ‘spirits’, let alone ‘biomechanisms’, ‘resources’, ‘possessions’, and ‘things’

The world is full of persons (people if you prefer), but few of them are human

The world is full of other-than-human persons

The world is full of other-than-oak persons

The world is full of other-than-hedgehog persons

The world is full of other-than-salmon persons

The world is full of other-than-kingfisher persons

The world is full of other-than-rock persons…

‘Other-than’ has at least three references:

it reminds us that we are persons in relationship with others,

it reminds us that many of our closest kin are human, while the closest kin of oaks are oaks, so we talk most easily with humans while rocks talk most easily with other rocks…

it reminds us to speak first of what we know best (those closest to us)

Make that four references:

it reminds us to celebrate difference as an opportunity to expand our relationships rather than seeing it as a cause of conflict or conquest

All life is relational and we should not collapse our intimate alterities into identities

Others and otherness keep us open to change, open to becoming, never finally fixed in being

Alterities resist entropy and encourage creativity through rationality, sociality (or, as William Blake said, ‘enmity is true friendship’)

Animism is neither monist nor dualist, it is only just beginning when you get beyond counting one, two… At its best it is thoroughly, gloriously, unashamedly, rampantly pluralist

Respect means being cautious and constructive

It is cautiously approaching others — and our own wishes,

It is constructing relationships, constructing opportunities to talk, to relate, to listen, to spend time in the face-to-face presence and company of others

It is taking care of, caring for, caring about, being careful about…

It can be shown by leaving alone and by giving gifts

believers in ‘human rights’, for example, demonstrate their belief in rights not only by supporting legislation to protect individuals from states, companies and majorities, but by not insisting on hogging the whole road or pavement, not insisting on another human getting out of the way on a busy street…

You don’t have to hug every tree to show them respect but you might have to let trees grow where they will—you might have to move your telephone lines or greenhouse

You might have to build that road away from that rock or that tree

Hugging trees that you don’t know may be rude – try introducing yourself first

Just because the world and the cosmos is full of life does not make it a nice and easy place to live. Lots of persons are quite unfriendly to others. Many see us as a good dinner. They might respect us as they eat us. Or they may need education. Like us, they might learn best in relationship with others who show respect even to those they don’t like, and especially to those they like the taste of.

Although evolution has no aim, life is not pointless. The purpose of life is to be good people — and good humans or good rocks or good badgers. What we have to find out is what ‘good’ means where we are, when we are, with whom we are, and so on. It is certainly wrapped up with the word ‘respect’ and all the acts that implies.

Since all that exists lives—and since all that lives is, in some senses, to some degree, conscious, communicative and relational—and since many of the persons with whom we humans share this planet have a far better idea of what’s going on than we do—we can now stop all the silliness about being the pinnacle of creation, the highest achievement of evolution, the self-consciousness of the world or cosmos… We’re just part of the whole living community and we’ve got a lot to learn. Our job isn’t to save the planet, or speak for the animals, or evolve towards higher states. Many other-than-human people are already happily self-aware, thank you very much, and if we paid attention we might learn a few things ourselves. By the way, we’re probably not alone in mistaking ourselves for the most important people in the world: hedgehogs probably think they are (but they’re spiky flea-ridden beasts so why believe them?!).

Um, when I said that ‘all that exists lives’, I’m not sure about plastic bags.

But I am certain that we should not treat objects as mere resources, somehow available or even given to us, or humanity, to use as we will or wish.

The same goes for words like ‘substances’, especially those that exist within plant and fungal persons. There are substances, but they aren’t ours until they are given, gifted to us. And then we’d better find out why we’ve been given whatever gifts we get. And we’d better ask how those gifts might be best used (whether its for pleasure, power, wisdom or whatever). This is especially true if the plant or mushroom person who offers us the gift substance has to lose their life in the process.

Maybe sometimes the mushrooms just want to help us join in the big conversation that’s going on all around us. But not all rocks, fish, plants, fungi, birds, animals or humans want to talk with us:

Sometimes they want to be quiet

Sometimes they want to be rude

Sometimes they have other concerns

Sometimes they don’t understand

Sometimes we don’t speak the language

Sometimes we don’t know the appropriate gift

The precise and proper way to show respect depends where you are, who you are, who you are respecting and what they expect. Gifts, like swords and words, have more than one side. Alcohol is a gift in one place, a poison somewhere else. Handshakes are friendly in one place, shows of strength elsewhere. Kissing is respectful to some people, an assault on others. Respectful etiquette is hard work but its reward is fuller participation in a large and exciting community of life.

Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking for us

Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking to us

Animism is just over the bridge that closes the Cartesian gap by knowing how to answer the question, What is your favourite colour? Perhaps it is the bridge. Perhaps there is no gap and animists are people who refuse to collude with the illusion

Animism is often discovered by sitting beneath trees, on hills, in rivers, with hedgehogs, beside fires… Animism is better communicated in trickster tales, soulful songs, powerful poems, rousing rituals, and/or elemental etiquette than in manifestos.

[Originally published By Strange Attractor Journal Journal number three . We would like to thank Graham for giving us the permission to publish this for the first time on line!]