Back Yard Shamanry

Healing with a Handful of Dirt and a Marlboro

2010-10-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Originally printed in PNW pagan news letter widdershins, reprinted with permission from author.

Healing with a Handful of Dirt and a Marlboro
Article by Freya Ray
“Hey, we’ve got a healing crisis on our hands!”
“What kind?”
“Well, she went into the sweat lodge just fine. When she came out, she started spontaneously expelling a demon, speaking in tongues — that sort of thing. You should hear the spooky growling voice she’s using.”
“Has she puked yet?”
“Yup – kinda nasty dribbly stuff. While rocking back and forth on all fours.”
“Got it. Let’s see … I’ve got a bottle of Evian, a bunch of dirt and twigs and a pack of Marlboros. Yes. We can do this. Let the healing begin.”
I’m not really kidding. Of course, in the moment I don’t think it’s funny, as I am honestly scrounging around for what I can use to help someone desperately in need of help. Later, though, I can’t seem to resist the urge to find my entire spiritual practice hilarious.
Kitchen witching, pulling a McGyver, using mundane tools for sacred pagan purposes – whatever you want to call it, it works and sometimes it’s all you’ve got.
Some Situations Just Require Improvising
I have a Portable Witch Kit.™ Who doesn’t? It’s full of all the cool things I might want should I find myself in a Situation. A Situation could be any of the following:
· Sweat lodge, healing circle, or ritual fallout
· Someone’s living life a little too intensely and is frying on the energy
· Someone went and got themselves a demon, or a demon-ette (crud, guck, negative energy, that gray spot on their heart chakra)
· A breakup
· Psychic attack (see breakup)
· “Stuff” is up (childhood abuse issues, abandonment stuff, addictive patterns)
· There’s a sudden opening — a sweet spot, a softening in someone’s armor — that would allow some healing work to be done
· Past lives are rearing their ugly heads
· “Look! It’s an implant! Quick, let’s get it!”

I’d love to say I have my Witch Kit with me at all times, but it’s just not possible. I mean, first of all, it’s sort of unwieldy. It’s a small canvas bag, and an entire fishing tackle box of crystals. And even though the canvas bag by itself is fairly small, it’s not sturdy. It’s a precarious concoction including a glass candle; various bottles of things like Florida Water, Rescue Remedy and magickal massage oil; charcoal pellets; dragon’s blood; and a big honkin’ shell with sage in various stages of burnt in it, wrapped in a dish towel. The shell balances on top of the candle, but not well enough to rattle around in my car all the time. Besides, I like to have the shell out on an altar at home, so the whole bag has a tendency to get half-unpacked and then repacked when I need it.
Let’s look again at the list above and consider how many of these Situations would allow me to run home, assemble my kit, and come back. Hmm… that’s not an option. Much of the time, healing is like a first kiss. You seize the moment or the chance moves on and you’re “just friends” forever.

Tools to Consider:
You have the whole world at your disposal. What sorts of things can be turned to your evile witchy purposes?
Dirt
When I teach healing with energy work, I ask my students in the tools class, “I can think of six ways off the top of my head to heal someone with dirt. How many can you come up with?” They start throwing out ideas, and it goes on for more than six every class. You can use mud to draw out toxins, make a fetish, hold a handful in your hand and put energy you want to get rid of in it and then throw it away, you can bury things in it, you can put your hands or body on it to ground, etc. It’s almost always available to you (even indoors – I’ve grounded out excess energy into a houseplant’s soil). Same thing with rocks and twigs, should you find yourself outside.
My favorite grounding ritual: lay face down on the dirt and give it back to Mama. One time a boyfriend and I were fighting, and he told me later, “I was so mad and I was crying and I went out in the yard and laid on the grass, and then I remembered it was you who taught me that and I was even more pissed at you.” Ha! Useful technique trumps current attitude about teacher. Doesn’t get better than that.
Tobacco
Of course when working with tobacco we’d all prefer to have a nice pouch of Drum or a fine Cuban cigar rolled on the thighs of virgins. All smoke has powerful smudging properties, and tobacco is unique in its flavor. In the right hands, it’s completely different from sage or sweetgrass or dragon’s blood or Epsom salts and rubbing alcohol or cinnamon or any of the other things you might burn for the smoke.
However, when you can’t have the best, any old crap-ass menthol will do. Honest. Just don’t inhale. Pull smoke just into your mouth and then puff it out onto the area you want to clear. For yourself, pull it into your mouth and then puff it out into your cupped hand. Use your hand to pull it where you need it – heart and crown chakras being the most common places.
Water
Use that bottle of Evian! Water need not come from the Glastonbury Spring nor be buried by Rumi-chanting elves under the light of the Full Moon in order to be sacred. Wave a blessing its direction and put it to good use. Water can be used to help flush stuff out of someone’s system — that’s why massage therapists tell you to drink lots after a massage. You can use it to wash things out of your aura — add cider vinegar, sea salt, or Epsom salts, and it’s even more powerful. Water can be used to anoint, to gently bless. You don’t have sage handy? Throw them in the lake, or the bathtub!
Throw Something Away
So one time, at this festival, I had the opportunity to be the recipient of the combined healer energy from a Vicky Noble healing class. She was looking for volunteers for the group to practice on, and I happened to have a very groovy lump growing out of the side of my neck. Turns out the healing circle had zero effect on the lump (that benign cyst required surgery), but it was my ticket to some massive amounts of transformative energy that I desperately needed.
After this circle, I found myself standing in a doorway. My energy was stirred, shaken, massively bedrock disturbed. I needed to move it, fast, before I imploded. I was dancing at an outdoor performance, barefoot in a dustbowl surrounded by other festivalgoers. It came to me that I had to walk through that doorway naked and alone. Alone was easy — strangers who weren’t paying any attention to me surrounded me. Naked, well, that meant my jewelry.
I was wearing a little goddess in my ear, with a dangling amethyst crystal. I had on a string of rose quartz beads. There were toe rings. There was a silver fairy pendant, a gift from my sister, around my neck. I was wearing my juju! These things were all doing particular magickal jobs: balancing my energy, invoking the other realities I was learning to dance through, giving me rose quartz teddy bear love, and importantly — advertising to other baby witches that I was a proud new member of the clan. Naked. These things were performing functions, but they were also locking me into my previous energetic matrix. They were holding the vibrations of who I had been before Vicky Noble coordinated the energies of forty healers, all pointed at me. Although now, 10 years later, I can still tell you which pretty things I let go of, I can also tell you it was an easy decision. No deep thought was required at all. I just started stripping things off and hurling them into the woods.
The best was the rose quartz. I snapped the string and pulled the beads loose. I dropped them into the dirt. Then I danced them into the dust with my bare feet.
I was free. I walked through the door.
Should you find yourself in a Situation, look at what else is there with you. Is there some talisman that is holding on to what you seek to release? Can you or the person you’re working with be persuaded to throw or give it away?
Bring in a Little Sweetness
A friend brought a friend over to my house, and one thing led to another in the way things do. Next thing you know, I’m deep in energy work with the friend of my friend. After much excitement and an impressive display of our healing talent and her willingness to heal, things were settling into a quiet, wrapping up mood.
My friend and I settled on either side of our healing victim. I felt so strongly that she needed to know the sweetness of sisterhood. She needed to know, all through her, that she was loved and cherished.
I fetched the honey. I put a single drop on her tongue, while my friend and I held her and let her know she was loved. The honey communicated this message to her body on a level we couldn’t reach. I know it made an impression — I got several letters from this woman who had been a stranger a few hours before.

Puking is Your Friend
Never underestimate the value of puking. Both for you and for the person you’re helping. I mean, sure, there are nice, controlled Reiki types who make it through their entire healing careers without yakking their guts up on behalf of a client. Bless their hearts; I’m sure it must be wonderful.
I’m a shamanic type, though. I don’t get the luxury of standing off at a distance waving my arms around. I mean, sure, I wave my arms around (and yell and bite and whatever it takes), but I’m also directly involved in the crap coming out of someone. There’s a reason why I don’t do much healing work. I can’t avoid it all the time, though, and puking can be great.
When removing junk from someone, one technique is to suck it out of them. Now this is like siphoning gas from a car. (Anyone tried this recently as the prices keep going up?) You need to start sucking, and then get your mouth off the tube before you get a mouthful of toxic death. Same exact principle with energetic guck. You do a Clinton Inhale™(or a We’re Already Married Swallow™— pick your metaphor). Suck into your mouth, and then spit it out real quick.
If you’re a shamanic, full-body sort of healer like me, sometimes stripping stuff off with your hands isn’t enough. You have to suck it out instead. Two problems: Sometimes you don’t spit quickly enough, and sometimes the guck is extra wily and gloms onto you anyway.
What do you do then? Puke. If you’re lucky, you can do some meaningful dry heaving and call it good. If you’re not, sometimes you just have to use the full physical metaphor to get that crap you just ingested right back out of you.
If you’re dumb enough to add this sucking technique to your repertoire (or are already stuck with it — it’s not really something you choose), please remember one thing: If you have the urge to gak, don’t fight it. You will really regret it if you work to keep someone else’s demon-nasty slime-trail inside you. The short-term pain of throwing up is a thousand times better than the long-term pain of trying to find another sucker (oops! I mean healer) to get it out of you.
On the other side of the healer equation, puking can be good for the one being healed, too. If they’ve got the nasty in them and they’re trying to expel it themselves, encourage them to follow their urge. You’ll see them going green around the edges or perhaps retching a bit. Let them know that this can be an effective way to move energy, and they should go with it rather than fight it.
The body knows. If it can move the energy out with just a little mucous, it will do so. If it needs to go throw up for half an hour, it will do that.
Other Special Techniques
All right, I’m finished being disgusting. What else do you have at your disposal besides your digestive tract? Hands, breath, voice, warmth, the rest of your body. When helping someone move energy, I have wrapped myself around them and rocked them, using that instinctive child-like rhythm to help sort things out to where they needed to be. I have used my breath to blow things away or move them around. The voice is wonderful for toning (you and/or the recipient), doing a kung-fu cry to break up stuck guck, or telling a story about the energy leaving (guided visualization).
The hands are magick. With nothing but your hands, you can pull energy out, put energy in, balance chakras, smooth someone’s brow, or hold their hand. You can fix, heal, support, and love.

What else could you need?

This is so funny....

2010-06-13T10:43:00.001-07:00

Do Glass Pipes, Incense Prove Teens Are Practicing Shamanism?

Animist Service Societies

2010-04-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

Lately in the face of having an real up and personal look at our current social system, as well as looking at the new laws on health insurance, I find myself thinking back to earlier times as well as other cultures who take care of each other in a much healthier way.

In my community there is a place that has been rented out to artists that was built and run by loggers a long time ago. This was a lodge they used for meeting and community get togethers as well as fund raising; the lodge was built for the purpose creating a cooperative that allowed loggers to gain health care. Other organizations around the united states where built many years ago that provided social services to people; the Odd fellows building around old town centers are a common site, few people know that the Odd fellows also own grave yards and the organization started as a way for low income members to be able to afford life insurance and to pay for burials of their members. The Eagles club, Moose lodge, Shriners, Masons, Knights of Columbus, Rotary Club are but a few. Many of these organizations are considered fraternities or sororities, or as the Odd fellows was called in England when originated in the 1700's as a friendly society.

All of these organizations where built on the foundation of helping members when they needed it in a time where there was no social welfare system, state health care or trade unions. Most of these organizations were non-profit mutual organizations owned by their members with all income passed back to the members in the form of services and benefits. Local services clubs as they are also called such as the Kiwanis club provide fire wood to single mothers in the winter time and one Kiwanis organization that is local to me runs a garden that is worked by volunteers as well as prisoners and the food that is grown is donated to the local food bank. Other service organizations such as the Fraternal Order of the Eagles were created in Washington state as a society for the development of the performance arts. Organizations such as the Elks Lodge are mostly social organizations that also work as charity and fundraising organizations to aid their community. Interestingly the Elks lodge also works as a way of honoring deceased members...

"Deceased and otherwise absent lodge members are recalled each evening at 11 p.m. when the lodge esquire intones, "It is the Hour of Recollection." The exalted ruler or a member designated by him gives the 11 o'clock toast, of which this version is the most common:

You have heard the tolling of eleven strokes. This is to remind you that with Elks, the hour of eleven has a tender significance. Wherever Elks may roam, whatever their lot in life may be, when this hour tolls upon the dial of night, the great heart of Elkdom swells and throbs. It is the golden hour of recollection, the homecoming of those who wander, the mystic roll call of those who will come no more. Living or dead, Elks are never forgotten, never forsaken. Morning and noon may pass them by, the light of day sink heedlessly into the west. But ere the shadows of midnight shall fall, the chimes of memory shall be pealing forth the friendly message: To our absent members."

In the past community members around the world saw the importance of these organizations because the government was not providing these services to those that needed them. Our grandparents knew the value of these organizations and often belonged to if not one several. Today we have our social services provided to us by privatized industry and our governments. The lack of personalized care and attention from our community wanes due to this dynamic today, and is woefully inept.

These society are nothing new animist culture as well had social and civic organizations, secret societies and rites associated to them, societies that encouraged every member to be a medicine person or the best warrior they could be; these organizations where also the law enforcement, and religious organizations of their societies. These societies worked, and in many cases continue to work to promote health and well being in animist communities. The names of many of the societies in Cascadia such as the Eagles lodge are often inspired by animist traditions.

A local therapist told me that he had gone over to do relief work in Indonesia after the tsunami hit there. He had planed to spend the majority of the time helping people cope with the trauma of surviving the tragedy. What he found however was a community that was extremely resilient. He found no cases of PTSD and people where coping with their grief very well. He could not at first understand why a society with no fundamental social services organizations or community mental health organizations could be so resilient.

What he discovered however was that each member of the community had a vested interest in each other community member. they also integrated ritual into their lives through building shrines which helped them deal with their grief (which reminds one of the Odd fellows as well as the Elks societies). This mutual care and care giving allowed these people to survive after the tragedy that occurred, and aided them in all other aspects of life as well, before and after the tragic tsunami. Working in the mental health field as a case manager and working daily with people in need I cannot help but look at the system I participate in as facilitating a lack of this mutual care, a passing of the buck if you will to state funded non-profit organizations, where the state has the final say as to how and who receives care; and why...

Value systems as well as aesthetics change from generation to generation, membership to social organizations such as those mentioned have wavered and waned. To belong to a civic organization today is a dieing tradition. Our needs are being provided for by state social services (sure they are) and it is easier to just pass the buck or live in tot6al apathy. We are becoming more and more divided and separate from each other; few of us know our neighbor next door or have even spoken to them. We live in communities? Many of us do not know what it is like to NEED aid from our community, and so invest very little into their community. These times are changing however. More and more people require aid due to the United States economic problems (all stemming from ecological devastation honestly) and it may be time again to reinvent or at the very least rediscover the community empowerment of the Service Societies.

Service societies can exist again and be motivated by bioregional as well as animist relational dynamics. Ritual and ceremony has always been a major facet in social cohesion as well as personal empowerment within societies. Mutual aid in assisting society members in helping each other has also empowered and co-created healthy communities. Groups that are forming now, such as a local organization like GRUB which teaches people to build garden boxes and grow food on their own property, Food not Lawns Organizations where also beginning to form aiding people to go local with their food production. These are non-profit organizations though, not necessarily service based societies. Non-profit organizations often times are funded by grants and not the community or members of the organization itself. Those that work for NPO's know too well that those who fund call the shots, if one wants funding then who ever is giving the money is in control. One must ask themselves what are the motivations of these people giving the grant? Are they members of the community? Do they live in your bioregion and do they understand the needs of those in your bioregion, human and other than human? Some may... but most will not. Funding provided by government funding to NPO's also continue the lack of regional autonomy, and further alienate us from our own home and community. This occurs because we are not giving the funding or doing the work for our community some one else it.

Dedication to Service

In my early twenties, I dropped out of college and studied and practice the art of shamanry, as well as the path of humble servitude. I took a part time low paying job, and ate approximately once or twice a day, some times eating road kill, dumpster diving or eating from the local food bank. At work I made bread from pizza dough that we threw away at the end of the day; and took it down to the park or the street's giving it away to any one who needed it. I would then get a cup of coffee and bring with me a book and a pouch of tobacco and I would sit on the busy down town sidewalk of the state capital I lived in. My daily mainstream mediation and prayer was a humble one, I would roll a cigarette and while smoking it I would ask life to bring me any one who needs healing and to help me to help them. I would say this prayer and open my heart. You can feel your heart when it is open, you feel loved by all that is, supported, and you feel love for all that is and supportive of all that is. I would put out my cigarette and unroll the tobacco and give what was left blowing my breath into it; my life force and then give it as an offering to life, on the side walk.

I did this every day for three years. I always had exactly what I needed to keep healing and helping others, even the eventual lack of fulfillment that led me to finding ways to help more people which placed me in mental health and finishing college.

During this time however I gave... I gave everything I had, I lead healing ceremonies with those I met, I built community and made strong and powerful allies in helping others. I brought healers to visit my community some times going into debt inorder to help others. The entire time I felt supported and guided and assisted by the land, by spirit, by the life force itself. In a very real way, moving my mind and body at times. I was the land, the whole in service to itself. My intuitive abilities soared! There where times where I began to understand what it meant to be a holy man, and I learned that there was not one thing I could ever do just for myself. In this time I went through an extreme healing and learning process as well; as I taught others I learned, as I healed others I myself healed. I needed help though, at times the need was so great but few where able to assist and so I spent time attempting to teach others how to awaken to the light within themselves and to serve others with humility. In a sense this is exactly what it is I am doing now.

When I started spending less time on the street and more time helping people through working with state funded agencies, I started to notice that the same power that came into me would enter into random people on the street. It was like watching a person get possessed by a beneficent being. You could see it, hear it in their voices, watch it in their behaviors... few of them new how to embody it for long and it would leave them. But I became aware that for those who allow themselves to live a life of humble service and who open their hearts to the whole the whole's ability to promote health and balance will become embodied within them, like a deity or bodhisattva of compassion entering into a monk in a trance dance. I saw that this force of nature or energy (we call it spirit in my community) was available to any one.

Over the years I have thought off and on about this path I walked in those years and from time to time I meet a young seeker and I recommend this to them. Few do so; perhaps they do not feel supported enough. Recently I watched the movie Men Who Stare at Goats, the NEW EARTH ARMY, I could not help but relate to these people, it was satirical of new agers, but the Jedi knights concept as funny as it seemed... was well possible, or some semblance of it. The notion of a group of people willing to embrace discipline and care for others using shamanic, and animist practice as a base of their philosophy, working with nature in synergy to aid others, this is possible... this could be! taking the shape of service communities as an organizational model bioregional animist societies could form on a membership basis focused on specific intentions, service to people in need on the street for example, care to the ill and the infirmed, care to the land and its need for healing and bioremediation, working with the spirit of place; with the life place, and the other than human persons of the life place. Done working with transrational practices allowing guidance and empowerment to heighten their efficacy in service.

It would be possible to begin small, groups of friends, meeting together donating small amounts of resources to their group intention. Through working with the spirit of place, with each other synergistically as well; the co-creation of rituals and ceremonies that would empower and create further social cohesion between society members. A deepening of ones synergy with place and each other could be developed through these practices, granting one help from the spirit of place in ones endeavor’s both personally and for the society and larger community. Meeting the needs of ones community or just narrowly working within ones own society could be a focus for these societies as well.

I would like to encourage people to think about beginning shamanic and bioregional animist societies with these thoughts in mind... this I believe is one way we can promote powerful changes in our communities, promote bioregionalism as a life way, and co-create healthy high synergy communities.

Making the Shift From Shaman to Animist Healer

2010-03-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

As many of us know the term or label Shaman has become a loaded subject, a humpty dumpty word, and a term clouded with so many personal definitions and political associations that to utilize the word is an invitation to an extremely difficult discourse. I have mentioned before the need to revisit the original etymology of the word shaman and work from there. If we closely examine the word we see that it means “ one who knows” and as I pointed out previously here and the back yard shamanry page, it would seem that the distinction is that a shaman is one who knows about the animist cosmology of their people... at least enough to be called one who knows about it!

I have been finding more and more in my dialogs with others, as well as in my thinking and writing that this loaded term may be too difficult to work with any more. It was borrowed from the Tungus people and utilized by colonialism to describe something much to vast to go under one categorized anthropological label. The very vague nature of the term has allowed it to be specific and warped by the motives of individuals that do not always carry the clearest of intentions either.

So what do we do know? What would be and adequate shift in our terminology that no longer carries with it the clouded much debated qualities this term has come to hold? Even the use of the term shamanry as apposed to shamanism, though still a helpful clarification is still such a loaded coinage that it does not allow us to communicate clearly still. Not to mention that many traditional indigenous animists have brought up their grievance with the use of the word in labeling their own cultural practices.

My proposal is simple, and straight forward allowing clarity as well as a much needed opening line to discussing the importance of animism recognition today. The shift I think we require in describing that which has been labeled “shaman” in the past is to center the term itself in animism again. The terms Animist healer or Animist visionary healer, or animist spiritual leader, depending on the context of the relational dynamic a community has with their spiritual practitioners seems to work to create more clarity over all.

Working with this terminology instead of “shaman” helps in several ways. For one it redirects our attention to animism the origin point of what has been called erroneously “shasmanism”, it communicates clearly what we mean instead of working with a vague and cloudy definition that up to as many interpretations in today’s spiritual and academic circles as there are wasps in a wasp nest. It allows people to begin to see the relationship between people and place between being a healer and being an animist ie. having a relationship with nature for the purpose of healing. It also lets go of the potential for cultural appropriation and allows for people to discover their own unique ways of relating as a healer and as an animist.

Making a shift in our language helps make a shift in our understanding as well as our perception and behavior. It is my hope and has been along with the bioregional animism project that this shift occur so that the real strength of animist healing can really come forth in the world in new yet very ancient ways. In ways that are integrated in relationships with place, spirit and community. Essentially when one is communicating to another that they are an animist healer or that they are participating in an animist healing ceremony ect. they are telling some one that they are participating in a healing ceremony that revolves around a relational ontology. That they are participating in a relationship with spirit, with place, with community both human and other than human for the well being of not just themselves but that spirit, that place, and those people, both human and other than human.

It is my hope that in perpetuating this shift we will see practices evolve out of the armchair of the neo-shamaic counselors office space but into the permacultured gardens of communities that work with the land and cultivate not only fruits but intimate communicative relationships that create abundance, health and the ability to thrive, while keeping to our values as animist people.

Time will tell if this catches on... it is my prayer that it does!

Sacred Economics

2010-03-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

Healing and the new economy is a lecture by Charles Eisenstein. His work think lays out ways for animist healers and visionaries to work in a way that heals how we relate to the world. Allowing us to live as animists.
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/Healing-and-the-New-Economy.php

His work on gift economics is the prequel to his book on Sacred Economics.
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/gift-economics.php

A Gathering of the tribe

2010-03-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

A Gathering of the tribe.
By Charles Eisenstein on Reality Sandwich
Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.

One day the shaman of the tribe called a meeting. They gathered around him, and he spoke very solemnly. "My friends," he said, "there is a world that needs our help. It is called earth, and its fate hangs in the balance. Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing, and they will be stillborn without our help. Who would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place, and render service to humanity?"

"Tell us more about his mission," they asked.

"I am glad you asked, because it is no small thing. I will put you into a deep, deep trance, so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life, and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world, and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will not know what it is you are missing. You will only remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge, as you plunge into the painfully marred earth, that a more beautiful world is possible.

"As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety, and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened.

"You see, even though you will feel, for a time, utterly alone, you will not be alone. I will send you assistance, help that you will experience as miraculous, experiences that you will describe as transcendent. For a few moments or hours or days, you will reawaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be. You will see it on earth, for even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real.

"You will also receive help from each other. As you begin to awaken to your mission you will meet others of our tribe. You will recognize them by your common purpose, values, and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked. As the condition of the planet earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more. The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy, will be over.

"You will find the people of your tribe all over the earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet. But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings in special places on earth. When many of you gather together you will launch a new stage on your journey, a journey which, I assure you, will end where it began. Then, the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness. Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful one.

"In the time of loneliness, you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy. You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don't listen to you. You will be hungry for stories of wrongness, atrocity, and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists. But after you have fully received the help I will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that. Because, you will Know. Your energy will thereafter turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world."

A tribeswoman asked the shaman, "How do you know this will work? Are you sure your shamanic powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?"

The shaman replied, "I know it will work because I have done it many times before. Many have already been sent to earth, to live human lives, and to lay the groundwork for the mission you will undertake now. I've been practicing! The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once. What is new in the time you will live in, is that the Gatherings are beginning to happen."

A tribesman asked, "Is there a danger we will become lost in that world, and never wake up from the shamanic trance? Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin, and that we will separated from our beloved ones forever?"

The shaman replied, "That is impossible. The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help I will send you. You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, the loss of everything important to you. Later you will recognize the gift within it. We will never abandon you."

Another man asked, "Is it possible that our mission will fail, and that this planet, earth, will perish?"

The shaman replied, "I will answer your question with a paradox. It is impossible that your mission will fail. Yet, its success hangs on your own actions. The fate of the world is in your hands. The key to this paradox lies within you, in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal, secret struggles within, has cosmic significance. You will know then, as you do now, that everything you do matters. God sees everything."

There were no more questions. The volunteers gathered in a circle, and the shaman went to each one. The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his face. They entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.

****

Who are these missionaries from the more beautiful world? You and I are surely among them. Where else could this longing come from, for this magical place to be found nowhere on earth, this beautiful time outside of time? It comes from our intuitive knowledge of our origin and destination. The longing, indomitable, will never settle for a world that is less. Against all reason, we look upon the horrors of our age, mounting over the millennia, and we say NO, it does not have to be this way! We know it, because we have been there. We carry in our souls the knowledge that a more beautiful world is possible. Reason says it is impossible; reason says that even to slow -- much less reverse -- the degradation of the planet is an impossible task: politically unfeasible, opposed by the Money Power and its oligarchies. It is true that those powers will fight to uphold the world we have known. Their allies lurk within even ourselves: despair, cynicism, and resignation to carving out a life that is "good enough" for me and mine.

But we of the tribe know better. In the darkest despair a spark of hope lies inextinguishable within us, ready to be fanned into flames at the slightest turn of good news. However compelling the cynicism, a jejune idealism lives within us, always ready to believe, always ready to look upon new possibilities with fresh eyes, surviving despite infinite disappointments. And however resigned we may have felt, our aggrandizement of me and mine is half-hearted, for part of our energy is looking elsewhere, outward toward our true mission.

I would like to advise caution against dividing the world into two types of people, those who are of the tribe and those who are not. How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don't get it and don't care? The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way, deep down. When we are young the feeling of mission and the sense of magnificent origins and a magnificent destination is strong. Any career or way of life lived in betrayal of that knowing is painful, and can only be maintained through an inner struggle that shuts down a part of our being. For a time, we can keep ourselves functioning through various kinds of addictions or trivial pleasures to consume the life force and dull the pain. In earlier times, we might have kept the sense of mission and destiny buried for a lifetime, and called that condition maturity. Times are changing now though, as millions of people are awakening to their mission all at the same time. The condition of the planet is waking us up. Another way to put it, is that we are becoming young again.

When you feel that sense of alienation, when you look upon that sea of faces mired so inextricably in the old world and fighting to maintain it, think back to a time when you too were, to all outside appearances, a full and willing participant in that world as well. The same spark of revolution you carried then, the same secret refusal, dwells in all people. How was it that you finally stopped fighting it? How was it that you came to realize that you were right all along, that the world offered to us is wrong, and that no life is worth living that does not in some way strive to create a better one? How was it that it became intolerable to devote your life energy toward the perpetuation of the old world? Most likely, it happened when the old world fell apart around your ears.

As the multiple crises of money, health, energy, ecology, and more converge upon us, the world is going to collapse for millions more. We must stand ready to welcome them into the tribe. We must stand ready to welcome them back home.

The time of loneliness, of walking the path alone, of thinking maybe the world is right and I am wrong for refusing to participate fully in it... that time is over. For years we walked around talking about how wrong everything is: the political system, the educational system, religious institutions, the military-industrial complex, the banking industry, the medical system -- really, any system you study deeply enough. We needed to talk about it because we needed to assure ourselves that we were not, in fact, crazy. We needed as well to talk about alternatives, the way things should be. "We" should eliminate CFCs. "They" should stop cutting down the rain forests. "The government" should declare no fishing zones. This talk, too, was necessary, for it validated our vision of the world that could be: a peaceful and exuberant humanity living in co-creative partnership with a wild garden earth.

The time, though, for talking merely to assure ourselves that we are right is coming to an end. People everywhere are tired of it, tired of attending yet another lecture, organizing yet another discussion group online. We want more. A few weeks ago as I was preparing for a speaking trip to Oregon, the organizers told me, "These people don't need to be told what the problems are. They don't even need to be told what the solutions are. They already know that, and many of them are already in action. What they want is to take their activism to the next level."

To do that, to fully step into one's mission here on earth, one must experience an inner shift that cannot be merely willed upon oneself. It does not normally happen through the gathering or receiving of information, but through various kinds of experiences that reach deep into our unconscious minds. Whenever I am blessed with such an experience, I get the sense that some benevolent yet pitiless power -- the shaman in the story -- has reached across the void to quicken me, to reorganize my DNA, to rewire my nervous system. I come away changed.

One way it happens is through the "gathering of the tribe" I described in this story. I think many people who attended the recent Reality Sandwich retreat in Utah experienced something like this. Such gatherings are happening now all over the world. You go back, perhaps, to "real life" afterwards, but it no longer seems so real. Your perceptions and priorities change. New possibilities emerge. Instead of feeling stuck in your routines, life changes around you at a vertiginous pace. The unthinkable becomes commonsense and the impossible becomes easy. It may not happen right away, but once the internal shift has occurred, it is inevitable.

Here I am, a speaker and a writer, going on about how the time for mere talk has ended. Yet not all words are mere talk. A spirit can ride the vehicle of words, a spirit that is larger than, yet not separate from, their meaning. Sometimes I find that when I bow into service, that spirit inhabits the space in which I speak and affects all present. A sacredness infuses our conversations and the non-verbal experiences that are becoming part of my events. In the absence of that sacredness, I feel like a smart-ass, up there entertaining people and telling them information they could just as easily read online. Last Friday night I spoke on a panel in New York, one of three smart-asses, and I think many in the audience left disappointed (though maybe not as disappointed as I was in myself). We are looking for something more, and it is finding us.

The revolutionary spark of our true mission has been fanned into flames before, only to return again to an ember. You may remember an acid trip in 1975, a Grateful Dead concert in 1982, a kundalini awakening in 1999 -- an event that, in the midst of it, you knew was real, a privileged glimpse into a future that can actually manifest. Then later, as its reality faded into memory and the inertial routines of life consumed you, you perhaps dismissed it and all such experiences as an excursion from life, a mere "trip." But something in you knows it was real, realer than the routines of normalcy. Today, such experiences are accelerating in frequency even as "normal" falls apart. We are at the beginning of a new phase. Our gatherings are not a substitute for action; they are an initiation into a state of being from which the necessary kinds of actions arise. Soon you will say, with wonder and serenity, "I know what to do, and I trust myself to do it."

Torch

2010-02-22T21:37:00.000-08:00

I read this on an internet entheogen forum the other day. It is quite amazing that these conversations go on over such great distances. Human beings are so amazing.At times I am just flattened by the reality that so many people have access to so much medicine, and how this is effecting people. I trust that spirit guides these people in ways I cannot imagine, and i know that it guides them in ways that helps the world, and i think you can feel that from the words below.

Question: Greetings to all,
A friend has been tempting me to try the sacred cacti (peruvian torch), but Im a little resistant because of the duration and since Aya has worked so well as an ally thus far. So I would appreciate any comments and advice.
What I mainly want to know is how the healing compares with Aya. The day after Aya I always feel thoroughly healed and extremely mood elevated. Is that aspect present in the cacti?
Any admonitions are welcome.

Answer: If you feel depleted or tired after working with the cactus it means its not done working with you, and you must go back to it to get more work done. Then you do, and you still might be tired or exhausted the next day... you may have seen the sun rise and this may have brought the power of the cactus to you for a few more hours giving you a look at what more you must do to get cleaned up and clear. So then you go back... this time you give more to the cactus then it gives to you, and you bloom, you flower, and after that you are no longer tired, you are well and you are well for a long time. there is no next day feeling fine healing... it goes on for the rest of your life, but for months after words you have this strong glowing inner power that attracts others that need healing, some people who you never have met or will meet again, think of you as holy, and this is the first time that had ever crossed their minds.
you are changed and you can feel it...
it requires perseverance and patience, much like the cactus it self needs to grow and finally bloom.

Shamanry vs Shamanism

2009-10-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-29T01:09:00.000-08:00

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

2008-06-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

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.

DOR DAY!

2007-10-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-30T22:52:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-30T22:50:00.001-07:00

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!]

"How can you poison some thing so beautiful?"

2007-09-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

"How can you poison some thing so beautiful?"

One night during a San Pedro long dance ceremony with a South American shaman I was sprayed by some perfume he had made during a dieta in the amazon, made with amazonian flowers.
In the perfumero curandero practice they take the perfume into the mouth and spray it on you in a mist from the mouth, the breath carries the and charges the intention to heal with the perfume. This is called Ch'alla, and is done primarily as a ritual action for cleansing.
I opened my self to receive the medicine. So many times healing is a painful process, cleansing is allot of hard work and I find my self resistant to it as I think many of get some times, this time I opened up, and "took my medicine".
I started coughing so hard it was like puking from my lungs! Once my lungs were cleaned out the scent of the perfume of the amazon flower people could find their way into my chest and deliver their message of healing to me.

I heard this very beautiful collective of voices say within me..."Why would you poison something so beautiful?"
I broke down in tears! A harsh question to be asked, I was racked with quilt for poisoning my body and at the same time feeling the message of the flowers telling me and affirming that I was a beautiful being, but I could not personalise the message completely. As the message expanded I saw how I was participating in poisoning the earth with pollution through damaging ways of relating to that which is around me and actually is me. The message expanded even larger and I could see that this was a question to my whole species.
Much of the work I am doing here is a response to this question, and a way to reciprocate and give thanks to the flowers of the amazon that healed my body and spirit that night. That night they showed me ways to not have to poison my self and my environment, showed me alternative ways of relating to the world, not out of guilt, shame or fear, but out of love for all that is.

Since that night I have been looking at the social and environmental impact of importation, out sourcing, and air travel. My partner is an ecology student ( go figure eh?) and allot of what I learn from her is very helpful. During one of her sustainability classes her teacher pointed out the immensely negative impact of air travel. A round trip ticket creates as much pollution as 100,000 SUV's driving for a full year. I began to look into it more feeling more an more drawn to bioregionalism I wanted to look at more and more reasons to embrace it. I found out that air planes dump the rest of their fuel from the air before landing to prevent explosions due to crash or some other potential landing problem, the chemicals in jet fuel are carcinogenic and mutagens, they have been found in nearly ever sample of breast milk in mammals as well as breast tissues, they are a major cause of breast cancer as is the same with PBDEs used as fire retardants in plastics. the chemicals can be found nearly every where in the world in water samples soil samples its unreal!

It is humbling and extremely scary to think wow when I eat a banana I am contributing to the poisoning of a mothers breast, to all mothers breasts, I am poisoning that which nurtures billions of babies, something beautiful.
Air freight is one of the fastest means of transporting food especially perishable fruits from other places in the world. When ever we eat a non local food that is out of season where we live, we can count on the fact that the majority of the time, it was flown to us. It is a horrible irony that the way wee feed our selves is killing us and others and not in the balanced cycle that life normally functions. The chemical found in the breast milk also keeps babies from gaining the immune boasting qualities of the breast milk, eating a banana makes babies sick... I have to hold my head for a moment and just allow the nausea to pass just from the thought....

I am in no means attempting to create motivation for change through fear and guilt. "My god look what your doing for shame!" I don't go for that I feel that with information like this we can make more intelligent decisions on how to live our lives and be motivated instead out of love then fear and guilt.
I think its more important then ever to attempt to look at what you have in your life, what you need and see if you can attempt to replace that with a local alternative do I need to travel by air? Why am I motivated to travel? Where does my food come from? Could I really fulfill my needs from local sources? More times then not we can! Though we do not have to work with just native regional foods and materials and life ways, we can work with what has been imported to our life places and integrate them and adapt them into our lives in a sustainable way.
The Polynesians for example have what they call boat plants that they took to Hawaii. Plants that were not native to Hawaii but were integrated to the ecosystems there. These plants were essential to their survival there, as was the pigs they brought with them.
With a knowledge of permaculture and ecology we can create natural holistic alternatives needing to import very little, working as a community, the development of cooperatives, collectives, and farmers markets in your local area can help immensely. Once systems of relationships are strengthened and old habits of relying on out sourced foods and other needs are changed, you will be surprised as to how much of a difference your making both socialy and ecologically. There is simply no need to import every thing we need. It appears so now but that's an illusion we are all going to have to face together, through working together to establish alternatives.The answer I give to the flowers of the amazon "How can you poison something so beautiful?" is..."I cant, I wont! Please show me ways to live advise me help me generate wellness for all. Aid us in finding alternatives. Be our allies?" If you ask the spirits of nature to help you in this way you discover they are more then happy to help! you can learn allot from a flower!

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Bio-Regional Animism in Five Minutes

2007-09-20T13:21:00.001-07:00

Bio-Regional Animism in Five Minutes
By Fish bowl on tribes.net
This is a speech that will be given by Fish bowl at a local unitarian church in his bioregion this coming Sunday.

Spirituality is everywhere to be found; it unfolds with the peddles of a rose, and gurgles in the song of a creek, and in the canyons, and running through the forest. This is the experience animism is built from. It is the belief in spirit. It does not distinguish from the spiritual and the material; instead, they are one and the same.

Today, New Animism seeks to discard the dualism of modern society, where we divide into us, them and the other, to realize there is only everything. Instead, we seek a way of relating our modern culture to a spirituality based upon how we interact with ourselves, other human people and other-than-human-people that are the trees, rivers, mountains, animals, energies, and scientific principles, that we interact with daily. Nature is not seen as collection of resources for human consumption, but as equals to humans to be related to. This does not mean we abandon modern society, but to relate our lives to what is needed for daily sustenance. We have to ask ourselves how we are using, what we are using, and what are we contributing back to nature and the universe This forces one to realize the essential truth, that life is sacrificed to sustain life.

This way of thinking demands that we be environmentally, ecologically, and socially aware and to implement change. This shift of consciences brings empathy with our environment and to feel the reality of its state of being. Humans are not above nature but as much a part of it in everyway. However, our form of intelligence has lead to an irresponsible attitude towards the things we need to sustain our own lives, subjugating our environments to mere material and forgetting the spiritual nature of everything.
Our planet is a vast network of ecosystems that work in highly concentrated ways, unique to their immediate environment. These ecosystems have been surveyed for their resources and been divided up on the market to be bought and sold by piecemeal. Do you know where you food comes from? Do you know what is in it? Most likely you don’t.

Our culture has become so disconnected from our eco-systems through a homogeneous market that we have long lost the sacredness of daily life. Bio-Regional Animism is form of New Animism that re-cultivates the sacred relationship of humans and the eco-systems they inhabit. We recognize the values and lessons taught by animist cultures from the past and the present, but understand that is one way in which a specific culture related to a specific ecosystem.

Bio-Regional animism is not a new religion or a even a new tradition of neo-paganism; rather, it is a way of relating to our environment in a deeply spiritual way. For me I came to it through studying the history, culture, and mythology of the British-Celts. In time the pantheon lost its human attributes and revealed themselves to me as the rivers, mountains, forest, animals, and plants of the ecosystems where I was living in at the time. In this way its synchronism can co-exist with other spiritual systems and life philosophies, if one is open to the possibilities.

All one needs is to listen to their intuition and hear the needs, desires, and unique understanding of their ecosystem. This is not only done with improvisational ceremonies and meditations but through scientific study of their environment. Understanding where your water comes from, the medicinal value of indigenous plants and the social activities of local wildlife builds the foundation for relating to your ecosystem. Bio-Regional animism is not the path for those who seek predefinitions and structure; instead, it directly challenges these notions, leaving us with the very soil under your feet and sky above our heads, and that is what we work with to grow our spiritual relationships.

DYI

2007-09-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

What is back yard shamanry?

Well to start off... there is no such thing as shamanism... the 'ism' behind shaman misleads us to believe that shaman'ism' is a belief system or religion even unto its self independent of an animist cosmology that is grounded and centered in place. Shaman is a role created by an animist community, by both human and other than human persons, and is a role filled by both human and other than human persons. The characteristics of the shaman are designed by the bioregion itself and is as much an aspect and expression of a bioregion as the flora and fauna. Because the shaman is a role within an animist belief system, it like many other roles, cannot be called a belief system thus the adage of ism to shaman is as inappropriate as adding ism behind the word carpenter, or therapist or doctor... even healer in which the word shaman is the most synonymous cannot be called a belief system, and placing, ism behind healer, therapist, or doctor, would be absurd...

This blog is in preparation for a book based on Bioregional animisms healers as well as a place to transmit stories of healing and inspiration....
The book Bioregional animism: Finding the spirit of the shaman in your back yard with out having to culturally appropriate, is still in the works and is still waiting for enough work to be contributed from others from other bioregions telling their stories of how they relate to the land from this particular life way...