S ha m a n P or t a l Q u a r t e r ly R e v ie w
A Note from the Publisher TABL E OF CO N T E NT
I am excited to welcome you to our fourth issue of SPQR. I hope you will apply the wisdom of the many shamans’ traditions. As the world is changing all around us at an accelerated speed, I feel we must return to the secret of survival indigenous people of the earth practiced from the very beginning of time. Otherwise, we will vanish from the face of the Earth. In Tungus, the language from which the word Shaman derived from, the true meaning of Saman–as told to me by a visiting elder shaman–is “Keeper of the Fire.” The person who keeps the embers–a small burning piece of coal or wood in a dying fire. The keeper of his or her community’s emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. The keeper of their stories, songs, lore, history, wisdom, and medicinal ways for survival. SPQR and Shaman Portal website, social media, and other projects are part of my efforts to keep my promise to the spirit I made many years ago in the Amazon. I am thrilled to share it with you and many like-minded members of our growing global community.
ISSUE #4 JUNE 2021
Taita don Jose Shairy Quimbo Page 4 Condor Medicine–The Teachings of the Seven Feathers–part 2 Page 10 Serge Kahili King Dreaming Techniques: Working with Night Dreams, Daydreams, and Liminal Dreams
Itzhak Beery Page 15 Shamanic Invisible Cord-Cutting Peter Brown Page 20 When the Rains Stopped Falling Page 25 Christa Mackinnon and Seersha O’Sullivan Sacred Earth Activism in Transformational Times. Combining the shamanic with activism for change
Art by Geenss Archenti Flores
(See artist’s information on page 32)
Shungo -From my heart to yours-
Copyright. All rights reserved by each of the authors. No part of this publication or photographs therein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.
Itzhak Beery, Founder & publisher
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A Note from the Editor may hold us back or suck energy away from us. A solution for this situation can be Cord Cutting. Itzhak Beery shows different ways how that could be done.
Welcome to our fourth issue of the Shaman Portal Quarterly Review. When the first issue was published in late 2019 (yes, we’re not yet fully in the quarterly rhythm) the world was different – it was the time BC – Before Covid. 16 months later many things have changed. But more change is required on an individual, community and society level. Christa Mackinnon and Seersha O’Sullivan in their article on Sacred Earth Activism point out that Shamanism traditionally was an imbedded service to the community, not just a tool for self-development as is it often used in Western societies.
One of the most well-known human rights activists was Dr. Martin Luther King jr. One of his most famous speech evolves around the narrative of “I have a dream”. History has shown how powerful that dream was and how much change it ignited. But dreaming and working with dreams is not just something a few can do – it’s a source of inspiration and power for all humans. Serge Kahili King explains how we can work with our dreams and tap into this innate pool of wisdom and vision. And while we humans struggle in our daily lives here on earth, the big Condor of Andes is flying high in the air – up to 30,000 feet – and watching us. But we can also learn a lot by observing the condor as Taita Shairy Quimbo teaches in the second part of his Condor Medicine article.
The connection with nature is an integral part in many Shamanic traditions. This not only includes connection to the plant and animal world but also to the weather beings. In his article Peter Brown tells how he started to form a relationship with them and shows way for the reader to build their own connections to the local weather beings. Many traditions use the metaphor of a web to express the interconnectedness of all things and beings – the Web of life, web of Wyrd etc. Everything is connected through invisible strings. But not all of those connections support us or are helpful for us. Quite the opposite – some
I wish you much joy in reading this fourth issue of the Shaman Portal Quarterly Review.
Many blessings,
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Christian Thurow, Editor
Condor Medicine – The Teachings of the Seven Feathers–part 2 By Taita don Jose Shairy Quimbo There is neither privilege nor discrimination in natural law. All life is complementary. Exploitation is not an option. To be in correct relationship with this law in my option simultaneously benefits the other person. The universe shows us the correct options and in the cosmic order we all have the proper option. We are all sentient beings. Our Pachamama is a great sentient organism, thus it is cosmic intelligence. When we use our options wisely, we fill the void of the Pachamama. This vacuum is created so that we may fill it.
Fourth teaching: YANANTINKUY The complementary relationship of all existence
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he condor is the glider of the heights. It possesses the most powerful claws and beak. From the heights it can spot his food (prey) which is shared with other birds and animals who will also benefit from the more superficial organs, while the condor must feed itself from the hardest/ strongest most nutritious parts.
When we invoke our necessities, we create this vacuum. The universe responds by sending signals. In the indigenous world we recognize those signals through dreams. When the request is correct, the signal is natural and the results are spontaneous. What to do to live in complimentary reciprocity within ourselves to transcend to the universe? In
Proper alimentation allow him to have a great thrust of flight which requires a lot of energy. He awaits his turn patiently and choses the exact best moment to eat what is best for him. In life’s philosophy complementation is an evident law. No one is on the margin of this law.
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the Andean world, contemplation is synonymous to cosmic reciprocity. This law is accomplished through giving and receiving. Modern society has distorted and unbalanced this law, we focus on receiving, disregarding giving. Love yourself, love others, love the world. There is no stronger power than love, we are here to love each other and the earth and to bring happiness to all sentient beings.
sacred moments of the transition of the cycles of time. Those are short periods during the day and the night during which Mother Earth and Father Sun are in synchrony. In Mother Earth the energy vortices open up; and Father Sun emits his radiation with more energetic power. Therefore they know the subtle moments of vibration when the energy transmits messages from universal intelligence. Then the Condor alights in front with his wings opened to synchronize with this vibration, since he captures those vibrations through his magnetic wings.
• Step 1: Reflect on your life and on all the beings with whom we co-exist; (animals, people, plants, etc). Reflect on your quality of life taken into account the importance of living in harmony with all. If there is dis-harmony, make the decision to come back into harmony with those with whom you are in disharmony.
Beings with wings have in their feathers a complex woven structure that constitutes sidereal antennae to capture or connect with the vibration of the cosmic energy. The cosmic energy is the vibration of intelligence and logic that irradiate order and harmony. The mandate is to energize and tense our wings. Our wings are the intelligence of the heart connected with the intelligence of the mind. In this state our intuition becomes activated, which means that we connect our personal I with the absolute. We activate our innate intuition, that which exist in all children prior to the age of 7. We can achieve this state through meditation and exercise.
• Step 2: Make the best of your intellectual, fiscal and spiritual capacities to plant your proper option. ‘Your option is my option’ Human beings distorted this natural law to accumulate or horde for themselves to the detriment of others. We are here to re-establish this order. When I fulfill the option of others, my life’s option is qualitatively elevated. • Step 3: Pay attention to the correct moment and the proper opportunities. For this you must use the intelligence of your heart. Do not disregard that which appears humbly because inside might be the Mana. Be grateful and magnanimous, this will make you worthy of receiving.
The four life principles In the Andean culture there are four life principles. The first is both our internal and external silence to propitiate the conditions to make decisions.
Fifth teaching: AYCHAYTA ACHIKYACHIKUY Readiness to initiate the big flight
The second is love, all things must be realized with unconditional love because that energy optimizes the results.
Poised in front of Father Sun, the Condor Maliku opens and tenses his wings. It is the ritual of preparation for his flight towards the infinite. He remains impassible and unperturbed to the amount of time needed to fulfill this ritual. Then, unexpectedly he flies towards the cliff in front. He stayed with Father Sun at his back.
The third is to activate and materialize our dreams through accessing our knowledge and our knowing. The fourth is to dare, the state of consciousness that guides us towards mastery. In America and in the Andean culture we have many examples of the capacity to create material things such as great monuments like the temples and the Inca trail. It is believed that the beings who accomplished those feats were connected to cosmic knowledge yachay also known as Akasha in Sanskrit.
My ignorance was so great that I had not begun to understand that the feathers were sidereal antennae that connect with cosmic messages That was the ritual of connection with Pachakamaq, the cosmic intelligence. The condor and other birds know the
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• Step 2: Materialize our ideas, our dreams, our illusions and our intentions. When you realize this action make sure that your intentions must be of high purpose and that they are in sync with Mother Earth. When our intentions are clear, we activate cosmic intelligence and the infinite creativity makes our evolution possible.
The preparation is also the tactical moment to measure the impact of our decisions and actions to optimize the results. The preparation consists in calculating the exact best moment to make the correct decisions thanks to the contact between the actions and the result. We all have our moment to realize our dreams. We must choose the correct moment to initiate our flight.
• Step 3: Remember that the Andean wise people are the medium of the quantum leap, the daring. Remember that each particle of our being has a seed of those wise people. Daring is the result of a simple act but with extraordinary determination and faith/belief in one’s self. This belief can only be activated through self-love.
An important action in the preparation is to create and recognize the request and to transform it into a purpose. That is to tighten our wings. To tighten our wings means to energize and potentiate the purpose to make the flight towards our objective. How to use our skills to illuminate the intelligence of the heart for our big flight. To dream that we are flying is a sign that our capacities, our internal power are getting ready to make the decisions and take the actions that will be favorable.
Sixth teaching: Urayman Muyurimuna The necessary descent
To dream that you are flying next to a Condor has a superior significance. It is the signal that indicates that we have a teacher in our lives that guides us to make the right decisions so that our actions have the result that our purpose requires.
The Condor plans as much to go up as to come down. It’s a dialectic process. To know the right time is also to know the conditions as much to go up as to come down. The Condor knows that in order to know the perfect moment to come down he must plan it, select the right place to bring together the spatio-temporal conditions suitable, as much as for the closeness of its food as for the strategic space to be able to ascend again.
Condors live in families. The elder Condor is the Condor Mallku who takes on the responsibility of flying together with the apprentice to show him the dexterity of flight. Our flight consists of refining our silence to be able to see and hear the signals of our dreams and other signals that come to us. Our love must be unconditional fin order for the materialization of our intentions and purpose to manifest effectively. Once we are on the path of the previous levels, we are ready to dare and we will have lost the fear of our high journey.
To know the laws of the winds and their trajectories is essential for its survival. We pre-cognize the closeness of changes or the end of our cycle. This is the moment to accept and plan this change or final cycle. We act with the awareness that the change or the final cycle is inevitable, so activate our faith in the positive results and we attract in this new cycle and the new options that already exist in the threshold of the door waiting for us to enter. In this way we open the door to the new cycle and we allow new life options to come in that await us around the corner of this renovation.
• Step 1: Love all that you are and that you represent. Love all that you do. Love all that exists around you. All your actions must be motivated by your unconditional love. Love yourself unconditionally because out of that will burst forth this force of love that transforms and harmonizes everything and nurtures the happiness of your life. If you don’t love yourself the well will be dry. If you are not capable of giving love, the law of love’s reciprocity will not work for you.
The spiral is the same curve to go up and to come down. There is a natural law that says that all that goes up sooner or later will come down. The problem lies in overcoming our attachments: a relationship that we consider essential, a duty to which we cling, a job that we consider vital or the money without which we consider ourselves unhappy. If we assume
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the end of something with acceptance, the transition will be natural, and the new cycle will begin without difficulties.
Seventh teaching: MALLKUYAY Synonym of the Condor Mallku The condor-man or man-condor is the precept of evolution and connection with the highest values and knowledge of the cosmic conscience. The woman or man who walks the paths of knowledge has become an image or icon of society, is a cultural and human reference on which rest the columns of society’s structure. This person is recognized as woman or man Mallku, which means wise condor in aimara the language of Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile. The man-condor has remained through the cultural memory of the people of the Andes, through its myths.
• Step1: Free yourselves from any attachment that prevents us from taking the decision to change our life cycle. The unconditional love of the signs from the universe eliminates the resistances. The capacity of letting go allows the universe to compensate for what appears to be a loss, that is to gain by losing. Give the universe and its perfect order absolute confidence. • Step2: Accept change because it is inevitable. Acceptance does not mean submission. Acceptance frees you from the rigidity of resistance. Trust that you are part of this perfect order. Changes are always qualitatively better. Feel the freedom to direct your life with certitude of your evolution. Speak with your internal god or goddess. Tell her/him that you accept without conditions the change that is being presented to you. In return, you will receive wellbeing in your life. The universe opens to provide you wellbeing, abundance and fullness.
This relationship is evident in the energetic synchronicity that the Andean people maintain with the king bird of the heights, who have their home in the highest peaks of the Andean mountains. The synchronicity between the Andean person and the cosmic laws of the universe, reflected through the magnetic resonance Shumman is an other evidence that the man-condor and its counterpart the condorman.
• Step3: Gather strength to begin your flight. The Condor usually has his neck inclined (lowered); However, when he is ready to fly, he gets ready and propels himself raising his chest towards the sky. To begin the flight signifies the conquest of space. It is important that you take into account that you will not return to your previous state. The universe is in evolution and we are part of this evolution. We must assume the powerful demand of being the protagonists of the qualitative chances. We must start with ourselves.
The being of evolved consciousness is an illuminated being, synonymous to the energetic symbiosis mancondor. This evolved state allows the synchronicity of the cosmic laws between man as universal being and the condor as master conductor of the laws of pure knowledge, intelligence and logic. All humas are governed by evolution. The older the human being and the condor, the more they will live in synchrony with this law. The complete human is he or she who walks and lives life with a simplicity, who has transcended
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the dogma and discourses of society, who knows and follows the complexity of the cosmos through the simplicity of life. That is the man-condor Mallku.
self-imposed through dogma. Know and believe that magic is a possible reality that can be created through faith. To believe is not to become attached to your beliefs, it is to walk on the path that allows you to have vision and criteria free of fanatism; it is to believe in the existence of the god within you, of the possible miracle, assuming the responsibility of the natural power that emanates from the cosmic consciousness that is known as god or goddess. That is spiritual consciousness. Spirituality is in the internalized consciousness of human beings. All is found within us, there is nothing to search for outside.
In the Andes the ancient people are revered as being of high consciousness and are the counselors of the people. The wise person transcends his interior peace. He is not elected. He or she who has mastered the cosmic complexities with a simple lifestyle. She knows that luck and happiness are inherent in the quality of hes attention. The wise person is simultaneously a warrior, a healer, a student and a teacher. • Step 1: The initiation consists in aligning oneself with the transcendent, take responsibility for the changes in one’s own life and to do all that is necessary for others. To accept the path, regardless of one’s personal characteristics and perspective. To know the perfect moment and to prepare one’s self when the teacher arrives.
Don Shairy is a Kichwa from Peguche. On a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of “Tayta Imbabura,” it was revealed to him that his life mission was to help humanity in the process of healing afflictions and dis-harmonies of today. He utilizes Takysamy Healing, the sound vibrations healing system of voice, sacred musical instruments, and plant medicine. He is the author and teacher of Condor Medicine: The Seven Teachings of the Andes Condor.
• Step 2: Eliminate the present. Access the resources needed for power. Remain open to the result, but do not be attached to it. Pay attention to everything that has heart and significance. Develop the attitude to utilize the power of love, gratitude, acknowledgement, respect, and values. Elect to be present in creating and developing the intuition as the perfect connection between intelligence of the heart and the intelligence of the mind.
He shares all this wisdom in the form of ceremonies, healing concerts, personal consultations, and workshops throughout the US and Europe.
• Step 3: Believe and have faith in the supernatural. Overcome the barriers or limits either imposed or
www.shairy-quimbo.com/english.html
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Excerpt:
Dreaming Techniques: Working with Night Dreams, Daydreams, and Liminal Dreams By Serge Kahili King TECHNIQUES FOR THE IN-BETWEEN STATE
Meditation Techniques
What I call the “In-Between” State is that range of
When someone asks “Do you meditate,” they usually mean “Do you do the type of meditation that I’ve learned?” The word itself covers a very broad range of practices, from simply thinking deeply about something for a while to the most intense, ecstatic spiritual visions. The range is so broad that I will limit the discussion to a few of what I think are most useful to talk about in the context of the purpose of this article.
consciousness with eyes closed where you are not quite awake and not quite asleep. This includes meditation, hypnosis, shamanic journeys, and others. What you want to develop in in this state is a form of controlled dreaming, where control consists mainly of purposely evoking at least a portion of the inner experience and of managing your own behavior during the experience. The main difference between this and “ordinary” lucid dreaming is the purposeful framework. In this article I will discuss four broad categories of practice.
Passive Meditation The purpose of this meditation is to narrow one’s focus in order to drift into a pre-sleep mode. In addition to focusing on objects, repetitive chanting of words, gazing at a mandala, or contemplating a spiritual
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image can all have the same effect. So can focusing on one’s breathing and purposely slowing it down. It’s fairly easy for the practitioner to slip into sleep mode while doing this, which is considered a good thing for some meditators, but serves no useful purpose for inbetween activity. A good way to stay in the in-between mode is to maintain some kind of contact with the fully awake state. I have found that holding an object in your hand while doing this can be of great help if you remember to be aware of it from time to time. I use a crystal or a pen or a rock, but it could be anything you can hold in your hand. Allow experiences to happen on their own, and as they do, practice using your will to modify them. Active Meditation This could also be called “Active Imagination With Your Eyes Closed.” Basically, you create a story that gets you into the in-between mode deeper and deeper as you create more and more detail. What will happen is a combination of your intention and spontaneous reactions to that intention. We don’t control the dream world any more than we do Waking Life, but our conscious actions produce reactions in both places and we can find opportunities to make decisions and exert our will. Here are some ideas for practice: Follow The Path. Close your eyes and imagine that you are walking a path. Pay attention to what the path is made of (dirt, grass, pavement, etc.) and what is on either side of the path (grass, trees, flowers, desert, etc.). As you walk the path you find something blocking your way (stone, gate, hole, etc.). Find a way over, under, around or through it and keep walking. Up ahead is a village and the path goes straight through it. Pay attention to what kind of village it is (medieval, modern suburban, primitive, etc.). At the end of the path and the village is a tall building. Pay attention to what kind of building appears (church, tower, temple, palace, etc.). There is a doorway. Go inside. Just inside is a pedestal with a box on it. Inside the box is a gift for you. Open the box and take it out. Whatever it is, you decide what it represents for you. End the experience if you wish by moving your fingers and toes and opening your eyes (moving your fingers and toes helps you return to the awake mode more easily). Invitation To A Luau. Close your eyes and imagine
that you are on the deck of a sailboat anchored in the lagoon of a tropical island. Stand at the railing. Feel the railing under your hands and the deck under your feet. Look down into the clear water and see fish swimming. Pay attention to what kind of fish are there. Look at the island and see a white sand beach fringed by coconut palms swaying in the soft breeze. Smell the perfume of flowers coming from the island. See two natives come out from the trees with an outrigger canoe and watch them paddle it out to your boat. Hear them invite you to a luau on the island. Climb over the side of your boat and get into the canoe. Let the natives paddle you to the shore and help you onto the sand. Feel the water and the sand with your feet. Now you hear the sound of drums and singing. Follow the natives through the trees to a clearing where a great feast has been prepared for you. Accept the invitation to sit and eat with them and watch dancers entertain you. Let the rest of the story open up on its own as you make appropriate decisions and take specific actions until you feel like coming back to the awake state. It might be interesting to have some friends do the same experience on their own and compare differences. Meditation To Solve Problems My friend Jim Fallon worked at an electronics company and was ordered to come up with a solution to a problem caused by the power company switching power to save energy, which resulted in voltage spikes that damaged sensitive equipment. What he did was to enter into the in-between state to find an answer. In that state he saw a tiny little wizard holding a stop watch and using the watch as a timing device to turn an AC wall outlet switch on and off. Back in the awake state he designed a piece of equipment with a voltage sensing relay connected to the power source going to the sensitive equipment. If the voltage from the power company went to high or too low the relay would turn off the power, allowing for a safe power down or loss of power. What follows are three methods he used to find solutions when he needed them: Method one: “I first decided that I wanted to have a dream that gave me solutions to the problem I wanted to solve, then I did a simple progressive body relaxation. After that I used my breathing to imagine I was going up an elevator on my inhalation, and on the exhalation I was projecting my awareness from my
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forehead to a room where I was monitoring a large TV screen for watching the dream, While watching the TV, I kept asking the question and watching the TV monitor for a return answer.”
insight to appear there in some form. Some people will receive an insight right away, and some will have to repeat the practice until an insight comes.
Method 2: “When I really had to do something fast, I just simply focused on my breathing, without trying to control the breathing, just being aware that now I was breathing in, and now I was breathing out. This was very repetitious, and the slow rhythmic breathing slowed down the brain wave activity from the active beta state, to the lower brainwave frequencies, but with the added difference that I was carting my conscious awareness into these brainwave states without blacking out, and that allowed me to have a more active, vivid, recallable dream.
Hypnosis Techniques Hypnosis is nothing more–and nothing less–than an in-between mode state used to change habits, reduce pain, practice skills, assist the healing of mental, emotional and physical problems and facilitate a host of other practical benefits. The basic process consists of getting someone to close their eyes, giving suggestions to relax, guiding the person through some kind of inner experience related to resolving their problem or achieving their goal, then bringing the person back to an almost awake state and suggesting that they will feel good when they open their eyes. It is my opinion that all hypnosis is self hypnosis, aided and abetted by the hypnotist to the degree that he or she is perceived as an authority figure.
Meditation For Spiritual Insight In some forms of Tibetan Buddhism the purpose of meditating goes far beyond the realization of life as an illusion and the ability to dream lucidly toward being able to enter the esoteric lands of “Sambhogakaya,” the matrices of all form, and to learn from the thoughtforms of already enlightened beings. This is described as a very advanced form of meditation. What is required is a belief that there are such esoteric lands, which brings up the question of whether they exist on their own or are created by the desire to find them. Still, it is possible to use the in-between mode for spiritual purposes without having to go through intense spiritual training. Importantly, The Dalai Lama has said, “Going through this transition (meaning from just closing your eyes through the in-between state) without blacking out is one of the highest accomplishments for a yogi.” So here is one way to meditate for spiritual insight.
Almost all hypnosis makes use of dream-like imagery in some fashion and most of it takes a person no farther than the border of closed eyes and in-between. As a matter of fact, hypnosis is often described as states of light, medium and deep trance. As noted in The Complete Book of Self-hypnosis, by John M. Yates and Elizabeth S. Wallace, “The profound emotional changes described by people in a deep hypnotic trance resemble nirvana in Yoga or Zen’s satori.” One famous experiment (famous among hypnotists, that is) concerned a group of people who played piano moderately well. They were guided into a deep hypnotic trance in which it was suggested that they become various famous composers like Beethoven, Bach, Liszt and Debussy. Then they were asked to play the piano while in trance. Each one of them played markedly better than usual in the style of the composer they had emulated, even those who had never played that composer’s music before. One of them, I think it was the one who became Liszt, even composed music in that style after the experiment was over.
1. Decide what kind of spiritual insight you want and close your eyes. 2. Think of a source for your spiritual insight and imagine a symbol of it above your head. 3. Inhale with your attention on that symbol and exhale with your attention on your pineal gland (in the center of your head behind the bridge of your nose). Do this ten times.
In one of my workshops I use a hypnotic-style deep trance induction to take students back to a past life in which they were a shaman, allowing the specifics to emerge from within the students themselves. I begin with having them be aware of their feet, then move up
4. Imagine an empty circle in front of you and ask the
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the body through sexual orientation, clothing, jewelry and hair styles before expanding their awareness outward to their surroundings. Most interesting to me is the incredible variety of times and cultures that appear, and the astounding details of the experience. On the way back to present awareness I suggest that they will retain the skills of the shaman they were, and while not everyone reported back after the course, some have claimed that their skills did improve. Of course, there is no way to prove or disprove that this was an actual past life experience, but that’s not the point. The point is that a past life dream experience appeared on demand, skills were learned or improved, and any interpretation of that is no more than speculation. Here is the actual process. 1. Close your eyes and intend to experience yourself in a past life (it doesn’t have to be a shaman). 2. Count backward from 10 to 1. At the count of 1 check your feet and continue as above. 3. If you choose, use a count of 5 to go forward or backward in that life. 4. When you are ready, count forward from 1 to 10, move your fingers and toes and open your eyes. OOBE Techniques OOBE is an acronym for “Out Of Body Experience.” Also called “astral travel” and “magical flight,” this is an experience that could occur during the inbetween or sleep mode. Essentially, it involves the sensation of being separate from one’s body and either hovering about or traveling to some other destination. It is a phenomenon reported worldwide over many centuries. Meditation and hypnotic induction can be used to bring it about and so can sensory deprivation practices, but most often it happens spontaneously during in-between or sleep mode dreaming. Occult practitioners of this insist that astral travelers retain a connection with their body by means of a “silver cord” that is attached to the back of the head or some other inconvenient place and warn of the danger of it being cut, which would result in the death of your body and leave your astral self wandering through endless dimensions forever. In my experience and that of all my students there is no such cord. My belief is that the idea was invented by someone who was afraid
he wouldn’t find his way back to his body. The simple rule is: no fear, no need of a cord. In one of my classes where I teach this, I begin by isolating myself in a room, then going quickly into a deep in-between state. From there I use imagination to separate my consciousness from my body and put it into a form of some kind, usually an animal. Next I energize the form and project myself into the classroom, where I dance, jump, fly, touch the students and generally act silly. Then I go back to my body, return to the awake state mode and go into the classroom to ask the students what they experienced. Almost always, half or more of the students report an experience related to my animal form or something I did. After that, I guide them into a deep in-between state, have them take animal forms, and walk, run or fly to a location nearby where I have placed an object none of them have ever seen before and examine it closely in their “astral” form. When questioned back in the classroom, around 80 or 90% of the students report something related to the size, shape, color, material or symbolism of the object. The point here is that some of the students did perceive something when I projected, that most of them were able to see or feel something at a distance, and that anyone can learn to do it because it isn’t difficult. Serge Kahili King, Ph.D. has published the world’s largest selection of books and tapes on Huna, the Polynesian philosophy and practice of effective living, and in the spirit of Aloha, the attitude of love and peace for which the Hawaiian Islands are so famous. He also writes extensively on Hawaiian culture and is a celebrated novelist as well. At fourteen he was initiated into the path of Hawaiian shamanism by his father. At eighteen he was adopted as the grandson of Joseph Kahili of Kauai, a “kupua” or shaman of the Hawaiian tradition. Dr. King spent seven years in West Africa being trained in African shamanic traditions, and has made in-depth studies of other such traditions around the world. Today he teaches people how to use shamanic healing techniques and uses his knowledge to help others discover their own creative power. Visit his website www.huna.org
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Shamanic Invisible Cord-Cutting By Itzhak Beery
You and I, any one of us, is emotionally and
rationally connected in invisible strings of invisible energy through our hearts or other parts of our physical and emotional bodies with people who are the closest to us. Such as our mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, teachers, best friends, lovers, ex-lovers, and co-workers. Those we create emotional and spiritual bonding and associations with. Thess matrix of cords could be attached to those who are still living, the deceased and ancestors, or even to relationships we had in our past lives (if you acknowledge it). When we have a healthy interpersonal relationship of mutual love, respect, and support, it can empower us to embody our life and soul purpose. We send those
positive invisible cords by interacting energetically and telepathically, which may appear as golden or light shade cords. How can you tell if you need cord-cutting and from whom? There are behavioral signs you can diagnose yourself. If a familiar tone of voice triggers you. If you feel you can’t act or behave authentically, with certain people. If you feel obsessed over someone who is not reciprocated with you, or if you are having endless wasted thoughts of someone. If you are trying to avoid a person at all costs. If you are afraid to answer the phone because you know that that person will ask you to do certain things, you hate doing and then hate yourself for doing it. If you didn’t say no, for fear, they would not love you or judge you harshly.
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There are also physical signs, such as pain, sleeplessness, pressure, etc. For example, one of my clients had a bloated and painful stomach–no doctor could diagnose–that was connected to an abortion she had sixteen years ago. Another had a chronic left shoulder pain–that was connected to her Holocaust survivor mother, and so on. Those toxic dark cords could be used for negative influences and control. Using manipulative energies of guilt, shame, or fear, sometimes accompanied by physical or verbal abuse. That harmful energy between our perpetrators and us–could happen intentionally or unintentionally–is attached with hooks to both sides. They are hooked into our tissues, organs, and other body parts, triggering the condition of blocked energy that propagates unexplained depression, anger, resentment, sadness, dependency, and many illnesses. Shamans conduct healing ceremonies to sever those ties. In my work, I have witnessed physical pain disappearing after severing those cords cutting ceremony in my clients. There is no need to sever healthy relationship cords, nurture them by acknowledging them in the seen and unseen worlds. Cord-cutting is not performed to hurt anyone, on the contrary. It happens to free you both to live your full potentials. When we sever those negative poisoned ties, the abuser loses their power over us, and we can begin to live freely, without guilt, fear, or shame. And maybe, you and the other person could be equal and not entangled. Otherwise, you will continue to behave and do things against your will, and they can skillfully pull your strings and actions. Those cords may have fulfilled a purpose when we were younger, weaker, and dependent, but they don’t serve us anymore when we grow older, and they don’t help those people who are attached as well. Actually, by cutting those cords, you are giving them a gift. You allow the abusers the possibility to stand on their own two feet as an independent person, even if they do not believe they can. This lesson is an excellent teaching for them. This is not to say that you are eliminating the relationship with those close people to you. It just means that you free them to be themselves, without the emotional baggage, even if it will be challenging for
them. As they were living off you for so long, and they are afraid of change, but they may need to grow too. In one of the European countries, I frequently travel for teaching and healing. I had a client who had an interdependency relationship with her son. She and her son, who was already nine years old, took naked baths together and slept in the same bed. She justified it stating that his father was absent and an abuser. The boy was scared and dependent on her. One time she showed me a picture of them in the bath. I asked her to bring him to the next session. I stood them side by side and performed la limpia (purification) ceremony. Before the end. I took my long wooden sword and forcefully cut the cords between them. I cut the cord on all sides and above. I blew Agua de Florida, to fill in the voids, and sealed their energy body with the protective energy of black lava stones. Two weeks later I get an email from my client telling me she doesn’t know what happened to her son, he refuses to take a bath and sleep in the same bed with her. This is another email: “Thank you for the most amazing journey and healing session yesterday. I have continued feeling the after-effects last night and today with my solar plexus area feeling twinge, my intestines rumbling and the tops of my legs feeling weak. I feel like my body went through some trauma. By night I am feeling a little more “normal.” Ceremonies The cord-cutting ceremony can be done by either the shaman himself or by the client alone or with a shaman. Client’s Ceremony Explain to your client that once you start drumming, she will call her power animal or any spirit guide she is working with. If the client is new, make a Power Animal retrieval journey first. And ask it to enter through her crown of the head and show you where those cords are attached. Once she sees it, she needs to see who this cord is leading to. Then, tell that person the reason you are here, and why you are have decided to cut this cord off. With the use of her hands, she must yank it out forcefully, and release it to the universe. She can also use a machete, sword, knives, or
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scissors as well. If she laying down, make sure to give her permission to stand up if the cords are attached to areas that are hard to get at. 1. Ask the client to either lay down or sit on a chair. 2. Smudge the client with a fan of feathers, or green branches. 3. Ask the client to close her eyes. Start drumming softly. 4. This journey is not limited in time. Drum as long as the client is doing the cord-cutting. 5. After she stops, allow her a few minutes to integrate the experiences quietly. 6. Ask the client to stay, and to invite her spirit guide to fill in the places of voids with love and light Energy. 7. Discuss what the client experienced, help her process, and integrate it into her life. This ceremony can be repeated by the client at home without the shaman’s supervision. Shaman Ceremony The client could either stand up or sit down on a chair. 1. The shaman is sensing either by gazing or by overpassing his palms over the client’s energy body to determine where those cords are attached. 2. As the shaman chants, he smudges the client with either copal, white sage, pine, or any plants to remove negative energies. To spread the smoke, you can use large feathers, or feather fan, or green branches. 3. The shaman can use a variety of sharp tools to cut the air all around the client or scrape the bad energy clean. Use a machete, chunta spear or sword (hardened Amazonian Palm tree wood), dagger, black tourmaline stone or jade knives, etc. 4. The shaman blows (camay) Agua de Florida or any flowery cologne, over the entire client, to fill in the void energies. Additionally, you can also choose to tap
red (feminine) and white (masculine) carnation on the client, starting from the crown of the head to the toes. 5. The shaman pours Siete Esseinca de Los Andes or Agua de Florida in the client’s palm. The client brushes it strongly, claps three times (spraying the particles), and brushes her palm all over her body, starting from the crown of the head. Cord-cutting for Non-Shamans This process can be easily adapted to the therapist who does not know or want to use the shamanic language but wants to lead the client to experience its power. The therapist will be talking about and guiding the client throughout. Sit in front of your client. -Ask her to relax, breathe in and out, and pay attention to different parts of her body. -Ask her to concentrate on one part of the body that is calling her. Either she feels pain, tension, or blocked energy. Put her hand on that part. - Ask her to concentrate on that spot. Then follow the cord that was hooked to see who it is attached to it. -Tell that person, why you are here. Tell him that although you love him, you no longer need this toxic relationship, and you are going to cut the cord between you and him to free both of you to be who you are. -Take a scissor, machete, knives, or with your hands and cut the cord, sending it to the cosmos. -Ask the client to imagine white light from above. Take it with her open hands and bring it to the place, to fill in the void. -Discuss and process the experience. Candle Cutting Ceremony. Write down the name of your abuser on a piece of paper, and of yours on another piece of paper. Or take your picture and your abuser. Roll them. Tie them to each end of a string. Light a candle. Hold the string in each end (with the piece of paper or pictures at the ends).
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Make a prayer and request to sever the unhealthy ties between you two. Once complete, burn the whole string, start in the middle. You can burn the two pieces of paper and or pictures or bury them in two separate places. Itzhak Beery is an internationally recognized shamanic teacher, healer, public speaker, community activist, and author of three Amazon bestseller books. He was born in an Israeli Kibbutz, had a fine art and advertising career in New
York City. A midlife crisis led to his shift from a skeptical atheist and business executive into a passionate believer, aligned with his life purpose. Since 1995, Itzhak bridges the spiritual and practical wisdom his indigenous and Western teachers entrusted to him. He was initiated by his Kichwa teacher in Ecuador, and by Amazonian Kanamari Pajè in Brazil. Itzhak is the founder of ShamanPortal.org, The Andes Summit, and co-founder of the New York Shamanic Circle. Itzhak received the ‘Ambassador for Peace Award’ from The Universal Peace Federation and the UN. Visit his website: www.itzhakbeery.com
When the Rains Stopped Falling By Peter Brown
I moved to the Pacific Northwest a bit over 11 years
Becoming a Weather Worker
ago, from the Mediterranean climate of coastal California to the rains of the north. I had heard stories of the PNW and the prodigious amounts of rain, drizzle and grey skies that occupied the landscape and fed the abundance. My family and I knew for many reasons that our life along costal California was not tenable in the long run; so, we started listening for a land that called. Many years and many road trips later, we found our new home in Olympia, WA at the southernmost point of the Salish Sea. I need to travel back a couple of decades and tell how my family was called to this region and why the rains stopped falling.
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In 2000, I was pilgrimaging in the Mexican desert. During the all-night fire vigil, two clouds appeared to me with a life and being that I had never seen before. The cloud people arrived and spoke to me. They told me that I needed to travel to a village called Nepaculato in the highlands of central Mexico and meet a man called Don Lucio Campos Elizade, though they just said Don Lucio. At that time in my life, I was traveling with the cloud people, trying to understand and build relationship. I did not really think about why I wanted to be with the cloud people. I just felt called. The cloud people were generous in that they let me travel with them but would never speak with me.
That night in the desert, I listened to two of the cloud people. I had never heard such a clear directive from the natural world before. I traveled to the village the following spring to see Don Lucio in his consultorio. As I entered, he looked at me and threw his arms up into the air and said, “I have seen you in the clouds. You need to be crowned (initiated) right away!” So, started my journey as a weather worker, a Granicero and as a Quiapaquiz, a healer in the Nahua tradition. An Aha Moment This brings me to how my wife and I found ourselves in a place, a circumstance in which we had to listen to the weather beings and understand - what are we missing? What may we be doing or not doing that is causing the hot, dry summers here? During the first several years of living in Olympia, we did not feel that we could perform certain ceremonies due to not knowing the weather beings of this place. We listened. We watched. We gave gratitude. After settling in, we renewed the annual gratitude ceremony that surrounds the time of harvest. Here in the PNW it is different than other regions which are more agriculturally based, because a large part of the harvest is in relationship to the salmon and their runs. We proceeded with this ceremony and after a few more years, we felt ready to bring forth the thanking of the rains ceremony. Thanking the weather beings for all the waters that they bring forth and to say goodbye until their return in the fall. We sat and listened. We felt that we had arrived at an appropriate time to have the ceremony. A time when the rains were leaving us. We let the local community know of the upcoming ceremony and the protocols and set a day for all to arrive. My wife and I felt that the weather beings had listened and that the ceremony was received. In a sense, we were correct, and at the same time we were completely wrong. Yes, the rains left.
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The problem is that they left too soon, and the months that followed were dry and hot. We had performed the ceremony in April. For several years to come, we held the ceremony around the same time, and each year the months that followed were drier and hotter than the norm or historical averages. We could see how the rivers and the fish, the trees, the agriculture and the people were impacted. A few years ago, during the week-long spring ceremonies in Mexico, we started to hear something. In Mexico, the rain cycle is the opposite of the PNW and part of the week long ceremonial time is to welcome the rains. Upon returning home in early April, we felt that the gratitude ceremony had been performed too early. We had been thanking the rains almost 2 months before they would normally leave on their annual journey. This strong awareness arrived separately and was expressed when we sat down for ceremonial planning. We talked about the dry and hot years. We talked how this coincided with the starting of the ceremony here. We talked about what had caused us to hear what we had heard. We had been thinking, not feeling, not listening. The rains start in Mexico; so, they must be stopping here. After talking about this together, we each sat at our altars and asked this question of the weather beings, of Santa Barbarita, Goddess of the sky, patron of all weather workers. We heard, yes, we had been asking them to leave, and they responded. We did not ask if they were doing this solely, because we asked this of them or that they were showing us through the demonstrative act, the effects of our requests on life here. What we did hear is that we needed to move the ceremony to later in the spring, closer to the summer solstice. In ensuing years, the weather has returned to ‘normal’ for this place. The rains have stayed longer. The heat through the summer has not been as high. The trees, fish and land have responded with gratitude.
I have heard people mention whether it be in passing or through conversations and even through the media that the weather is what it used to be like. I heard comfort in their voices. The land felt more abundant. Where can we go with this? What can people do to insure beneficial weather for the land, the plants, animals and humanity? Offerings & Prayer There are chores that a weather worker must complete. One of these responsibilities is to be in good relationship with the weather beings in the region in which one lives. The weather beings are wind, rain, clouds thunder and lightning. Relationship does not happen immediately. It takes many years. There needs to be a common language and understanding. Not only is one learning their language, their personalities, one is also having to see their patterns of migration through the seasons. One has to learn what they need and expect. One needs to learn the prayers and the offerings that they request. Relationships are developed through respect, presence and exchange. It is not what I or other humans feel that the relationship arises from. Relationship comes from listening to the other, and what they are saying. What are they needing for this relationship to be beneficial? Having a human elder is critical for this understanding. They have been taught and apprenticed with their elder, who with theirs’ and so on. Don Lucio taught me about our relationship with the weather beings. We are of service to them. It is not the weather beings who are of service to humans. Don Lucio was not one who would sit in prayer or ceremony and direct the Gods and spirits to act in the way and manner that he believed that the world should be. He listened and followed their ways. I remember sitting in ceremony and in settings in which people had questions of Don Lucio regarding weather or their own personal circumstances. He would move in a manner that felt like there was something else informing him. During ceremony, one moment Don Lucio responds in a certain manner, and then later he responds differently. There was an effortless, a seamlessness to his work as he listened to
their requests. The work is not something that you jot down in one’s notebook like an A, B, C performance. It is literally a dance with the weather beings, listening to their song. Ceremony, Devotion and Sacrifice Ceremony, devotion and sacrifice are the avenues in which humanity relates with, speaks to and is part of life. In our modern western culture of the USA, these do not tend to be areas in which people place importance or adherence. Individuality, personal power, “I am the center from which it comes”, and an absence of gratitude and the objectification of life, are ways of being that hinder communing. Ceremonies are not something that we ‘make-up’ to talk with the Gods. Ceremonies are given to us by the Gods, to our ancestors, so that we may commune. It is what they ask of us so that a way of life that supports all creation can continue. There can be a certain hubris with ceremonies in which the human feels that they know best. They know what the Gods want, need and like, because this is what I like. If I like it, the Gods must like it. Am I not in the image of God? It means something to me or holds a strong value for me. It is so. This would be somewhat like an individual going to a place where drinking alcohol was not allowed or seen as improper. The individual values alcohol and sees it as a means of celebration and a great gift. How would the host respond to a person telling them what is appropriate and good for them in their homeland, in their home, because another believes it to be? How would the relationship flourish? Ceremony is passed from the Gods to the people. From there, generation to generation receives this relationship so that it can be maintained and nourished. A way of life, a tradition is supported. This is where devotion arrives. Devotion is the faith to hold it together. To be shown the path, learn the prayers, pilgrimage, do the work even when one is tired or sick or poor, or the lightening is striking all around you on a mountain top. Being present even when things do not seem to be working as one expected.
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This is where sacrifice is required. Sacrifice is giving up something to be able to receive. This work is not about accumulation which is a mantra in our USA culture. There needs to be room within you to receive. Sacrifice can take many forms. This is when learning from the elders is important.
one does, what happens?
The Gods may ask for certain forms of fasting. They may ask for offerings that require time or money to obtain or make. They may ask for physical challenges. They may ask that you be of service and one may miss a wedding or a birthday or a business meeting.
Peter Brown is an initiated Marakame in the Huichol tradition and a crowned Granicero and an initiated Quiapequis in the Nahua tradition of Mexico. After many years of searching for an Elder who would take Peter as an apprentice, he was accepted in 1997 and started his path. Peter travels to Mexico several times a year for over 2 decades to pilgrimage and continue his learning from his Elders.
How we as humans’ act and feel, very much affects the weather beings and their relationship with us. Like a person who may unconsciously act in a manner that may seem fine and normal to themselves, but another is highly offended or feeling disrespected, it is the same with the weather beings. We are not all called to be weather workers. We are not all called to be public servants. Our actions and expressions do affect the weather beings as do our actions and expressions affect the community in which we live. Telling a person that you do not want them around due to their skin color or their nationality is like one telling the weather beings that one does not like their way of being, “stop raining on me!”, and if
When the rains or snows come to your home town, expressing your gratitude goes a long way to supporting life.
Peter has a healing practice in Olympia, Seattle and Victoria and along with his wife offer ceremony and sacred fires. Visit his website:
www.peterbrownhealing.com
Sacred Earth Activism in Transformational Times. Combining the shamanic with activism for change By Christa Mackinnon and Seersha O’Sullivan “It’s in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active, and active people becoming spiritual, that the hope of humanity now rests.”
This article asks the question if there is a need for
and that forces working towards change, as well as forces trying to hold on to the old, are mobilising on every level. Whilst we face the biggest human made ecological crisis this planet has ever seen and a diminishing of democratic rights in many countries, we also see countless movements emerging which work towards change, creating a powerful web of resistance and new ways forward.
Nobody doubts that we live in transformational times
Indigenous people around the globe are becoming increasingly visible and vocal as earth protectors, demanding water rights, human rights and the return and protection of sacred, ancestral lands. Young people are involved in climate movements in substantial numbers, especially within Extinction Rebellion and other ecological and climate change organisations. Black Lives Matter had enormous international support when they became re-politicised after the
–Van Jones
people within the shamanic scene to get more actively involved in the various change-movements to cocreate the emerging world. It outlines why we feel that this is necessary and how this ‘sacred activism’ could be attempted and created. The article is mainly based on the outcomes of a recently held conference, during which we brought activists together with earth and shamanic teachers and visionaries.
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death of George Floyd and the women’s movement is active and vocal again. There are countless initiatives from tree planting to regenerative culture, with permaculture schemes to farming cooperatives flourishing.
of individual and collective consciousness. All need to be ‘seen’ as innately related. Therefore the question is how do we combine and use the teachings, tools, approaches, and ways of seeing and being in the world which shamanism offers within activist movements?
Whilst movements develop and the world goes through a shift, we might want to ask the question whether our work within the shamanic community needs to move more towards working within these world-wide movements. It seems to us that many within the shamanic scene, especially in Western Societies, are still very much focused on selfdevelopment, influenced by individualism and by newage philosophies, and see the work we do within the spirit world as sufficient.
Who we are and what we do: Sacred Earth Activism
Of course, we can neither discard this time of selfdiscovery and preparation, nor the work shamanic practitioners do within the spirit worlds. This long phase of individual development was necessary for our growth. The fact that shamanic practitioners work in the spirit worlds and with energies, aiming to form bridges between the worlds, is after all, fundamental to shamanism. However, we feel that now is the time to remember that: 1. Traditional shamans work foremost for their communities, their work within the spirit world is and should be - for the benefit of All. 2. The concern and working realm of shamans and animists is first and foremost the natural world. Listening deeply to nature, observing her laws and being profoundly connected with Earth and the sacred that can be found within nature is a basic. If we do that, we cannot miss her call. 3. The shaman will ‘heal’ the individual, but shamanism sees the individual as part of the community and the community as part of a greater whole. The wholeness (health) of the bigger realms - from community to nature - are as important as individual growth and well-being.
Sacred Earth Activism is the vision of a small circle of people, all long-standing shamanic practitioners and earth wisdom teachers as well as eco-activists in the UK. It is based on hearing the call for profound change and transformation that needs to take place if we want to live sustainable, humane and fulfilled lives, infused with a sense of connection to earth and the sacred. The co-founders began to vision-quest around the question of how to encourage people to become more engaged and active within the change-movement and integrate shamanic ways, approaches and tools within it. We were guided and founded Sacred Earth Activism as an organisation a year ago, growing quickly beyond our wildest dreams. Sacred Earth Activism is based on simple premises: 1. The sickness of society is a sickness of separation, greed and profound inequality on every level. Therefor the process of transformation needs to lead from separation to connectedness, from fragmentation to wholeness, from the thriving of the few to the thriving of all life on this beautiful planet. 2. We believe that if we want to envisage and birth the new, we need to re-connect to all things, ground ourselves in our relationship with the Earth, listen to the call of the sacred and bring that through us into the growing change-movements around the globe. 3. This led us to working with the intent of bringing the sacred and earth-centered spiritually actively into the web of change.
4. Our focus is on ecological movements, on sacred sites and lands, on political resistance to destruction of Change is not a neutral term. If we want to move nature and infringements of human rights and forward as a species, we need a societal metamorphosis freedoms, as well as initiatives which work towards and a shift in our paradigm as well as an expansion connecting communities,people and institutions with
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earth, nature and the sacred. How we do this We spread information via social media and our website about ‘Sacred Earth Activism’ and act increasingly as a hub connecting disparate organisations who concentrate on various topics including ecological, sacred lands, sacred sites, earth and water protectors as well as other groups from around the world. We offer support in whatever way we can to communities and individuals. All our support is based on our foundation of ‘questing for vision, tuning into spirit, earth and the ancestors’, gathering information to formulate appropriate action. We ground our work in ceremony, prayer and the sacred. We bring these principles into already established movements and we have been instrumental in creating new initiatives. At this moment in time we are very actively involved in the Stonehenge movement, the trespass movement and Extinction Rebellion here in the UK. We facilitate conferences bringing shamanic and earth wisdom teachers together with activists on the ground. We work together with other organisations and our original co-founders Christa Mackinnon and Jonathan Weekes also speak at conferences and summits. A series of ‘Earth Talks’ are in the planning and we
increasingly offer training in sacred earth activism, specifically on how to ground activism in the sacred and support individual activists as much as we can. Co-Creating the Emerging World Conference: Receiving Insights, Inspiration and Guidance A few weeks ago we organised our first larger conference, which confirmed what we already knew from our practical work, namely that there is a growing number of people globally who feel the need to combine the earth centred spiritual with concrete ecological, social and political action. In fact, we were blown away by the positive responses of a rather large participating audience and the many thousands of people who clicked into the live streams. When organising the conference, we had a clear vision. We wanted a combination of wisdom teachers, visionaries and activists from a wide variety of movements and from different countries and age groups. Our aim was to create a platform that enabled people to meet, get ideas of how to combine activism with a spirituality grounded in earth and to be inspired. Coming together for change
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The call for ‘coming together and working together’ could be clearly heard in the contributions of all speakers. Bruce Shillingsworth, the well-known indigenous elder and sacred water activist from Australian reminded us that now is the time to come together internationally to ‘rise up’ and that mother earth is supporting us. Itzhak Beery, a leading shamanic teacher and author, who founded Shaman Portal and the co-founder of the NY shamanic circles, expressed that shamans always work for the community. He also talked about the prophecy of the Condor and the Eagle and about his work of bringing the teachings and philosophies of the Condor to the Eagle-dominated North of the Americas, stressing that our work needs to be about building communities to move our world forward. Jim Graywolf Petruzzi, who was instrumental in gathering support for Standing Rock via social media, telling their story at a time when the conventional press wasn’t interested, explained how important it is to weave a web of change, supporting each other. This was echoed by activists from Pine Ridge who said “we need to unite and become active”. Connecting with Nature to find our Activist Direction All speakers and activists stressed in one way or another the need for earth connection. Elizabeth Jenkins, author, wisdom teacher of the Inka Path, organic farmer and now also earth activist spoke to us about how to engage in conversations with the Spirits of Nature, to enable us to hear what is needed directly from them. To not only gain information but support from them too. She shared her own experiences of the effectiveness of sacred direct action in her homeland of Hawaii.
Rune Rasmussen, a Nordic Animism scholar, asked how we can reconnect to our Lands using Totems in a time of catacylsm, how to reclaim Nordic animism from fascist groups that have appropriated many of the old symbols and how to read their messages for actionguidance. Nick Hayes, the author of the instant best-selling, amazing book ‘Trespass - Crossing the Lines that Divide Us’ and eco-activist, joined us to talk about the politicisation of Sacred Lands. His book brought the problems of private land and water ownership, dominant in the UK, to the fore. Not only is legitimate access to open spaces important for our physical, mental health and spiritual health, but also for our re-connection with nature and the planet that supports us, so that we can develop a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of all things and stand up against the destruction of the natural habitat and all of life. Pat McCabe from the Dine, our last speaker, who campaigns for the ‘thriving of life’, facilitated a prayer at the end of our conference. She explained why and how women will be the leaders of the needed change, stressing that it is vital for women to tune into the earth so that they can speak with ’authority’ about the direction we need to take. Pat emphasised that we all need to fall madly in love with the earth again’ so that we can ground our activism into the sacredness of all of life. Combining the Sacred with Activism Quite a few speakers and of course the activists had inspirational ideas of how to combine the sacred with activism.
Tiana Jacout is a young activist, who spent a year at the Calais refugee camp, then at Standing Rock and founded Woman Fest. She was the central mass action co-ordinator for the Extinction Rebellion movement in the UK and is active in the Stonehenge movement. Carolyn Hillyer, a renowned wisdom teacher, artist, Tiana outlined her journey of moving from being drum maker, author and ceremonialist from the British solely focused on her own spiritual development to Isles, who facilitated the opening ceremony, connected becoming an activist and then bringing both together. all with the deep wisdom within the land. She sang She described how her experiences at the Standing to us the spirits of the lands and the Ancient Ones, Rock camp taught her a combination of grounding in encouraging us to learn from them and their ways as a earth, sacred ceremony, prayer, intense holding of the recipe to move forward today. activists by elders and active resistance.
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Elizabeth Jenkins delighted us with a wonderful example of how concrete activism combined with the sacred works. She described the resistance to an infrastructure project in Hawaii on Sacred Land, which included ongoing ceremonial work, contact with nature entities and prayers, but also active resistance. Nature conspired with the activists by volcanic eruption, but the elders of the tribe also sat in front of the bulldozers, not to be moved. Nicola Peel, a well-known activist and environmental award winner, whose work is focused on many environmental projects, mostly in Ecuador, offered 10 brilliant tips of environmentally friendly changes we can employ in our private lives. Within this context her experiences of bringing elders and shamans to do ceremonial work at Stonehenge in the UK, and how much more this kind of work is combined in Ecuador with concrete activism, were inspiring. According to her own story, she is saved from ‘activist burn-out’ by her deep love for the earth and spiritual practices. The last speaker we want to mention is Indra Donfranceso, a truly inspiring UK front-line activist elder. After a long life in service to the environment and lately helping to coordinate the activist camps at HS2 resistance (a UK infrastructure development that partly destroys 102 ancient woodlands) she is now instrumental in setting up the ‘Protect Stonehenge’ camps. Indra sees activism as a sacred path, deeply grounded in and connected to earth. She explained how young activists can get overwhelmed by emotions, bring all their wounding with them and need training in grounding and ceremonial work, help with personal healing and more. Here is where our shamanic training and experience can really help ‘on the ground’. To conclude: moving through a time of change and transformation, we feel that we need to take our place as co-creators because “Each of us is put here in this time and this place to decide the future of humankind. Did you think you were put here for something less?”
Christa Mackinnon is the co-founder of Sacred Earth Activism. She is a psychologist, shamanic teacher, medicine woman, author, international speaker and sacred activist. Christa authored three renowned books, combining ancient wisdom traditions and shamanism with the contemporary therapeutic. She teaches shamanic approaches via ‘Bridging the Worlds’ and is a director of the ‘Modern Medicine Woman Training School’ in the UK. All her practices and teachings are woven together from her life-long learning from teachers around the world. Her work aims to facilitate peoples’ journeys towards wholeness, towards becoming all they can be. Her activism is firmly rooted in earth and spirit, grounded in the conviction that we need an overall paradigm shift so that all life on this planet to thrive. www.christamackinnon.com
Seersha O’Sullivan is a Grandmother-Nani, Druid, Soitla-Shaman woman, mystic, spirit traveller and Wrakka-yikka-woman who heals, mends and makes whole-terms from the Proto-Celtic language and teacher. She walks a braided path encompassing teachings from her own Land and others. She is a Runesinger and honours the Old Ways and her ancestors. Her passion is caring for Mother Earth in whatever way she can in the hope of a World for the next 7 generations. www.shamanicplanet.com
–Chief Arvol Looking Horse
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Geenss Archenti was born in Tarapoto, in the high jungle of Peru – a place of mystical landscapes, legendary creatures, magical spirits, of medicinal plants and healers. His creativity and inspiration spring from the richness of Mother Nature, observing the shapes and textures, above and below, feeling the profound connection
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and interconnectedness of all beings. Archenti’s specialty is painting with natural pigments extracted from medicinal plants, resins, saps and fruits of the jungle. The visionary painter has a passion for depicting the old and wrinkled faces, full of stories of the past, guardians of the mountains, of the rivers, of ancestral wisdom, indigenous culture and arts. www.facebook.com/Geenss.Archenti
PAST ISSUES OF SPQR MAGAZINE The SPQR is an advertising free quarterly on-line publication of articles by leading Shamanic practitioners and teachers about Shamanism - Ceremonies, Rituals, Traditions, Techniques and more. Each issue contains 4-7 articles and featured art work. If you like to contribute your artical, artwork, photography, and poetry send Christian Thurow a request with samples. E-mail to: info@shamanportal.org
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INTRODUCING A NEW WAY TO EXPAND YOUR SHAMANIC KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES. We are committed to expanding shamanic knowledge and practices while promoting sustainable wisdom and harmony worldwide. We are offering inspiring ongoing teaching of respected teachers in thought-provoking and experiential webinars. For questions or suggestions, email shamanportal.wisdomwebinars@gmail.com to See a full upcoming schedule go to http://www.itzhakbeery.com/sp-wisdom-webinars.html
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