For myself as a practicing shaman, otherworldly vision has always been the core passion of a quintessential reality, a boundless sacred Circle about whose central axis I dance and limp the endless cycling of soul. Although shamans have traditionally recognized three levels of Otherworld-World, Underworld and celestial Overworld-I hereby add a Fourth: psyberspace. Note the spelling, a gesture in homage of 'psyche' as 'soul', which as all-pervasive is well able to encompass this latest addition to humanity's shared realms of consciousness. Interesting, too, that the Internet employs the lateral, nonhierarchical metaphors of 'web' and 'net', which evoke its Dionysian quality as an interconnected, organically spreading whole.
I regularly offer shamanic distance healing work via the Internet for any who wish to receive it. Spacetime poses no barrier here, since folk who have focused on these healing journeys before or after I've embarked on them, have still correlated what happened for them with what I undertook on their behalf. This ability to move between time and timelessness arises from the shamanic power to access multiple selves, some of whom work in linear time, some of whom concentrate on work done in dreams (see my offering in DNJ Vol. 20 Nos 1 & 2), while others work both in and out of measured time, and still others transcend chronological time, existing in the atemporal sacred spacetime of shamanic Otherworlds, vivid realms of mythic energy and navigable terrain which the shaman knows as well as-or better than-her own backyard.
Usually, I receive a particular healing request and before the actual journey, spend time in connecting and communing via trance-drumming with the soul-essence of the person concerned. I next establish his/her presence with me through journeying through psyberspace-often experienced as tunneling and changing direction rapidly through resonating wires and across flashing, colored circuits-until I meet up with the person's soul-essence. I then soul-bond with him/her just before I begin the session. My guide through psyberspace is usually my Trickster deity, Terragian, whose mercurial character is at home anywhere and who thrives on exploring new vistas and tunneling into parallel realities.
SHAMANISM AS THE 'LITERAL IMAGINAL'
Shamanism thrives on direct access to the living realms of the sacred and in this sense, makes no apology for its literalism through which imaginal vision reverts to practical application. Indeed, shamanic work involves a concretism redeemed by paradox; its context is what I call the 'literal imaginal', or the realm of 'visionary pragmatism'. Lesson one in shamanic work is that you're dealing with tangibly imaginal reality. Poison darts are seen, felt, heard poison darts; entangling webs are entangling webs, flowers have scent, boulders are heavy and lunar landscapes are treadable terrain.
Yet like the slippery, multifaceted reality of the vivid dream, the shamanic landscape shape-shifts with mercurial ambience, ambiguity and a seductive flow of living forms. Like the schizophrenia sufferer, the shaman dreams in a waking state and with a similarly symbolic mode of perception and articulation. Unlike the schizophrenia sufferer, the shaman has one foot firmly planted on the ground and is in control, just as the 'lucid dreamer' is. The difference between the latter and the shaman involves both intent and content: lucid dreaming usually 're-presents' spacetime reality and the dreamer's mission does not involve face-to-face encounters, often on behalf of others or the World, with incarnate Otherworld energies.
For in the end, shamanism comes down to intensely practical considerations; can the person do-with humility, authority, cunning and compassion-the work of a shaman: retrieve souls, extract harmful spirits, embody a healing vision for the community, diagnose and prescribe remedies for illness, distinguish between helpful darkness and destructive evil, dialogue intimately with Nature,
work closely with Guides, and journey to shamanic realms? And has s/he been clearly called and initiated?
SHAMANIC INITIATION & VOCATION
Firstly, then, a bit about shamanism per se: shamans are an 'elect' who have access, using an archaic technique of drum-induced ecstatic trance and via direct communion with their personal gods and guides, to regions of the sacred inaccessible to other members of the community. ('Ecstasy' comes from the Greek 'ek-stasis', which means 'the ability to stand outside of oneself'.) Shamans are thus relatively scarce individuals who not only have responded to a personal call received in dreams and/or by election of an elder shaman, but also have endured alone a psychologically shattering and wounding crisis of ritual death and rebirth in order to baptize, refine and verify their healing powers.
Survival of these initial brushes with death provides the shaman with wisdom and experience which strengthen his/her ability to empathize and work effectively with others in crisis or illness situations. Having experienced psychophysical trauma first-hand, a shaman is more likely to understand what must be done to correct an imbalance, debilitating conflict, or pathological condition. The shaman can consequently lead or escort another through these sometimes perilous soulscapes of vision and power.
Shamanism in its most potent form is accordingly not chosen so much as it chooses an individual through election of the gods (as archetypal powers); during initiation, the shaman falls into the collective unconscious head-first, through the equivalent of a schizophrenic crack-up, or psychic disintegration. If s/he can rescue and heal herself from this, s/he has the makings of a shaman and her work is from thereon a kind of 'chosen madness'.
Shamans commune and work directly with their guides, gods and power animals, asking their advice and following their lead. They also journey through trance to find and retrieve lost souls, or split off fragments thereof. Shamanic drumming and chanting also heals through helping re-establish a harmonic resonance between physical and psycho spiritual centers of the personality.
THE SHAMAN AS SOUL-GUIDE
As healer and soul-guide, the shaman can venture far 'below' and 'above' normal states of consciousness, because s/he has already been there and so 'knows the road'. Hence, for instance, the shaman can reach down to someone in chronic depression (since depression is literally a 'descent'), help the person explore and work through their condition and perhaps return with a lost soul fragment, or forgotten treasure as a bridge to their frozen creativity, or trapped energy. Likewise, the shaman who has experienced psychosis can reach the schizophrenic person who, as a potential shaman, is still imprisoned in it.
Usually in my own soul retrieval work, captured soul parts, reclaimed energies and retrieved potential - sometimes personified as embryos, lost animals, babies, various body organs, or unwanted children-are placed, or blown gently into stones, spiral shells, hollow 'wood wombs', or crystals, then later posted to those for whom the work has been done. Of course the real test of the efficacy of this mode of healing is in the results. Happily, I've received only positive feedback from this work, from folk all over the world. I'll toss in here an example (which I have permission to share) involving exploration, energy redistribution, diagnosis and the prescription of helpful natural remedies.
A DISTANCE SHAMANIC HEALING
From Judy:
"The things I'm dealing with at the moment are mainly, short-term: I had breast cancer last year. Long-term: I'm very enmeshed with my parents on levels of guilt and responsibility, much as I've tried to resolve it. My father has died but my mother is still alive. 'Picking up my web and moving on'. I've lived in a very cluttered but charming house for the last ten years and feel the need to move on; my possessions are beautiful but now feel like a burden. I just can't pick up and go. Yet I feel the new can't begin until I've let go of the old".
This was an intriguing 'mixed issue', which involved the twin areas of creativity (unbirthed potential), and heart entrapment and release. The journey involved, in the first instance, a contact with unborn ability that was trying to find a welcoming space in Judy's life; secondly, a freeing of the heart enmeshed and asleep in vampiric, maternal energies. (I have done similar 'warrior' work for other people in dreams).
The journey: In a drum-induced ek-stasis, I shrank to a tiny size and first visited the left breast area, which I had earlier seen (during a phone conversation, before Judy told me about the cancer) as inflamed with red (suppressed emotion) and dark yellow (trapped ambition and self-esteem). These energies were siphoned off with the help of Wolf totem Daynar, who dug a hole in the 'floor' of the breast so that the red and yellow could flow down in liquid form, thence out into the Underworld sea. These colors were then replaced with pink and green, siphoned off from my own heart and directed in a flowing braid to the breast region, with the help of Child deity Aaivan, who formed an energy bridge from me to the breast area.
EMBRYONIC & TRAPPED SOUL
Led by Aaivan, I then visited the core of the cancerous area and found there a hard black egg covered all over with glowing points of stars. This immediately suggested unborn creative potential and untapped imaginative powers. I went inside the egg and found there an embryo being, half-formed like a fetus and crouched over a writing desk atop an Overworld mountain. She was writing with a golden quill pen: "When I was born, part of me remained on the Mountain".
Aaivan asked her if she was ready to come down and be with Judy. She replied that she wasn't yet, because there was as yet no room for her, no special place in which she was free to create and reflect in simplicity, quietude, and open-aired tranquility. She seemed tired and alone, and full of longing for a home and friend. Aaivan and I left her in peace after Aaivan with his Shepherd's Staff had anointed her with a protective blessing. Sea Eagle power animal Merryth offered to remain behind to stand guard atop the Mountain and fly around it while surveying the land below, thus generating needed energy and creating a circular "temenos", or protected sacred space.
I next journeyed to a realm of World, where I found a giant spider web, home of a maternal red-back. Trapped in her web was Judy's heart, sound asleep as though having been drugged. The spider energy wasn't malevolent, or even primarily conscious; it was more like a powerful intoxicant, or sleep-inducing drug which tried to lower resistance and willpower. I felt this strongly when approaching the web and had to ward it off with a readiness to fight to free the trapped heart. At this point, the spider became aroused and defensive and tried to keep hold of the heart, but a powerful Underworld Guide, Ainjanneth, helped me here. She disempowered the spider with a stunning lightning strike, cut free the heart, and handed it to me. I sensed that this spider energy was Judy's mother's and that the redness-which included a lot of unexpressed anger and pain-was what had inflamed the cancerous breast region. So that Judy could forgive, I let her know that most of this spider energy was not intentional, or meaning to cause harm, even though it had disempowered her and made her heart weak and numb. I also suggested that the clutter in her life had to do with being '(s)mothered' in this entangling web.
The heart was retrieved safely and blown gently into a protective rose quartz crystal. The embryo was soulbonded to a pebble, which looked like a hybrid of fetus and crouched Tibetan monk. I felt it was important that Judy have tangible contact with concrete symbols of these two healing areas and so posted them to her. She needed to do more work with this embryo and invite her into her life-once she had made room for her. The heart released a lot of emotional pain once it was freed from the web, but it was now at peace.
HEALING REMEDIES & FEEDBACK
During the journey, I also 'saw' that Judy's father had wounded her at the level of the knees, as though he'd swept her legs from under her and had made her unable to move, or stand on her own feet without support, or emotional crutches. Totem Serpent and diagnostician Nathair also suggested that Judy regularly rub the breast region with warm olive oil to which she was to add a few drops of lemon (aromatherapy) oil, applied with lemon skins. This cool, pale-yellow energy would replace the negative, dark-yellow energy that was siphoned off.
Judy's Feedback: "I am full of tears and gratitude. You and the Guides have helped me beyond measure. I'm going to sit down now and reflect on everything you've said. Last night I read your amazing notes amid tears of recognition. The insights and revelations were truly meaningful. I sat on the floor and rubbed with olive oil and lemon and had the intention of allowing this healing to really happen. Then I felt so overwhelmed with it all that I fell asleep; I couldn't think or feel about it any more. I slept till this morning and later today I'm going to do some work with the embryo. I felt such gratitude to you for your willingness to do this work and to life generally, knowing there is this love available that finds me and wants me to heal into my wholeness. Love, Judy".
As a postscript, people often write to me saying, "Well, I'm not sure if I'm called to shamanism or not", to which my reply is often along the lines of: is a germinating seed called to sprout, or a ripe egg called to hatch? The bird hatches, or the egg goes cold, stale and eventually rots. The gods speak the shamanic "vocation" to and through the heart like a sword and they cannot be denied. You obey them - ultimately out of compassion for the Cosmos - or you go mad, or get sick, or die. Obey and you remain prone to madness, sickness and death in a more helpful way-as the Holy Fool, Waking Dream-dancer and Wounded Healer.
Text c. 2002. Dr Maureen Roberts (shamanic name "The Dark" Nathair) is an initiated Celtic shaman who practices in South Australia. Home Page: http://members.nbci.com/jungcircle
