The Journey to the Otherworld: A Way of Starting your Shamanic Path.

Glastonbury Tor Midsummer 2016

Ideas were swirling around in my head in the autumn of 1998 when I attended a series of workshops with the Celtic shamanic practitioner John Matthews. I’d read a lot of his books, and that of Caitlin Matthews, and had already tried to journey. 

I first experienced an ‘inspired visualization’ in the home of a Druid. There were twelve or so of us sprawled out on her carpet. I laid my jumper over my eyes and listened to her seductive voice describe an imaginary landscape, telling us to smell the scents and look around us. She called this ‘using our psychic eyes’, which, apparently, were open behind our closed lids. At first, thoughts kept getting in the way… do I look a prat lying here…is my bag of Chorizos good enough for the communal table? Bit-by-bit, I began seeing things that felt very real. I could feel the grass beneath bare feet, hear a skylark singing. Her voice faded away, and it was up to me what happened next. 

I wanted to learn more and so I turned to shamanism. I wanted to ‘journey over the rainbow bridge’ that would take me into an otherworld, and gain a deep connection with Nature, an understanding of what is outside ourselves and learn about Spirit. One of the first things John Matthews said on that day is “this will change your life”. I was there to learn, but even so, the thought that came to me was, “what rubbish that must be!” By the end of that weekend, I had realised he was right; journeying across the rainbow bridge into the otherworld changes your life in a phenomenal way.

That was 25 years ago. Now I use shamanic techniques regularly and with amazing results, which help me in my personal life, in ritual, and my creative work, too. 

I'm not recommending that you simply jump in without a guide, though.  'Baby steps' is a very good approach when thinking about investigating shamanism; it's profound, it's global, it's literally mind-blowing; it really does change your life, and it needs to be approached thoughtfully, steadily and with caution.  It's not a hobby, to be picked up lightly then dropped again. Once you've started, it's very hard to stop. There are some guidelines you should be careful to follow. Be warned –– then you can be fearless.

The first thing, perhaps, is to decide how you are going to access this amazing otherworld. Some say that you cross a 'rainbow bridge', others say you 'take a crystal path'. These are metaphors, of course, but some medium in necessary to get you into an Alpha Brian state so that you are no longer fully in the present world. 

I use drumming; others use chanting, dancing/spinning, or listening to a gong or didjeridoo. Some, of course, rely of drugs, but I have actually ever attempted that. I find drumming effective and useful. At some point, you should make (or buy) a drum (bodhran), but to begin, it's best to use a recording of a shaman drumming. These can be downloaded from the internet, or purchased as CDs. Chose the plainest; no speaking, and limited other sounds (such as birdsong).

You might try the website The Way of the Buzzard for more information on listening or creating drums. Play the drumming, not too loud, while you are either sitting comfortably or lying prone. Cover you eyes with something soft and dark. Allow yourself to relax, one muscle at a time. Focus on the 'song' of the drum, which is a constant note above the drumming. Allow whatever images you feel are arriving to form more solidly in your mind. Forget about the outside world, and 'see' with your psychic eyes. Watch the images unfold. These can be very varied; people see events, or shifting patterns, or 'a variety of 'still images' or a 'movie'; or hear, rather than particularly see, things. 

Choose the shortest drumming session for your first attempt. Note how there is a starting beat, then the fast drumming ( around 4 beats per minute, which is far slower than the 'rhythm' of your brain – this fast beat actually slows your mind). Finally you'll hear the 'call back' which is a different beat that interrupts your journeyings. Stretch and take off your 'mask' at that point. You are back in the apparent world, and ready to make a record of your first journey to find the song of the drum. Before you forget, note down everything that happened. Write down something of what you saw, heard, felt, etc, and any thoughts that occurred to you.

Find out more about that here 

You can read some of the records I've kept about journeys by clicking on any of the links at the SHAMANISM PAGE (Shamanism; The Crystal Path to the Otherworld) 

The Summer God of Love Oengus Mac Og

They say that Oengus Mac Og, the Irish god of love and inspiration, wit and charm, was a born liar. He could gab his way out of any tricky situation and gab his way into any advantageous one.

  

      

But if he was a trickster, it’s no wonder, because he was born of a trick. 

The Dagda, an Irish god so huge his club could not even be lifted by eight men, fell in love with Boann, goddess of the river Boyne, which flows past Newgrange in the northeast of Ireland. Boann was already married, but that did not deter the Dagda in his amorous pursuit. Naturally Boann fell pregnant and was terrified her husband would find out. So the Dagda caused the sun to stay still in the sky for an entire year, and when, at the end of what he though was a single day, Nechtan returned home, all seemed the same, except for a puzzling change in the foliage on the trees. 

On that one day, Boann had given birth to Oengus Og, and the Dadga had taken him away to be fostered in a good home.

I suppose his story really starts when he’s maybe fifteen — after all, it’s set in the smelly bedroom of an adolescent boy who wakes one morning to remember what seemed almost like a dream; the most beautiful girl had come into his room. From that day, in a love-sick fever, Oengus does not leave his bed, wrapt up in the dream of her. 

His foster mother asks him, ‘darling, what is wrong?’ But he can’t reply. 

His foster father comes to him; “Now, son, you’ve got to stop all this nonsense.’ But still he can explain.

Finally, they call the Dagda and to him, Oengus reveals the truth; he’s in love. The Dagda spends a year searching before the girl is found. 

Yewberry

Turns out she is Caer, or Yewberry, the daughter of the fairy king Ethal Anubal, who,with her 149 sisters, mostly wears the garb of swans. When Oengus arrives to claim his love, he has to pick her out from 150 white birds. But he knows her directly; she has a golden chain around her neck. He also transforms into a swan and they circle the lake three times before flying off to the Brough na Boinne. 

This was the ancient name for Newgrange, and it is said that it originally belonged to the Dagda, but when Oengus finally discovered he was his son, he decided to grab his inheritance. After all, his mother was goddess of the river that flows around this great edifice. He approached his real father, to ask if he could take up residence for a night and a day, and the Dadga gave his consent to that small request. 

Brough na Boinne –– Newgrange

However, the next morning, Oengus          refused to leave. Remember, that in old Irish, as in Welsh today, there is no indefinite article. ‘A night and a day’ would simply be ‘night and day’ and Oengus argued that  what he had been granted was residency at Newgrange for all time. 

Oengus wasn’t just god of love because of his winning of Yewberry. Perhaps it was more to do with the way he would successfully woo for others. He asks for the hand of the beautiful Etain for has friend Midir, and then undergoes many arduous jobs, such as clearing acres of land, before that hand is granted. However, Midir’s present wife is filled with jealously and turns Etain into a purple fly. She is blown about on Druidic winds for a long time, but finally Oengus finds her and crafts a bower for her, in which she can rest. 

Perhaps most famous is the story of Oengus’ foster son, Diarmaid. He had a great love for Grainne. Oegnus woos her for Diarmaid and they run away from her wedding feast after Granne drugs her new husband. They run from pillar to post -- or rather -- from ancient cairn to ancient dolmen. (It’s great fun searching for these ‘beds of Grainne’ which are scattered all over Ireland). 

Dairmuid and Grainne

After long years on the run, Grainne fell pregnant with Diarmuid's child, but fate was about to catch up with them. One day out in the wilderness, Diarmuid and Grainne came across a giant boar. Legend was, that a boar was the only living thing that could harm Diarmuid. As the boar charged, Diarmuid, protecting his heavily pregnant lover, wrestled it to the gound and killing it with his sword, but not before the boar had gored Diarmuid, fatally wounding him.

So what does all this mean? And why is Oengus the god of transformation, as well as love and wit?

I think it may be connected to his dreaming of Caer. Okay, I likened this story earlier to spotty teenaged romance, but when you think about the story, it seems more like creative experience to  me. Everything is reversed, or in mirror image. The girl comes in a dream; or does the girl really arrive (in some versions of the story) and it’s only after she disappears that Oengus dreams of her? He dreams and dreams and finally, there she is, a gold chain around her neck. 

This is so much like the creative process. First; the glimmer of something new, which can almost be forgotten immediately, unless it is ‘dreamed’ into existence. Then, the search —the frustration and hard toil of turning a ‘glimmer’ of an artistic idea into something solid; a book, an art work, a musical composition. But finally, it is done. People are saying they love it. It is enough to make the artist take wing and fly into the sunset.

W.B. Yeats wrote about this in his poem, “The Song of Wandering Aengus” centuries later, in the late 1890s. 

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

I think this paints a haunting picture. An old man reminisces about a life-quest, contrasting the earthly realm of ordinary life and the mystical otherworld of dreams.Check through the poem, to see where Yeats employs a semicolon or colon. These are used to make that shift each time we leave the real world (for instance 'he hooks a berry to a thread'), and move into the mysterious, magical otherworld

You can learn about my very own Yewberry here.

You can learn more about Newgrange here

You can learn more about Oengus Og.here 

You can learn more about “The Song of Wandering Aengus” here. 

Meeting the Glastonbury Pagan Moot - keeping a shamanic journal

 

I was honoured and delighted to be asked to talk to the Glastonbury Moot about Shamanism, but I was a bit worried – wouldn’t it be like teaching my grandmother to suck eggs? Or – more accurately – like teaching a load of pagans to walk between the worlds? I talked about my own shamanic journey through the years, and what I do with my shamanism now, so that we could open up a debate and share our shamanic experiences. 

I had brought my own 'secret diary' of my journeys over the years; nearly 25 years, in fact. I passed this round, so that people could see the sorts of things I write down when I return from a trance. I was delighted when this resonated with the mooters – some were able to talk about their own experiences in front of the moot, and others spoke to me personally, afterwards. I told the story of my relationship with my two main guardians on the spirit plane, Esmerelda and The Golden Boy, archetypes who advise, and often offer me gifts.  I was very happy to share this, and that caused quite a positive reaction, with many people sharing back. 

part of my shamanic journal

I believe it is essential that, before you forget, you note down everything that happened in any shamanic journey. Write down something of what you saw, heard, felt, etc, and any thoughts that occurred to you. 

Once you get going, you will probably want to buy a nice notebook to keep your writings in. I've had a few over the years, some are fabulous books, but mostly they are just Black and Red A4 notebooks.

The record is essential because it shapes the experience. As you write, tiny details will emerge which otherwise would be forgotten. As you write, some sense is made of nonsensical experiences. As you writer, you may spot synchronicities – likenesses and coincidences in life or story that make even more sense of the journey. And, of course, recording allows you to enjoy reading back after the event; I do this often and am amazed at how a path unfolds (linked to the word 'path working') and how enriched I am by remembering old journeys. Often, then I'll return to continue that adventure. 

But as a writer, I soon discovered I could also use these techniques to explore story so that my ideas almost ‘wrote themselves’ before I even got to a keyboard. And at that point, a character arrived in my life - a zesty twenty-something therapeutic shaman called Sabbie Dare, who kept telling me that I should write about her. “I see a lot of clients,” she told me, “who don’t really know what’s wrong with them. They’re on the edge.  They bring me some very difficult problems.”

I write the Shaman Mysteries for pagans and crime fiction lovers alike, so I have to be careful to walk a line between the truth of my own spiritual path, and the fictions I create. I don’t want to suggest that shamans can ‘solve crime’. And as the series progresses I am trying to introduce some of the aspects of shamanism and paganism that might enlighten the ‘muggle reader’. Book one, In the Moors, introduces the shamanic journey and Sabbie’s animal ally, an otter called Trendle.

In the second book, I developed Sabbie’s ritual life, and otherworld associations, especially her guardian, a river goddess who she doesn’t yet quite trust. Book three, Beneath the Tor, uses a theme of transformation, including shapeshifting.This book is set in Glastonbury, and it was my great delight to be able to use some of the legends of the Vale of Avalon In book four, which I'm writing, I'm going to look at the Lower Realms, and introduce Sabbie's father, who is also a shaman.

We ran right out of time (I am hard to shut up, but they finally managed it!). I’m delighted to say that Oak

has invited me back, sometime in the future. There were so many aspects to living with shamanism that we didn’t cover, and I’d love to have that opportunity. The Glastonbury Moot, which meets on Wednesday evenings at the Mitre Inn, is a welcoming gathering, and I’d recommend it if you are looking for like-minded friends and live in that area.

                                                      Good Friday Sunrise by Kev Pearson

I was lucky enough to be able to stay the night with two kindly members of the moot, who have recently moved to Glastonbury. Kev is photographer, and (isn’t the universe strange?) I’d only that previous week discovered his wonderful images on the net. Check out his stunning photos, especially of the Tor at http://www.kevpearson.com/recent/ 

You can read some of the records I've kept about journeys by clicking on any of the links at the SHAMANISM PAGE (Shamanism; The Crystal Path to the Otherworld) 

July 2020 - A Ritual In Lockdown.

Sacred wild places are best

Since lockdown began, and we’ve all been staying at home, for me and lots of people, that means we've not been sharing our spiritual path with like-minded others. Whether it’s church, synagogue, mosque or temple, getting out to share worship has been terribly missed. 

At least I’m lucky; my place of worship is any place in nature where natural life flourishes, but especially wild areas where the trees, and the creatures living under or in them, are untamed and free.

And I’m also blessed with my own tiny, self-built stone circle, which takes up a more secluded area of my garden. These stones, although they are miniature, have long memories of previous rituals; Jim, my husband and I transported them from Bristol when we came to Wales, and so they have witnessed a continual pattern of outdoor seasonal celebration for twenty years...they certainly have stories they could tell.

Enter through the rose arch

We had planned to celebrate the Vernal Equinox in the circle with the usual group of friends, but I cancelled that, as full lockdown approached. Then Beltaine went by, at the start of May (and, for us, the start of summer), noted with just a couple of Zoom meetings with other pagans.

However, we have been using our stone circle, just the two of us, lighting the firepit and drumming and dreaming around it.

 On a sunny evening this week, we entered the circle again, robed and ready for ritual. I’d been re-reading a recent Indie Pagan*, in which the writer quoted an old saying…ask a stone a question and you will get an answer.

Jim said, “I’ve heard something like that Tell a stone a story, and it will remember for ever. Because the consciousness of the mineral kingdom is different from ours; slower by millennia, and deeper and more retentive.”

We decided to loosely base our ritual on the one described in that article. 

Casting the circle

That evening, we lit a fire and readied the circle, tidying it, brushing away the empty beechnut shells and bits of twig. As the smoke swirled high, we herded the hens into their enclosure, but the dog wandered freely, settling in a corner to 
watch. 

We entered the circle through the rose arch, each carrying four stones, to represent our four grandparents. Jim brought his staff to cast the circle, and I brought two big potatoes which I threw into the red hot coals of the firepit.

Consecrating with water

We always set our circle up in the Druidic fashion, asking Great Spirit for guidance and protection as the circle is cast, calling in peace, consecrating with fire and water and then welcoming the power of the four quarters – East, South, West, North – into the circle. We also invited the spirits of the lower, ancestral world, and to balance things up, the spirits of the upper shamanic world, too, calling ‘hail, and welcome’ to each of these.

We  took four other carefully chosen stones (there are a lot of stones in this ritual!) to further represent the quarters and their elements. A peice of white quartz for the airy East, a cracked stone previously from the firepit to stand in the fiery South, a beautiful fossil for the watery West, and a piece of sacred Bluestone for the earthy North.

The western quarter

We had worn our ovate crane bags into the circle. These function in the same way as a shamanic spirit bag, holding the memories from our time as Druids. We emptied them, going through the tiny objects and natural products, crystals and broken down bits of leaf, talking about the memories they brought to our minds. Leaving them on the Southern Alter, we spent some time smudging our eight grandparent stones and ourselves with white sage. Then we took our time thinking about each grandparent, and choosing where we would put  each of their representing stones around the cross-quarters. We took our time, because we were looking for the grandparent who gave us the biggest and most welcoming smile.

The alter is shielded by foxgloves

For Jim, that was easier. He remembers both his mother’s parents and loved them very much. Often, his grandmother visits him in his dreams. She was smiling very broadly indeed. 

I knew none of my grandparents. My mother was the last of seven, born in 1908. My father was the eldest of three, but born 8 years before the start of that century…an actual Victorian. Their parents were dead long before I was born. But I could feel each of these next generation ancestors as I moved around. This was probably influenced by their sepia photograph, and the stories I’d heard about them. I chose my father’s mother, whose name was Elizabeth.

In silence, apart from the crackle of the fire and singing of bedtime birds, we asked this chosen grandparent our question, and waited for their answer. Then we shared a story with them. I told my grandmother something I knew about her that Dad had told me. 

Once we had said farewell, we sat together in the circle and shared both the questions and the stories.

Growing dark...

It was time to ‘take down’ the circle, thanking the spirits of the four quarters (who function, for druids, as a hawk, a deer, a salmon, and a bear) and the spirits of the upper and lower worlds, saying ‘hail, and farewell’ to each, before Jim uncast the circle, widdershins. 

We left the stones in place, and pulled our chairs closer to the fire, which had died to glowing embers. We fished out the baked potatoes and lavished them with butter. Mmmm…a delicious way to ground ourselves after ritual.

Several days later, the memory of the occasion still resonates in my mind. We will visit our stone circle again soon, I’m sure.

A Ritual in Lockdown was Published in Indie Shaman Magazine in 2021

* Steven Ash; Finding Your Ancestors in the Medicine Wheel, Issue 43 (January 2020) available from https://indieshaman.co.uk