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In this piece I delve a little into my personal journey to shamanic practice and why I see shamanism as an antidote to much of the malaise we feel. At the end of this piece I offer you the most concise list of "shamanic core values" I've ever come across, and a practical and potent shamanic ... Read More
Soul Loss: An Interview with a Mayan Daycounter
[Note: Bob Makransky met Gg (Pronounced "Gigi"), an American woman who is an initiated Mayan daycounter, several years ago in Antigua Guatemala. Bob studied extensively with his teacher don Abel Yat Saquib until his teacher's death in 2009. This interview took place in May 2017, at Bob's home in ... Read More
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: the Resuscitation of Beauty
Soul Retrieval is a powerful topic for people walking the shamanic path. This article is about my experiences learning and conducting soul retrieval, but it is equally about doubt and wonder, because my thirty plus years on the shamanic path is ever and always about the flow between these two ... Read More
Faerie Presence
There is a type of fairy encounter often dismissed as less authentic and less significant than other types, and yet possibly the most common encounter and one with the most positive, uplifting effects on the human spirit. This is what I call encountering the “faerie presence,” rather than ... Read More
Becoming Prayers
Prayers are silent, Prayers are sung, Prayers are danced, and Prayers are spun. What does it mean to live in prayer? My own expression of prayer has changed over the years as many of my prayers have become my reality, and many others not. I still like to give thanks, and ask for things like ... Read More
How To Pray the Shaman’s Way
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. -Gandhi What is Prayer? Prayers are an intensely personal communication with what anyone might consider a higher source of power. For some this power source is a vague notion of something greater than they, for ... Read More
On Prayer
‘You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer’. Thich Nhat Hanh When the request to write this piece came ... Read More
Five Practices for More Potent Prayers
Over the past 30 years I have had the good fortune to participate in many spiritual traditions including Methodist Christianity, Islamic Sufism, Zen Buddhism, contemporary Paganism, Lakota ways and the Native American Church, Buryat Mongolian shamanism, and West Africa Ifá/Òrìṣà tradition. ... Read More
My Way on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela
What I think is a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? - Joseph ... Read More
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
September, 2014: Devon, England After a half-hour climb, I stand in an outcropping of rock at the top of a hill covered in heather and gorse. Below me, shrouded in mist, lie the wild lands of Dartmoor National Park. I have come in search of Grimspound, the remains of a late Bronze age village. It ... Read More