[e s]

I’ve never had any severe mental illness, though I have a lot of experience of the dark night of the soul of codependency recovery, which was a relationship dysfunction, existing not just in me, but in society. I also think that society could be braver in its perception of the relationship of mental illness to shamanic initiation. But that’s mainly because we don’t have very good initiations and initiators in Western culture, and I think severe mental illnesses simply are the veridical evidence of this. Those people, I am guessing without the opportunity to see for certain would be the ones who would go on to heal and initiate. Therefore, they exhibit the highest symptoms of pathology at the lack therefore in adequate initiatory practices. Though I have little experience to back this up. I do think that deconstruction, darkness and confusions are part of the process of various initiations. For example, alcohol can also produce a temporary psychosis, but it wouldn’t be accurate to say its shamanic. I guess if you wanted to invoke a demon, then it could be useful. But you’d have no control over the situation, so you couldn’t say that was channeling. When it is unregulated, that can produce psychosis, rather than heal or turn it into something good.

[e s]

I heard you can get some pretty potent turkeytail mushroom derivatives for fighting cancer these days.

[e s]

I think a crucial step is having something in your life that forces you not to be able to rely on advice from others. Trials of isolation, or challenges that don’t have mainstream support structures such as mainstream medicine are useful for this. That said, humans are social beings, so to achieve the wholeness sought through shamanic practice, guidance at first can be useful. Grounding that in your environment by celebrating high days could be good.

[e s]

I would say that because I regard plants and animals as conscious beings with their own interdependent identity and social responsibility, what is hard for me is treating them just as symbols. So I can really only get into an animal spirit connection beyond a symbolic spiritual connection if I’m in working relationship with the being. So for me, that has been the tawny frogmouth, as I have lived and slept alongside one, and it was following me around, and appearing especially when I was doing photography work for animal welfare. They have a tendency to successfully hide themselves and watch whoever is in their environment for a long time before they would think of revealing themselves, so it was a huge compliment, and one I am very proud of.

Bats are also an animal I have been working with, though have not explored the symbolic aspects much at all, as it has been inspired through scientific issues, such as their struggle being veridical validation for the disaffects of climate change. But its interesting therefore to note a link with science and scientific inquiry. The bats I am interested in are specifically fruit bats, not blind bats.

Bears to me are a symbol of my early neolithic ancestors and their religious practice. Bears and wolves are symbols of winter. Wolves are also symbols of liminality, especially social, though for me, cats fulfill that role more, since they have been around me my whole life. Infact, I was even mothered by one.

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