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So the Gods and spirits I work with have been pushing me for some time to put together a book on shamanic practice for people with disabilities – physical, mental, neurological, etc. I want it to be a supportive, compassionate, useful book that does not penalize anyone for being disabled, nor suggest that they aren’t “doing it right” if they aren’t magically healed. I’m not looking for stuff about how everyone can be “fixed” if they just do XYZ. I’m looking for helpful material for people trying to do this work regardless of what’s difficult for them.
So I’m looking for submissions from people who have struggled with the intersection of shamanic practice and disability. What if you can’t climb a mountain, or fast, or sit still during meditation, or even get out of bed? What if mental illness makes you doubt whether the visions you’re having are real or your own sock puppets? How can you create a shamanic practice around your limitations? If you’ve got written accounts, please send them to me at cauldronfarm@hotmail.com. (That’s a public email, I’m fine with having it passed around.) If you aren’t up to writing an essay but could answer questions in an email interview, or even a recorded Zoom interview, I’m down for that as well.
Essays should be no more than 10K words, and sent in a Word document. You don’t have to use your real name. I’m setting a tentative deadline for June 21st,the Summer Solstice, 2021. Please feel free to pass this CFS to anyone who might be interested. Let’s help people to know that the sacred spirits are there for anyone regardless of what bodies they’ve been given this time around.
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Hi, Raven:
I’m a professional freelance writer (usually for Spirituality & Health magazine). I’m not sure what their policy is on reprinting articles but if you’re putting together an anthology, I can check. The next article I’m doing for them is on Chod, the Tibetan shamanic practice that has been wedded in the West to gestalt and active imagination. “Feeding Your Demons” practice, has been shown to be helpful with Multiple Personality Disorder. I’m sorry I can’t write for free, but if the magazine has already paid me, perhaps we could work out a royalty agreement. You can find a sample of my work here: “Walking the Edge of Cultural Appropriation”. Winter Ross -
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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.
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Dear Raven,
I am a shamanic practitioner, author and person with a disability. I wrote a bit on the connection between my disability and shamanic work in this overview blog on my website: https://www.herownwitch.com/blog/whatisshamanism (second section of the blog) I would be happy to contribute it you are still looking for contributors.
Blessings,
Rae -
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