Swan Medicine & Past Life Healing

Swan waits patiently for us to call upon her to take us “through the mirror” when a past life healing is required.

It never occurred to us, when we chose to remain open to whatever animal spirits appeared to assist us with our healing work over the weekend, that the shamanic archetype taking the form of Swan would be one of them. Nor had it occurred to us that the chronic pain one of the women was experiencing might be the result of a past life trauma. However, when I shamanically scanned her as she spoke of her pain, observing the shamanic energies available to assist in her healing, it gradually became clear that the underlying, hidden source of her present-life pain syndrome was a violent trauma which had occurred in a past life in medieval Europe. The pain she was feeling in the present was an echo, or a mirror reflection, of the impact of the intrusive energy of that long-ago trauma. That energy, which had followed her through several reincarnations, had been awakened in this lifetime by a recent physical injury.

Swan is the animal spirit feminist shamans work with when attempting to heal the impact of past life trauma on present life experience. In shamanic reality, Swan has the power to carry us safely back through time into the exact moment in a person’s past life when the trauma being mirrored by the present-day distress originally occurred. During such shamanic journeys, we can observe the sequential dynamics of the causal situation, and intervene in any number of ways to shift things in that time and place so that the trauma either never occurs, or is healed in the past life at the time and in the place where it took place.

Painting by Scarlet Kinney
Gallery No. K334: Deer, Shamanic South
w/c and pastel on 300# hot press w/c paper
22 x 26” – Price: $1200
Available through the Center’s art gallery,
Turtle Mountain Mythic Art

Swan is found in the shamanic South. When one enters the shamanic South during a shamanic journey, one discovers a lush, water-rich summer landscape glistening beneath a bright noonday sun. If one walks into the tropical forest that is the first feature of the landscape one encounters, and follows a path South along the East bank of a North-flowing stream of pure water, one will eventually arrive at the central geographical feature of the shamanic South –a beautiful Waterfall of the kind one finds in tropical forests. Along the way to the Waterfall, one is likely to encounter Deer, whose shamanic “home” is also the South. Climbing the cliff to the east of the waterfall, one eventually arrives at the Great Marsh which feeds it. This is Swan’s home in the shamanic South, and this is where one begins the long journey with Swan back in time to the client’s past life.

I’ve done many such shamanic healings that all began in this manner; by greeting Swan at the edge of the Great Marsh and asking to be taken back into the client’s past life. Such journeys are always the stuff of high adventure, but this particular case required that I undertake two separate journeys, each involving a long piece of unusually dangerous shamanic work, in order to shamanically interrupt and reorganize the sequence of events that led to the original trauma. With a great deal of help from a goddess archetype active in that time, I finally prevailed, and the causal trauma was undone.

In every such healing I’ve ever undertaken, clients have reported back to me that they didn’t feel any change immediately, but that over time the issue and its symptoms gradually became less troublesome, until finally they were gone. Curious about this phenomenon after a client once reported the very clearly incremental nature of the healing’s effect, I sought a shamanic teaching about it from Swan. What Swan revealed during that journey was that the reason for this felt sense of gradual, rather than immediate relief when a client has experienced this particular type of shamanic healing, is that the healing moves forward through time incrementally, lifetime through lifetime, beginning with the lifetime in which the trauma and healing occurred, until at last its benefit reaches the person in her present life. Hopefully that will be the case for this woman as well.

 Part Three: Mother Light Opening Smudge Ceremony

Calling Mother Light

Feminist shamanic workshops, circles, and Intensives are begun with a Mother Light Smudge Ceremony, during which we connect with the feminine energy of the Earth in the specific place in which we’re gathering, by means of shamanic drumming, singing, and chanting. “Stretch Eyes” is a shamanic practice which allows us to “see” past the veils of ego consciousness into the directional landscapes of shamanic reality as the sacred smoke of the smudge is offered to each direction.

As the person conducting the smudge lights the sage wand and offers it to the Four Directions, and to Earth and Sky, she and the other women in the circle practice “stretch eyes” to visualize the shamanic landscapes of the Four Directions. When the person smudging has completed her smudge of the space, the circle, her shamanic tools and herself, she passes the smudge stick or resin bowl on to the person to her left, so that it passes around the circle in a clockwise manner, and begins drumming and singing the shamanic song/chant “Mother Light.” As she does so, she asks that the Earth lend some of her hidden light and energy to the circle, sending it upwards to surround, bless and protect the circle and its work. As each person around the circle finishes smudging herself and her shamanic tools, she passes the smudge to the next person, and joins in the drumming and singing. The music increases in intensity with each person who joins in, and we all enter the kind of light shamanic trance that enables us to “see” the Earth’s light and energy rising in response to our musical request that it do so. We may also see various animal spirits and other shamanic energies that inhabit the particular part of the earth upon which we’re working. The following is a description of my experience of performing a Mother Light Smudge Ceremony to open our Intensive retreat in the Endless Mountains, where Deer medicine abounds.

Singing, drumming, and chanting, we call upon Mother Light, the feminine light energy which lives deep within the earth, to inspire and guide our work. As this pure energy emerges from the earth, revealing its form and shamanic power to us, each of us “sees” the light rising up from the earth in slightly different ways, because of our individual medicines and levels of shamanic consciousness. Because of a shoulder injury I sustained during the past year, I’m unable to drum, but I’ve brought two pair of juvenile buck antlers I received as a gift, which I tap together to set the rhythm for the other’s drums. As I relax into shamanic visionary consciousness in response to the powerful percussion and music we’re making, I see shafts of pale blue light emerging from Earth, spiraling upwards towards Sky as they form a protective circle of power around the farmhouse.

“Deer at Home in the Shamanic South” – w/c and pastel by Scarlet Kinney. Available through Turtle Mountain Mythic Art.

A group of does and bucks emerges from the forest, dancing with the drums and the blue-white spirals of light, the bucks outside the light-circle, the does inside, their hooves stamping to the beat of the drums, moving clockwise as they go. Several Ancient Ones, women, perhaps feminine spirit echoes of  original inhabitants of these mountains, now appear, shimmering and transparent, dressed in deerskin, and begin dancing with the deer, weaving in and out among the spiraling towers of light. Now small flocks of birds appear, like those we had seen earlier while walking on the steep hill on which the farm is located.  The birds in one flock are brilliant yellow, in the other, black and white. They fly among the light-spirals above the dancing deer and women, filling the air with birdsong. Everything but the shamanic vision I’m witnessing disappears from consciousness. The movements of the deer dancers, the brilliance of the blue-while spirals of light, the sound of the drums and the clicking antlers, and of our voices, overlaid with birdsong, are all I can now see or hear. The light pulses and expands, blessing the earth upon which we will walk for the next few days, bathing us in its healing power, strengthening and preparing us for the work that is to come. Slowly, the vision fades, and I return to my ordinary state of consciousness. We are ready to begin.

A recording of Mother Light is available through my web site store as part of my feminist shamanic journey drumming CD.

PART TWO: Inner Practice & Outer Expression

The sun rising beyond the mountains.

We had arrived at the farm in a state of discouragement about the events of the past year, and the future of our small, scattered community of women. Because our discouragement was so profound, we decided to begin our own personal healing work by shamanically looking at its causes. Being women, we naturally gravitated toward introspection: What was wrong with us? What mistakes had we made? What could we do better?  The basic underlying issue seemed to be that the problems women face in today’s world are caused by the monolithic weight of the patriarchal pressures we must deal with on a daily basis, and because of who we are, we are particularly sensitive to those pressures. It all seemed like too much to take on; it felt as though our small voices advocating for balance between Feminine and Masculine energies were being lost; were being suffocated and oppressed by those relentless patriarchal pressures.

Whatever your personal feminine practice may be, I’d like to share with you some of the guidance we received about this issue, in the event you, too, are feeling a similar kind of discouragement as you contribute to the rebalancing of Earth and Sky energies, which have been dangerously skewed by thousands of years of patriarchy. These are some of the teachings and guidance we received regarding this issue:

Connecting

~ Women all over the world giving love to the Earth and to other women is what we can do.

~ It doesn’t have to be a coordinated local community effort. All women working towards Earth/Sky-Feminine/Masculine balance can be connected in the most feminine of ways, as a web of relationships with Earth.

~ Each new stage of feminine shamanic growth is initiated by a test which challenges the status quo in ways that shatter it, making room for the next stage of growth to develop.

~ The challenge of maintaining one’s personal feminine shamanic practice and accomplishing one’s life goals and tasks in the face of deep discouragement is a test; something we must master if we are to reach the next level of feminine shamanic consciousness. Discouragement is not evidence of failure. It’s a sign that one is about to break through into a new level of awareness.

~ Don’t try to measure the success of your personal feminine spiritual practice by patriarchal, western standards of success. They don’t apply.

~ Rather, measure your success by how well you have encouraged and supported the women you encounter who also seek feminine wisdom, however few they may be, so that they may be empowered by your encouragement and support to share that wisdom with other women, each according to her own gifts.

~ One of the greatest flaws of patriarchal religions and cultures is that they suffer from the delusion that they are the only one, true religion, or the best of all cultures, and are therefore suitable for all people in all parts of the world. This belief is responsible for much of the suffering humanity has experienced throughout history.

~ One of the primary teachings of feminist shamanism is that it is an earth-centered practice, and as such, arises directly from Earth, not “descending” upon one from Sky. It therefore takes on many forms, depending upon the specific geographies in which it arises. It is understood that shamanic cosmologies arising in one geographic location are not suitable for the kind of one-fits-all transfer to other locations and cultures that patriarchy embraces. The aspects of feminist shamanism which are suitable for transfer or sharing across geographies and cultures, however, are the feminist shamanic structures, practices, forms, and processes by which women can discover and align themselves with the animal and plant spirits, and with other shamanic energies and needs of the particular part of the earth upon which they walk, and so develop healing relationship with the earth upon which they walk.

~ In these times, it is very important that women learn how to find meaning in their own lives in the places on the earth where they live, love, and work. Discovering one’s personal myth, or story, as it relates to one’s connection with the land upon which one lives, is crucial to finding that meaning. It is for this reason that I was given the practices and sequential shamanic procedures required to teach women how to successfully “find” their personal myth. To learn more about this teaching: /shamanic-myth-writing-seminar/