shamanism

This journey unfolded as a complete cycle of initiation. The volcano gifted me primal power; Wolf consumed me and returned me, dissolving and remaking me; the water of the pond purified me; the tribe welcomed me into the rhythm of collective life; the Snake raised me into ecstatic energy, uniting body and spirit. It was not symbolic alone. It was visceral, embodied. My clapping, howling, stomping, and humming brought the vision into flesh. This was not only “seen” but lived.

For 37 years, I marked 15 August with a kind of dread, a shadowed memory of collapse, panic, and loss. [...] When I mark it now as the return of my power to myself, I am not pretending the loss didn’t happen. I am saying: That was the day I was pulled out of the ordinary game and went on a journey to find the tools I was meant to carry.

The irony [the cosmic joke common in shamanic journeys] is that the spirit world often answers literally rather than politely. The teaching is direct, uncompromising, and impossible to ignore.

I don’t call myself a witch [it would be so much easier!] because that’s not the archetype I serve. That is not my land, my practice, my spirits. But I do call myself a shaman, because that’s what echoes through my bones, my dreams, my gestures.

Then the sea came again. I sank into the water, the dead-body float. The surrender. The letting go. I turned and there she was: I wasn’t alone. The she-wolf. Always there, swimming beside me, moving with me no matter where I tried to go. Her presence was fierce, gentle, and intimate all at once. I moved from frenzy to surrender. That’s ritual form: I went back to the sea, this primal womb, and floated dead, corpse-like. Another shamanic death without spectacle, and she swam w