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This is an ongoing US and global project to help enthusiasts, scholars, practitioners, and curious parties learn more about shamanic living in a contemporary culture. The space here is devoted to sharing info, experiences and opinions about all forms of shamanic expression covering shamanism's multiple permutations. Among subjects explored are traditions, techniques, insights, definitions, events, artists, authors, and creativity. You are invited to draw from your own experiences and contribute.

What is a SHAMAN?

MAYAN: "a technichian of the Holy, a lover of the Sacred." CELTIC: "Empower the people...by changing the way we think." MEXICAN APACHE: "Someone who has simply learned to give freely of themselves..." AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL: "...a teacher or healer, a wisdom keeper of knowledge... (who) takes people to a door and encourages them to enter." W. AFRICAN DIAGRA: "views every event in life within a spiritual context." HAWAIIAN: "...human bridges to the spiritual world and its laws and the material world and its trials..." QUECHUA INDIAN: "embodies all experience." AMAZON: "...willing to engage the forces of the Universe...in a beneficial end for self, people, and for life in general."


-- from Travelers, Magicians and Shamans (Danny Paradise)

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Celebrate Scars


A rapturous shriek and a gash
That’s how it starts
This intolerable tear in a fabric-like womb-tunnel shoots
Opens a break away channel for water and blood to seep
An escape
Through the tug of gravity’s downward slope
I pierce through skintightness and numbness
Into the arms of a new world I land
Violently parting curtains of tissue
Lifting window panes of separation
The way back spins shut
Awakened by my severed connection’s pull
I grieve contemplating this journey’s price
The losses, exchanges of comfort
One cut to the cord and the ensuing emotional sting
Lingers to tell me nothing will ever again be assured
Further from home, closer to knowing it(’)s nature in all that I am
I run my fingers over
Open wounds I have emerged from my organic tomb
The parted fibers seal, harden fast and fold into scar
A rippling reminder that
The unseen mystery can sail into flesh
And ship out again anytime with the tide
Change is a tattoo
I am etched in and out of its portals
From far away worlds to this one and back I have passed
The first order of business
Survive
The blackness of travel
The agony sung from the struggle to sustain a unit of delicate life
Learn to willfully die a little each day
And every morning again be
Recreated
This biosuit demands much from its host
I make peace with my body’s wasteful consumption
I will breathe, feed, and take
from Ocean and Earth only what's needed
But I will wither away if attunement to beauty and purpose is denied
A tear from her glittering eyes to my kiss
A sliver of gold uncoiling eternal verve from her breaching lips
Carried from inside her belly to mine
Food for my soul lends me enough strength to dream a return to her shores
By braving these scars as entryway points to much more
I can be sure
Before I drain away
That the Beloved exists
and will always be here
Arise