WELCOME!

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, July 18, 2010

NEW VISION IIa

 Image from www.alexgrey.com

Lifting into higher realms
In color coats I shift the walls
They do and don't exist
In radiant hues they bend and penetrate

A threshold to the spirit world
Somewhere in between
Death and invitation to invent
I and future self embrace in soft diffuse

Impatiently debating pulse
I slow mine completely still
Beyond duality’s confines my second core
Awakens many-into-one spins subtlety

It begins an artist’s instrument of thought, an inner sphere’s incision
Unmasked, made weak from all the astral plasma spills
Something sharp has pierced and in the skewering
Instilled a seed of inspiration—cut away my inhibition’s weighty husk

“I want you to create”
A voice astride each minute particle a story weaves
“Take time to be my maker,”
Whispers each tinted splash of brush-blot sheen

Just then an inner light
Shoots in and out of body
To the terrifying wilds
I’m unafraid to go

A barrage of concepts beyond words
A language from the disarray of paint punched through
Imagination’s rainbow merging birth with arcing mind
Blown free of shape, a smeary tale casts back a look in canvas form

I feel the race of heart tear fascination into fashioning
Seed of thought to cellular existence cycles into matter flowering
Left behind through points of skin abrazed empowering
My substance induced altered state is lost, the unseen part of me is gained

Together we progress to any point
To turn illusion on its pregnant skull
My pool of life reflects the me
Concealed in dreams

Alive or dead or
Somewhere in between
I see: a dawn of worlds sees back
—Infinity

No comments: