Shamanic Experience – Feminism and Religion

Overnight at a Neolithic Dolmen: A Womb Healing Ceremony by Eline Kieft

In preparation for my hysterectomy, I decided to spend a night in a dolmen at Samhain last year, to seek guidance and healing. I chose Dolmen de Bajouilière in Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne, in Northern France, a site I had discovered by chance the previous year on my local explorations.

This well-preserved structure, with its spacious square divided into two rooms, felt inviting and safe for an overnight ritual. Though I am accustomed to spending nights in neolithic monuments, mostly in the UK, I felt some hesitation, partly due to my intermediate French and unfamiliarity with the local spirits.

Nevertheless, I recognized this resistance as part of the ego’s fear of the unknown, and I gave myself permission to retreat if needed. If I would feel too vulnerable, it wouldn’t serve my body and spirit ahead of the surgery. Please join me on my overnight Samhain Ceremony full of deep imagery and transformation as I shed my womb three times…

Desperately Seeking Persephone by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd, Part Two

In Part One of this review (posted yesterday), we learned how Janet descended into the Underworld, like Inanna and Persephone, after child abuse and rape, and how she began a decades-long journey back to our own world, healed and empowered. To learn more about her return from the Underworld and how she became the shaman and author she is today, I invite you to join the journey in Part Two as we continue to explore “Signposts” that marked her ascent.

Signpost #3. Be aware, be free, be focused, be here, be loved, be strong, be healed.

Janet’s teachers at the Mystery School had brought together shamanic traditions from throughout then world. Among them was Huna, or Hawaiian Adventure Shamanism as practiced by Serge Kahili King. A summary of Huna is shown in a mantra: Be aware, be free, be focused, be here, be loved, be strong, be healed (114) and “focus on the gifts that come to us through adversity” (116).

Desperately Seeking Persephone by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd, Part One

The myths of the descents of the Sumerian Inanna and the Greek Persephone to the underworld have fascinated and inspired women for millennia with their violence and betrayal, leaving behind all you love and that hold you up, and facing your deepest fears, even death. We recognize our own traumas in their struggles and seek guidance as to how to navigate our ascents back to wholeness and well being in their stories.

After her own experience of childhood abuse and stranger rape as a young woman, Janet Rudolph, one of FAR’s co-weavers, also pored over the myths in hopes of finding a helpful account of their journey home. “Once I had tumbled metaphorically, literally and mythically into the thorny quagmire of the underworld, it was devilishly hard to escape. I felt lost. I needed a guide, a role model to find my path outward”(xii). The problem is, Janet says, “The stories of their return are glossed over. There is no detailed story called From the Great Below Back to the Great Above” (15). Until now in Janet’s recently re-published book, Desperately Seeking Persephone.

Exploring Dance as Spiritual Practice by Eline Kieft

Nature and dance are my gateways to the mystery, where I can bring my worries, exhaustion, prayers, celebrations and gratitude. These gateways open to places deep within and far beyond my perception and imagination. They create an impromptu sacred space that emerges, flexes, stretches, and nurtures, and always ‘meets’ me regardless of my emotional state.

In this post I reflect on the possibilities of danced spirituality in relation to the overarching theme of Feminism and Religion. How does dance relate to our sense of personal expression, freedom and take on life as gender-aware people, and our experience of spiritual intimacy?

Dance is a versatile practice to move through life in an empowered way and to strengthen our connection with the numinous. I truly believe that everyone can dance, and one of my roles as a ceremonial dance facilitator is to help people re-connect with the dancer inside them.

Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly

“Childbirth is a rite of passage so intense physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, that most other events in a woman’s life pale next to it. In our modern lives, there are few remaining rituals of initiation, few events that challenge a person’s mettle down to the very core. Childbirth remains a primary initiatory rite for a woman.” –Maren Hansen (MotherMysteries)

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read an article with the theme of “Birth as a Shamanic Experience.” I can no longer find the exact article (online or printed), but I distinctly remember my feeling upon reading it: I was entering into a mystery. Giving birth was big. Bigger than anything I’d ever done before and it went beyond the realm of a purely biological process and into something else. Like shamanic experiences, giving birth is often described as involving a sense of connection to the larger forces of the world as well as being in an altered state of consciousness or even a trance state. While shamanic experiences may involve “journeying” to other realms of reality, giving birth requires the most thoroughly embodied rootedness of being that I’ve ever experienced. It, too, is a journey, but it is a journey into one’s own deepest resources and strongest places. The sensation of being in a totally focused, state of trance and on a soul work mission is intense, defining, and pivotal.

Shamanic journeys may be embarked upon for the purpose of soul retrieval and I can’t help but think that this is the purpose of giving birth as well—the birthing woman travels into herself to bring forth the soul of her child. Continue reading “Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly”