Issue 30 Indie £2.50 ISSN 2050-568X (Online) Shamanfor independent spirits A Buryat Shanar Revealing Shamanic The Green Initiation Man Hallucination: River A Shamanic Way Stewardship: of Seeing Working for people, working for nature Greeting the Cailleach. The indigenous Shamans of Britain www.indieshaman.co.uk Indie Shaman Environmental and Accessibility WEBSITE www.indieshaman.co.uk OFFICE 18 Bradwell Grove Danesmoor Chesterfield Derbyshire S45 9TA EDITOR June Kent Indie Shaman is committed to minimize the effects of its activities on the environment. Indie Shaman Magazine CONTACT is printed by Minuteman Press, Bristol, whose products [email protected] are Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) www.fsc.org 01246 251768 certificated and meet the requirements of the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC) Chain of Custody wwwpefc.org. All articles and images are © Indie Shaman 2009-2016 or to the artist, photographer, writer where named Indie Shaman is committed to aiming towards equality of unless otherwise stated. All rights accessibility. For this reason this magazine uses a book reserved. rather than traditional magazine layout, with clear print size and spacing. The views expressed in the articles and advertisements in the Indie We carried out research with the help of our subscribers Shaman Magazine are those of the to make sure we are providing the service you want and authors and are not necessarily those we value your feedback. If you have any comments or of the editor/Indie Shaman. questions on any of the above please contact us: The editor/Indie Shaman takes no by email to: [email protected] responsibility for errors, omissions or the consequences thereof and or or by post to: for any actions taken in relation to June Kent, Indie Shaman, any article herein or for any contract 18 Bradwell Grove, Danesmoor entered into with any third party. Chesterfield, Derbyshire, S45 9TA 7 Cover Features: 15 A Buryat Shanar 9 Shamanic Initiation Greeting the Revealing The Cailleach Green Man 13 17 River Hallucination: A Stewardship: Shamanic Way of Seeing Working for people, working 2 for nature Contents Contributors Features Articles 5 Greeting the Cailleach Danu Forest Eoghan Odinsson 9 A Buryat Shanar Shamanic John Tarrow Initiation Kevin Turner Mark Olly 13 Hallucination: A Shamanic Way of Rochelle Kent-Ellis Seeing Robert Owings 15 Revealing The Green Man Artwork Dan Goodfellow: ‘Goddess Cailleach’ Front 17 River Stewardship: Working for Cover; ‘Cailleach Breath’ p 7. people, working for nature http://www.dangoodfellow.co.uk/ 21 Northern Plantlore: Elder Pauline Marshall: ‘Green Man’ p 15 27 The Secret Lies Within; Talliston Columnists Brenda El-Leithy 30 The Raven’s Tale Yvonne Ryves Poetry and photography(Back cover) Regulars & Snippets Chris Roe 4 Community News Additional Photography Jem Burrows, Nightscape Photography: 34 Community Spirit: Oak Spirit ‘Branwen’ p 30. Photo editor: Simon Harding 36 The Spirit of Shamanism Reviewers 38 Shaman Moon June Kent Wendy Stokes 39 Shay Mann ‘Shay Mann’ 40 Book Reviews Simon Harding 44 Events Calendar Storyteller Martin Pallot Editorial and Production Editor, Design & Production - June Kent Not yet a subscriber? Proofreading - Moonmad Antlerman Printing - Minuteman Press, Bristol Magazine subscriptions are available at www. Distribution - www.indieshaman.co.uk indieshaman.co.uk. Only £10.00 a year for pdf subscriptions via email and from £20.72 a year (UK subscription price) for print editions. www.indieshaman.co.uk Subscription includes other benefits and offers www.facebook.com/IndieShaman plus 50p from all subscriptions go to support https://twitter.com/JuneKent wildlife charities! 3 Community News NEWS Editor’s Letter Welcome to Issue 30 of Indie Shaman magazine. New Facebook Discussion Group! This edition brings two new features: our new Indie Shaman has a new Facebook discussion Community Spirit section in the magazine and group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ shamanic stories. indieshaman/ I was contemplating how it may be a nice idea to It was suggested that Indie Shaman have a include a regular article celebrating community discussion group on Facebook providing a space spirit and those that put this into action when, where people can discuss shamanism and share synchronicity working as it does, I heard information in a safe and supportive environment. about Oak Spirit. So the first article is about a Like our original website discussion board, the community coming together to celebrate and Facebook group is open to everyone who would support practitioners in Derbyshire. Which also like to join but is a closed group meaning posts seemed very timely and appropriate as Indie can only be seen by group members. So if you Shaman is now registered as ‘Made in Derbyshire’! are on Facebook please do join us! And do please tell anyone else who you feel would benefit or be I’d like to thank Martin Pallot, who I hope is interested in joining. sitting comfortably, having agreed to be our new ‘resident’ storyteller. The previous magazine Proud to be Made In Derbyshire! issue featured one of Martin’s tales which went down wonderfully well, so please do sit around the fireside for future issues as Martin continues to enthrall with his shamanic storytelling and the Raven’s Tale on page 30 of this issue. In addition a big thank you to Branwen, courtesy of Wendy Winstanley and Ravenswell, for allowing her photo to be used for ‘the Raven’. Many thanks also to Dan Goodfellow for allowing me to use his amazing artwork ‘the Cailleach’ for the front cover of this issue. Wonderfully appropriate for the season. As is our first article ‘Greeting the Cailleach’ by Danu Forest’. Enjoy! Samhain blessings June Indie Shaman magazine is now registered with ‘Made in Derbyshire’, a partnership of public, private, voluntary and community organisations working together to promote and improve the cultural life of the county. For more information visit http://www.madeinderbyshire.org/ 4 Greeting the Cailleach Danu Forest Artwork: Dan Goodfellow 5 In the endless cycles of life and death, winter and summer, dark and light, there is a constant...that the wheel will always turn. To the Celts all life started with darkness, with the cold season at Samhain, now celebrated on October 31st or the full moon nearest to it. This acknowledged a secret; that within the dark winter nights, beneath the frozen soil, new life stirs. It needs that time within the land, within the body, to grow strong. It develops, quietly burrowing through the darkness before the dawn of its journey. Roots and seeds nestle into the cold earth; sleeping badgers and hedgehogs, foxes, rabbits, and once even bears, pregnant with possibility, slept beneath the British hills. And to this day ewes’ bellies swell in preparation to birth lambs in the cold February still months ahead. So as the year tips into the dark cauldron of winter, the soul sets forth into the underworld - seeking transformation, seeking birth and rebirth - into the darkness, into the barrow mounds of our ancestors, into the cave, into the womb, into the soil...trusting that truly there will always be life and light ahead. But who guides and befriends the weary traveller through the dark? The indigenous Shamans of this land have gone by many names: the cunning men and wisewomen; the awenyddion; the gelta; the fili and druids. And they are but a few. But they always knew if they reached out, called in their allies, She would take their hand on the long road. She appears in dreams and visions, on the edge of sight, and stares you in the eye when you come face to face with your fears and your power. She is as old as the hollow hills, palms tough, rough and dirt caked, smelling of moss, dark water and barrow mound dirt. The wise old woman, the Cailleach, knows the way through the winter, through the soul’s dark night, and will tend you if you let her - as gently as she’d hold a new born babe or washed the body of our ancestors long ago, holding them softly in her strong and ancient hands, anointing their bones with ochre by firelight and shadow. Each year, on the wild remote hills of Perthshire in the Scottish highlands, the Ancient One is remembered in a simple shrine that has continued in use well back into folk memory. Tigh na Cailleach, hidden in the remote Glen Lyon, is a small turf roofed ‘house’ which shelters a collection of ancient river worn stones. These are known as the Cailleach and her family. Their shapes rounded and shaped long ago, several of them are reminiscent of Ice Age and Neolithic goddess figurines, featureless but powerfully evocative; the old woman and her family, the bodach (the old man), the nighean (the daughter, the lass) and other ‘children’. Each Beltane (May 1st) a local resident takes the family out of the shelter, placing them on the grass outside to oversee the flocks and the wellbeing of the land and each October at Samhain (Oct 31st) they are placed back inside, in an ancient continuous practice that’s been going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and is easily the oldest working pagan shrine in the British Isles. There are many, many places across Britain and Ireland named after or dedicated to the Cailleach. Cailleach means old veiled or hooded one and later it was taken to mean hag or witch - someone who lives at the edge of things, a woman of power, feared and needed in equal measure. The last sheaf of corn at the harvest was also known as the Cailleach, harking back to a time when the cycles of life were more consciously honoured than they are today.