Wassailing – Blessing the Apple Tree

January 6th, 2012  -  Mike Williams

Wassailing is an ancient tradition of blessing apple trees at Twelfth Night and asking the spirit of the tree for a bountiful harvest of fruit the following autumn. Some wassailers adhere to the Gregorian calendar and mark Twelfth Night on 6th January (although it strictly begins at dusk on the day before), whereas others adhere to the older Julian calendar and leave their wassails until the 17th January.

Wassail is an Anglo-Saxon word and is thought to mean ‘Be In Good Health’. Whilst there is a tradition of wassailing neighbours with songs and good wishes at yuletide (similar to the modern tradition of carolling), apple trees had to wait until Twelfth Night, a time when the world is turned upside down, the Lord of Misrule reigns for a day, and the spirits draw close, including those of trees.

People who cared for an apple tree – and the tradition is still strong in the cider growing areas of England and the marches of Wales – set out with gifts of hot cakes and cider as an offering to the spirit of the tree. Usually, a cider soaked cake was hoisted high and left in the fork of a branch, with more cider splashed on the earth over the roots. Whereas many people think that tree spirits are called Dryads, this word actually only refers to the spirit of oak trees. The spirits of apple trees are called Epimeliads.

In order to drive away any malignant influence, people might shout or bang pan lids together, and some even fire shotguns into the air. Then, all present sing the wassailing song, asking for a good crop of apples the following autumn. If you want to wassail your own apple tree (or, with amendment to the words, any other sort of fruiting tree) here are some traditional words to use.

Old Apple Tree, we wassail thee
And hoping thou wilt bear,
For the Gods do know where we shall be
‘till the apples come for another year.
For to bear well and to bear well
So merry let us be.

Let everyone here take off their hat
And shout to the old Apple Tree:
“Old Apple Tree, we wassail thee
And hoping thou wilt bear,
Hatfuls, capfuls, three bushel bagfuls
And a little heap under the stairs”.

Wassail! Wassail! Wassail!

Following the formal part of the ritual, the ceremony concludes with sharing cider and cakes among all those present. Traditionally, a single bowl of cider was passed around the company so it became a ‘loving cup’ binding all there in fellowship and community.

It is interesting that in Nordic tradition, the Goddess Idun held the apples of immortality that kept the Gods young and the world cared for. To people of the time, including the Anglo-Saxons who probably began the wassailing tradition, apples may have been more than fruit; they also kept the Gods in the heavens and the world on its course. No wonder such an effort was made to respect the spirits of these trees and to ensure a healthy supply of apples. If you wassail your trees this year, maybe you should also dedicate a little of the crop for Idun and her invaluable store.

But however you celebrate, Wassail and be in good health!

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Nicholas: From Saint to Shaman to Santa

December 23rd, 2011  -  Mike Williams

Everyone knows that Santa Claus hails from Lapland, where he spends the year in his elf-run toy factory, pausing only to feed his red-nosed reindeer Rudolf, before loading his sleigh each Christmas and delivering presents to children around the world. But where did it all start, just who is Santa, and why does he perform this amazing role every Christmas Eve?

Santa, or rather his alter-ego Nicholas, was born around 270 AD, not in Lapland, but on the Mediterranean shores of Turkey in Patara. Nicholas came from a wealthy family but his parents died when he was still young. Fortunately, his uncle was Bishop of the adjacent town of Myra and took in the young Nicholas, raising him for the church.

What we know of Nicholas was only recorded centuries after his death but it appears that he succeeded his uncle as Bishop of Myra at a very young age. Slowly, stories about this boy bishop spread. One time, for instance, when Nicholas was on pilgrimage to Egypt, he worked miracles to stop ships being wrecked upon rocks and even brought a dead sailor back to life. This was not the only time that Nicholas resurrected the dead. He also restored three boys to life after they had been slain by an unscrupulous butcher who intended to sell their remains as ham.

Most famous, however, was the help Nicholas gave to three daughters from an impoverished family. Unable to afford a dowry, the father of the girls could not arrange their marriage and feared they would be forced into prostitution. Nicholas, upon hearing of the girls’ fate, secretly left gold in their house, securing their future betrothal and, hopefully, happiness.

Nicholas was later canonised as St Nicholas and became a favourite of fishermen and travellers on account of him saving the ships and resurrecting sailor. Greece, a nation of fishermen, took him as their Patron Saint and he became enmeshed with the Orthodox Church. During the Crusades, pilgrims and warriors would pray to St Nicholas before making sea crossings and they spread his cult throughout Europe and beyond.

As the Orthodox Church moved into Russia, it took its most prominent saint, Nicholas, with it and he quickly became the Patron Saint of Russia. Not everyone in Russia was Christian, however, and the original inhabitants, the Viking Rus, were from Scandinavia. They had brought their pagan Gods with them and it is possible that they account for the first metamorphosis of St Nicholas.

Until recent times, the tradition for much of northern Europe was for St Nicholas to deliver presents to children on his feast day: December 6th (the day of his death). This tradition likely stems from his gift of dowries to the poor man’s daughters. But why he arrives on a flying grey horse, accompanied by mischievous and capricious black-faced elves, is less easy to explain. Unless, from the traditions of the Viking Rus, St Nicholas took on some of the qualities of the Norse God Odin, who also rides a flying grey horse and is accompanied by black-faced ravens. St Nicholas had become a Nordic saint.

St Nicholas’s next metamorphosis likely occurred in the depths of Russian Siberia as settlers forged their way into the frozen wilderness of the north. Local Siberians followed shamanic traditions and, upon hearing of St Nicholas – who healed, brought souls back from the dead, and bestowed otherworldly goods to his community – readily decided that he was a powerful shaman and assimilated him into their pantheon of spirits. An Evenki individual interviewed in 1913 even claimed St Nicholas was ‘Master of Shamans’.

Such shamans often journey to other realms, carried on the beat of their reindeer skin drums. In fact, many Siberian shamans believe their drum actually is a reindeer, carrying them upwards, through the smoke-hole in the roof, and north to an otherworldly reality. Returning with gifts of knowledge, the shaman comes back via the smoke-hole and tells the wide-eyed community of his or her extraordinary journey. All the while, bells on their costume ring loudly, warning the spirits of their passage. If St Nicholas was a shaman then naturally he did the same.

Shamanic St Nicholas likely merged with Nordic St Nicholas to create the legend of a man who travels from the north, pulled by flying reindeer, with bells on his costume, bringing gifts to children made by his helper elves, all delivered via the smoke-hole, now a chimney. In a nod to the distant past, he even wears his bright red bishop’s cloak.

St Nicholas, in his Dutch homeland in northern Europe, is Sinta Klauss: Santa Claus. The finishing touches were added by American writer Washington Irving in his fictional ‘Father Knickerbocker’s History of New York’ and high-jacked by Coca-Cola whose jovial and slightly-overweight Santa took the Coca-Cola brand, and Santa Claus along with it, worldwide.

Rudolph first appeared in a 1939 booklet written by Robert L. May but it is striking that, in Santa’s home of Lapland, reindeer are fond of munching on the hallucinogenic red-and-white fly agaric mushrooms. The local Sámi, who were also partial to the effects of the drug, likely recognised the feelings of lightness it engendered. And a high-flying reindeer flushed with fly agaric may indeed have had a bright red shiny nose. Santa Claus – one time saint, then shaman, and now beloved of children everywhere – had found his companion.

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Cabeza de Vaca: From Conquistador to Shaman

December 16th, 2011  -  Mike Williams

Cabeza de Vaca was a man of his time. Born in Spain around 1490, he sailed to the New World during his teens. It was not long before he joined an expedition from Cuba to Florida to look for unchartered lands and, God willing, a fortune to plunder. It was a typical Conquistador plan that had already seen the fall of the Mexica (Aztecs) and would later see the collapse of the Inca empire. Cabeza de Vaca thought only of fortune; in fact, he was the expedition treasurer.

Within months of landing, and following a pointless trek through the swamplands of Florida, the men were exhausted and starving. Their ship lost, they decided to construct rafts and make a desperate bid for home. It was a fatal mistake; all bar Cabeza de Vaca and three others would either die in the attempt or would perish shortly afterwards.

Cabeza de Vaca was lucky; his raft washed up on Galveston Island, where the local Indians took him in. To his surprise, the Conquistador received compassion from the people he had set out to rob and kill. After regaining his health, Cabeza de Vaca found that previous experience as a Spanish gentleman left him with nothing he could offer the Indians and he found himself falling lower and lower in their esteem before becoming a virtual slave. After several years of hardship, Cabeza de Vaca and his companions broke free and decided to walk through Texas into northern Mexico before following the country south to reach the Spanish towns. It was an audacious plan.

Putting into practice survival techniques learnt from the Indians, Cabeza de Vaca endured by eating anything he could catch – worms and spiders got him through many days. He also developed genuine sympathy for the Indians he met, learning their language and ways. Slowly, the Spanish Conquistador was changing into something more.

Cabeza de Vaca also witnessed healing performed by local shamans, driving out illness through prayer and cleansing the body with plants. Although Cabeza de Vaca never understood why, people took him to be a shaman himself. Perhaps they thought his pale looks were symbolic of the otherworld or perhaps they acknowledged his profound hardship and suffering. For whatever reason, the Indians brought people to Cabeza de Vaca for healing and he obliged them. He and his companions made the sign of the cross over patients and commended them to God. Their ministrations worked and people reported miraculous healing from the hands of the Spaniards. Cabeza de Vaca was given food and other items in exchange and more people arrived to be healed.

On one occasion, Cabeza de Vaca saw that his patient had already died and so he prayed that God would accept the dead man’s soul, breathing over the body several times before making the sign of the cross. The local people probably recognised this as a form of psychopomping and gave Cabeza de Vaca the dead man’s belongings in token of gratitude.

Although Cabeza de Vaca had developed deep sympathy with the Indians and had forged a recognised position in their society, his aim was always to return to his own people and, eventually, he did just that. First reaching Mexico City, he then sailed for Spain, a full ten years after beginning his extraordinary journey.

Cabeza de Vaca did not forget his experiences upon his return and he wrote a book about his journey, still in print today and entitled “The Shipwrecked Men”. Unlike his contemporaries, compassion and respect tempered his attitude towards the Indians. When he became Governor of a region of Argentina, his benevolent attitude towards the native people interfered with the nobles’ desire to enslave them on plantations. Cabeza de Vaca might have been ahead of his time but, with the lack of support from his nobles, his governorship was to be short and he eventually died, ruined and in poverty back in Spain.

The journey Cabeza de Vaca made on foot, although impressive, pales in comparison to the journey he made in his heart. From Conquistador to Shaman, Cabeza de Vaca found his humanity and compassion in the desert. If only there had been more in his mould.

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Dancing with Crocodiles: Spirits and Masks Torres Strait Islands

December 2nd, 2011  -  Mike Williams

Until last week, the Natural History Museum in London had a collection of human bones, gathered as souvenirs and curios by 19th century travellers to the Torres Strait Islands, a chain of small islands running between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. Despite initial resistance, the Museum finally returned the bones to representatives of the Islanders, who had long campaigned for their ancestral remains – taken with no thought to the desecration inflicted upon traditional beliefs – to be returned. After an hour-long ceremony to commune with the dead spirits, the bones were on their way home.

I thought of these bones when I viewed a crocodile dance mask from the same islands at the British Museum (shown in the photograph above). Unlike the bones, the mask was legitimately presented to a 19th century collector by its maker, a local Chief called Maino, and there is no pressure for its return.

The mask is a compelling object, formed from local wongai wood, but brought alive with turtle-shell inlay, cassowary feathers, hanging charms, and, most impressive of all, teeth formed from the blades of metal saws. It is undeniably beautiful, slightly sinister, and deeply moving.

It was not until the mid-19th century that Torres Strait Islanders had access to such an array of materials. A turbulent period overseen by Maino’s father – a revered warrior and leader – opened up the island to contact and trade. This new openness eventually brought a British scientist to Maino’s shores: Professor Alfred Cort Haddon. From his copious records, it appears Haddon got on splendidly with Maino and this enabled the scientist to study and record many aspects of Torres Strait tradition that might have otherwise been closed to an outsider. One of the most cherished traditions was a spirit dance and, after persuasion, Maino agreed to put on a dance for his British friend.

From Haddon’s notes, it appears that a spirit dance was a means for the community to contact deceased ancestors. Often part of a mortuary ritual, the dance took place at a special ceremonial ground called a ‘kod’. Dancers, known as ‘markai’, impersonated dead ancestors so accurately that people in the crowd immediately recognised who it was being portrayed. Although Haddon does not mention possession, it is possible that the dance was a means of drawing down ancestral spirits and embodying them within the form of the dancers. The accompanying drums and dizzying rhythm would have been more than enough to initiate trance states if this was what the dancers intended.

An important part of the dance was for the totem animal of each family to appear and, in Maino’s case, this was a crocodile. His role was to dance the creature and bring its spirit to the performance.

The crocodile mask fitted over the wearer’s head completely and was held in place by biting on a horizontal bar. Teeth marks show where Maino did this, possibly even during the dance witnessed by Haddon. To see his surroundings, Maino would have looked out of the crocodile’s jaw, perhaps giving him a different view of reality and of the ancestral spirits descending into other dancers.

After the performance, Haddon asked to purchase the mask and other dance regalia, including Maino’s drum. On his return to Britain, Haddon donated the objects to the British Museum where they now housed. Maino got fair trade in return and there is even a record of Haddon giving calico and tobacco to Maino’s mother-in-law as part of the payment. In Torres Strait society, this was considered a smart move.

In letting Haddon collect the objects and record the ceremonies, Maino thought that he was preserving a record for the future. His faith in this regard was visionary. Haddon’s collection – including all his notebooks – are still consulted by Torres Strait Islanders to learn about their culture and traditions and to serve as inspiration for modern craftspeople. As for Haddon, he was eventually adopted into Maino’s family and, wherever he travelled in the South Seas, he would always introduce himself as ‘Haddon, a crocodile man’.

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Ötzi the Iceman

September 19th, 2011  -  Mike Williams

Erika and Helmut Simon usually liked to complete their mountain excursions in a single day; they were experienced climbers and knew what they could comfortably manage. On Wednesday 18th September 1991, therefore, they knew that by getting held up whilst crossing a glacier, and then still pressing on to climb the peak that was their aim for the day, they would have to spend the night on the hill. That was no problem as there was a refuge nearby. The next morning dawned bright and, like any other climbers, Erikaand Helmut found the conditions irresistible and decided to bag another peak. It was on their return to pick up their rucksacks from the hut that it happened. Erika saw it first: a brown smudge in the snow, which, as they came closer, took the form of a man. For mountaineers, death is always a possibility, so the find, gruesome as it was, did not unduly surprise them and they tried to prise the remains out of the ice with their axes. What they had no way of knowing is that the body, christened Ötzi for the region in which he was found, had been dead for 5,300 years. He was the oldest frozen mummy ever known.

Dressed for travelling, Ötzi wore leather trousers, a deerskin coat, and a cape fashioned from woven grass. His shoes were finely made with bearskin soles and stuffed with grass as a precaution against the cold. His cap was pieced together from odd bits of fur but it would have been warm. He also carried a backback, an unfinished bow and arrows, some tools including a fire-lighting kit, and a copper axe. He was, perhaps, as much as 45 years old when he died, a grand age for a man at this time. What he was doing so high in the mountains remains a mystery but the circumstances surrounding his death are slowly being pieced together by an international team of experts; bringing to life the sorry tale of a time almost five millennia ago.

Ötzi came from the southern side of the Alps and was born and raised in the folded valleys of the foothills. He probably left a settlement in the Val Venosta, in Italy, on that fateful morning of his flight into the mountains. We can be reasonably certain about this as the microscopic bits of stone in his gut, originating from the stone tools used to prepare his food, leave a geological signature that can be precisely located. He was dressed for the hills and carried much of what he would have needed to make an extended stay comfortable, that is, provided he did not venture too high. Ötzi also carried something valuable and new: copper. A copper axe may have marked him out as a wealthy man and, perhaps, even a leader that others followed. If so, then his reign as leader was shortly to come to a dramatic end.

Ötzi was not in the best of health; his backpack contained medicine and modern analysis of his body shows signs of frailty. Maybe others saw this as a chance to seize power. Discontent was clearly festering as Ötzi had suffered a cut to his hand just a day or so before he died. The few nicks on the edge of his axe-blade may have been as a result of this altercation although we shall never know whether he was using it as a weapon or as a symbol for his diminishing status. It seems likely that similar threats forced him to make that fateful journey into the mountains. Pollen layers in his gut show that he travelled through the low altitude hornbeam trees, moved up to a stand of high altitude pines, before doubling back and visiting the hornbeams again. Perhaps he was trying to elude his pursuers. It did not work. Eventually, and probably through sheer desperation, he followed a pass up into the mountains where an arrow, expertly aimed so that it cut an artery, caused him to bleed to death. Before he died, his assailant removed the arrow, perhaps to mask the tell-tale mark of his or her identity. To make sure Ötzi was truly dead, his assailant also struck him on the head. An ignominious end for an old man. Whoever killed him, and there may have been more than one involved, left Ötzi’s belongings, including his axe, where they lay. Again, this may have been a precaution to avoid later detection but perhaps the items were just too special and too closely bound to Ötzi that their removal could not be countenanced. Enough harm had been done that day. With the last of his strength, Ötzi seems to have reached out for his axe – even today, his arm remains stretched across his body – but it was not to be. Whether he realised the sacred object was still close by or not, it could do little for him and he died alone, frozen in time.

In a bizarre twist, Simon Helmut, the man who jointly found Ötzi on 19th September twenty years ago, shared the same fate as his sensational discovery. In October 2004, his dead body was recovered from the ice where it had been trapped, just like Ötzi’s had, so many years before.

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Huichol Wolf Shamanism

September 9th, 2011  -  Mike Williams

The Huichol people live in the Sierra Madre Occidental range in Mexico and many will know them for their annual pilgrimage to Wirikuta, a sacred desert where the first ancestors emerged. The purpose of the pilgrimage is to gather peyote cactus. Walking, or, more recently, riding on buses, pilgrims stop at numerous sacred places in order to prepare themselves for entering Wirikuta. Novices have their eyes covered and everyone must undergo confession and purification to rid themselves of their sins. Wirikuta is a sacred place, as this was where Elder Brother Deer, Kauyumári, once walked, enabling peyote cactus to grow wherever he trod. People do not gather peyote but hunt it, shooting arrows into the ground before giving thanks for Kauyumári’s sacrifice. The people then eat the small buttons of peyote in shamanic rituals, the psychoactive effects of the plant allowing them to break free from this world and access the realm of the gods. The Huichol believe that all wisdom originates from peyote.

There is another form of Huichol shamanism, however, that is far less well known and centres on people’s reverence for wolves.

The Huichol believe that, in the beginning, all humans were part wolf. These creatures lived in dark caves and had never learned how to hunt.  One day, feeling compassion for their plight, Kauyumári allowed Father Wolf to hunt him. After a long chase, Father Wolf caught the deer, who promptly turned into peyote cactus. All the wolves gathered to eat the peyote and, in so doing, they gained great wisdom. They left their dark haunts and came out into the light. Father Sun then gave the wolves a choice: they could either transform into full humans or remain as wolves. Most, including Father Wolf, chose to transform into humans.

Father Wolf, now a human, made a shrine to the remaining wolves, ensuring that people would always be able to communicate with their kind. This gave rise to the Huichol tradition of wolf shamanism.

Initiation into wolf shamanism takes five to ten years during which time the initiate must visit several wolf shrines and make offerings according to strict ceremonial procedure. The wolf shrines are colour coded and the initiate works up through the ranks until he (wolf shamanism appears to be open only to males) works with blue, grey, or multi-coloured wolves.

Towards the end of his apprenticeship, the initiate meets real wolves, who take him to their lair and begin to teach him how to shapeshift. The wolves introduce the initiate to the wolf-kiéri plant (Solandra guttata is its Latin name, a form of datura), which induces visions similar to peyote. This may account for the final part of the apprenticeship.

At the full moon, the initiate goes to a place shown to him by the wolves and performs five somersaults. Each acrobatic move effects a transformation from human to wolf until, by the fifth, the initiate has shapeshifted into a wolf. He will now remain in this form for five days and five nights, joining his wolf friends as they live and hunt together in the vicinity. After this time, the initiate returns to human form but retains his shapeshifting power. Indeed, one Huichol individual recounts that his grandfather had shapeshifted into a wolf regularly and, as a child, he heard the pack howling outside the house.

Wolf shamanism remains a hidden and little studied aspect of Huichol tradition but, if anyone wants to research it further, I have provided the main reference for the practice below. And, if you should ever feel inspired to perform five somersaults at the full moon…

Valdez, Susana Eger. 1996. Wolf power and interspecies communication in Huichol shamanism. In Schaefer, Stacy and Peter Furst (eds.). People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion and Survival. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press: 267-305.

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Baskets and Belonging: Aboriginal Australian Cosmology

August 12th, 2011  -  Mike Williams

There is a wonderful exhibition at the British Museum this summer about Aboriginal basket making in Australia. Truth is, I almost didn’t bother with it as, pushed for time, I couldn’t see how baskets could possibly be that interesting. How wrong I was. The exhibition is a gem and had themes that immediately resonated with the circularity of death and rebirth, revealing much about the Aboriginal view of the world.

Basket making is an ancient activity in Australia. Rock art from 20,000 years ago shows people using baskets that their descendants still made until very recently.

It is usually, although not exclusively, women who create the baskets. Using traditional techniques and long established patterns, they form each basket by plaiting fibres collected from the bush around them. This entails an intimate knowledge of not just the environment but also the best times for collecting, whether it is during the dry season or after heavy rains. It connects people to their land.

Although people birth the baskets and give them life, some have even stronger links with parturition and long thin baskets, often with a tell-tale protuberance at their base, contain dried umbilical cords from a baby’s birth.

These, and other baskets, often have decoration on their sides, mostly geometric shapes or stripes. People leave the rear undecorated, however, so that the paint will not rub off as the baskets hang against the back. The pigments are all earth based and are the same as those used in rock art, linking the two medium together. Both the colour and designs transmit tribal identity and ancestral knowledge of the region. People can read a basket and know about the life of its owner. Baskets become symbols of belonging and carrying a basket is akin to carrying the land.

Some baskets go deeper still and some, woven from fibre and wool pulled from the blankets European missionaries once doled out, hold pituri, a nicotine based hallucinogen that is chewed by senior men. These baskets are small, brightly coloured, and shaped like a well-stuffed banana. The exhibition, uniquely, has several bags still containing their original pituri leaves.

Upon death, people carry provisions to the funeral in baskets. Usually people use these same baskets for hunting or carrying food and they are plain and undecorated. When people take them to funerals, however, they paint each basket, adapting designs used to decorate bodies for ceremonies. It is as if the baskets become surrogates for the deceased and, after the funeral, people hang them upside-down on the top of the poles that mark the mortuary ground. The baskets become a memorial that will slowly disintegrate over time. Occasionally, people will retain some bones from the dead and, inevitably, they store these in baskets.

Basket making is undergoing a renaissance among Aboriginal people, partly due to the introduction of coiling. Due to the restrictions on innovation among traditional basket weaving, this new style allows people to experiment and try new things. Some waste products have been given new life through basket making with plastic strapping tape making colourful and hardwearing baskets. The traditional styles usually last only three years with constant use. Finally, there are those who gather damaged fishing nets washed up on the coast. Known locally as ghost nets, the fibre makes colourful and strong baskets, adding another facet to the history of the region and people’s relationship with the land they inhabit.

The exhibition at the British Museum runs until 11 September and is free to enter. Spend a while absorbing the power of these beautiful objects and let these words of Verna Nichols, an Aboriginal basket maker from Tasmania, roll around your mind. “The baskets are not empty. They are full of makers, their stories, their thoughts while making. The baskets are never empty.”

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Dark Shamanism: Embracing the Shadow

July 8th, 2011  -  Mike Williams

I once visited a place in Siberia that local people considered so evil that I needed to purify beforehand, bathing in sacred waters and staying the preceding night close to a mountain sacred to Buddhist tradition. To me, the rock plateau that my guides took me to was beautiful, with views far across the Mongolian steppe, but it was not a place to linger. At the base of the rock lay 36 black shamans, killed whilst in trance by a Buddhist monk and buried there for their spirits to fester malevolence for all time. That salutary visit made me realise that not everything about shamanism was either positive or pleasant.

Many traditional shamans can curse as well as cure. For them, illness and bad fortune is often a direct result of dark shamans inflicting malignant energy upon an individual, usually via spirit arrows they send whilst in trance. Extracting these arrows from a patient requires the shaman to understand and have a working knowledge of how they are formed and sent. After extraction, many shamans have no hesitation in sending them back to the dark shaman; cursing the malefactor as he or she curses others.

In a similar manner, I have no hesitation in defending myself, sometimes verbally, sometimes legally, but often spiritually, putting up barriers against harm and baleful influence. But it has never crossed my mind to curse anyone or send malevolent energy their way. The practicalities of doing so would not be hard – if I can extract negative energy from an individual then I can certainly insert the same – but it just feels wrong. I am sure traditional shamans would just shake their heads and say that I am too soft and my shamanic practice too sanitised by Western views of what is right and what is wrong. Maybe they are right.

Some shamans go further still and we are probably all familiar with the historical Jivaro (now called Shuar) from the Amazon and their practice of capturing heads of enemies. They shrink the heads in order to trap the soul of the person and prevent it from gaining revenge from the otherworld. To the Jivaro, this was not a bad or evil practice but just common sense when feuds between communities could rapidly turn into violent and prolonged confrontation.

Other Amazonian shamans seek more than heads from the slain and will stalk and capture victims who they ritually, and extremely sadistically, torture to death. The precise details are enough to give any seasoned anthropologist nightmares. The shamans then bury the body. When it begins to putrefy several days later – the heat of the Amazon speeding the process – they go back to taste the flesh. If it is sweet like a rotting pineapple, they will take body parts from the corpse and use them as power objects. Whilst many of us might have power objects that we use in our practice, very few would be prepared to go to such hideous lengths to obtain them.

At a significantly lower level of ghastliness, but still unsettling to Western minds, blood sacrifice is extremely common in tribal societies and is often connected with shamanic ritual. In North America, supplicants may offer their own flesh to the spirits and in the Yuwipi ceremony, this may leave people bleeding profusely where they cut flesh from their arms to wrap in cloth as offerings. Similarly, whilst dancing the Sun Dance, people pierce their flesh with hooks connected to the sacred tree at the centre of the dance and rip them out as the climax to the ceremony. Elsewhere, people offer animal sacrifice to the spirits and I have attended rituals in traditional communities where people have slaughtered and burnt sheep for their ancestors. Inca shamans use guinea pigs to diagnose and heal illness, rubbing the patient with the animal until the malignant spirit leaves its host and attaches to the guinea pig. After that, killing the animal prevents the spirit doing further harm. Clearly, this attitude towards sacrifice is not shared in the West, where self-harm is considered a mental disturbance and animal protection laws prevent any form of animal sacrifice.

There is a huge divergence between our Western practice of shamanism and the darker ways of traditional shamans from tribal societies. Does this weaken our practice, leaving it overly sanitised and removing us from the bloody, violent, and occasionally death-ridden origins of our path? Indeed, would there be a demand for weekend workshops on how to curse, how to trap souls of the dying, or even how to procure power objects from the decaying copses of the dead? Possibly not. But these are all parts of shamanism that we ignore at our peril. The world is not always as benign as we might like it to be and knowing how to attack is, if nothing else, useful for defence. As traditional shamans might tell us, if we do not know how to curse, then how can we know how to cure? Maybe we need to look again at dark shamanism and not only embrace our own shadow but that of our tradition too. But remember, in the immortal words of Sergeant Esterhaus: Let’s be careful out there.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Fairy Folk in Wales

June 24th, 2011  -  Mike Williams

Today is International Fairy Day and, whilst the fairies might not realise the significance, June 24th is Midsummer’s Night, when Shakespeare told us that Puck, Titania, and Queen Mab crossed the boundary and visited our world.

Shakespeare may have taken his inspiration for Puck from the Welsh Pwca, one of the fairy beings found in my home county of Breconshire. In fact, there is local tradition that Shakespeare visited the county town of Brecon and gained his knowledge of the Welsh Fair Folk (or Tylwyth Teg in Welsh) from his friend Richard Price, who lived in Brecon priory. Cwm Pwca, a magical valley nearby, may have been the inspiration for not only Puck but also the magical dreamworld in which Shakespeare’s play is set.

Pwca, in his less romanticised form, was not so benign. When a servant girl from Abergwyddon, who used to leave out milk and bread for the spirit, decided one night to consume everything herself, leaving only dregs and crusts for Pwca, he took a terrible revenge. Dragging the girl with fleshy but otherwise invisible hands, the records of 1875 describe her torment as ‘mortifying’ without adding any further details.

Pwca is one of the Ellyllon, or elves, who tend to haunt groves and valleys and, as well as bread and milk, feast on ‘poisonous’ mushrooms, probably the hallucinogenic fly agaric, and foxgloves. In fact, consuming fly agaric may have allowed some mortals to peer into the realm of the Ellyllon and see the spirits for themselves. This happened on a Glamorganshire farm where the Ellyllon took pity on a poor farmer and undertook all the work that needed doing about the place whilst he was tucked up in bed. Their only stipulation was that nobody must ever watch them doing it. One night, the farmer’s wife caught sight of the ellyllon and, caught up in their antics, laughed aloud. The Ellyllon promptly vanished, never to be seen again.

Much of south Wales is bound up with mining and these underground caverns have their own Tylwyth Teg called Coblynau. Grotesque to look at, these small dwarves are generally good natured towards the miners, unless anyone speaks ill of them that is. The Coblynau often work just out of sight of the miners, tapping their own veins of mineral. The tap-tap of their hammers gives the Coblynau their English name of Knockers. There is a record from 1813 of William Evan crossing the Brecon Mountain early one morning and observing the Coblynau busy at their work. Most miners consider their presence a good omen since they indicate the presence of good veins to work and will do nothing to disturb the dwarves’ industrious work. A more ominous menace in the mines is fire-damp – methane gas – which regularly caused explosions; events the early miners put down to the presence of malevolent basilisks or dragons.

Like the useful Ellyllon, helping the poor farmer from Glamorgan, the Bwbach is a good-natured goblin who assists Welsh maids in their chores. If a maid is tidy and leaves a basin of cream next to a filled churn of buttermilk, the Bwbach will drink the cream during the night and then churn the butter, saving the grateful maid hours of work the next morning. The Bwbach is not altogether benign, however, and takes particular exception towards those who favour prayers over jugs of ale. One Bwbach from Cardiganshire drove out a preacher from the village after hounding him with supernatural pranks. The Bwbach was both a household fairy but also a terrifying phantom. In some cases, it could even spirit away the recalcitrant or even the plain unlucky.

The Ellylldan is more dangerous still and, like the English Will-o’-Wisp, this hideous creature lured unwary travellers towards treacherous bogs with its supernatural light (‘dan’ in Welsh means fire). Whereas the Ellylldan dances across the marshy swamp, the poor victim flounders behind and eventually drowns. In 1839, Iola the Bard had a lucky escape when the Ellylldan he was following left to join a dance with his fellows, leaving a terrified Iola to escape his terrible ordeal.

No escape is possible for poor babies who the Tylwyth Teg spirit away, leaving a goblin child in their place. Often, the interloper will resemble the original child at first, but its malevolence and repugnant looks develop over time. People could only rid themselves of the goblin child by putting it into a hot oven, holding it over a fire, or bathing it in the plant of the Ellyllon, the foxglove. The goblin child will then vanish and the human child will return in its place. Another sure method was to place an entire meal in an eggshell or, similarly, to brew beer in an eggshell. Apparently, the shock of such a sight is enough to cause any goblin child to flee.

Despite their respectful name – Tylwyth Teg or the Fair Folk – Welsh fairies can be indifferent, annoying, or even malevolent to any humans they meet. But people always speak of them in elevated terms as, to name them otherwise, is to incur their wrath. Even today, it is best to be cautious, especially when wandering the Welsh countryside at night. After all, you can never be entirely sure that the light in the distance is not an Ellylldan come to lead you to your doom.

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The Double-Slit Experiment: The World Really Is How You Dream It

June 3rd, 2011  -  Mike Williams

One of my favourite experiments from the world of quantum science is the double-slit experiment and, amazingly, it seems to confirm what shamans have been telling us for years: that reality really is what we make it.


Firstly, the experiment. Imagine a photographic plate that records when light touches it. A short way in front of this is a board with two vertical slits cut into it. A short way in front of that is a light source. When the light shines through the two slits, the pattern it makes on the photographic plate will comprise several vertical lines of light with darker patches in between. This is because light travels as a wave and, as it passes through the two slits, it is broken up before meeting again on the other side. This is rather like two ripples meeting on a pond. Where the converging waves form a peak, it registers as a light patch on the photographic plate and where the waves form a trough, it registers as a dark patch. So the effect of shining light through two slits is to cause a striped effect on the photographic plate.


Now things get odd. By using a machine capable of shooting only a single photon of light – the smallest unit of light there is; think of it like a bullet – and using it to fire many discrete photons over time, we would expect the photographic plate to register two vertical lines of light. This is because each separate photon can only pass through one single slit before hitting the photographic plate. Over time, some photons will go through both slits and two lines should form on the photographic plate. But that’s not what happens. Instead, the pattern recorded by the photographic plate is the same as when waves of light passed through the slits. That, realised the researchers, is impossible.


Somehow, the single photon of light divides before passing through the slits, making itself into a wave. Except that photons can’t physically divide in this way. Something else is happening. Scientists decided to investigate further and put small sensors just before the slits, trying to find out what happened to the photon. Remarkably, the result was now totally different and the photographic plate registered two lines of light as expected; the photons when observed behaved like normal photons. The implications of this are profound.


To sum up: photons of light act like a wave (which is impossible), unless we try to watch them do it, when they act like normal photons. Again and again the researchers got the same results. And there was no cheating; the photons always knew they were being watched. So what exactly is happening?


Now things get really odd. We know that the photon, in acting like a wave, cannot divide and so it must therefore replicate itself and, effectively, be in two places at once. This turns the photon into a wave. But not if we’re looking at it, in which case the photon can be in only one place and acts like a normal photon. It seems that we can determine whether and where something exists merely through observing it. As Einstein said: how do we even know that the moon exists unless we are looking at it? You can see why this is starting to look a little shamanic; we can determine where the photon exists and the outcome of the experiment purely through our intention: whether we observe it or not. That’s what shamans would tell us: our intention determines the outcome. But there’s more.


Some scientists do not believe that the photon replicates itself when it acts like a wave but that the entire universe replicates itself and there become many slits that a single photon can pass through, leaving the tell-tale wave pattern on the photographic plate beyond. So this experiment – providing we don’t directly observe it happening – shows a continuing process whereby the universe – our reality – consistently and continuously replicates itself into an almost infinite number of possibilities. The double-slit experiment just catches it at it.


That means that every time there is a change in our world (and there must be a finite number of changes but it’s a pretty gargantuan number) the universe replicates and the future will be different in each. But can we determine how it replicates and, in effect, which future we chose to experience? Shamans would say, yes, we can, and this is what they have been telling us for years. We can make our own destiny through our intention or, to use a phrase from the Shuar of South America: the world is how we dream it. Scientifically speaking, what this actually means is deciding which version of the universe you want to move into as it replicates and which you want to leave behind. Despite the double-slit experiment, scientists would be cautious and pronounce this impossible. But is it?


When you decided to read this blog, another you – now in a different universe – decided not to and is now doing something else (maybe that was a sensible move). Over your lifetime, there must be zillions of universes with you living different lives in each. If we return to the example of the photon of light, what is most important is that you didn’t replicate into two on each occasion but that the universe did. That means that you are the same in every single universe where you exist. But where does this leave your consciousness, the bit of you that looks around and believes that what you see is the only reality that exists? Where does that reside?


Perhaps we have only one consciousness but with many parallel lives. The immediate reality around us now swamps our senses until we believe that this is all there is. Maybe that happens in every life we are living. But if we use techniques that expand our usual consciousness – just as shamans do – then maybe we can connect to our other lives and access an almost limitless wellspring of information and knowledge. This may be why some people can predict the future, why some people can remember past lives, why some are telepathic, and others (such as shamans) seem to have access to information they could not possibly know under everyday circumstances. There is no trick; they are merely accessing information from the almost infinite lives they are living in different universes.


We must be careful not to run away with the science (and I am the first to admit that I am fond of doing so) but, as the scientists studying the nature of reality consider stranger and stranger possibilities, perhaps it is time to ask those other masters of reality: the shamans, who may just quietly nod and say, yes, we knew it all along.

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