Green Man Musings

I first got interested in the Green Man about five years ago when I spontaneously dressed up as the Green Man for a Halloween party. Halloween parties are a big deal around here and I painted all my visible skin a Lincoln green, made a robe out of a old green blanket, and wreathed my face and hands with faux ivy strands. It was a good costume as I'm rather tall and large and the wildness was around. It was an evocation of some kind, I now suppose. Or a premonition of what was to come. It is hard to sort past and future and now out when you start getting into Green Man space.

Around the same time I was just starting to keep a dream journal and working with dream contents using some visualization techniques in kind of a Jungian or shamanic way. I had wondered at my choice of costume and later found a reference to the Green Man in a book on imaginal journeys. The gist of it was that Green Man symbols commonly arise when one starts to delve deeper into the unconscious--the Green Man is at the threshold and is maybe something like a gatekeeper. This remark caught my attention as some of my dreams and imaging would bring forth non-human people with stag horns and other woody or nature attributes. I love digging into the symbols and images that arise in this kind of work and so I started some research into the Green Man.

And here I am years later and I must say that I can't give much of a scholar's account of the topic, but my love of it and the mystery of the subject has only deepened. My current reading has been into alchemical symbols and I was delighted, but not shocked, to see my old friend appearing in different guises there. The Green Man seems to be a figure that spans opposites. Human/non-human, plant/animal, living/dead, and so on. I think there's an Osiris thing going on there, too. I still have a vivid memory of doing a meditation on Osiris dead but alive, it is a very weird kind of thing to contemplate and unlike the normal pattern of thought we have about being alive and being dead.

A Video

I love this music video of Morcheeba's 'Enjoy The Ride' done by Joel Tussell. It seems to me to have some shamanic elements with the animal forms and the spirits and the ritual. The song has nice lyrics, but the video adds a whole new dimension to the song. Check it out! It bears a few watchings.

The Chamber of Colors and Light

Every now and then I bump into books by Dolores Cannon and have a hard time putting them down. Dolores Cannon is a regression hypnotist who writes books about the interesting places that she discovers in working with people in deep trance states. I've been hypnotized a few times and have done a few past life regressions, and I think that this is a fascinating area of study. I've debated learning more about it and working more with it, but for now I enjoy reading books written by people who have gone very far with it.

I recently started reading her book, "Between Life and Death" whose subject is the area that spirits inhabit between incarnations, if that is the correct way to say it. Last winter I went through an involved healing process and a big part of it was working with the imaginal aspects of healing. Caroline Myss has an interesting take on this. She puts healing on three levels, the lowest is the physical, then the energetic level, and then the symbolic. Working at a higher level allows you to overcome issues at the lower level. In my case, we were working with a number of health issues and addressed them at different levels. It was amazing to see how making a change at the symbolic level would just change everything at the energetic and physical levels. I went through a lot of things with that, but this is not what I wanted to write about here, but I only want to mention that healing imagery seems to fit that idea of working at the symbolic level and seems like a powerful way to approach healing

Since my healing experience used healing images, I have been interested in discovering more about the the possibilities of using healing images. Part of the Dolores Cannon book involves healing places that one can visit in the imaginal realms. In the chapter titled "The Grand Tour" she visits a healing place in the Temple of Wisdom on some astral plane. The image of it was so strong that I felt that it was worth quoting part of it here:

I was working with a young man named John who had been having some physical problems. He wondered if there might be a place in the spirit realm where he could obtain some healing. [...] After John had entered the deep somnambulistic level, I purposely directed him to go to the spirit realm and see if he could find a place that dealt with healing, if indeed such a place existed.

When I finished counting, John found himself in beautiful ethereal surroundings. He was informed that this was a portion of the Temple of Wisdom which was a large complex containing several different departments: The Temple of Healing, the Tapestry Room and the Library. I am often disappointed because I cannot also enjoy the visual wonder of what my subjects see. Like a blind person I must rely on the verbal descriptions of others, and often mere words are inadequate to truly portray the marvels they find in these other dimensions.

J: I am in the Temple of Healing now. It's a beautiful place. It's a round rotunda, and all these brilliant lights are coming through gem windows that are located up high on the ceiling. There are blues, reds, greens, yellows, oranges, turquoises, every color that you can think of except black and white. They are not represented here but every other color is, and they cast these beautiful rays of light down onto the rotunda floor. Here comes the guardian of the Temple of Healing. He walks up to me and smiles, and he's taking my hand now. He says, 'You have come for some treatment, haven't you? Your soul has gone through a great deal, hasn't it? Stand here in the center of all this light and let this light energy be with you.'

D: Is that what this place is used for?

There was no answer. He was obviously experiencing something very profound as indicated by his bodily movements and facial sensations. I was not alarmed because it seemed to be a pleasant experience.

D: Can you tell me what's happening at this time!

Still no answer. He apparently was very involved with the experience. His whole body jerked convulsively several times. This went on for a few seconds.

D: What does it feel like?

J: The different lights are swirling all around me and feeling and cleansing me. This is why I'm not able to talk at the present time.

D: I just wanted to make sure that everything is all right. Is it a good feeling?

J: It's ecstatic. (Several more seconds of silence followed as his body continued to occasionally jerk.) Oh, it's a wonderful feeling. I feel so rejuvenated. (A pause of several more seconds.) Ahh! It's just wonderful. Ohh! It's just waves of color and energy all around me taking out all my pain and soreness. And now he takes my hand and leads me away from this. He says, 'Your soul is cleansed of much negative energy that has been around you. Feel the sense of peace that comes. You must concentrate on learning to heal yourself.' (A big deep breath.) Ohh! That was a wonderful feeling. This is a beautiful place for people who have been very ill in the physical body. When they pass over they are taken here so that their astral and spiritual bodies may be rejuvenated and healed in this rotunda. Afterwards these souls that are no longer tied to bodies are met by their spirit guides and conducted into the different areas where they need to go to learn more about their soul's evolution. There's a long line of them. But because I asked to be healed and I'm still in the human form they said it was okay for me to come first and be allowed to go through the chamber. They call it the 'Chamber of Colors and Light.'

D: Is this unusual for someone who is still in the physical body to come to this place?

J: Yes. The guardian says not many people afford themselves of this opportunity while in the astral traveling state. 'But they should,' he says. 'We are here to also be of service to the souls that are still incarnated as well. If they would like to come, we would be happy to welcome them. For always there is a loving energy that goes with all this healing.' 'This is a wondrous, loving place. It's nothing like a hospital or anything like that. It's like a beautiful temple, and above this round rotunda are these gem windows. I'd say they're about five, six feet tall, and they're made up of different colored gems. The light pours through them and bounces into the center of the rotunda and it swirls you with energy.

This is a page or so of a chapter that is pretty long and involves a tour of the Temple of Wisdom Complex. They encounter a number of guides and guardians who explain a lot of what is going on there. The guides are open to the earthbound visiting and so I decided that I would try to visit. I still have lingering problems that I am actively working to heal, so a visit to the Temple of Healing would seem to be worth my while. The other areas mentioned in the book also seem worth a visit, but that is another journey for another day.

So last night I set myself up to make a journey to the Temple of Healing. I used a shamanic drumming recording, got myself on the comfy couch and put a warm blanket over me and went. I found that my most powerful healing Animal was behind me and lifted me under the shoulders up and up until we reached the Temple of Healing. That was pretty quick! The guardian there said that I could enter, but that there were too many people there for me to have the rotunda to myself, so I went into one of the many light beams. It was a pale rose color an it bathed my throat area and upper chest, one of the areas that I have been working on. Different beams of light addressed different problems from different angles. After everything had been addressed I went out of the rotunda and outside and found a set of stairs that went down to a cleansing pool where I could bathe. When I returned, I sat and thought about how my home is also like a body and needs healing and cleansing, and I made plans for things I could do and considered what I could do with light in my home.

It was a good journey and a good adventure. I'll keep this in my toolkit for future work, there seems to be an easily accessible realm of help and healing for us. I'm really enthused about seeing the Tapestry Room. I have visited the Library many times already, I believe, but that is worth checking out on some future journey.

A Flood Poem

The Flood Flows Around My Mother's House

It wasn't winter
when you saw the flood
your first flood
the firemen tore apart the tracks
the rails left in segments
while glass green water pools around them
I watch/we watch and carry down
we watch the people watch the water
rising
between the houses a great roil
a crystal mass pushes toward us
placid we watch
I feel your presence, is this your memory?
or mine?
are you resting after your long travail?
did you fight your way to peace?
this was a day after your birthday
christmas 1939
I miss you
but why send me this memory?
did you remember me? do you recall
the life you had as a priestess?
or the life of a country witch
hidden behind your mask?
what moved you to the silent battles
you fought
only to have to rest again?
your spirit spirals through the house
up and up the ceiling expands to enfold you
the water laps on my feet, my shins
rising.


I recently read a nice post on Robert Moss's blog on floods and dreams and poetry and it connected for me with a mysterious dream I had about my mother. I posted a comment on the topic and later felt that my descriptive dream journal entry deserved something better. Something that captured the feeling and mood of that dream, which was probably the point of the dream, as I understand it. I've worked this dream on and off for a year in a group and alone and I've felt that it was a sending from my departed mother. I think that this poem is the closest I've come to capturing the feeling of the dream. I haven't tried writing a poem for a few many years, but I feel like this isn't a bad result for all that.

Shamanic Drumming Recordings - Part 1

Over the last few years I have purchased a number of recordings of drumming for use when shamanic journeying on my own. I have not yet reached the point where I can journey while I drum, so recordings are very handy when I want to journey by myself. I thought it would be good to post some simple reviews of the recordings I have used so that other folks can have a starting point for comparison when tying to choose some drumming tracks for journeying.

I first got into shamanic journeying because of dreaming. I'd been keeping a dream journal for a few years and wanted to broaden my experience and do group dreamwork, so I began reading every solid book on dreaming that I could find. Somebody gave me the audiobook for "Dream Gates" by Robert Moss. I wasn't so sure about it but decided to give it a listen. Nearly the first sentence of Robert's is that the best book on dreams is the one you write yourself in your own dream journal. Well, that really got my attention, I couldn't agree more! I decided to take this one more seriously and discovered that he has formed a nice modern synthesis of dreaming and shamanic practice and that really grabbed my attention.

Here's a link to a CD audiobook of Dream Gates, which is also the title of a book covering similar material. I'm not sure what content you will find on these recordings as I have only listened to the original cassette audiobook:

Dream Gates Audiobook - Robert Moss
http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Gates-Robert-Moss/dp/1591794897

I've never found a Robert Moss book that I didn't like, so I'm sure that the CD version will be of good quality and will cover a lot of the same material as the cassettes. You can find more information about Robert Moss at his site:

http://www.mossdreams.com/

I'd always been drawn to shamanism but felt that I didn't want to be ripping off any native or aboriginal culture, so I kept away from a sense of respect. But after some experiences with past life regressions and getting a life reading from a psychic, I could see that shamanism is a real part of my roots, actually all of our roots. I understood that I was drawn to it because I had some ancestors who worked with it and that I had had some exposure to it in other lives. Or so it seems to me, these things are never so cut and dried, but if you look at them as stories about you and your current life, then they have something to say. Something important and worth looking into at least.

But back to the drumming. One of the early tracks on "Dream Gates" introduces you to the technique of reentering a dream using shamanic drumming. The first time I did this I had an amazing experience where a old dream of mine came to life and I first met Snake, but that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say that this opened up new vistas in my dreamwork and got me hooked on shamanic journeying. The problem I had with using the drumming on "Dream Gates" is that the drumming parts are of limited duration and I didn't want to spend time finding the right places in the audiobook and fumbling around with them. I think "Dream Gates" is a great audiobook, one of the best on dreams, and certainly a great introduction to shamanic journeying, but a dedicated drumming recording seemed the right way to go. Looking around, I found "Shamanic Journey Drumming" by "Spirit Passages":

Shamanic Journey Drumming - Spirit Passages
Evelyn Rysdyk & C. Allie Knowlton
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005MOH2

It has an opening track that helps set a good focus for journeying. The drumming track is over an hour long, probably long enough for most journeys. It closes with a really good callback. This is the recording I used for about a year and consider it a good basic tool and I still use it occasionally. The drumming is very solid and of the right rhythm for me. Not as fast as others, but steady. The quality of the recording is very good and the actual sound is rather nice. I ripped mine to a high quality audio format and used it in my music player. I found out very soon that drumming recordings will destroy the kinds of earbud earphones you get with most music players. I suggest a decent pair of headphones. I used this set of Plantronics computer headphones:

Multimedia Stereo PC Headset - Plantronics Audio
http://www.amazon.com/Plantronics-Audio-Multimedia-Stereo-Headset/dp/B0000665P5

They have the benefit of not only being inexpensive, but I find myself using them with my computer when I want to keep things quiet in the evening. They have a volume control on the cord, which is very handy when journeying to a recording. I might as well mention another useful item to have--an eyeshade. My experience has been that using an eyeshade reduces distractions that might intrude on your journeys. Some people use various kinds of cloth that they wrap around their head, but I didn't have time to make one and I found a simple pair at a place that supplies traveler's needs. Here is the pair I use, but I'm sure that anything that you find comfortable will work:

Eyeshade - Eagle Creek
http://www.amazon.com/Eagle-Creek-Travel-Gear-Comfort/dp/B001M0NZ5E

You'll also need to have a quiet comfortable place where you feel relaxed and secure. I like to sit upright but lots of folks like to lie on their backs. I find that sitting half lotus on our comfy living room couch with a blanket when it is cool and there is nobody around is perfect for me. Dim the light and turn up the headphones to where it is loud enough to block out distractions, but not so loud that it harms your ears. This is where a volume control on the cord is useful.

After using the Spirit Passages recording for a while I started to feel a bit stale and looked around for another recording. I wanted to have some alternatives to compare. I found the reviews for "Drumming To Journey By" by Kay Cordell Whitaker:

Drumming To Journey - Kay Cordell Whitaker
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004U2JF

This has had a lot of good reviews and I agree that it is a very good recording, perfect for journeying. It is, however, a bit slower that most drumming tracks, and it is has a rich and complex set of sounds and some low chanting in the background. I actually have grown to like the chanting and feel that it is a benefit, but others may not agree. Kay Cordell Whitaker (http://www.worldbalance.com/) has a website and has written some great books and has been a teacher in her particular tradition of shamanism. You should check out her books, too!

At some point after Amazon started selling digital music I noticed that some of the recordings on my list of drumming tracks I'd like to try had become available, and at very reasonable prices. After looking around a bit I decided that Frauke Rotwein's recordings looked like good ones to take a chance on, so I downloaded a number of tracks from Volume 1. I skipped the birds singing track and got the three drumming tracks. This has turned out to be the set of tracks I use most often, especially the Double Drumming track. Since my injury last fall, most evenings after I finish my breathing and energy exercises, I will do a short healing journey and this the track I usually use.

Shamanic Journey Drumming - Frauke Rotwein
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZOE8Y0

I also listened to the samples of the other Frauke Rotwein recordings and decided that Volume 3 had some interesting tracks. Again, I skipped the birds songs, picked the drumming, and also got the Singing Bowls track. I've never used this last for journeying, but like to use it for centering myself if my heart is jumpy before I undertake a journey.

Shamanic Journey Drumming Volume 3 - Frauke Rotwein
http://www.amazon.com/Shamanic-Journey-Drumming-Volume-3/dp/B000QQVSSG/

These recordings of Frauke Rotwein are fairly inexpensive, and of good quality and easy to download and are ready to put on your digital audio player if you have one, or your computer if you don't. I was going to include links to the CD versions but they are marked as discontinued.

This post is getting long, so I will stop here and continue later.