A culture that doesn't have ... a shaman, that doesn't therefore have access to the potencies of the beginning, is in trouble,
____John Moriarty, Turtle Was Gone a Long Time
The ability to access the primal powers of life, to connect with them and mediate them, is the task of the shaman. Today most of us have forgotten to honor (or even recognize) the primal powers of life. Life is merely the stream of existence in which each of swims. We move along this stream largely unaware of the larger reality to which we are involved.
The shaman stands at the threshold between the worlds with the duty of honoring the powers of both apparent and unseen worlds. On the druid path, this role is fulfilled by the ovate: the vision-seer who walks between the worlds in order to bring the apparent world into harmony with the unseen world.
Without such mediators, who are aware of the primal otherworld, our own world can become disconnected from the larger harmony. A shaman's work is primarily healing the fractures that separate our world from the other so that power can once more flow; this task is performed for people, animals, plants and places.
The potent primal world of beginnings is potentially accessible to all of us by virtue of the life within our veins. The spiral ladder of DNA is itself a pathway of life, a circuit of power connected to the primal source of life from which we can consciously draw the healing that we need. But we still need our shamans - our mediators and healers - who can pass beyond physical boundaries to effect the work of reconnection; we need them to maintain an embassy at the threshold of the worlds so that the ways of negotiating remain open.
"Meditate upon the source of primal life. How are your body and soul connected to this source? By what evidence do know this?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]
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