Power

MAY 2014 -

Walking down by the pond it is so still except for the song of a warbler. Sitting by the water, I thought over the past weeks. It has been busy with four courses in four countries working with some of the faces of power – balance, gratitude, responsibility, joy, and the spirits of nature.

Many people think of power as the power over us, but as we know it is also a surging energy that gives life-force. Power has so many faces and different ways of interacting with our lives: the powe…

FEBRUARY 2016 -

This Spring marks the thirtieth anniversary of the very first shamanic workshop I ever taught. Of course I wasn’t alone the doing the teaching. My Spirits were with me all the way. I suppose they were looking at me the way we look at a child who is taking her first steps. And there was one miracle I remember to this day: a woman was spontaneously healed from claustrophobia which had been plaguing her all of her life – cured on her very first journey. Any doubts about shamanism I…

WINTER 2016 -

We are blessed to live in amazingly challenging times. Often we cannot help but feel hopeless in the face of what is happening, be it environmental destruction, political injustice, poverty or greed. But if we allow these things to cripple us, then neither we nor the world has a chance. This cannot be allowed to happen.

We also live in a time of amazing possibilities. For the past half year I have been greatly inspired by what is going on at the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation o…

FEBRUARY 2017 -

Years ago I was given a deep lesson from my Teacher. He said: “Life is change. Shamanism is change with power.” Of course, he was not talking about the power of money or armies. He was talking about spirit power, the power of Love. Reading the headlines, hearing “the news” from many places around the world, it is easy to feel that love and wellbeing is not of great interest to many political leaders. Whether or not this is true, it does not absolve us from our duty to shine and …

FEBRUARY 2018 -

Our first human teacher of shamanism, Michael Harner, left the land of the living to join the Spirits on February 3rd. He left behind him a great legacy. No, not his organization, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies. The legacy he left behind are the thousands of people who have had their lives changed because he showed that the ability to do the shaman’s work is not limited to people living in tropical jungles or on the arctic tundra. The ability to intentionally contact and i…

SUMMER 2018 -

For me, the practice of shamanism is about bringing power over the bridge from the Spirit world to the physical world. This power belongs to no one. It is the essence of the Universe. How can I call it “mine”? Possessive pronouns – my, mine, yours, ours, theirs - are real troublemakers and therefore great teachers, if we pay attention. When I first started with shamanic practice, it was with the simple desire of wanting to feel more at home on Earth. I had no wish to become a hea…

AUTUMN 2018 -

On a misty day you can see forever
If you close your eyes and
Listen to the sound of the clouds
Caressing the mountain’s face
Then there are no secrets
To be kept away from anyone
You only have to listen

This year has been a time of deepening for us. A time not so much about the new or finding more, but being deeper with where we are. Peeling off the layers, letting them fall away and allowing them to enrich us.

Shamanic practice is a kind of spiritual archeology. On every cou…

SPRING 2021 - by ANNETTE HØST

Every naked spring, on the very day when the Sun for the first time has Power to really warm me through and make my cheeks glow, the old Nordic word MEGIN springs up in my consciousness, because it so precisely expresses the energy that bursts forward. In the Sun, the Earth, the Light, the Tree - in Everything.

The concept of megin has inspired me since I first came across it in Folke Ström's old "Nordic Paganism - Faith and Customs in Pre-Christian Times"(Nordisk…

SPRING 2020 -

Dear friends. Here we are.

A few weeks into these deep changing times. Where are you now? Where do you find yourself? What is this time bringing you?

One of the original meanings of the Greek word “krisis” is a "turning point in a disease, that change which indicates recovery or death". In the 15th century it came to mean a "vitally important or decisive state of things, point at which change must come, for better or worse”. Crisis is the time when there is no choice but change…

AUTUMN 2020 -

As we go through Harvest days, this is a deep time to reflect on where we are. For many of us, it has not been an easy year, and it may feel like there is still a long way to go. But simply waiting for it to be over will not bring real change. There is no choice now but change. We cannot go back, we have to be where we are. Open our eyes and open hearts to the new beginnings that are waiting.

Even if you don’t know what it is, is there a way you can welcome the new growing out of…