What Do You Want Of Me?
Sit Under a Tree & Ask it What it Wants of Me. This is the impossible question because humans don't speak tree, so any answer is a projection.
"Shamanic Practitioner" is a Modern New-Ager from the industrial Capitalist world who imagines or projects themselve to be a shaman, without the trials and connection to nature that indigenous shaman go through or learn.
I restored these 400-year-old Ash Pollard in 1997. They are now managed annually to maintain their structure, but sadly are dieing from Ash Die Back.
this avenue is thought to have been part of a 1000 year old agroforestry "wood meadow".
These pollards have a circumference of over 12 feet.
Up until 100 years ago when the chemical match was invented, we all still used Iron Age tools to make fire. Interestingly these tools, and learning how to use them with natural tinders in nature is where we rekindle our knowledge of how we are connected to nature.
Most shamanic practitioners reject the learning of any type of skills that indigenous shamans may have learned prior to being chosen by the tribes elders to go into the wilderness and be apprenticed to a shaman, because they don't think we are going to hunt & gather in the future. Anyone could be excused for believing that wilderness survival is just a case of reading a few manuals. Reality, however, is very different.
I don't think these LARPing shamanic types can be blamed for thinking survival skills are easy to just pick up.
Connection To The Ancient Landacape
I have a degree in Sustainable Development with a specialisation in sustainable forestry. This doesnt connect you to the land though. Working on the land, not farming it but working the ancient ways in the English woodlands is an in-road.
I have managed Ancient English Woodlands, listed in the Domesday Book. I have laid about 5km of hedges in the traditional manner.
This is what 7 year cut in rotation coppice looks like.
This is what happens to coppice "last cut in the time of our grandparents". A wood looking like this has no coppice value and is a shadow of its former glory.
I teach courses about our ancient managed landscape and skills to continue to manage it traditionally. I also teach courses about how we remember that we have always been connected to nature, but have forgotten what we need to do to remember. Sitting under a tree, isn't it? These skills can't be taught online, they require 1 to1 tuition in nature. These skills give us a deep knowledge of nature & teach us old knowledge.
This landscape is listed in the Doomesday Book because it was productive & wealthy, a thousadn years ago.
Iron Age Tools & Skills Are Still Taught
Neo-shamanism theories of nature connection cannot prepare anyone to be able to observe natuee to understand what is going on now in our woodlands.
At the moment its the driest Spring in 168 years and we have decades of heatwaves to come. We lost the climate fight before it even started. But survivalists like me aren't popular for telling the truth about what we see in nature. Nature is struggling in the heat, native trees are wilting. Not one single neo-shaman has been sounding that alarm about nature being in trouble in the heat, let alone how we survive this heat.
The Shamanic Practitioner/Dreamer lacks that genuine connection to nature. They are not spending time in nature to know. Sitting under a tree and asking what it wants cannot prepare you for anything other tham delusion and projection.
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