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Have you been having weird dreams since this all began, dreams that seem somehow more mythic, more weighted, more charged with meaning, than usual? Me too.

Here's today's.

Every year my grandfather would drive up north to a particular lake in Canada.

When he got there, he would lay down on the shore of the lake, and his soul would leave his body through his mouth. For three days and nights it would fly, while his body lay unmoving on the lakeshore.

Where it flew off to he would never say, but this much I can say: when he awoke, there would always be three fish lined up on the ground beside him.

Full title: What to Do after a Major Otherworldly Vision or Powerful Calling from the Gods: Priesthood Means Service

A major, otherworldly, life-changing vision—or a forceful calling from the Gods—that lacks the follow-through of acts of service corrupts one’s spirit eventually.

The calling or vision ends up feeding the false ego. ... Wow, voice-recognition software turned “feeding the ego” into “cheating the eagle.” Oh, my Gods! (I added the word “false” later, when correcting the errors voice recognition created.)

 I'm having my own private Stevie Wonder festival. 

When I'm giving clients shamanic treatments (click here for info about them), I might listen to his music. It is so happy that it makes my spirit soar, which feeds my magic. 

Or, when I'm doing physical therapy exercises, the sheer joy in Stevie Wonder's music loosens my muscles and joints, so the physical therapy is all the more effective. 

Last week I began exploring Minoan ecstatic postures, starting with the most famous and familiar one: the Minoan salute.

Many modern Pagan traditions use specific poses and gestures in ritual. These are meant to symbolize parts of the spiritual belief system and to remind us of those during the rite. Ecstatic postures look very much like ritual gestures - in fact, they can be used as ritual gestures - but ultimately they have a different purpose.

Throughout time, shamanic practitioners are known for their ability to enter an altered state of consciousness, called a “journey trance”, and visit other worlds. These initiated, trained and chosen spiritual leaders practice as mediators between community members, the spirit realms and the natural world. Understanding the mechanisms for how energy moves, how illness operates, and how healing is bestowed are all the domain of the shamanic practitioner. 

A lot falls under the umbrella of the shaman. Many get caught up in web of all the different directions one can go in the study of shamanism. It is important to come back to the foundation from time to time and realize that in the root of the practice springs forth much of what shamanism has to offer.

"Even though modern culture has done it's best to corrupt art into a celebrity production machine, simply another form of entertainment, designed specifically as an opiate to the downtrodden, gluttonous, and vapid, it fails because the artist knows better. Art is magic. Art is one of the rawest shamanistic forms of connection with the universal source of everything, but only if the artist is brave enough to give the audience what it needs rather than what it thinks, or has been told, it wants." --Peter Beckley

A mystic needn't be an academic to be a scholar. Why is this idea important? Some people create a magical, fulfilling life based in a non-academically-shaped worldview. We also might want to teach from such an orientation. Our cosmology can be as carefully constructed and extensively developed as any scientific understanding, but many would crush our power by insisting there is only one intelligent way to see, to learn, to study.