My Pathways In

(Part 2) Encounters with the Deep Past

I think my interest in our ancient past began when I was apprenticing with shamans in Peru, but whose to say exactly… A calling is a calling. Certainly whilst I was training in a lineage so foreign to my own cultural heritage, I felt a deep bone knowing that the shamanic traditions of indigenous cultures would have once existed in my native Europe.

And more than that, I was a woman apprenticing within a line of shamanism that had been passed down from man to man. I couldn’t help feeling like an intruder. A bit like getting into a yoga posture that you know was designed by a man, for men. I had a deep bone longing to encounter a path that was walked by people like me: women.

The Roman invasions of the landmass we now call Europe, followed by the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, near-wiped out all remnants of the indigenous customs and traditions of the indigenous peoples, especially the wisdom ways of women.

But this doesn’t mean that before they enforced their new pantheon - be it the gods of the Romans or the father god of the the Judeo-Christians - there wasn’t a system of beliefs here already.

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