The following elements are suggestions for orientations of practice based on the original visions that guided us to create World Soul Retrieval Day on June 21, 2003. It is offered as a general guide for working with World Soul Retrieval Day from year to year.
On June 20, 2004, some of you may find yourselves in your traditional communities, or attending other gatherings of prayer and focus. The following is not intended to compete or to distract you from your traditional work, or from other ventures that you may have aligned with.
Instead, the invitation of World Soul Retrieval Day is to align your individual or community shamanic practice to a spirit, and to carry this spirit with you into your traditional ceremonies; to hold and work with these energies how you see fit.
Likewise, some of you may find yourselves facilitating retreats, teachings, or trainings on this day. Again, the following is not intended to compete or distract from your sacred work. It is an invitation to weave this vision, what is truly all of our vision, into your circles.
The following information will touch on certain points: sacred fire, altar work and the world altar, linking-up, spirit-journeys to address fear and grief, spirit-journeys to influence a reharmonization within the soul of the world, processing the work, celebration, and sharing return accounts and experiences.
Fire is sacred to all earth people. It is at the core of the transformative process in many shamanic traditions. At the apex of the noonday sun on June 20 2004, people working with the energies of the World Soul Retrieval vision are invited to light a ceremonial fire, or a candle, to acknolwedge our luminous connections and our common aim to promote healing, purification, and soul-retrieval. It is also an ancient way to pay homage to the life-giving Sun, on this the eve of the Summer Solstice.
As we do this we remember the Old Ones; those who came before us; those who lit the ceremonial fires before us; those many generations who also knew soul loss and who also gathered in ceremony to call the soul parts home.
We are also calling to the spirit of the sacred fires of the future; the fires of our descendents, even the fires we will one day stand around again thousands of years from now. We, who are the ancestors of those to come, are kindling this flame for those who will, in time, remember us in ceremony; who will, in time, be seeking our guidance for the challenges of their time. On this day we commit, or re-commit, to a path of becoming good ancestors for them.
Many of you work with sacred altars, mesas, or medicine-bundles. These tools are but one of the ways in which the spirits hold us, guide us, and help us.
On the 20th of June we invite the shamanic community to activate your altars and to link up within sacred time. This is the real World Wide Web. One suggestion for how this can be done is through the WEAVING WORLDS JOURNEY MEDITATION.
Through this approach, and acknowledging our pre-established connections as one human tribe, we consciously join the luminous energies of our altars, mesas and medicine bundles; we become active points of light in the binding weave, the matrix of energy that is the Soul of the Earth, and the Soul of the World.
In addition to our traditional bundles, mesas and altars, people are also invited to create a temporary “world altar” on World Soul Retrieval Day. This may be an actual altar in the natural world that becomes a shrine, an altar in the center of your ceremonial room, or simply an altar that one "builds" and consecrates within one's inner vision and heart. The important element is to know, consciously, that on this day, and into the night, your world altar links you with all of the other world altars being activated on this day.
The World Altar as a physical altar can also become a dreaming altar. As our dear brother Peem Juan Arcos, a shaman among the Shuar has said, "It is important for us to realize that we are all living within the same dream. Now is the time to change the dream we are dreaming."
Such a World Dreaming Altar acknowledges the nightmare that is the dream of this time, but it is also a centerpoint in time and space where we actively seek to remember our power to change the dream.
On the World Altar we gather images, items, and objects that express and contain the energies of both our sacred medicine (the enlightened aspects of our cultures and our collective humanity), as well as the shadow, heaviness, or darkness of humanity that yearns to be transformed. Because it is a World Altar, all manner of items may be placed on the altar to represent the different peoples, nations, and tribes of the world.
One of the stepping stones of World Soul Retrieval Day is to investigate the fear and grief of this time. We invite the shamanic community to engage in a collective process together to address this fear and grief specifically through shamanic journeying.
As we all know, one important element of shamanic work is to address spirit-intrusions through the work of extraction. Such terms as “extraction” can be misleading, however, for the spirit-realities associated with intrusions require us to enter into the wound for an awareness of its cause, not simply to remove it like an invasive surgery on cancer.
The Spirit Journey to address fear and grief is intended to aid us in gaining a more thorough level of awareness about the Spirit of Fear that has “set up camp” in the Soul of the World, and within many people.
Like all troublesome spirits or hungry ghosts, they want to be fed and transformed. We invite people and their circles to feed this Spirit of Fear with their own keening, their own fully embodied grieving, and for each of us in our global shamanic community to “step down” these energies, thus transforming them into a positive current of energy that can be harnessed and directed for life-affirming purposes.
We also invite the shamanic community to engage in a collective journey together to actively seek to restore harmony in the soul of the world. Many activists and peaceworkers have been laying down their lives to attempt to restore the harmony within the Soul of the World. They have been working on this within ordinary reality, within the everyday world. As a global shamanic community we seek to work from the other side, from the Otherworld to this one.
Another important element of shamanic work is soul retrieval work. In the context of World Soul Retrieval Day the term “soul retrieval” refers to the act of restoring the balance. We seek to join our energies as a global shamanic collective; to raise these energies, to harness our light, and to beseech the powers to return more fully to the world.
Some have said, "Isn't it a bit presumptuous to think that one can perform a soul retrieval on behalf of the whole world?" Seen through a particular lens it may appear to be an impossibility, but from the holographic crucible of shamanic perception and experience we are simply acknowledging and agreeing to perform our "quantum obligations." We are gathering our power as a community to strengthen the luminous strands that form the great pattern.
The Spirit Journey to influence a reharmonization in the Soul of the World seeks to replenish, restore, and nourish. We are each facets of the wider net, but as the New Physics suggests, this also makes us microcosms of the entire net.
Similarly as a global shamanic collective we seek a shared vision for the times to come; the spark of a vision that will kindle many fires in the future earth culture. There has never been a time when we were not on this journey. And, as the Hopi elders say, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
People are invited to process their experiences in whatever manner they see fit. Providing time and space for this is important. We are all journeying for each other. We are all journeying for the seven generations yet unborn. We are all journeying to determine our roles in this era of wide-sweeping change. We are all journeying to receive guidance on how to manifest the future earth culture; how to, as Peruvian shaman Oscar Miro-Quesada says, "find a common myth that all people can align with."
Setting aside time to process and share these things within your communities is highly encouraged.
Celebration and feasting is a cornerstone of indigenous and shamanic traditions worldwide. Celebrate, feast, honor the richness and abundance of the life-giving earth. In whatever manner is your way, hold a community feast to honor the work we have done. Our hearts are full. We have done good work. We have blown forth from our hearts our prayers on spirit-wind, and blown these same prayers into the earth, to the core where our shared hearth-fire burns. We are vision-holders, and dream-keepers. We are changing the dream with a new dream.
As a global shamanic collective, people are also encouraged to share this information with your brothers and sisters by returning to the Weaving Worlds website after June 20, 2004 to share return accounts, experiences, insights, or your own particular strands of vision. A message board is provided, a guest book, an Event Announcement tool for those who are creating circles on World Soul Retrieval Day, likewise some letters/comments may also become condensed information that is posted on the website www.worldsoulretrieval.com.
To summarize, the vision is for individuals and/or communities, to light a sacred fire and observe whatever your pre-existing Solstice customs are, or to send forth prayers in connection with other events, such as World Prayer and Peace Day.
Beyond this, the actual practice of World Soul Retrieval Day that is proposed is to:
--utilize the WEAVING THE WORLDS MEDITATION> to "link up" our energies
--perform a spirit journey based on the theme of the collective grief and fear of this time, with attention given to transforming these energies (some may elect to perform grief or keening rituals in addition to this journey)
--perform a spirit journey based on the theme of supporting the vital essence of the soul of the world, collectively harnessing our energies in ceremony for the sake of finding soul parts that have been lost and being shown what else can be done to bring about our future earth culture.
--process the individual and group experiences of your circle, in part on World Soul Retrieval Day, and possibly in follow-up meetings or drumming circles
--hold a simple feast to celebrate our connections and the good work of the day
--visit the Weaving Worlds site and share with your brothers and sisters any insights, experiences, visions, or teachings you have received along these themes that may benefit us all in continuing the path of world soul retrieval into the future.
To conclude, spread the word. This work takes all of us.--activate your altars (hearth-altars, mesas and bundles)
