Quill & Ink

Expert From

Urban Shaman

“…a true shaman keeps no secrets about knowledge that can help and heal. The difficulty is not in keeping knowledge secret, but in getting people to understand and use it. As for misuse, that only comes from ignorance. The more knowledge everyone has about how to change things, the less inclination and opportunity there will be for misuse. Widely spread knowledge actually has more potency than secrets locked up and unused. Knowledge held secret is about as useful as money under a miser’s mattress. And the sacredness of knowledge lies not in its reservation for a few, but in its availability to many. More likely such a fear of free _expression has to do with a baser fear that the guardian of knowledge really hasn’t much to guard or doesn’t understand what he has. And finally, shamans recognize no hierarchy or authority in matters of the mind; if ever a group of people could be said to follow a system of spiritual democracy, it would be the shamans of the world.”

by Serge Kahili King, Ph.D.

Raven Drow

Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find were she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.

-W. B. Yeats