In the process of guiding vision quests, I share a cornucopia of rituals, exercises, or ceremonies which people may do – or not – as part of their solo time. The following – Presenting Your Ego to a Tree — can be fun, as well as quite revealing.
It begins by having people go onto the land and wander until they each find a tree that “speaks to them,” a… Read More »
Black Elk was a ‘wichasa wakhan’ — medicine or holy man — of the Oglala Lakota, born in late 1863 on the Little Powder River in Wyoming. He had been taken ill at age nine, unresponsive and lying in a coma for several days. During… Read More »
The Other Story:
Over the past several days, I’ve been editing a training manual I created for a men’s program — the Mythic Warrior – that encompassed nine weekends, one per month. The manual includes “the game plan” — the list of rituals, processes, and exercises planned for each weekend – a section on Rituals and Exercises describing how to set up, perform, and lead each of the processes, as… Read More »
After several sodden vision quest days in Nova Scotia, wishing for sun, I decided to just “love what is.” It was a good decision! And this love letter to Nature, to the primal reality of a wet and dripping world was one of the results. Enjoy!
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Wind moves in the branches. This morning brings rain and fog, the call of a lonely sparrow, the tapping of dripping… Read More »
Comparing a vision quest today to traditional quests of centuries ago, the range of issues in modern life is far greater than in the small, tight-knit communities of the past. Communities of the past were relatively homogenous and lacked wide diversities of
1. Wealth, class, and economic status.
2. Racial, ethnic, and gender identities.
3. Family dynamics, upbringing, and personal history. Read more »
