“Four realms” is used in two ways in Therapeutic Shamanism: in the books it means the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer, the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and the two sides of the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer, which give us our four parts, whilst in the teaching on landscapes it means the great environments of sea, land, sky and underground, each with its own medicine. The published books meet the elements through the transformation practicesTransformation practices. The family of journey-practices in which the self is deliberately taken apart, reduced to something formless, and reformed: burials, burnings, dismemberments, sky burials, dissolvings, cocoonings, poisonings, shapeshifting. A mini death-and-rebirth: cleansing, loosening of identity, and preparation for the greatest transformation of all. Read the full answer rather than placing them on either map. How the realms, the landscapes and the elements fit together is taught on the courses.
What are the four realms? #
It depends which map is meant. The four realms are the shamanic map of the whole: “Remember, there are four realms: the Upper-World, the Lower-World; the physical middle-world; and the non-physical (or, shamanic) middle-world. These give rise to the four main parts-of-self.”1 ‘Realms’ is also used in a second sense, for the great landscapes of sea, land, sky and underground that are met within the shamanic worlds. See What are the three shamanic realms?
What do the landscapes teach? #
Each landscape has its own medicine. “A journey that unfolds in the depths of the ocean will carry very different lessons to one that takes place on a windswept plateau or in a volcanic ravine. Your emotional and bodily responses are clues.” And in the animist view, each environment is a being in its own right: “The environment itself is alive. It has its own Soul. The desert is a consciousness. The grassland is a consciousness… A mountain has a consciousness you can talk to. The sea is a living being.”
How do the Animal, Plant and Stone People help with the elements? #
Through their gifts, and through the transformation practices. The Stone PeopleStone People. All physical matter: mountains, sea, rivers, clouds, sun and stars: the oldest and widest of the Peoples. As some animist cultures put it, ‘we are just the Stone People, dancing for a while’. Read the full answer are far more than stones: they include “water, the air, sand, soil, and so on.”2 So the sea itself is one of the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer.
And every one of the Peoples has a gift: “every type of Plant, Animal and Stone agreed to take on a healing gift and teaching, and to give this freely to any human who asked for it.”3 Through the transformation practices, too, we meet the elements directly: burial in the earth, burning in fire, sky burial among the birds and dissolving in water.4 See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?
