Right relationship is living as 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 rather than above them: with humility, respect and gratitude, towards other humans, the other-than-human world and Spirit. Reciprocity is its practical heart, giving back for what we receive, so that asking the Animal, Plant and 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 for healing and teaching goes together with helping them in the middle-world.
What is right relationship? #
Right relationship is the animist way of being in the world: knowing ourselves to be part of a web of kin and acting accordingly. It runs in three directions: shamanism must “show us how to live in right relationship again, with each other, with other beings, and with Spirit. Our survival depends on this. It always has.”1 It rests on the non-hierarchy at the heart of animism: everything is equal and deserving of equal respect, not just when journeying, but in day-to-day life.
Because humans are the youngest of the Peoples, right relationship begins with humility. “This is not about hierarchy, but about family. It means that we are the children.” Knowing this, “our animist ancestors lived with humility, respect and gratitude”.2
Who teaches right relationship? #
Teachers in the Lower-World, and the shaman. The people met in the Lower-World can be great teachers of shamanism, and “They can help us to heal our broken connection with Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this, and show us how to live in right relationship with her and with our other brother and sisters – the Animal, Plant and Stone Peoples.”3 Within the tribe, “it was the role of the shaman to be the wisdom keeper; to be the person who could keep the tribe on the right path and in right-relationship and advise and guide the tribe when it had strayed from what was healthy.”4 Part of that role was to be the champion and voice of the other Peoples, and to make sure the humans lived in right relationship with them. Learning right relationship is therefore not only a private matter but something a whole community once relied on.
What is reciprocity? #
Reciprocity is giving back for what we receive. The healing gifts of the other Peoples are offered freely: “When in nature, we are surrounded by thousands of things with healing gifts, knowledge and wisdom, and all given freely to us. All we have to do is ask.”5 Receiving them creates an obligation, not as payment but as part of the relationship. It is an ethical principle: if we ask for help from the Animal, Plant and Stone People in the Lower-World, then in turn we need to help them in the middle-world too, and these days they need our help.6
Giving back, because “it is nonsensical to ask for help and teaching from the other Peoples whilst ignoring their plight in the middle-world.” How someone gives back depends on who they are, whether through teaching or writing, supporting charities, campaigning, or the choices they make about food and their impact on the environment, but “we have to act in the world to help the things we love, and show them gratitude and support.”7
Is reciprocity a kind of trade? #
No. It is not a transaction in which we pay for what we receive, or give in order to get. Thanking the Power Animal shows the spirit of it: “This is about you expressing gratitude and appreciation to them, with no strings, conditions or expectations attached. This is about you giving.”8 The gifts of the Peoples are given freely, and our giving back is offered in the same spirit.
The patterns people bring from human relationships matter here. Someone who habitually takes more than they give will find that this affects their shamanic relationships too, “because you do need to give back to your Guides”.9
How do people give back to their Power Animal and Guides? #
In two ways: gratitude in the relationship itself, and practical help in the middle-world. The Shamanic Journey and Rewilding Yourself both include exercises for expressing gratitude to one’s Power Animal and Guides, simply for the sake of giving.10 The Shamanic Journey also has an exercise called ‘Giving Something Back’, which turns gratitude into practical, ongoing support for the physical animals of one’s Power Animal’s species.
The logic is simple. “We simply cannot ask an OversoulOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this like Panther or Wolf to teach us and heal us, and then ignore the plight of physical panthers and wolves in the middle-world. That would make no kind of sense, morally, or ethically, and would just be plain wrong.”11 See What is a Power Animal?
Should I ask permission of a plant or stone? #
It is good manners. Making a plant or stone essence includes asking the Plant or Crystal for permission: “This is really just about good manners.” All Lower-World beings “have healing and teaching that they will give freely on being asked, without any strings attached, but it is still good to be polite!” A refusal is “a middle-world response”.12
What does right relationship mean between humans? #
Healthy human groups follow patterns of their own. One of them is a form of reciprocity: “When people take the benefits of being in the group, then they are willing to meet the costs (responsibilities).” When some family members take without meeting the costs, the whole family becomes dysfunctional, “because inequality is toxic to communities.”13 Part of the shaman’s role was “to hold and share the knowledge of how to live in right-relationship with each other.”14
What does it mean to be a Leaver rather than a Taker? #
The writer Daniel Quinn called pre-agricultural cultures Leaver culturesLeaver culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the animist tribal peoples, hunter-gatherers above all, who took only as much as they needed and left the rest, living in reciprocal right-relationship for the vast majority of human history. Read the full answer, “in that they took what they needed at any given time, and left the rest.” Many had the idea of leaving a share for other creatures, taking only a certain number of berries, for example, so that the rest were left for other animals. By contrast, the Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer that came with agriculture “takes everything that it possibly can, with no regard to other animals or species.”15
There is a story of a great hunter who always asked permission, killed quickly and kindly, gave thanks, used every part of the animal and wasted nothing, and who, “if he had food to spare then he would leave a share for the other animals.”16 Taking only what is needed, wasting nothing, and sharing what is left over is right relationship in its most everyday form. See What are Taker and Leaver cultures?
What happens when right relationship is lost? #
Therapeutic Shamanism sees the crises of the modern world as the result: “what has gone wrong with us, the reason we are now in the Anthropocene extinction era, is because of our broken, hierarchical relationship with the other Peoples and the Earth.”17 The break began with domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the Neolithic, from around 11,000 to 10,000 BC, and accelerated with the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer, the rise of the first city-states from around 4000 BC (see What is the Fall?). In cutting ourselves off from the Lower-World, “we lost our right-relationship with the more-than-human world and turned our backs on the bountiful healing, teaching, and wisdom that is freely offered to us by the other Peoples.”18
Where does gratitude fit in? #
Gratitude is the everyday form of reciprocity. It is a remarkably quick and effective antidote to the despair that can come with becoming more aware of the state of the world, and it is also something given, to the Power Animal and to everything else.19 An old story of a hunter shows the attitude behind it, extended to everything that sustains a life: “He honoured the water that he drank, the air that he breathed, the fire that warmed him and the ground that he walked on.”20
