It changes how we live from the inside out. Receiving healing and teaching from 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 brings an obligation to help them in 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, through activism, right living and right action. The teaching sets no rules for this, and what to eat is left to each person: reliably ethical behaviour “arises more from within than just from some externally-applied rules.”
Should working with Animal, Plant and Stone People change how we live? #
Yes. “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.” Shamanism is not a path that turns its back on the world: “activism, right living, and right action, are all at the very heart of Therapeutic Shamanism.”1
How that is lived out differs from person to person, “whether it is through teaching or writing, supporting charities, campaigning and lobbying, or the choices we make in terms of what we eat, our environmental impact, and so on, we have to act in the world to help the things we love, and show them gratitude and support.”2 See What is right relationship and reciprocity?
Does this mean following a set of rules? #
No. Ethics come from the inside: Paul Francis has found in his own practice as a teacher that reliably ethical behaviour arises more from within than just from some externally-applied rules.3 So the teaching describes what an animist ethic involves, and leaves the choices to each person.
What does eating have to do with the Animal, Plant and Stone People? #
Food is one of the ways people act in the world for what they love (“the choices we make in terms of what we eat”), but no one is told what to eat. “There is an interesting and indeed important conversation to be had about shamanism and the ethics about what we choose to eat (or not eat) in our middle-world, physical lives here.” It is a middle-world issue, and the books deliberately leave it aside.4
A 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 hunting and gathering journey is not a statement about diet: “Doing a Lower-World hunt is not about the ethics of what you choose to do in your middle-world, physical life here.” It is about experiencing life as hunter-gatherers lived it, and it is offered without judgement: Paul is himself a squeamish vegetarian. Hunter-gatherers gave thanks for what they hunted and gathered.
What does it mean to live as a Leaver rather than a Taker? #
To take what is needed and leave the rest. In the writer Daniel Quinn’s terms, the shift that came with Neolithic agriculture was a move away from “the ‘Leaver CultureLeaver 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’, that is, people who take only what they need and leave the rest. What emerges in its place is 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’, people who take more than they need and leave nothing (in other words, us).”5 Being a Leaver, in the terms of the Core AnimismCore Animism. The culture-neutral core of animism: the aspects of animist teaching that are (near-)universal rather than specific to any one culture: the Original Instructions, fierce egalitarianism, respectful right relationship with the other-than-human people, equal respect for the masculine and the feminine, treating all as sacred, living as a Leaver rather than a Taker. The parallel of Michael Harner’s ‘core shamanism’, and its necessary root: shamanism is a branch of animism, so a culture-neutral shamanism has to be grounded in a culture-neutral animism, with no borrowed regalia required. More about this definition, is part of living in right relationship with the other Peoples. See What are Taker and Leaver cultures?
Does it change how we relate to the things we make? #
Yes. In the animist view, made things are alive too. We will need to “develop a more conscious and healthy relationship” with technology and “learn to live in right-relationship with them too.”6 Right relationship is not only for the natural world: it reaches the phones, machines and other things humans have made. Even so, most people find natural places more alive than human-made ones: “Generally, we find being in nature to be good for the Soul.”7
Does it change us inwardly? #
It brings back a sense of belonging, and humility. Humans are the youngest of the Peoples, and the other Peoples offer their gifts freely: “We are surrounded by powerful medicines and profound wisdom, and yet as modern humans we generally go about our business entirely unaware of this.”8 Humans are the children of that family, with much to learn.
