In the general language of shamanism, nature spirits are the spirits of trees, waters, mountains, stones, wind and weather, and spirits of place are the spirits of a particular land or site, which many peoples honour as part of everyday life. Therapeutic Shamanism separates two very different things that these words can cover. 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 OversoulsOversoul. 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 of 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, and of whole environments such as a mountain, a desert or the sea, are wise, loving and kin; the spirits of the land and the elementals 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, fairies, elves and the like, are real, but a mixed bag, and are met with respect and caution rather than taken on as GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this.
What does the term usually mean? #
Something very broad. In the shamanic teacher Christina Pratt’s An Encyclopedia of Shamanism, a nature spirit is the spiritual aspect of any form found in nature, a tree, water, the sun or moon, the sky, the wind, a mountain or a stone, and nature spirits are one of several kinds of helping spirit a shaman may work with, sometimes appearing in human form and sometimes in the form of the thing itself.1 Spirits of place are the spirits of particular lands and sites. Among the Tuvans, herding people of the mountains and steppe north of Mongolia, the spirits of nature, and above all the spirits of the land, are honoured every day, with offerings, songs and music given at mountain passes, forks in the road, burial grounds, rock-art sites and sacred caves, and a shaman cultivates relationships with the spirits of places in order to draw on them in healing.2
Hunter-gatherer peoples lived the same respect in their own way. They did not see themselves as owning the land but as belonging to it, and as one species in a community of species; the animals and plants they lived among were honoured, and so were the stones, the hills, the rivers and streams, and the land itself.3 See What is right relationship and reciprocity?
Is the land itself alive? #
Yes. In animism the environment is not a backdrop but a being. A desert is a consciousness, and so is a grassland; the sea is a living being, and a mountain has a consciousness that can be spoken to. Each is made up of individual Animals, Plants and Stones, but they are like cells in a larger body, or branches on a vast tree. To know the world in this way, as alive and full of others who are alive, and to know ourselves as woven into it rather than standing outside it, is to become animist again.
The same holds in journeys. The place where something happens in a journey is not random, and the setting can matter as much as the beings who appear in it. Environments in journeys, like the beings met there, have their own presence and their own spirit. See What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons? and What is an axis mundi, and why does place matter?
Where do fairies, elves and other nature spirits belong? #
In the middle-world, and outside 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. Therapeutic Shamanism lists the Stone, Plant, Animal and Human People as the beings of the material world, and, separately, the elementals of the energy world: nature spirits such as fairies and elves, and archetypal beings such as angels and dragons.4 The middle-world has two aspects, the physical world and the energetic one behind it, and that energetic middle-world includes the atmosphere of buildings and places and non-physical beings such as spirits of the land, elementals and the lost souls of the dead.5 The Lower-World, by contrast, is the realm of the Peoples, the Oversouls of Wolf, Oak, Mountain and the rest. See Who are Fungi People, Small People and other kinds of People? and What is the middle-world?
Are nature spirits safe to work with? #
Not in the way Lower-World beings are. The middle-world is a mixed bag, a realm where we need to look after ourselves, because not everything there has good intentions or our best interests at heart; in the Lower-World and 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, by contrast, everyone we meet can be trusted.6 Plants themselves have no agendas, and never deceive or manipulate. Many people, though, talk to the elemental beings that live in and around plants in the middle-world, thinking they are talking to the plant itself, and such beings are notoriously tricky to work with and full of agendas of their own.7 So in Therapeutic Shamanism a person who wants to learn from Oak or from Mountain journeys to the Lower-World to meet Oak or Mountain, rather than seeking out the spirits that live around them. See How do humans communicate and build relationships with the other-than-human Peoples?
What is a terrapomp? #
The nature-spirit counterpart of a psychopomp. A psychopomp helps lost or stuck souls of the dead to move on; a terrapomp helps lost or stuck nature spirits to find their home again.8 The books name it only in their glossaries, beside the psychopomp’s work with the dead, and do not describe the practice. See What is psychopomping?
Does Therapeutic Shamanism use fairy-lore or local spirit traditions? #
Not as such. It was deliberately built to be as culturally neutral as possible, as a set of underlying principles that people from many backgrounds can adopt and adapt, so it does not draw on Celtic or Norse traditions, Druidry, or British and European gods, goddesses and fairy-lore. What it does encourage is adding in the flora and fauna of the place where a person lives, and applying the practice in a way that fits their own land and culture.9 See Is Western shamanism cultural appropriation?
