In abandoning 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 our culture lost the healthy Stories of Mother, creating the Mother-Wound, a wounded relationship 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 herself. A personal mother-wound, from not receiving healthy mothering, can, until we do something about it, feed into that collective Mother-Wound. The Father-Wound is the parallel wound around Father, a big topic in its own right that belongs with 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 and Father SkyFather Sky. The sacred Masculine pole: pure consciousness, from which the Upper-World arises. Paired with Mother Earth. ‘Father Sun’ is the older name for the same pole, found in the first three books. More about this.
What is the Mother-Wound? #
In cutting ourselves off from the Lower-World, our culture lost its right relationship with the more-than-human world, and lost connection with our own Souls. “In abandoning the Lower-World, we lost the healthy Stories of Mother. This created what is known as ‘the Mother-Wound’, and it lies at the heart of the Taker cult.”1
Our modern ‘civilisation’ has a profoundly wounded relationship with the earth, the other beings we share it with, and Mother Earth herself, and “This wounded relationship, the Mother-wound, can colour our perception of the shamanic Lower-World, and even shape and distort what we experience when journeying.”2
Does “Mother” mean our biological mother? #
Not necessarily. This is the Mother Archetype. The archetypal role of Mother is to be someone’s first relationship in the world, the first thing they attach to, and their first experience of nurture, love, support, comfort, safety and protection. It is also their first experience of the Feminine. The person who fills that role need not even be female, as ‘Masculine and Feminine’ and ‘male and female’ are not the same thing.3
Mother and Father are also far bigger than any human parent. Mother Earth and Father Sky are “the two great creator energies that bring the universe into existence. They are the sacred Feminine and Masculine, and the sacred Mother and Father.” They exist both outside of us and within us, and “The one we need to seek out first is Mother.”4
See What are the sacred Masculine and sacred Feminine (Father Sky and Mother Earth)?
What is “good enough” mothering? #
Therapeutic Shamanism draws on the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott and his idea of “the good enough mother”. People often assume this means that perfection is impossible, but Winnicott meant something subtler. A good enough mother is one who gets the balance right between emotionally holding a child too tightly, and holding them too loosely.
A child held too tightly may stay overly bonded to their mother even as an adult, or rebel and find it hard to be vulnerable or form secure attachments. A child held too loosely may not feel safe and welcome, and grow up anxious and ungrounded, “with little sense of belonging”. These patterns can apply to fathers too, and looking at dysfunctional mothering is not an attack on mothers or motherhood.5
How does a personal wound become a collective one? #
“Like our hunger for food, we come into this world with an inbuilt yearning for Mother.” And as with food, what we imprint on is not necessarily healthy for us: as vulnerable, dependent children, we have to make do with what is available. A wounded experience of mother can distort our picture of the Mother Archetype, and this can follow through into our relationship with Mother Earth herself. “In other words, if we have a mother-wound, then, until we do something about it, this can become a Mother-Wound.”
This happens collectively too, because our personal wounds feed into and create the collective. A society of people with unhealthy stories about the Mother Archetype creates distorted stories about Mother Earth: that the Lower-World is hell, that the natural world is “lesser” and can be used and abused, that humans are better than the other Peoples, and that Masculine is better than Feminine. So the usual criticism of therapy is turned around: “Far from it being self-indulgent, we have a responsibility to the world around us to heal ourselves.”6
And the Father-Wound? #
“Obviously, these examples of dysfunctional parenting can apply to fathers, too.” Finding Your Deep Soul focuses on the Mother-Wound, because it is about the Lower-World and our relationship with Mother Earth. “The nature of the Father-Wound is a big topic in its own right, and one that belongs in the next book, which explores the Upper-World and our relationship with Father Sky.”7
How does Therapeutic Shamanism help to heal these wounds? #
The first step is to face the truth. That includes “stopping making excuses for your parents”, and recognising that even if there were good things in childhood, the good things do not cancel the bad things out. Many people tell themselves they had a good childhood even when, by any sane measure, this is not true.8
Because Mother is the first relationship we seek, an unhealthy attachment is sometimes called the “primary” or “base” wound. It happened before we had language, so the wound is “an embodied and somatic one, an unconscious one”, not easily reached through words. This is where shamanic work has something particular to offer. In a journey, we can go to the Lower-World to have the experience of being nurtured as a baby and of feeling a secure attachment to a Mother. Because this is non-traumatic, somatic and sensory, it “can begin to gently release the primary wounding patterns locked in the right hemisphere and the body.” For people who cannot imagine being nurtured by a Human Mother, a nurturing Animal can be met instead, such as She-Bear, She-Wolf or Lioness. The practice itself is given in Finding Your Deep Soul.9
Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer, “a gift from Mother Earth, the ultimate mother who shows unconditional love”, helps us learn to love and be compassionate to ourselves, “And it helps to begin to heal the deep Mother wound”.10
See How does Power Animal heal and support us? and What is the forgiveness trap?
