The Lower-World is home to the Oversouls of the Animal, Plant and Stone People, to Human Lower-World GuidesHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer and Tribes, and to our own Soul; it is where we receive healing, teaching and the medicine of the Peoples, and, with the Upper-World, one of the two safest places for extractionExtraction. Drawing a foreign body (an intrusion) out of a person and packing the hole with something healthy. The iron rule: only ever foreign bodies, never a part of the self: extracting a genuine part of self creates soul-loss. More about this and depossessionDe-possession. The healing for a full entity takeover: persuading or compelling the possessing entity out, then disposing of it, and always addressing the underlying soul-loss and Power-loss that let it in. More about this. The Upper-World is home to Spirit and to wise teachers; it is for perspective, ethics and compassion. The middle-world is this physical world and its unseen side: atmospheres, spirits of places, elementals and the unquiet deadUnquiet dead. The middle-world self become ghost: the ego that, having no body left to anchor it, lingers among the living instead of moving on to the Land of the Dead. Unhealthy for the living, and moved on by psychopomping. More about this, so each realm has its own beings and its own work.
Does each realm have its own beings and its own work? #
Yes. “The three realms are quite different to each other. Each realm has distinct qualities, and different ‘inhabitants’. Each realm needs a different set of skills from the journeyer, and a different awareness and approach.”1 Knowing what belongs where is part of knowing which realm you are in. See What are the three shamanic realms?
What kinds of beings are found in the Lower-World? #
The Peoples, met as their Oversouls. The Lower-World is “the realm of Mother Earth and of wildness. It is the home of the Souls of Animals, Plants and Stones, and the place where we can receive their medicine, gifts and teachings.”2 It is the realm of the Oversouls of Animals, Plants and Minerals.3 In the Lower-World we meet the whole of a species rather than an individual animal or plant.
There are people too. Human Lower-World Guides live there as hunter-gatherers, “and as I have said they can be great teachers of shamanism”, though “the Lower-World is primarily a place of connecting with the other Peoples; with animals, plants and stones.”4 It is also home to our own Soul, the person we were meant to be. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People? and What are Human Guides?
What kinds of work belong in the Lower-World? #
Healing, learning and reconnection. The Lower-World is “a place we can receive the healing gifts and wisdom of our non-human brothers and sisters, the Animal, Plant and Stone Peoples, and healing from Mother Earth herself.”5 It is where the Power Animal is found and the bond deepened, where the medicine of the Peoples is learnt through grokking, and where 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 happen. In a healing journey, what may happen includes “extractions; burning; burials; smoking and smudging; using crystals and/or plants; and anything else.”6
Extraction and depossession are most safely done there, or in the Upper-World. “Extraction can be done in any of the shamanic realms”, but “the safest place to do an extraction is either in the Lower or Upper Worlds.”7 The same is true of depossession.8 What is removed, though, is still of the middle-world: “we are bringing something that is of the middle-world into the Lower-World in order to deal with it.”
Where does soul retrieval belong? #
It draws on more than one realm. Soul retrieval “is not specifically a Lower-World issue. Doing soul-retrieval usually involves working in all the realms, and often can involve doing a substantial amount of middle-world work.”9 The soul partsSoul-part. A small-s, middle-world part of the self that can be lost (sent away) and can be retrieved. Not the capital-S Soul. Read the full answer that are retrieved are usually middle-world parts of us. That is different from the Lower-World Soul, which is never lost but has to be found. Because it needs skill in all the realms, soul retrieval comes later in a practice. See What is soul retrieval?
What kinds of beings and work belong in the Upper-World? #
Spirit, and wise teachers. The Upper-World is “the realm of 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. It is the realm that most people think of as “spiritual””, and “a place of wisdom, love and healing.”10 Our own Spirit belongs there, the part of us that is a fragment of Father Sky.
Its work is perspective. “It is the realm we turn to for spiritual guidance and wisdom, the place where we can go to get a bigger perspective and ask for help with things like ethics and right action.”11 The imagery people meet there varies greatly with their culture, so it is best not taken literally. Like the Lower-World, the Upper-World is also one of the two safest places for extraction and depossession. See What is the Upper-World?
What kinds of beings are found in the middle-world? #
Everything in this world, seen and unseen. The middle-world “is the physical world, and the energies and entities that inhabit everyday reality (“atmospheres” in rooms and buildings, ghosts, spirits of places, and so on).”12 It includes “non-physical beings such as spirits of the land, elementals, lost souls of the dead, and more.”13 It is also where the human-made under-world belongs.
These beings vary as much as people do. Spirit possession, for example, “is a middle-world problem”: no Upper-World or Lower-World spirit would ever possess anyone against their will.14 And “the unquiet dead are as much of a mixed bag as the living are.”15 See What is the middle-world?
What kinds of work belong in the middle-world? #
The work of dealing with what happens here, once someone is ready. “Shamanic middle-world journeys are an essential part of shamanic healing, in terms of dealing with unhealthy energies, possessions, unhealthy entanglementsEntanglement. An unhealthy energetic tie hooking us into another person, a role, an object or a family story; released by disentanglement. More about this, soul loss, and so on. After all, the middle-world is the place where these things happen in the first place.”16 It is also where psychopomping happens, helping the unquiet dead to move on, a specialist area which, unless someone is highly experienced, is left to a Guide.
That work comes last in training. “Doing shamanic middle-world work is indeed important, but only once we are properly ready for it, and able to do it safely.”17 See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism begin with the Lower-World?
