Soul calling is calling a lost part of a person’s soul back home. Amongst hunter-gatherers, the shaman would heal soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer by finding the lost part, or calling it back, and returning it to the person it belonged to, after which it soon settled in again. Calling a part back is one traditional way of doing soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer, but it is often not enough on its own today, because most lost parts were sent away by another part of the same person, which first has to be listened to.
What is soul calling? #
The calling back of a lost soul partSoul-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. When part of a person’s soul leaves, through shock, illness, grief or trauma, the traditional remedy was for the shaman to bring it home. In hunter-gatherer tribes, traditional soul retrieval involved some version of the shaman finding the lost soul part, or calling it back, and then placing it back into the person it belonged to.1 Calling is one way of bringing a part home; going out to find it is another.
In those cultures it was usually a short business. The returned part would be integrated after a little while, and the matter would be resolved.1 Hunter-gatherers recognised the signs of soul loss and dealt with them swiftly, which is part of why it seems to have been so much rarer amongst them than it is now.2
What part of the soul is called back? #
A 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 part, soul with a small s. What leaves in soul loss, and what is called back, are pieces of our middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer: our playfulness, confidence, vulnerability, anger or tears, for example. The Lower-World Soul, with a capital S, is never lost in this way, so it is never called back; it is found and grown into over a lifetime. See What is the difference between Soul and a soul part?
Does the lost part have a say? #
Yes. A lost part is not dragged home. In a soul retrieval the practitioner, working with their 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 and other 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, finds the part, meets it with kindness and compassion, asks for it to be given the healing it needs, and then tries to persuade it to come back; only if it agrees is it brought home. Part of the work is asking why it left, and what needs to happen for it to stay. See How does soul retrieval work?
Why is calling a part back often not enough today? #
Because the reason parts leave has changed. In the modern world the commonest cause of soul loss is that we send parts of ourselves away in order to fit in. If all of our soul had gone, we would have died; the part that stayed behind and carried on, the fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer, is the very part that sent the other away, to protect us. So it may be uneasy about the lost part returning, or flatly opposed to it.3
That is why modern soul retrieval usually means listening to the fort-holder and winning its consent first, and then a time of integration afterwards, whilst the person adjusts to having the part back. Simply bringing a part home and blowing it back in can still work when the whole person is fully ready, but these days it is far less likely to.4 The fuller account is in What is soul retrieval? and What happens after soul retrieval and why is integration essential?
Is soul calling the same as a calling in life? #
No, that is a different subject that happens to share the words. Talk of a ‘calling’ usually means a sense of life direction or vocation, and how that relates to the Lower-World Soul is a question of its own. See What is a calling?
