The Lower-World Tribe is a tribe of Lower-World Humans, sometimes called your Ancestral Kin, whom you meet in shamanic journeys as well as your individual Human 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. They are not your biological ancestors but representatives of Human, living as hunter-gatherers did before agriculture, according to the Patterns of a healthy tribe. Spending time with them shows what it is to belong and be loved in a healthy human community, and can heal deep wounds around family, people and groups.
What is the Lower-World Tribe? #
A community of Humans in the Lower-World. “As well as individual Lower-World Guides, at some point in your shamanic journeying you will meet your Lower-World Tribe. In shamanism, these people are sometimes referred to as your ‘Ancestral Kin’.” You may meet them unexpectedly in a journey, or ask your Power Animal to take you to them.1
Like the Human Guides, they are not individual people who once lived. “They are not ancestors, but AncestorsAncestors. The human Oversoul: the whole of humanity held as one Lower-World being. Distinct from individual dead ancestors (small a), who are not worked with in this approach. Read the full answer.” Working with your biological ancestors is middle-world work; the Ancestral Kin are “not individuals from the middle-world, though, but of the Lower-World, representatives of Human.” Your Tribe may be of a different race and culture from you, or not, and may or may not share the culture of your main Human Guide; “It does not matter either way.”1 (The glossaries of all three books define ‘Ancestral Kin’ more broadly, The Shamanic Journey‘s as one’s Lower-World helper-spirits and the other two as one’s Human Guides; in Therapeutic Shamanism today it means the Tribe.) See What are Human Guides? and What is the difference between an ancestor and an Ancestor?
What is the Tribe for? #
Belonging, healing and learning. “Your Tribe shows you how you are part of Human, and what it is to be loved and part of a healthy human tribe.” Where they live is a safe place to go for healing, and a place to learn from Guides who specialise in particular areas of shamanism. It is also somewhere simply to be, “as a respite from the human middle-world and the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer; a place where you do not have to worry about paying bills, problems at work, emails, or ethical dilemmas about what food or products to buy”, and to remember how we used to live, “in right-relationship with the Earth and the other Peoples, living a sustainable and simple life.”2 See Who are specialist Human Guides?
How can the Tribe heal wounds around people? #
By letting us experience, again and again, what it is like not to have them. The Tribe is “a place you can go to heal wounds created by difficult or dysfunctional human relationships.” If you have never felt welcome in the human world, you can experience being somewhere you “really belong, and are loved, valued, accepted, and truly treasured.” If you never felt safe as a child, or felt you had no voice, or always had to be on guard, or if the politics of work or family exhaust you, the Tribe can show you the opposite. “Whatever the wound is in terms of relationships with people and human society, you can travel to your Lower-World tribe and experience what it is like to not have that wound. Doing this can be profoundly healing.”3
And there is no limit on it: “you can do this as often as you need and as many times as you want, until the wound is healed or no longer troubles you. For your Lower-World Tribe will always be there for you, whenever you want them or need them.”3
What are they like? #
Hunter-gatherers, living well. They are “a Tribe of Humans living as they would have before agriculture and domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this”, so, as always in the Lower-World, there is no metalwork and there are no domesticated animals, and middle-world things that bleed into a journey are signs to watch for. They live “according to the Patterns of Healthy Tribe.”4 See What makes a healthy group or tribe?
Because that way of life is so unlike ours, it helps to know something of what hunter-gatherer tribes were really like; otherwise “you will inevitably tend to use imagery and concepts you are familiar with.” People often picture tribes as an extended family or a small modern community, but “they were very different to either of these things.”5 They were rarely made up of nuclear family units; children were usually raised by all the adults, free to spend time with whichever adults they felt closest to. And people in them felt little need for privacy, because they were free of the tensions we take for granted.6
What can get in the way of meeting them? #
Our own history with people. Each of us has a relationship style, the strong one, the needy one, the joker, guarded or trusting, and so on, and we can carry it into the Lower-World. Some people are so used to being independent and in control that they stop paying attention to their Guides; others hand their power away; others keep the Tribe at arm’s length because they are afraid of being hurt or do not feel worthy, even though “the reality is that their Guides would never hurt them or let them down”.7 The stories of the nuclear family and of privacy can distort the picture too.
So can the drama triangle, the endless game of victim, persecutor and rescuer that surrounds us in modern life. “This is why you will not find the drama triangleDrama triangle. The persecutor–rescuer–victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. More about this being played in your Lower-World Tribe (or anywhere else in the Lower-World, or 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, for that matter). It is a middle-world game.” What the Guides can do is help us walk away from it.8 Awareness of these patterns helps us leave them behind, and the Guides can help heal the wounds behind them.
How do people meet their Tribe? #
In journeys, when the time is right. Finding Your Deep Soul prepares for the meeting with reflections on our experience of family, school and groups, and then gives a set of journeys: a first meeting, then journeys that deepen the connection. The steps are in the book and not repeated here. “After reading through what is involved, if you do not feel ready to meet your Tribe, that is fine. It is important that you meet them when the time feels right.”9
Does the Tribe include children and Elders? #
Yes. Spending time with the Tribe’s Children can be healing for anyone, “And even if your childhood was a happy one, there is still much to be gained from experiencing what it would have been like to have had a childhood free of conventional schooling and the trappings of modern-day life; to experience what it would have been like to have been raised by animists.” One journey is simply to play with them, or to experience being one of them.10
The Tribe also has its EldersElder (True Elder). The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. More about this, the Grandfathers and Grandmothers, whom we can meet for healing and teaching or simply to be with. See What is an Elder?
How do we show gratitude to the Tribe? #
With a real gift. One of the book’s practices is to offer the Tribe an actual physical object as an expression of gratitude, something found or made, such as a carving, a flint knife, a toy for the Children, a pipe for the Elders or a letter of thanks; afterwards the object becomes a reminder of the connection.11 Gratitude of this kind keeps the relationship reciprocal, since the Tribe gives us healing, teaching and belonging. See What are altars, fetishes and offerings for?
Is the Lower-World Tribe the same as the inner tribe? #
No. The inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer is the community of our own parts of self; the Lower-World Tribe is a community of other beings, Humans of the Lower-World. Meeting them is part of the larger work of the book in which they appear, digging deep into the Lower-World “to meet our Human Ancestral Tribe and ask them to teach us how best to live on this Earth.”12 See What is the inner tribe?
