The Lower-World is one of the two spiritual realms of shamanism: the realm of 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, 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, of the 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 and of our own Soul. In journeys it appears as pure, unspoilt nature, with a few people living as hunter-gatherers, and it always feels safe. It is not the under-worldUnder-world. The realm of our repressed and disowned psychic energies, personal and collective: Jung’s Shadow and the unconscious, mapped shamanically. A part of the middle-world, created by the Fall, not the Lower-World, and psychotherapy’s proper territory rather than shamanism’s. Read the full answer, and it is not the human unconscious: the under-world is part of the middle-world, made by human repression, whereas the Lower-World is real, wild and not of our making.
What is the Lower-World? #
The realm of Mother Earth and the other Peoples. It is “the place where, as humans, we can go to receive both the healing gifts, and the teaching and wisdom from the Animal, Plant, and Stone People, and from Mother Earth herself… The Lower-World is a place of love, wisdom and healing. It is as far removed from hell as it is possible to be.”1
In journeys it looks like wild nature: “In journeying, the Lower-World appears as pure, unspoilt nature. It is nature as it was before humans have messed with it.” There are people there, “although they are few and far between”, and they live as hunter-gatherers, “respectfully alongside the other (non-human) Peoples, being part of the web of life.”2
Is the Lower-World a spiritual realm? #
Yes, every bit as much as 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. Western culture tends to locate the spiritual only upwards, “But, in shamanism there are two transcendent and transpersonal realms. Two realms that are far beyond the limitations and every-day concerns of the ego. Realms that are not subject to the limitations of the material universe. Places of love, healing and profound truth.”3 The Lower-World is spirituality rooted in the Earth rather than in the sky.
What lives in the Lower-World? #
The Oversouls of 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, and our own Soul. In the Lower-World we meet not individual animals or plants but the whole of a species: “Individuality then is a characteristic of the middle-world, and wholeness is a characteristic of the Lower-World.”4 It is also where the Soul of everything lives: “In the Lower-World, the Soul is what something was born to be. It is its truest nature; the essence of it”, and the blueprint for how it could grow in the middle-world.5 That includes our own Lower-World Soul, the person we were meant to be. See What is an Oversoul?
Is the Lower-World in time? #
Not as we know it. “Like the Upper-World, the Lower-World is outside of space-time. Again, we experience time passing when we journey there, but this is just the way we make sense of it.” The same is true of our Soul: “Like our Upper-World Spirit, our Lower-World Soul always was, is, and will be.”6 It is the middle-world that is bound by time; the Lower-World is not.
Is the Lower-World real, or just imagination? #
Real. It is a world in its own right. Journeying experiences are strikingly consistent across cultures, and “Shamans are quite adamant and clear that what they are experiencing is in no way merely ‘a figment of their imagination’, but a world as real as this one”.7 Our perceptions of it are clothed in images we can understand, but the realm itself is not something we make up. See Is shamanic journeying imagination, and how are journeys co-created?
Is the Lower-World the human unconscious? #
No. This is one of the most important distinctions in Therapeutic Shamanism. Even from a psychotherapist’s point of view, the shamanic realms are not merely the human unconscious. The unconscious (the under-world) and the shamanic Upper and Lower Worlds are not the same thing.8 Treating the Lower-World as the unconscious reduces the whole of wild nature to something human.
The unconscious has its own place, and its own tools. Just as shamanism is specifically designed and equipped to deal with soul loss and Power-loss, psychotherapy is specifically designed and equipped to deal with the under-world. Therapeutic Shamanism uses both, each for its own work.
What is the difference between the Lower-World and the under-world? #
The under-world is human-made, and belongs to the middle-world. With 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 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 we repressed vast amounts of our psyche, and so “We create, in effect, a whole new part of the middle-world, the under-world (as opposed to the Lower-World). The under-world is the realm of our repressed and unconscious middle-world psychic energies. It is a realm full of ‘demons’ and ‘monsters’, both personal and collective.”9 “Unlike the shamanic Lower-World, the under-world is still part of the middle-world”, and it has grown “a thousand-fold or more” since domestication.10
Its “demons”, in the sense meant here, are not independent beings. They are “only subjectively ‘real’. They are someone’s disowned and repressed parts-of-self.”11 Telling the two apart is one of the main skills of journeying.
How do I know whether I am in the Lower-World? #
By how it looks and how it feels. The Lower-World “is the realm of wild nature, and not the world of human domestication and agriculture”, so it has “no pylons, mobile phone masts, roads etc.”, “no domesticated animals”, and “No fields or hedgerows.”12 And it always feels safe: “It always feels deeply safe, safer then here ever feels. If you do not feel safe, or even just feel uneasy, that is a sure sign of middle-world energy.”13
The middle-world, by contrast, has a feel of its own: “The middle-world, even the nice bits of it, feels decidedly murkier than the other two worlds, and becomes easy to spot.” When it creeps in, the remedy is to go deeper. See How do I distinguish guidance from projection and middle-world bleed-through?
What if I see huts, fire-pits or other human signs in the Lower-World? #
Simple dwellings and fires belong there. There are people in the Lower-World, and they live in “simple dwellings such as yurts, tepees, wigwams, or benders, or mud huts.”14 “Hunter-gatherers usually cooked food directly over an open fire, or in hot ashes or fire-pits (with the food wrapped in leaves)”, whereas metal cooking pots and cauldrons belong to the middle-world.15
What does not belong is anything domesticated, built on a large scale or manufactured: farms and fences, roads, temples, castles, towns or metalwork. And whatever the setting, the Lower-World always feels deeply safe.
