What is the medicine bundle?

What is the medicine bundle? #

It is what a shaman knows about the healing gifts of the other Peoples. In indigenous cultures, a shaman would teach their apprentice about the healing properties of each being and how best to work with them, and the apprentice’s own guides would teach them directly. “Through this process, a student would acquire a body of knowledge that is sometimes referred to as a shaman’s ‘Medicine Bundle’ (or, ‘Medicine Bag’).”¹ In short: “Knowing about the healing properties of particular Animals, Plants and Stones and how to use them.”²

What does “medicine” mean here? #

A being’s healing gift and its teaching. In the traditional story of the great council of all 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, every type of Plant, Animal and Stone agreed to take on a healing gift and teaching, and to give it freely to any human who asked. It was, and is, the shaman’s role “to go to the Plants, Animals and Stones and ask them for their healing gifts and teaching, in order to help heal the humans in a tribe, and to help us live as humans in harmony with nature.”³ Medicine can be practical teaching too. In journeying, we may learn that “Wren can teach us that we do not have to be big to find our voice.”⁴ See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?

Is the medicine bundle a physical bag? #

Sometimes, but that is not what matters. A shaman’s bag might hold stones, crystals, bones, teeth, shells, feathers, herbs or bark. Unlike a herbalist, though, the shaman uses them differently: “Shamanic healing is largely done in the shamanic realms. When physical objects are used, their purpose is usually to help the shaman connect to that object’s healing power in shamanic reality.”⁵

Some shamans carry a great many objects, which is why shamanism is sometimes called “the ‘path of paraphernalia’”; others use almost none. “Such shamans still have a Medicine Bundle, in that they have an extensive knowledge of the healing properties of particular plants, animals, and stones, but they do not bother with having physical representations of these things”. What matters is “not the physical representation itself, but knowing about its teaching and healing properties, and how to work with it shamanically”, and “it is the Lower-World Medicine Bundle that is important and what is needed, not 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 medicine bundle.”

How is a medicine bundle built up? #

Over a lifetime, through journeying and research. Sometimes a being’s gift is obvious from what happens in a journey. Often, though, given the symbolic nature of the work, things “will have to be ‘unpacked’ afterwards”, and if an Animal, Plant or Stone appears that is unfamiliar, “after the journey you can research it. In this way, you can build up your Medicine Bundle.”⁶ The same holds for healing journeys done for oneself: if a Plant or Crystal is used, research it in this reality, and “This way you start to build up your ‘medicine bundle’ of helper Stone, Plant and Animal spirits that you can draw on in journeys when needed.”⁷

Research also builds confidence: “nothing quite shuts up the rational and sceptical left hemisphere of our brains like looking up something that appeared in a journey, something that you did not know anything about beforehand, and finding that its healing medicine is exactly what was needed.” In a shamanic culture an apprentice would also learn from human teachers, in words, so in their absence, “when something appears in a journey, your 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 are essentially saying, ‘You need to Google this.’”⁸

Which beings go into the medicine bundle? #

Animals, Plants, including trees, and Stones, met in truly Lower-World work as their 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 rather than as individuals. In Lower-World work, “if you work with individuals in journeys, the work will inevitably have a middle-world energy to it to some degree”, so the aim is to connect with the species as a whole, “the same goes for working with Plant and Stone too”.⁹ Knowing about a being before meeting it is no obstacle. Since journeys are co-created, “Journeys are never objectively true. They are mythosMythos. Metaphorical, symbolic, felt truth: the truth of art, poetry and shamanic journeys. Shamanic reality is mythologically true, not literally true, which is why journeys are interpreted, never taken at face value. More about this, not logosLogos. Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this.”¹⁰ Prior knowledge simply gives the experience more to work with. See What is an Oversoul?

How does unpacking a journey relate to the medicine bundle? #

Unpacking is how what happens in a journey becomes knowledge. “When you come out of a journey you have a treasure trove of things to unpack.” Journeys are often packed with teaching “about specific plants, animals or stones, their healing medicines and how to work with them”, which is why writing journeys down helps.¹¹

The order matters. In helping someone unpack a journey, “my first intent is to help them discover their own meanings and interpretation. Having done that, and only after having done that, there will often still be things that do not mean anything to the person whose journey it is.” For those, “it can be useful to do some research, which is where the left-brain (and the internet!) comes in.”¹² Personal meaning comes first; research then adds what is known about the being’s medicine, and that is what joins the bundle. See How do I unpack and interpret a shamanic journey?

What is the difference between physical medicine and shamanic medicine? #

There are several differences, and the two are partners, not rivals. First, shamanic healing works in the shamanic realms with a being’s healing power, not with its physical substance, which is why a shaman and a herbalist use the same plant in different ways. Second, Therapeutic Shamanism understands that a remedy can carry a healing gift without any physical trace of the substance. Homeopathy is an example: “Whilst there may be no physical trace of a substance left in a homeopathic medicine, what is there is the substance’s healing gift.”¹³

Third, shamans are pragmatists. “Some things need shamanic medicine, some things need allopathic medicine, and some things need acupuncture, chiropractic, Bowen and other things.”¹⁴ One shaman with a fungal infection asked doctors for Western medicine for it: “That shaman knew when something needed western medicine, and when something needed shamanic medicine. Shamans are usually aware of the limits of what they can do.”¹⁵