Alongside 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, Therapeutic Shamanism recognises the Standing PeopleStanding People. The Trees. More about this (trees) and the Human People, all branches of one great family rooted in 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. The Fungi People and the Small People are taught to students on the Next-Steps course on the Animal, Plant and Stone People. Fairies, elves and other nature spirits are not counted among 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: they belong to the middle-world.
Why are they called People? #
Because everything is alive, conscious and kin. In animism, “Everything is equal and part of one big family of beings. For animists, we humans are one of the Animal People, cousins of the Plant People and Stone People, and part of an interconnected and inter-dependent web of life.”1 Calling other beings People says they are someones, with their own kind of awareness, rather than things. See What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons?
Which are the main Peoples? #
Five. The Lower-World is “the realm of ‘the People’ – Mother Earth’s children. As well as us, the Human People, there are the Animal People, the Standing People (the trees), the Plant People, and the Stone People.”2 The Fungi People and the Small People, described below, are not among them. The fuller account of the Animal, Plant and Stone People is in Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?
What are the Standing People? #
Trees. They are Plant People, with a highly collective awareness, but they live far longer than most plants, and so “individual trees acquire middle-world stories. They gradually develop a history and middle-world personality.” This is why shamans say the Standing People are more like us than other Plants, and generally easier to communicate with.3 Their roots reach deep into the earth and their branches high towards the sky, so they are seen as spanning the realms. See What are Plant People and what gifts do they bring?
How are the Human People related to the Animal, Plant and Stone People? #
As branches of the same tree. Each individual human is like the tip of a twig on a branch, Human, and the branches converge: “if we look deeper, into shamanic reality, we would see three branches – Human, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla.” Following them back, they join into a larger branch, Great Ape, and so on, back through Animal to the trunk and to Mother Earth herself.4
There is a Human OversoulOversoul. 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, just as there is a Wolf Oversoul. This is what is meant by the 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 with a capital A, “The Human Oversoul branch itself being just a part of a great tree with other branches”, and “the Ancestral 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 the Human Oversoul in a form or forms that we can have a relationship with.”5 Humans are the youngest of the Peoples, and in the family order the children (see How does animism understand power and hierarchy?).
Who are the Fungi People and the Small People? #
Neither appears in the published books, which name only the five Peoples above. They are taught to students on the Next-Steps course on the Animal, Plant and Stone People. Their teaching is shared in the wiki with students at that level.
Are fairies and elves part of the Peoples? #
No. Nature spirits such as fairies and elves are listed separately from the Peoples, as elementals. They belong to the energy behind the physical world, the shamanic middle-world. That world “includes things like the energetic atmosphere of buildings and places, the energy given off by people… and non-physical beings such as spirits of the land, elementals, lost souls of the dead, and more.”6 Many people “talk to elemental beings that live in and around plants in the middle-world, thinking that they are talking to the plant itself.”7 The Peoples belong to the Lower-World, and the Lower-World is about reconnecting with nature.
What is the purpose of working with the Peoples? #
To learn from them, to be healed by them and to find our place again. “Animists know that not only is everything around us sentient, but everything around us is a teacher.”8 Each kind of being carries a healing gift, freely given, and yet “We have cut ourselves off from all the love, healing and other help that is literally just there for the asking.”9 Working with the Peoples reconnects us with the web of life, which is the healing for Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer (see What is Power-loss?).
