Shaman, Fallen Angels and Sewing the Veil

A sharp juxtaposition between inner and outer calls awareness towards the space or gap between the two.

Before any movement inside the house at dawn, jays are screaming and squirrels are leaping with daredevil confidence from limb to trunk and back again. Sunlight streams through rising woodsmoke and yesterday's snow continues to disappear into the flows of groundwater.

Inside, nothing moves. The only sounds are of the heater kicking on and off. Inside me it is the opposite. I am moving and dancing to heartsongs on the precipice of something bottomless and ongoing. On the outside, I am a swan gliding through still waters – observing all but remaining nonplussed.

A woodpecker drums his mating call as my husband and dog sleep into full daylight. Outside – inside – what thin veil separates?

The wildwood of life has something to say. Though humanity typically places the forest “outside,” its deeps live within us all. Its sanctity and mystery is older than man, and it has gifted its symbolism, healing and mythos to us as we wander its paths and absorb its wisdom. For so many centuries we have pushed these gifts outside of ourselves. We made the gap. We sewed the veil.

We have cheated and divorced ourselves and one another from something very much alive in all the realms over all of time. Our forest deities and shaman have become fallen angels, relegated to an outer banishment as humanity chooses technology, entertainment, and short-sighted self fulfillment as gospel.

Look in at the Stillness and then look up at the Pole Star. Walk back into the woods and fields to find and sow the seeds of our timeless, eternal existence.