SHAMANISM, SAWAIN AND THE ANCESTORS.

The article that follows is inspired in this time of year in the Northern hemisphere and the days of Sawain that we have just lived.

A note for the semantic purists…
Please note that here we refer to the Celtic Cultures but we know very well that the so called Celtic cultures were in reality many different tribes and that they did not call themselves Celts, just as the peoples of Abya Yala (The Americas) did not call themselves Indians, however, there are some broad similarities in cosmovision and practices between all those tribes that ended up being called Celts and so we use this general term for convenience. We apologise in advance if this offends anyones sensibilities or conceptual frameworks.

SHAMANISM, SAWAIN AND THE ANCESTORS.

Recently we have passed through the long night of Sawain (or Samhain), the Festival that marks the entry of the earth into the dark winter time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
This festival of Sawain was, in older times, a very sacred day and for the Northern European tribes especially those that we now call Celts, for it was the end of the year, the last day of a yearly cycle in which the land enters into a necessary time of hibernation and withdrawal where new life is gestated.

The gestation of the new life and the renewal of the forces of nature takes 3 months and it is at the Festival of Imbolc at the beginning of February that the plants begin to emerge again from under the soil. From Sawain until Imbolc therefore it is a time of quiet and of reflection for the human beings huddled around the hearth telling the stories, repairing their tools, making their indoor work of winter time. Sawain, thus, has a mystical and shamanic aspect and also a more earthly aspect related to the agricultural year.

Sawain has now become known as Halloween or All Hallows Eve, the long night that precedes All Saints Day and as such it has become associated with ghosts, ghouls, dark and scary spectres of the dead, or perhaps, rather, the “undead”, those spirits that are suspended between this living world and the otherworld of the Afterlife.
As we know now this is something that has been taken over by the materialist society and is “celebrated” with fancy dress parties in which people dress up as monsters, phantoms, witches, warlocks and so on with a decidedly dark and sinister undertone albeit laced with ironic humour. Whatever the case in this shape and form it is anything but a Sacred Day and has lost it’s more ancient meaning. As such it can be hard for us, as modern people, to know really how this day was seen and felt in older times…

The practice of shamanism and sacred rituals on such a day can give us, however, a reconnection and some insights into this most sacred of days. In many ways we can even say that Sawain was and still is the most sacred day for the ancient Celtic peoples for Sawain is the day of the Ancestors, it is the day on which the humans living in the Middle World or ABRED, as it is known in the Druidic cosmovision, can get in touch with the ancestral spirits of their people and also pray for the help of the spirits for friends and family that have departed from this world.

The ancestral spirits are the ones which are the guardians of the Sacred Otherworld… The land beyond the sea known by different names, one of which is TIR NA NOG, the land of the forever young. The British Celts call this sacred isle Avalon located at Glastonbury which was once an island located in the middle of a sea marsh on the South West coast of Britain. Avalon is often depicted shrouded in mists and such mists were known to be magical. It is known that the Isle of Avalon was a sacred burial site for the local group of tribes known as the “Durotriges.”
The Irish Celts also spoke of a place called Tech Duinn which means the House of Donn, Donn being the God of the Dead and an ancestor of the Gaelic peoples. Tech Duinn is also to the west across the sea and is a place for the dead souls that are unable to reach Tir Na Nog and instead await a new reincarnation.

The journey to these otherworldly realms is one that is dangerous for the soul and thus the peoples used the day of Sawain to pray for and plead protection for the souls that have departed.
The danger on this journey is that the soul may get trapped or waylaid, even overpowered by negative spirits and condemned to wander in a the nether world as a shade, lost and filled with sadness. This is what explains the cases of ghosts in cemeteries and other haunted places where the souls have become trapped. Such souls where also potential prey for dark witches and warlocks that would use them to carry out their evil bidding!!

We find these understandings echoed in many traditions and the Gnostic Master, Samuel Aun Weor states that upon death many souls are unable to let go of this material realm and become trapped, most often staying near to the decomposing physical body that they once inhabited. The heavier that the soul is with the egos, the more likely this is to happen.

The ancestor spirits that conserve themselves alive and well in the sacred otherworld, however, are those beings that have transcended the mortal life and that reached awakened states of consciousness through their deeds in this world. They are the beings that gain access to that Sacred Land where life is eternal and from there they watch and help us mortals in our quest to awaken our consciousness. For them there is no longer a need to return to this world but for the less transcended souls, the hope is to travel to the ancestral spirit world and rest a while before returning again to this world.

Those ancestral spirits that in their lifetime made conscious sacrifice and made their own internal work taking on the “heroes quest” and dying in themselves for the benefit of their tribe and people are those that become revered and remembered for all eternity and whose names are kept alive in the folk tales and the folk memory. These are the true ancestral spirits and wisdom keepers of any people, nation or tribe.

Apart from those elevated beings whose deeds have been recorded in the racial memory, there have been many millions of souls that have lived in each race and tribe and not all are well remembered by everyone except for their closest friends and relatives.
Many of them will have had to return again to physical bodies, perhaps in different races or in different epochs and as such are not so generally remembered due to the fact that they did not awaken or did not make much spiritual advancement in the lifetime when they had a body in such and such race or tribe…
Thus in olden times, before the era of electric lights, motor cars, and all the home comforts of this modern age, the people collectively invoked the ancestors, lighting candles also for the spirits of the recently departed that they may find their way to those sacred realms to rest a while before returning to this mortal coil and so this is the time to say a prayer for all our departed and beloved friends, that they may be cared for by our ancestral heroes and the Gods and Goddesses that watch over us.

A day outside of Time...

This day of Sawain, as day of the ancestors was considered by the Druids of the Celtic tribes to be, not only the day of the dead but also a day outside of time.

As we know the year has 365 days and if we make the division we can see that the 52 weeks of the year take up 364 days leaving one left over. This day left over was considered to be a day out of time, the day in which the normal time is suspended and the veil between this world where time rules and the next world, the world of spirit, is thinnest, thus giving us access not only to the departed spirits but also giving us access to the very motions of the universe and the possibility to see and divine the future, or to remember the past, in order to better understand and comprehend our history. Thus it was a doubly Sacred Day, a day apt for reflecting on the past and preparing for the future, a day for concentrating in the world beyond the earthly one of time in which we find ourselves. For this reason it was the day of endings and beginnings, of coming full cycle and taking a moment to step back and to observe ones life and to reflect on the essence and the mystery of life and death.

The Celts were not the only peoples to have such a day and we know that the peoples of Mexico such as the Aztecs and the Maya also have their day out of time and their day of the dead, although in their case these are different days, for the Mayan day out of time is that which corresponds to Summer Solstice. The Aztec/Mayan/Mexican day of the dead, however, is also 31st October and this tradition is an ancient one on which they remember their ancestors and the spirits of loved ones that have departed. For the Aztec people this day is sacred to the Goddess Mictecacihuatl, the Queen of Mictlan, the Underworld or realm of the dead.

In the case of the Mapuche of Chile they also make special rituals for invocation of the ancestors, these rituals are called Nguillatun and in this celebration they congregate around the Totem Tree of their Nation which is the Canelo (Drymis winteri) and make a series of rituals, prayers, invocations and dances in order to connect with the departed ancestral spirits. The Mapuche shamans, (MACHIS) of the coastal zones of the Mapuche territory also speak of a land across the western ocean that they call Ngülchenmaywe, the island of the dead.

Just as we have explained above, according to the Mapuche, the ancestral spirits that remain as guardians and reach heaven or the Upper world (which they call Wenumapu) to watch over the tribe are the ones that have accumulated the inner knowledge and the vital energy necessary to transcend. For them it is easy to get past all the immediate obstacles of the afterlife and not be swallowed up as ghosts or spectres in a kind of netherworld in between this world and the sanctuary or island of the departed spirits. The Mapuche say that there are dark sorcerers called Kalkus that prey upon the souls of the dead and try to trap them and use them for their negative magic. The ability to get past the Kalkus to do this depends upon the consciousness of the soul and this is directly related to the actions of the soul in life and the vital energy that the soul has which will enable it to resist the sorcerers that want to trap it.

They say that when the 'Am' (or soul) leaves the corpse, it remains around the body, and the places in the material world where it had lived. This was the opportunity for the ‘kalkus' to hook the ‘Am’. If they manage this then the soul becomes a 'huichal-alhué', a soul enslaved by those sorcerers that will use it to harm their enemies.

If it escapes this trance the 'Am' becomes a 'Pulli' (a spirit) and leaves the places it frequented in its lifetime, arriving at a land beyond the ocean, where the sun sets. This is what the Mapuche cultures of the Pacific coast and the Isle of Chiloe affirm. These Mapuches of the coastal zones are called LAFKENCHE.

Some Mapuche have commented on the similarity between their customs and the celtic customs regarding the dead and they have also investigated about ‘Halloween’ because the Spanish introduced them to Halloween and All Saints Day and through that they investigated and came to the same conclusions that we share here, i.e. that Halloween is a corruption of a more ancient ‘Celtic” festival which works around the same understandings that they have about what happens when the soul leaves the body, so nowadays there are Mapuches that observe Sawain and use Sawain also as a day of the dead. This is quite a remarkable thing and shows the tremendous resilience of the Mapuche because, even though the Spanish tried to hypnotise them with the whole Halloween story which IGNORES the positive aspects of such a day, the intelligent Mapuche think for themselves and discovered the truth and then incorporated and made their own version of the Celtic Sawain even though they live on the other side of the world…

In the case of the Mapuche the soul or “Am” has to avoid the different traps and obstacles in order to travel across the western ocean to arrive at Ngülchenmaywe, the land of the dead. We can liken this to Tech Duinn of the Gaelic people, for this is the place where the soul can rest.

In Ngülchenmaywe, those souls that have made great advances and qualify to become ancestor guardian spirits convert themselves into Pillan or Wangulen (different kinds of ancestral spirits) and carry on to Wenumapu. The others can rest in Ngülchenmaywe until their time to return to the physical world comes. Likewise, the souls of the Celts can rest at Tech Duinn, the isle of the dead, whilst the ones that have earnt the right to become ancestral guardians can continue to Tir Na Nog or Tír Tairngire (the land of promise) as it is otherwise known.

For sure we can say that in both cases of Mapuche and Celtic peoples, the success or otherwise of this afterlife journey depends on the consciousness and deeds of the soul in this life. Indeed, the Celts also refer to many such things in their myths and stories. For example, in the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh tales, the hero Pwyll is safely guided to Annwn, the otherworld, at his death by Arawn the King of Annwn himself. In this case Pwyll was thus blessed with safe passage because during his lifetime he had personally helped the King of Annwn and so gained the merit of a safe passage to the elemental paradise of Annwn. Other souls would perhaps not be so blessed but in all cases the shamanic rituals and rites of Sawain were at once to aid and help the departed spirits of the dead and also to ask the help of the ancestors for those that still live in this world.

In Modern Times….

It is very much a reflection of the loss of culture and understanding about life and death that the modern day conception of Sawain is one which focuses only on the spectres and the ghosts and monsters of the world of shades and yet we do not recognise the sacred value of such a day, we do not practice the rites of our ancestors anymore and in general we do not use such a day to ask for the help of the ancestors. We have become cut off from our roots and we are now scared of death and of spirits, having only a negative attitude, or else an ironic one in which we effectively make fun and ridicule such a day with mundane and alcoholic fancy dress parties.

In such a way we no longer pray for our departed loved ones, we no longer recognise the souls journey and we no longer have knowledge about what happens after death. Perhaps because of this the realms beyond the veil, the netherworld between the worlds, is filled with ghosts and lost souls because there is no longer a strong connection with the ancestors or even a recognition of their existence and therefore they cannot help us so easily. It is strange that the church and the clergy taught us to reject our ancestors and cast upon their rituals a kind of a hex, saying that it was all dark and devils stuff and negating the sacred value of such a day, thus making many people afraid or sceptical of such things. There are reasons for this of course and it has all been part of a wider plan of the “Kalkus” on a world scale, that seek to trap the human souls and turn them into ZOMBIES that work for the ends of the negative sorcerers, for they know that if the cut us from our roots then they can harvest our souls and CONTROL THEM.

Nowadays we have even filled our minds with films such as “Halloween” which are just horror stories that make commerce and ridicule that which was once sacred.
This is symbolic because in our sub conscious minds we have placed a barrier between ourselves and the otherworldly heroes, faeries, Gods and Goddesses. The barrier is made up of negative images and induces in us fear and so cuts us off. Perhaps we should consider that this is ultimately detrimental because it means that our souls have become cut off from the ancestors and from the wisdom of the soul and in so doing have we not condemned our souls to get lost in such a netherworld once we depart?

It is time to drop the fear and reclaim our ancestral customs, worship once more the wonderful gifts of Mother Nature and understand that all these ancient customs are the legacy of our ancestral roots, the roots that connect our souls to all life and that are echoed across cultures, for they are found, in one way or another, in many tribes and nations.
Here we have mentioned the Aztecs, the Mapuche and the Celts but we know that there are many more examples that demonstrate the shamanic origin of spirituality and that are based in a practical knowledge of the land of the soul and of the spirit.

The ancient cultures knew and demonstrated through their tales, traditions and rituals a knowledge of there being certain days and times in the cycle of the seasons and the earth’s journey through the cosmos, in which the veil becomes thin and the presence of the other dimensions is more easily felt… They are cultures that recognised and knew of such dimensions and cycles long before we did and yet the modern rationalists say that they are primitive, however, this is part of the trap which is designed to cut us off from these truths.
Those ancient Shamanic cultures developed their ways, in accord with the laws of nature, to approach these entrances to the other dimensions and to know in what moments and in which places this was favourable and beneficial for their learning and for the development of the soul and of their spirituality. Many of the wisdom tales of the Celts, such as the Mabinogion, are all about the relationship between the human beings and the spirits of the different Otherworld regions and as such they were a way of instructing and guiding the people in sustaining a balanced relationship with the land and with the faery or elemental realms as well as with, God (Father and Mother), the ancestors, the spirits of the departed and many more things that have become lost to us now.

All is not lost however and we can access this wisdom by returning to a Shamanic understanding of the Universe for this is the ancient Spiritual Science of all of our ancestors and, although the practice of rituals and shamanism from other cultures can vary slightly from that of our own, there are essential teachings and shamanic techniques for attaining our own GNOSIS that can help us to recuperate the ancestral practices and ways of our ancestors. The thing is to be open and to have a sincere heart in this quest for wisdom and understanding….

Final note…

Strangely and precisely on the day of Sawain this year there were a series of news items announcing the sudden appearance in the sub-atomic experimental chambers of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, of a “new particle” which they are calling the “GHOST PARTICLE.” This particle, they say, “could change the very nature of reality.”

Somehow it would seem rather unlikely that a new kind of particle has just “popped into existence” (to use the words that the CERN scientists have done in their announcements…) but this is what they would want to have us believe. We can, however, surmise from this information that the sub-atomic experiments of CERN are an attempt to penetrate beyond the veil that separates this physical world from the other dimensions, the dimensions beyond time, although given the rather power hungry nature of the people behind these projects we can also understand that they are not doing this for sacred reasons and so, much as they think they know, they actually do not really know at all what they are playing with.
Our ancestors knew that you cannot penetrate beyond the veil without preparation and without permission and that these things are sacred. Intention is everything and before making a sacred ritual one must clarify ones intentions. This is done through meditation and through DEVOTION because the universe and the mysteries of the universe are sacred and not something to just play with, for when one makes any kind of magical act (and whatever they say, these scientists, what they are doing is magical) then one must be aware that all you do and all that you send out will come back on you. We think, however, that not everyone at CERN is just a material scientist that does not know anything about magic… far from it. If anyone takes the time to analyse the opening ceremony for the particle accelerator at CERN they will see a magical ritual taking place but this magical ritual is absolutely and most certainly not the magical ritual of some folk that have devotion and respect for the wisdom of God and of Mother Nature. At this juncture we will not say more, each one can take their own conclusions as to what is going on with all of that…..

The ancients, however, understood that CONSCIOUSNESS pervades everything….. and the esoteric teachings given by Samael Aun Weor confirm that every atom is a trio of matter, energy and consciousness.
The particles, therefore, are not inert pieces of physical matter and energy, for all is directed by CONSCIOUSNESS… i.e. GOD IS OMNIPRESENT AND OMNIPOTENT and therefore nothing that we do is without consequence within the cosmic mind and creation. For this reason the teachings of the Ancient Masters of the Light recommend that we learn to harmonise ourselves as human beings with the Cosmic Creation, and to do this we need to cultivate humility and the attitude of wonder and devotion for we are but tiny elements of this creation and there is no way that any one of us can claim to be able to control creation.

We say, therefore, that it is best to study and to contemplate these matters and learn to cultivate a serene mind and to learn to meditate and to reflect.

May all beings be happy, May all beings be Joyful, May all beings be in PEACE