Forgotten Dance

I've always loved animals and I've been in a process of spiritual search since my teenage years. I never expected, however, that animals would become key figures in finding my spiritual home ground — or rather, that the light would shift and show me they had been there all along.

The journey began when I packed my car and headed for a workshop on shamanism in upstate New York in the early 1980's. The little I had read about shamanism had intrigued me and stirred me in ways I couldn't readily explain. It touched an old and wordless hunger. I wanted something from that workshop, and I didn't know exactly what it was. But I knew it was something big. And I was afraid that I would get nothing at all, nothing but some lectures, some generalized piety, maybe a few interesting ideas. I'd been a voracious reader for 30-some years; I had studied a half a dozen traditions and theologies; I had enough ideas to choke me. Whatever I needed, that wasn't it.

So I drove through wooded hills on a beautiful summer day, with the window down and the wind in my hair and the ache of inarticulate hunger in my gut, and a deep suspicion that my hunger would not be filled.

The workshop was led by Michael Harner, an anthropologist who spent a number of years studying shamanic practices in North and South American Indian, Siberian, Lapp, and other cultures. Convinced of the importance of what he'd learned, he started the Foundation for Shamanic Studies to teach "core shamanism." There are beliefs and practices that occur in different forms in many shamanic cultures: Native American, Asian, African, Siberian, Australian, or pre-Christian European. The Foundation believes that these core practices provide valuable ways, rooted in our common human heritage, for contemporary people to reconnect with the Earth and with spirit.

It quickly became clear to me that shamanic work started close to home: with sound and movement, with our own voices and our own bodies. There were about 40 people in the workshop. After a brief introductory talk we began to drum together. The pulsing sound filled the room, insistent and stirring. This was definitely something new. I had tried many kinds of spiritual work over the years, but none of it had been so — well, so loud. None had wrapped around me and taken me in physically as that drumming did. It was exhilarating and disorienting at the same time.

One of the core beliefs of the shamanic path is that nobody makes it alone. If you are alive, you have had help; you are connected to the web of life. One of our most powerful connections on the spirit level is with an animal, or sometimes more than one animal. Guardian animal or spirit ally or power animal, totem or nagual or familiar or spirit friend — by whatever name, this figure is virtually universal in shamanic cultures. Most would say that all people have animal allies, though many of us allow our connections to become distant and vague. For those on the shamanic path, their power animal is the most constant and indispensable guide in exploring non-ordinary realms.

For people who know their spirit ally, dancing the animals is a way of honoring and strengthening that connection. For those who don't know their ally, it's a way to start finding out.

We were told to circle the dim-lit room with our eyes half-closed, so we could see just enough not to run into each other. We were told to relax, to move freely, to see how our bodies wanted to move

The drumming began. I began to walk, awkwardly, haltingly, around the edge of the room. I couldn't dance. I'd never been able to. I hadn't even tried in years. I made some vague movements with my arms, feeling lost and very silly. I knew how to be introspective, how to let something "come up" within my mind. But it was a strange, hard instruction, being told to listen to my body. "See how your body wants to move." That made no sense. Yet somewhere in that first session, something did begin to stir. When it did, I promptly rejected it.

Later that day we paired off with a partner and learned to do a rock reading, a kind of divination based on seeing what images you find on the surface of a stone. One of the first images I saw, so clear that it leaped out at me, was a horse. I ignored it. I said nothing about it to my partner. But I couldn't forget it was there. I was angry at myself that this childishness kept coming up when I was trying to do something spiritual, something important. Something of value.

We danced in the morning, again in the afternoon, again the next day. And slowly, something began to shift. I became consciously aware of the dismissiveness, amounting to outright contempt, that I felt for myself as a child. I saw how I kept trying to shove childhood experience away as something not merely incomplete, from my perspective as an adult, but shameful. I didn't understand my feelings; I only knew that I wanted to dance the animals. I wanted that with a deep hunger, though I had no way to say why, or to know how much it would matter.

The central discipline of shamanic work is the spirit journey. This form of inner seeing is usually practiced while lying in a relaxed state, eyes closed. Someone drums with a steady, monotonous beat. The rhythmic sound of the drum is a powerful aid in helping the mind make the shift to an altered state of consciousness, in which non-ordinary aspects of reality may be perceived. Siberian tribal people say that the drum is the shamans' horse: it carries them.

There are generally two kinds of spirit journey: downward into the Earth, to the Lower World, and skyward to the Upper World. That first morning, we attempted to journey to the Lower World. Each of us visualized an opening into the earth: a cave, an animal hole, a spring, the roots of a tree . . . When the drumming started, we were to enter the opening. We were to look for a tunnel leading down. If we were able to get as far as the end of the tunnel, we would come out into the Lower World. Our task was to look for our power animal there.

For me, the expectations that had been building for months peaked as we prepared for that first journey. I laid down with a cotton bandana over my eyes, consciously relaxed . . . and relaxed again, feeling how excitement had geared my body up. I knew the cave I would use for my entrance into the earth; I visualized it clearly; the drumming started . . .

I could see the cave: I could see the passageway leading downward, just as I had seen it while spelunking with friends. But I could not go down into the cave. I couldn't even enter the tunnel. I was left staring at the darkness inside my own eyelids, going nowhere.

The drumming seemed to last forever. Afterwards, there was a discussion period. A number of people had journeyed on their first try. Several, visibly delighted, told their experiences. Others had gotten into the tunnel but not to the end. Still others, like me, had gotten nowhere. Michael reassured us that many people don't journey the first time.

"I was in the tunnel for a long time, and when I came out it was really dry, like a dessert. It was beautiful, though. I could see for a really long way. I thought I was all alone, but I went over a little hill, and then I saw —"

"I went down so fast it was like falling. At the end, I was falling. I landed in water. I had to swim out of a cave, and then I could see trees over the water, and blue sky. Then there was a white bird . . . "

When we weren't meeting, I spent most of my time alone. I sensed that there were emotional resistances getting in my way, and I worked to bring them to light. I found an odd rag-bag of attitudes I thought I'd long since gotten rid of. There was a wariness of the "primitive," the pagan; there was a leftover, stubborn conviction that "down into the earth" meant evil and death; there was fear of the unknown.

Confronting these resistances was important. But the strongest thing that was happening wasn't my self-examination; it was the dancing. I kept trying to move, trying to listen; and Horse came to me over and over. Gradually, with effort, I opened. As I did, my history changed.

I remembered, with an embarrassed shrug, that I had been one of those "horse-crazy" girls. Though my family couldn't afford riding lessons, though I rarely so much as saw a horse in the flesh, I had loved them intensely for as long as I could remember. Where did it come from, this love no one taught me?

As I let my dismissiveness go, I remembered what it was really like. I remembered times of dreamlike, solitary play. I didn't play at riding horses — that was never the point. Being a horse — that was the point. I remembered how I, the sickly child, the weakling, raised my head and sniffed the wind, and felt it stir my hair. My mane. How I arched my neck, feeling pride, feeling strength. How I pawed the ground, how I ran. I remembered the sense of freedom and power. I remembered how I danced my power animal for hours on end, before I ever knew what such a thing might be.

Work as I might, Tuesday came to an end, and I still had not journeyed. The four and a half day workshop was half-over, and I was beset with a mounting sense of urgency and impending failure. Was I somehow deficient, unable to do this work? What was I doing wrong? How could I stand to go home with nothing more than other people's stories?

Tuesday evening, alone in my cabin, I examined my fears and doubts once more, doing my best to let them go. Then I spent some time in meditation. I asked for help. Quietly, without pressure, I visualized my cave. I rested with that for a bit. And then something marvelous happened. Spontaneously, I saw Horse there. I saw her as a bright chestnut, a red-gold mare. I was delighted. Only the color seemed a bit odd, as I'd never been especially fond of chestnuts. I tried to see her as bay, or black, or white. I still thought it was up to me, you see; I thought I could make it happen. But it wouldn't do. She would be nothing but a red-gold mare.

Michael was telling people to pick a "takeoff" place, and describing places often used: a hill or mountain, a treetop. Some shamans rise up on the smoke from a fire. Suddenly I knew where my takeoff place would be. But how would I take off? I needed a bird, I thought. I would have to ask for help from a bird spirit.

We laid down, and the drumming started. I was lying very close to the drum that morning, so close that the vibrations were running through the floor, through my body. The pulsing sound was very loud, almost above my head.

I visualized my takeoff place. I tried to visualize a hawk. They are powerful birds, high-flying. But I couldn't hold an image in my mind. I tried an owl, bird of wisdom, of secrets. I couldn't see it. I tried a crow — old friend of shamans and witches. It wouldn't work. It was as if the drumbeat, rolling through my head, shattered each image. I couldn't hold it, I couldn't make it happen.

Then it occurred to me that this was a power animal. So I simply asked it to make itself larger. It promptly did. It made itself about a foot long. Because I had already, without noticing, slipped into an altered state, that seemed perfectly logical and adequate to me. I put my hand on the bird's back, and the bird flew up, and I was drawn along with it. And I was on my way.

She stood by a blue pool on a golden plain: a shining red-gold mare. I came up to her and put my hand on her withers. My vision was shaky, tenuous, fading in and out. The babbling voice of fear was running through the back of my mind: "This isn't real, you're not doing it right, you're just making it up, stop it." I was aware of myself lying on the floor, of the drum above me.

And yet it was as if I could feel the stiff smoothness of horsehair under my fingers. I could see her eyes, so dark and so loving. We walked along together. With my songbird on my shoulder and Horse walking beside me, I felt a stirring of wonder that the babbling voice could not erase. That sense of wonder with me still.

On Friday the workshop ended, and I went back home and began to develop my own shamanic path. With the guidance and help of my spirit allies, I made a circle of protection around my house. I journeyed to find answers to questions for myself and for friends. I found some of my allies among the plant people, and visited them in journey. I learned to ask permission of herbs before I gathered them, to sense the giving or withholding of consent. I made friends with stones and learned to feel their energy. I assisted in healing work, seeing many subtle examples of healing power, and a few dramatic ones. I learned to sing.

I came to have a greater sense of how my connection with Horse had sustained me as a child. Loving horses was the way I kept a part of myself alive. In dreams and in solemn play I touched something strong and joyful and free. Something unbroken. So I kept a part of myself unbroken, in the midst of the chaos and pain and sporadic violence of my family that was blindly wrecking havoc on us all. I remember how I used to look at pictures of horses running free; I remember the wordless yearning, like a cry of grief. I know now that my spirit was calling out in its desperate need. And I was answered. My spirit was fed.

As knowing Horse changed my past, knowing my songbird changed my present, transforming the city where I live, as my closeness to her opened my eyes to life there that I had never seen before. Do you know the small grey and white bird that walks down tree-trunks head first? That big, vividly-marked woodpecker at the feeder next door, the one my newly-bought bird book called a Red-bellied woodpecker? I had never noticed her before; had such bold creatures really been around me all along? And when did crows become so beautiful?

All birds are beautiful to me now, from eagles in flight to flocks of starlings. They are among the primary threads that bind me to the web. They call me out of the city, to walk along the river where herons stand in the shallows, or to hike into the woods and hear the thrushes calling. They come to me in the city, too, bringing omens and gifts sometimes, or the simple joy of their presence; and reminding me that whether meadows or office buildings surround us, we are always walking on the Earth.

Every woman has her spirit connections, known or unknown. Some women know from the moment they first hear a term like "power animal" exactly who theirs is. But barring such unarguable conviction, it's good to stay open. Many women are surprised, even astonished, when they first encounter their ally.

There are many ways to learn. Some spirit allies announce themselves in powerful dreams or unsought visionary experiences. Sometimes a series of subtle synchronicities can be equally convincing. Some women who are not drawn to shamanism as a primary practice will nevertheless learn to journey for the specific purpose of finding out who their power animal is. Others may ask a shamanically trained friend to journey for them and see if their allies are willing to reveal themselves. Sometimes they are very willing. Other times, they send a message that the woman must discover them for herself.

Just as the animals that share our homes and affections in physical reality add something unique to our lives, so do the animal spirits. They are completely trustworthy. Whether they come in the form of the gentle animals we easily love or the fierce predators we easily fear, there is not one of them that is not of the Light. They are not symbols. They are not simply images that arise from our unconscious. They are as complex and varied in their being as only what is real can be. Horse has nurtured me in the tenderest ways, and she has also laughed at me to my face. She has taught me to roll in the grass with horselike abandon, to play. She has taught me about pride and about sacred fire. Once she carried me into battle against a monster. Sometimes she comes to me, my beloved red-gold mare, in a different form, white and winged, and carries me far beyond the clouds. She is a peerless companion and friend.

What do we offer to the animal spirits in return? That is harder to know. When we open to them in journey or by dancing, by singing to them, making drawings or images of them, talking to them, perhaps honoring them on our altars, we inevitably open a bit more to all of the web of life. This is at least part of the answer. The animal allies are all, in one sense, healers: reweaves of the broken web. They are calling us back to our place in the whole, and when we respond we give them joy.

As a beginning explorer in non-ordinary realms, I found nothing more striking, more affecting, than this: the enormous sense of welcome that greeted me there. Beast and bird and tree and herb and stone: our kin have not forgotten us. They are waiting for us to come home.