KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

January 16 through January 22, 2023

Happy Chinese New Year of the Rabbit! This new year kicks off early, officially starting on Sunday. In the days coming up to it, we’ll have virtual musical chairs of planets shifting as we prepare once again to greet a new year. Monday’s Scorpio Moon will carry an intense vibration, enabling us to get a lot of things taken care of that have been on the back burner since last year. A lighter energy prevails on Tuesday and Wednesday as the Moon dances through Sagittarius, but we’ll have to watch for oversensitive people or emotional outbursts here and there. Part of the cause will be Mercury turning direct in Capricorn on Wednesday. This can cause miscommunication and technical glitches are sure to try our last nerves! The Sun will move into Aquarius on Friday and meet up with Pluto, giving us a sense of destiny and karma to guide our way forward. On Saturday the Aquarius new Moon will occur, which then dictates the beginning of the Chinese New Year on Sunday. To add to the melee, Uranus will turn direct after four months of backward motion and cement the idea that new beginnings are upon us! With the Sun moving into Aquarius, the new Moon in Aquarius, Aquarius’ ruling plant Uranus going direct (as well as Mercury), and the Chinese New Year all happening within a matter of days, the message is clear: Change is on the horizon!

The Call of the Spirits, by Mike Williams

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

The woman had spent the day fishing the rock pools along the coast. She had been successful, catching plenty of fish and even a few crabs for that night's meal. However, now that her belly was full, she moved away from her companions, a small band that made their livelihoods around the cave they called home. Since her child had died, merely a few days after it had been born, she often sought the solitude her grief needed. She sat by a fire and stared at the flickering flames, letting her mind wander. She knew that strange shapes would soon start to appear in the darkness and then a tunnel would open up before her. Forcing back her fear, the woman allowed her mind to enter the tunnel and began to follow where it led. She already knew what she would find at its end; for it was there that her baby would be waiting.

The grieving woman lived almost 70,000 years ago along the shoreline of the Cape of Africa. She was part of a small band that fished the small pools that lay along the rocky shore and found sanctity each night in a shelter known as Blombos Cave. Despite living so long ago, the woman was just like you or me and had the same capacity to feel emotions, such as love and grief, as we do. She also shared another trait that we still retain today but with which we may be far less familiar: she could enter trance and visit the strange realm to which this gave access, what we would today call shamanism. In fact, this was so important to the people of Blombos Cave that they drew some of the images they encountered whilst in trance on small pieces of colored stone. They are the earliest examples of art anywhere in the world.

Trance clearly began at a very early stage in our development as humans and, since the inhabitants of Blombos Cave lived at a time when our species had only just begun to colonize the world, it underwrote everything that has happened since. Our ability to enter trance made us what we are. As the people of Blombos Cave would have realized, trance helps develop thought and it expands the mind, literally forming new neural pathways, and also improves the immune system. It gave early people the advantages they needed to succeed. It also joined them to the ebb and flow of forces beyond this reality, providing a wellspring of strength and power. The grieving woman knew this as she entered the tunnel that formed in her mind, but just where did she go after that?

The people of Blombos Cave did not draw what they found at the end of the tunnel. For that, we have to wait another 40,000 years or so until hunter bands roaming the south of France descended deep into caves (itself probably replicating the movement through the tunnel of trance) and painted the walls with their visions. Great herds of animals thunder about the caverns, their feet kicked up in a whirling maelstrom of flesh and fur. It makes the mind dizzy just to look at them. This is what people saw at the end of the tunnel: a different world inhabited by a swirling mass of animal forms, some entire and fully-formed, and some ephemeral and ghost-like, seemingly disappearing into the confines of the rock. To the people that painted the images, however, these were the spirits that they encountered in the otherworld of trance.

In among the great herds were other animals, the odd hunting bear, or a crouched lion ready to pounce. These were predators and it is likely that people sought the help of these hunting spirits when they entered the caves and conversed with their representations on the walls. People even made models of the most fearsome killers and, as if to emphasize that these were spirit animals, they marked them with the same patterns the people of Blombos Cave had drawn on the colored stones: the patterns that had their origins in trance. Over time, individuals probably sought out one special animal that he or she felt a special affinity with and provided them with the most help. These became power animals, spirits who befriend and help those who seek them out. I have a power animal and so do you, even if you do not yet realize it. To find it, you need to follow your earliest ancestors and journey to the otherworld of trance. This is a lot easier than it sounds and is a talent that every single one of us possesses. Your animal is out there waiting for you and perhaps now is a good time to acknowledge its presence.

Close your eyes and let your mind still. After a few moments, repeat the words "Come to me my power animal, come to me." Do you feel anything ahead of you in the darkness? Could something be waiting to connect with you, however faint? How would it feel to reach out and touch what lies before you? This is your power animal, the source of your shamanic power.

A few, extremely rare images in the caves depict humans, but these are not like any ordinary people. Caught in the moment of turning from human to animal forms, these are individuals whose mastery of the otherworld allowed them to take on the characteristics of their power animal, shapeshifting into its form. The power this gave them must have been immense, as shapeshifting was a technique to which people constantly returned, sometimes even acting out their experiences by wearing masks and headdresses of animals. Even after people settled to a farming life, shapeshifting retained its importance and people recorded their encounters on their pottery and, later, metal belongings. One silver goblet, from Bronze Age Trialeti, in Georgia, shows a whole array of shapeshifting individuals, all overseen by a figure sitting at the base of a tree. Could these have been initiates, undergoing training in the powers of the otherworld? As the novices will have found, shapeshifting is another technique that comes naturally. Once you have found your power animal, taking on its form and feeling what it is like to live within its skin will provide you with a source of power and wisdom that cannot be found in any other way.

Other images from the Bronze Age, this time from the frigid shores of Alta, high above the Arctic Circle in Norway, also show people drawing on the powers of the otherworld, this time sailing in boats and furiously pounding upon drums. Listening to the steady beat of a drum is one of the safest and easiest ways to enter trance and people still use this method today. The boat represents the journey undertaken by the drummers, although this is no ordinary jaunt and people slowly rise from the boat and fly upwards, into the sky. In addition to moving down, into the earth, it is also possible to travel upwards in trance and enter a different part of the otherworld. To differentiate the two, people familiar with these places call the former the lowerworld and the latter the upperworld. Our ancestors were familiar with both.

Visiting the upperworld is another technique that is easy to master and, if you go there yourself, you will find teacher spirits ready to help you with the problems of life. In fact, the help available in this realm is probably why the drummers at Alta attached such importance to it and depicted how to get there on the rocks. It was a road map that others could follow.

The upperworld is also where you might come across dead relatives, and certainly the woman at Blombos Cave felt drawn to this place as that is where the spirit of her baby resided. People who regularly visit the otherworlds do not fear the dead and, in fact, they can be a source of incredible power, providing a wealth of experience and wisdom that we can apply to our lives. However, the interaction is not always one-way; sometimes the dead need our help.

During the Stone Age, people understood that death comes in two stages. First, people leave the land of the living and, secondly, they join the ranks of the dead. In between, their souls wander and, without care from the living, can easily get lost. This is why, in burial chambers such as Newgrange in Ireland, people initially left newly deceased corpses in the entrance corridors. Waiting until the flesh had disappeared and they could separate and clean the bones, it was only then that people would move the remains to the back of the tomb to join the piles of bones that formed the ancestral lineage of the tribe. The time between these two events was likely marked with vigils and ceremonies, helping the soul on its way.

Today, we treat death differently and there is little care given to the newly departed soul. On occasions, this can lead to spirits becoming lost and even trapped in this world. We might call these disembodied forms ghosts and call the places they inhabit haunted, but, in truth, they are merely wandering spirits caught in an existence that is pitiful, and desperately needing our help to find a way out. For those that follow a shamanic path, midwifing the soul to the afterlife is an important part of the calling.

Caring for others also extends to the living and there are various healing techniques associated with shamanism. To understand them, however, requires a different view of the nature of illness and a focus on the underlying cause of dis-ease, rather than concentrating solely on the symptoms. Moreover, illness, like everything else, has a spirit.

Spirits are legion; everything in this world has a spirit in the otherworld: humans, animals, trees, and also other items such as rocks, the oceans, and even the computer on which you are reading this. To those versed in shamanism, everything is alive and has a spirit that they can approach in the otherworld. This was why people in the Bronze Age treated their swords with such deference, birthing them in special shelters, attributing great status to the feats they accomplished, and finally laying them to rest in a watery grave with great ceremony. To the people of the time, swords were as alive as they were.

If everything has a spirit, then this is true for illness and, when we take ill, it is because its spirit has entered our body and is lodging there, causing us to show signs of disease. Extracting these unwelcome visitors is easy once you know how and you can return the unwanted spirit to the otherworld, which is its true home. In the Iron Age, healers would pass the intruding spirit into model body parts and then throw these into springs, so that the spirit could follow the water back to the otherworld. The source of the Seine, in France, is full of such models and, even today, healers throw extracted spirits into water to dissipate their power.

In addition to illness entering our bodies, other experiences might cause things to depart, such as part of our soul. This often happens in trauma, where people put a part of themselves in a safe place in order that they have protection against whatever assails them, either physically or mentally. It is a sensible and very healthy technique to use. Problems only arise when the soul part does not come back, even once the trauma is over. People suffering from such soul loss might describe themselves as "not all here," and they are right. Without their missing soul part, they can never be complete. Their energy depletes, their health suffers, and they enter a downward spiral that only stops once they regain their soul part. This is why soul retrieval—finding lost souls as they wander adrift in the otherworlds, then bringing them back, and restoring them to patients—is one of the oldest and most important of all shamanic practices. In the Iron Age, silversmiths even engraved the technique on the side of a huge silver cauldron, from Gundestrup in Denmark, perhaps as a guide for those new to the healing arts.

Maintaining health extends beyond human and even animal patients, and also applies to the places we inhabit, such as our homes and workplaces. Negative energy can invade houses just as easily as human bodies, and we can extract it in much the same way. In the Iron Age, people went further still and arranged their dwellings according to principles that kept energy flowing, joining each house to the wider forces of the world. In a way, this was ancient Feng Shui, and you can apply many of the techniques to your own house to make it a more healthy and positive place to live.

Aligning ourselves to the wider patterns of the world is an important part of shamanic practice, whether it is the ebb and flow of the seasons or the changes in the natural world. There are many festivals celebrated by our Iron Age ancestors that can still have resonance in our lives today. They remind us that our own footprints upon the earth must be light and in harmony with the rest of existence. We all have a duty to sustain the planet that sustains us and shamanism reconnects us with these ancient ties to the earth.

The world, however, is not empty, and we must also consider those with whom we share our lives: our community or tribe. In the Ice Age, when existence was brutally harsh, belonging to a tribe is what helped people survive. People readily assisted others, knowing that what they gave one day they might need in return on another. Modern life often disintegrates tribes and forces each of us to stand on our own; it is something our Ice Age ancestors would have observed with horror. The bonds between each of us are the bonds that make us human.

Following a shamanic path draws upon great power (and it will certainly em-power you to be all that you are capable of becoming), but then you must let go and use your strength to help those around you. The motivation to help comes from compassion, an emotion innate to each of us, drawn forth from our suffering. We have all suffered and carry its effects with us and yet, by opening our wounds to the power of shamanism, we can draw strength from our darkest times as we seek to alleviate such suffering in others. It gives a point and a purpose to the pain we endure. How far you go in helping others is a decision only you can make. At the end of the Iron Age, however, those who walked a shamanic path were prepared to die gruesome deaths, entering the otherworlds permanently to watch over the tribes they had cared for their entire lives. It is a sacrifice that still commands awe.

Whilst reading these words, have you felt the tug of the spirits? Have you heard their faint call, the first stirrings of shamanic power deep within you? Keep an awareness over the next few days and see if the spirits beckon further. It might not be much, a (power) animal crossing your path or a cry for help from an old friend. If you do hear the call of the spirits, will you follow where they lead, claiming the destiny that is your birthright? I hope so and I wish you every blessing on your journey of discovery.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2010. All rights reserved.

Life has been tough lately. I can't find work, had to fight to get grant money to upgrade my skills, and have been fighting the VA to upgrade my disability. I was at a metaphysical fair a while back, and while looking at some merchandise, this woman walked up to me and told me that the Universe wants me to rest, and that's why I'm having all these problems, why I can't seem to get a job, etc. Does the Universe/Spirit decide such things as when I need a rest in my life? I have worked most of my life and have chosen to remain single. I have gone through all my assets and I am scared I will not have enough to retire on. If what that woman said is true, the Universe/Spirit has picked the damnedest time to force me to rest. I don't know if I can handle much more, especially living here in the desert. What do you think?

- Karen

Dreamchaser:

Karen, you say that "the Universe/Spirit has picked the damnedest time to force" you to rest. Would there have been a better time in your life? Were you ever at a point where you were able, in any form, to take a rest? I would venture to say the answer to those questions is "no." There is no good time (in our human opinions) for struggle. We tend to say, "Why NOW?" Well, as I said, it is not like there going to be a better time.

Whenever we struggle in any way (with finances, health, faith, etc.), we tend to try to find a solution or an answer. The iceberg theory applies here: we can usually only see just the tip of things. Under the surface, there is this HUGE mountain of ice that is keeping everything frozen. You cannot see why this is happening, so your efforts to try to fix things are not really helping at all. There is a bigger plan. You just are not privy to it at this time, so all the fixing that you are trying to do is not accomplishing much of anything except making you tired.

I keep flashing back to a man from the Christian Bible named Job. I am sure you have heard of him. His problems were not even about his life. His problems were a result of God and the Devil doing battle - a bet, if you will. All Job did "wrong" was be the most just man on the planet. He was tortured for being too GOOD. I think you need to look at Job as an example in your own life. Read about him if you want. Maybe you'll get some much-needed inspiration.

You also said another mouthful when you said, "I am scared." This is like a light switch. It cannot be on and off at the same time. We cannot be walking in faith and afraid at the same time. You believe in Spirit enough to go to a metaphysical fair and listen to something a woman walked up and told you out of the blue. Maybe you should go find your faith that went missing. If you could find it, you would stop trying to fix things, and you would be at peace with how things are, because you would know that things would move again when the time is right.

I do understand how you feel. We all lose our faith from time to time. It is time for you to go looking for it again. You have worried and tried to fix things for long enough. Just because we are suffering and things are very difficult does not mean that Spirit has abandoned us. It just means that we are going through hard times and they've gotten the better of us. It's easy to trust when things are good. Are we really THAT fickle?

I wish you attainment.

*****

Astrea:

We are LUCKY. No matter what happens, something always comes along to save us. You can't find a job right now? When you get down to your last two nickels, a dream job will fall right into your lap. You can't get yourself motivated to get going? Something will come along after this last Mercury Retrograde that will inspire you.

Everyone gets depressed from time to time, but a Sag knows how to blast herself out of that state. You need to do some BLASTING, that's all. Blast away at that feeling of lethargy; giving up is dangerous. NEVER GIVE UP!

I know what an awful year it's been for you: piles of stress piling onto more big piles of stress that were there already, people being ugly and rude, family letting you down at every turn. Yes, I do know. This next year (2004), however, is going to be FABULOUS for FIRE SIGNS! We're finally going to slow down enough to allow the abundance the Universe has planned for us to come into our lives.

Perhaps this was what the lady in the store was trying to tell you. Sit tight and wait and rest NOW, and let these things start to stack up on the POSITIVE side of your life. You're going to be so busy in 2004 making money and having a good time that this is the only "down time" you'll have for a long time. Take advantage of it until January 6, and then go ALL OUT to get what you've only dreamed of before.

As for the Universe wanting us to REST - OH! If that was so, I would be back in bed this morning! Whether it's a blessing or not, a Sag is DRIVEN. We're driven to do everything BUT rest! From my own Sagittarius experience, I know very well that "rest" is a foreign concept to us; it's something we do when we're SICK. It's that way with all Fire Signs, but we seem to get an extra dose of "busy hands are happy hands." Even if you're not working, you can be creating. Write, dance, walk, run, play! Lots of exercise will help your head get straightened out, and will lift that depression, too!

As tempting as it might be to heed the stranger who came up to you in that store, I think you know that was just the Devil trying to make you get all lazy. As a Sag, you have to take charge of your own life EVERY SINGLE DAY to make sure you get as much out of each day as possible. Life is too short for us; more so than for any other sign. Gosh, GIRL, have some FUN!

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.