Dance of Stones: A Shamanic Road Trip

Chapter 2
The Marketplace
We are on the road! It has already been a long morning. We
have driven non-stop for three hours since crossing the French bor-
der—eight hours since leaving Bonn early this morning—through
perpetually winding roads, quaint farm houses and lumps of cows
and sheep and trees. As much as I tell myself that I should be enjoy-
ing and appreciating the scenery, it is all a bit much. I feel like the
tourist who has already been to one too many cathedrals—a bit
overfed and under-rested, and I’m longing for the comfort of the
Askevold family home. I'm more than a little relieved when Soli
decides that we need to stop for provisions.
We pull off at the next junction and into the unpaved lot of a
market. Its cinderblock facade is painted like a 19th century circus
wagon, in deep shades of red and gold, reminding me of the boxes
of animal crackers I used to eat as a child—gleefully depicting lions
and monkeys and buffalo. It feels good—restful—to be reminded of
something that I already know for a change.
A long melodramatic sigh escapes me as Soli gathers her wal-
let. She looks at me in unspoken exasperation and it occurs to me
that this is not the first time she’s shot me such a glance in the last
24 hours, and that she is easily exasperated. On the other hand,
here I am complaining after a relatively short road trip.
Considering the fact that I spend so much time traveling in other
worlds, I should be expected to deliver a little more than the ordi-
nary traveling companion might. At the very least I shouldn't be so
exhausted at 3:20 in the afternoon. I wonder if just one day of miss-
ing my meditation and QiGong has this much impact.
As I unfasten my seat belt and stretch the kinks out of my
spine, an old man in a sagging tweed coat emerges from the door
of the market. His shoulder brushes roughly against a string of old,
brass bells hanging in the door frame, and they jangle as though
disturbed from a long sleep. Their muffled jingle passes through
me, as I open my own door, stepping from the car. Walking slowly
past, the man does not seem to see us; he simply mutters what
sounds to me like rambling incantations–ce chien foutu n'arrête pas
de mâcher ouvert la porte; ce chien foutu n'arrête pas de mâcher ouvert la
porte —and trails an odor of unwashed vegetables. Untying the rope
leash of a small white dog, which looks as old as its master, he whis-
pers more strange sounds beneath his breath, and disappears
round the corner.
“He reminds me of the Fool,” I say to Soli, gesturing toward
where the man was only moments ago, “of course, he’s too
old…not the youth that is usually pictured on the card.” She looks
at me askance, as if wondering about my sanity; then she returns
her attention to her mobile phone—the third time she’s checked for
messages in the last few hours. I consider explaining myself—that
what I meant was not that the old man really looked like a fool, but
that, with his little white dog, he reminded me of the Fool card in
the tarot deck. I decide not to bother. In fact, I wonder if she even
noticed him.
“Can you understand what he was saying?” I ask.
“He’s complaining about his dog—that he keeps chewing the
door open, or something like that.” She looks at me long and hard,
slightly irritable from eight long hours in a car, trapped with an
acquaintance of only three months. “And remember to lock your
door, Kenn,” she reminds me, as I try to stretch out my legs and
back. Unfocused and foggy, I follow her instructions, pushing
down the lock before shutting my door. From the rear of the sta-
tion wagon, she retrieves a wicker basket full of reusable cloth sacks.
“Here,” she says, handing me the basket to carry for her as she
marches past.
I follow her into the market. The whole experience is like a
lucid dream to me, and it feels like something that has been stored
safely away in my psyche has shaken loose and is floating to the sur-
face. This brings on the sensation that a part of me is grieving, like
it’s experiencing a small death. I do wish I didn’t find a trip to the
market overwhelming; however, I comfort myself with the knowl-
edge that any person with no understanding of a foreign language
would find themselves in similar straits. Three days after landing, I
can’t really blame it on jet lag.
The colors, shapes, and smells—like the signs and labels—all
speak an unfamiliar language. I feel disconnected, as if waking from
a deep sleep into another world.
Soli leads me, pushing our cart between displays of fresh fruit
and vegetables, exclaiming over shapes, colors, sizes, and practical-
ly purring over the sweet scent of a ripe melon. I ask her why we
need both a cart and a basket, and she looks at me as though the
answer is obvious. Clearly, we’re in her territory now. “The basket
is used for fruit and anything that bruises; the cart is used for every-
thing else,” she explains. She holds a perfectly round and strangely
green orb to my nose as I breathe in its smell—earthy and fiery—
before gently placing it in her basket. Watching her, it’s as if I’m see-
ing an ordinary melon for the first time. While my brain recognizes
the apples, oranges, and pears, there is some other inexplicable part
of me that wants to argue with these definitions. Instead, I feel
them inside me, as if I’m giving birth to them, as if these fruit have
more power at the moment than I do.
Looking down, I see a bushel of apples beneath the iced mel-
ons, sitting in straw, like a still–life. As if reaching into a painting,
I pick up a Boskop apple and for a moment it glows golden, like
the fruit of the tree of life or Eris’s golden prize offered to the
ancient gods and goddess of Greece, waiting to be discovered here
in the mundane world. Basking in it’s sensual glow, I ceremonious-
ly offer it to Soli, heavy with its weight of symbolism, taking her
hand and placing it reverently in her palm. “For you,” I say. She
sighs, handing it back to me with barely a glance, “Fruit goes in the
basket, Kenn.” We are obviously in different worlds.
As I lean over and settle the apple into Soli’s basket, the mar-
ket begins to spin around me. In an effort to return to my center,
with all this information coursing through my system, I steady
myself against the bread rack. Soli glances up, mildly suspicious,
but focused on the practical task of gathering bottled water for our
journey. It occurs to me that perhaps I should not have offered her
the apple, or at least not offered it so soon. Blinking my eyes, I try
to slow down the flood of information that is spewing it’s way into
my awareness. It seems like I am in two places at once, that both
happen to look the same. In one, I am shopping with Soli. In the
other I am dreaming of shopping with Soli. This makes no sense.
At the same time, I feel as if I am more than one person. There
is the self that I know—the one who is picking up groceries with
Soli—and then there is another self, one who feels large and deep
and somehow bigger than life. This other self seems to be moving
in a larger world, no matter how much it looks like the ordinary
world. In this larger world, this other self seems to have a message
or task of great importance— but which is impossible for me to
grasp in this moment.
Soli has moved on, leaving me dazed at the bread rack. I gath-
er myself and hurry on to find her in the next aisle at a display of
paperback novels. Peering over her shoulder, I try to see what book
she’s chosen for our journey, but her thumb covers the title, and all
I see is an illustration of a well-muscled blonde woman wielding a
golden trident, surrounded by swirling waves.
“Very dramatic,” I suggest, doing my best to bring myself into
this world—the real world—the one where Soli is expecting me to be
something more than a shamanic double exposure of myself.
Soli straightens and nestles the book into her market basket
among the fruit. “Research,” she informs me with a slight smile and
a raised eyebrow.
Looking at the book lying in the basket, I still can’t read the
title, but my other self seems to feel that it is important so I lift it
casually from its nest, only to find that it’s written in French. I
could probably figure it out, but for now I’m content to soak up the
image and hope it’s enough to keep that other self happy.
As we pass the meat counter, I overhear two middle aged
women, rapidly cranking up the volume of an argument. It feels
they are shoving each other back and forth with their voices. The
butcher hands one woman a package wrapped in white paper,
while the other snatches it away, and their argument explodes into
full-volume as they stalk off. I can’t help but smile at the image I
have of them hissing and yowling at each other like two cats fight-
ing for their territory in an alley.
As we move toward the checkout area, Soli leans over to me
and whispers conspiratorially. “They are fighting about how long
the meat should be in the pan before they drench it in wine.
Honestly! How stupid people can be?!” Soli shakes her head laying
the food for our journey onto the check-out counter, along with all
the cloth bags she’s so proud of.
But Soli’s interpretation doesn’t seem to square with the inner
image I have of the two cats staking claims to the same alley. “I
don’t think that’s what they’re really fighting about,” I reply, plac-
ing the bottles of water one after another on the black conveyer
belt. “It doesn’t match their body language, their energy—anything.
I’ll bet they’re... sisters—or something like that.” I say, nodding to
the two women who have now quieted and are taking their place
in line next to us. I point to the younger of the two: “And she is
married to the man who her sister is in love with. They all three live
in the same house and all three are chronically depressed—and
angry. None of them will come right out and talk about it, and yet
the older sister can’t bear to move away. And so they fight about
whatever meaningless things come along, just to let off steam.” As
I tell the story, my other self recognizes the truth of it and smiles.
Soli stops in the middle of counting out change for the cashier
and turns to speak to the two women in the next aisle. At first they
seem to appreciate the attention, but with the next question the
younger woman suddenly flushes and the older one goes white;
there is absolute silence for the next few moments. As we walk
away, their stifled argument begins again.
“Well, it seems you were right.” Soli says, as we walk back
toward the car. “It’s strange, but as you were saying it...it was as if I
also knew that it was true—and I just had to be sure.”
“You mean you just turned around and…what did you ask
them anyway?”
“I started out asking them about the recipe they were buying
food for—veal braised in white wine sauce. I told them it sounded
very good, and asked them if they were sisters. When they said they
were, I said that their husbands must be very proud of them for
being such excellent cooks. That’s when the younger one hissed
that it was her husband and that he wasn’t proud of anyone but
her, and that her silly sister was too stupid to get a husband of her
own so she needed to borrow other people’s husbands—something
like that.”
I can’t help but laugh, and Soli quickly joins in. We recover as
she unlocks the doors and we stow the groceries.
“That was a bit crazy—wasn’t it?” she asks.
“What? You mean you don’t usually talk to strangers like that?”
Still chuckling, we settle ourselves in the car, Soli behind the wheel
again. It suddenly hits me, like a friendly slap from my other self,
that this relationship and this roadtrip will change me in ways I do
not expect. I’m not completely sure that I like that—but it doesn’t
seem there’s much I can do about it. The journey is already begun.
I open a package of shortbread cookies, shaped like crescent
moons, and slowly pass one to Soli. “Why so quiet?” she asks.
“Just thinking. I sometimes get this feeling, especially when I’m
traveling on my own in a foreign country, when everything seems
alien to me and I feel like I’ve been dropped down a rabbit hole
into Alice’s Wonderland or something.” I fasten my seat belt and
take a long pull from the freshly opened water bottle.
“Is it anything like taking a shamanic journey for the first
time?” Soli asks with a smile as she pulls the red Mercedes station
wagon back onto the road.
I nod. “That’s exactly what it feels like. You’re walking around
in a place that should be familiar but isn’t, where you can’t quite
grasp the language yet, and you don’t feel quite…real.”
Soli is quiet for almost a minute before replying. “Then, for
you, to take someone else on a shamanic journey is something like
me walking through the market with you. I know the language. I’ve
visited here before, and nothing is as unfamiliar to me. I don’t get
that alien feeling from it that you do.”
“Yes. Except that I’m not sure I’ll ever be as familiar with the
shamanic worlds as you are with French markets.”
“I’d like you to take me on one of your journeys with you.” Soli
says. I point wordlessly to our upcoming exit and she steers us
smoothly around the tight spiral curve and onto the straight motor-
way toward Brittany. “But first I want to know more about it. I want
to know more about how you become a shaman.”
“That’s right...ask all the easy questions up front,” I quip.
“But I mean it!” she persists.
“I know you do. I’m just stalling because I don’t want to recite
the canned definition for you. That would be the opposite of
shamanic.”
Taking a deep and noisy breath, I continue. “One answer is
that it’s a very long path in which life teaches you how to serve as
a shaman by putting you through all sorts of traumatic, challenging
and life-threatening experiences. Assuming you survive, by the time
that’s over, you’ll know your own healing process deeply enough to
share it with others.”
Soli frowns over the wheel. “You said ‘one answer.’ I certainly
hope there are others as well. Perhaps even a less traumatic one that
will make more sense to me?”
I want to answer from my heart, as Grandfather, my closest
spiritual guide, is always reminding me to do. He consistently harps
on how important it is to stay in the moment and speak truth, but
it gets me in trouble more often than not, particularly when it
involves relationships—whether they’re with spirits or people. At
the moment, my heart is feeling pretty cloudy, far away from home,
so I let the answer come from my head instead. “A shaman needs
to be able to act effectively, to offer information and guidance, and
healing that you can’t get from ordinary places. In order to do that,
a shaman has to be able to create and maintain sacred space….”
“And just what is sacred space?”
So much for the condensed version.
“Do you mean like in a church?”she continues.
I let her question sink in, seeing if anything brilliant rises to the
surface in response. "You remember when we were at Mystery
School at that first session, and we were being led on what they
called a shamanic journey?"
"I remember how disgusted you seemed by it," Soli replies.
"Yes—well—be that as it may, in following her words and the
beat of the drum she was using, people did go into a different state
of consciousness—even you—right?"
"I suppose so," she responds skeptically.
The words seem to come more easily now, and I can feel my
own curiosity at what I will say next and how this is connected to
sacred space. "As everyone moved into that altered state of con-
sciousness together, our souls—our spirits—became aware of that
connection that we all share. Even though the facilitator herself
didn't seem particularly aware of it, our souls knew that there was
something that called them into the space that was being created.
And that space—the space in which we all feel a deep connection
with each other, the Earth, the divine, our ancestors—all of that—is
sacred space." I lean back in my seat, suddenly aware that I am
much more present and awake than I was only a moment ago.
“I still don’t get it,” she says shaking her head.
“Oh…well…let’s see…” I take a deep breath, and attempt to
begin again. It bothers me when I don’t have the right answer for
something, and it’s still hard for me to just say “I don’t know.”
Instead, I say, “Give me a second.” Waiting for the words to come,
my consciousness rises to the occasion, and I sound like what
might be the long-awaited textbook on shamanism. “Sacred space
is space that is simultaneously inside and outside of yourself. The
shaman uses his intention to open his or her inner space and
extend it into the surrounding outer space.”
“Oh!” Soli sparks. At last, clarity.
“This process awakens a state of consciousness sometimes
called liminal or threshold state. And before you ask, what makes
it sacred is that it allows the deepest parts of the inner world—
whether you think of that as the human psyche or the great mystery
or whatever—to manifest in the outer world, so that we can interact
with them consciously.”
Soli doesn’t respond, but I can tell that she’s rolling the idea
around in her mind. Slowly she shakes her head. “But that means
that any place could be sacred, even this car.”
“That’s right! The sacred is connected to our own state of
awareness—not to the physical space you are in. Hold on a second,”
I say. “I’ll show you what I mean.”
I close my eyes and focus inward, stepping through the door-
way at my heart center and expanding into the inner world around
us. Then I gather the substance of this inner world and extend it
into the outer world. As I open my eyes in both the inner and
outer, I notice that the colors seem richer, and I slowly scan the
landscape as we move through it. It’s a little disorienting to be so
focused in this state of consciousness while moving in the car, but
I hold onto it nonetheless.
“Okay. Do you feel any difference now?” I ask.
“Difference from what?” Soli returns, glancing sideways at me
in confusion. I can tell this is not going to be easy.
“I just set up sacred space around us. Well—around me anyway.
I guess you’re not tuned into it so it wouldn’t necessarily work for
you.” Soli seems less than impressed. I wonder how I can make her
feel the shift in awareness—in the quality of the space around us—
without getting in the way of her driving.
“Maybe you should just take my word for it—at least for now.
We can go into it more deeply when you’re not driving.”
“Hmmm—right.” Soli answers. She is obviously cynical about
anything I have to offer on this subject, and yet she seems fascinat-
ed at the same time, as if she wants it all to be true but is afraid to
really believe it. “So how would you go about using this alleged
sacred space?”
This is stuff that I love to talk about. It feeds my soul to find
people with an interest in shamanism, and yet it can be so frustrat-
ing trying to describe something that is invisible to the one I’m
speaking to. How do I find words that express to the person’s mind
an experience that their soul already remembers? I pick my brain
for a demonstration of sacred space that would work for this situa-
tion. I think of omens and how being in the shamanic state of con-
sciousness allows us to notice these meaningful signs. This might
be a good way to—
“There!” I say, pointing toward an old tree standing beside the
road ahead. It has been hit by lightning, leaving a ragged wound of
white wood where a large branch has been wrenched from the
trunk. It seems the limb had fallen into the road, which must have
blocked traffic in both directions for some time. Now there are cut
up sections of the limb off to the sides of the road and the last large
piece is being drug away by two men in white overalls and safety hel-
mets. Traffic has resumed. All that remains on the roadway as we
drive past is a chaotic pattern of fresh sawdust and scattered leaves.
“It’s an omen.” I say proudly. “This road we are on is also the path
we are taking on our inner journey. There is no difference. That
tree limb was an obstacle that was removed for us.”
“What do you mean by ‘obstacle’…?” Soli asks. “Obstacle to
what?”
“Let me back up a minute and explain how it works,” I tell her.
“When we expand our inner reality into the outer world, it creates
a space around us where the inner landscape overlaps the outer
landscape. So when we see something in the outer world—like that
branch—we are also seeing something in the inner world—like an
obstacle of some sort. The meaning of the inner object is revealed
through the outer. This is how omens work. We see something in
the outer world that has a meaning overlapped from the inner
world, and that gives us information we might otherwise miss.”
Soli ponders this before responding. “So you don’t really know
what the obstacle is–just that there is one.”
“Correct. When I saw the tree, with my inner world expanded
into the world we’re driving through; it caught my attention. I felt
a strong sense of ‘this is important–pay attention’. When it comes
to interpreting its specific meaning, that takes more work. And it’s
hard for me to do for myself. I’m too close to what’s happening to
be able to interpret my own omens with any much clarity.” With a
sigh, I allow myself to shift back into a more ordinary state of con-
sciousness, returning my awareness to my physical body.
Soli seems excited now. “So if I was in this liminal state—this
sacred space—and someone, say my mother, came into the room, I
might see her as ...a whirlwind or a lightning storm.”
“Not exactly.” I say. “You would see her as a reflection of your
internal experience of her, but you would see that projected onto
what was already in that outer space. So, unless there happened to
be a whirlwind handy, you would probably see her in the face of
another person, or perhaps in a tree, or a stone, or a cloud—any-
thing really.”
Soli purses her lips and considers. “So how does all that work?
I mean how does that meaning go from the inner object to the
outer?”
“The relationship between the outer and inner worlds is one
of the deep mysteries of our human experience,” I tell her. “As a
shaman, I’m not all that concerned about the theory. I only know
that it works, and that I can use it as a powerful tool.”
“So how is this omen different from symbolism?” Soli asks, still
not satisfied.
I feel like she is understanding at least some of what I’m trying
to explain to her and that is enough to warm me to the idea of con-
tinuing the conversation. “They do have something in common,” I
begin. “A symbol also communicates information from the inner to
the outer. However, a symbol works at the level of the mind, while
an omen operates at the deeper level of the soul.”
Deepening
No matter where you look around the world, every pre-techno-
logical society has had its share of shamans, and interestingly
enough, all these shamanic maps hold more in common than they
do in contrast.
If we look at these commonalities, we find a clear, simple map
that looks something like this: There are three worlds. One above,
one below, and one in the middle. These three worlds are joined
together by a middle pillar; a world tree that reaches its roots down
into the underworld, and stretches its limbs high into the upper
world. The trunk of the tree stands in the middle world.
This map manifests the same way in all traditional cultures.
Sometimes the tree is a river, or a mountain, but regardless of the
symbol used, the meaning is the same. For those interested in look-
ing more deeply into these similarities I would recommend the
work of Mircea Eliade and Holger Kalweit.
There are two basic theories to explain why this map is so wide-
spread. Theory one suggests that all mankind originated in the
same village, far back in the mists of pre-history. Assuming that this
prehistoric village had its own shaman with its own map, this map
was then carried by the people as they migrated outward filling the
rest of the world. Thus all villages have a shaman with this map,
because the primordial village had one.
Theory two assumes the radical notion that the maps are the
same across traditional cultures because they all represent the same
real territory: the three worlds of the very real shamanic realm. In
other words, they are similar because they are mapping the same
landscape.
If we look closely at this map, we see that the underworld, or
the world beneath the roots of the world tree, holds the spirits of
the tribe’s people, the ancestors who have died but who still main-
tain the identity they wore in their human life.
The upper world holds more celestial spirits, including those
ancestor spirits who have come to a realization of ‘Self’ behind the
identity they wore in human life. These spirits are ready to either
move back down into the middle world, taking on a new body and
name, or they may prefer to remain in the upper world, providing
their descendants with spiritual guidance.
The middle world is the one we’re most familiar with; it’s a
reflection of our own experience of daily life. For aboriginal tribes
living in wilderness areas, for instance, this world is populated by
the spirits of that surrounding world; the animals, trees, rocks and
caves that they experience in their physical bodies have a presence
in this middle world.
Each of these worlds obviously contains much more than the
spirits and bodies of human beings. Universal shamanic experience
suggests that the underworld tends to hold larger, deeper, and
more profound manifestations than the middle world of form,
while the upper world holds more ethereal and abstract complexes.
For example, the underworld often holds the deepest essence of an
animal species. I like to use the example of the squirrel. While
there may be 20 billion squirrels in the middle world they would all
be connected to the one soul of “Squirrel” (Squirrel with a capital
“S”) that exists in the underworld.
Unlike the underworld, the upper world manifests as lighter,
higher vibrations and more ethereal energy that can even appear as
abstract shapes in colorful and complex geometric forms, perhaps
because it is not as bound by the physical limitations of our middle
world. However, there are many who find their spirit guides or
teachers in this upper world, and that teacher may look like noth-
ing more extraordinary than an old man with a walking stick.
There is a story about the natives that first encountered the
ships of the European explorers in the Americas. It is said that
these natives could not see the ships that approached their shores.
They saw only huge white birds skimming the water. It was only
their shaman who could see what was there, perhaps because he
was more used to seeing beyond his expectations of what was real.
The alternative realities of books, television, movies, and computer
games have prepared our brains for recognition of new and unusu-
al shapes and concepts. This expands our ability to see what is
there, and yet we still see what we are conditioned to see. There is
no “old man with a walking stick”, but this is how our mind makes
sense of what it is experiencing, so it is a truth of a different sort.
This all leads us to yet another definition of shaman—as one
who is not bound by the mundane but travels in all these three
worlds. Further, it is the ability to see these other worlds overlap-
ping the everyday experience of the middle world that allows
shamans to see what we call omens.