The land has stories to tell for those who are willing to listen.
It’s not a quick and easy process. You have to learn to hear them, and earn their trust. But through the Shamanic work I am doing, I am learning to use my ears in another new way, and the Land Spirits are willing to teach me some good stuff. Below is a story I learned from a River Spirit who we just call John (short for Spirit of Johnson County) because his real name is unpronounceable if your voice box doesn’t contain reeds, a couple random beaver dams, and the odd school of fish. Anyway, it’s a story from the Long Ago, and it goes something like this.
In the time before humans were made, creatures and land were one mind.
We all knew each other, and we all trusted each other. Sure, some of us ate others of us, but that was part of the deal, and expected, and most of the time it was alright. It was a good way to keep the balance, and all creatures accepted it.
We didn’t talk about it – nobody talked about anything. We communicated through gesture and feeling and expression, and some of us communicated through imagery sent mind-to-mind. We didn’t have anything particularly complicated to say to each other most of the time. But even so, the birds gave us music, and the trees whispered their poetry, and the Land was the greatest artist who ever lived.
There were spirits you would probably call gods, but they were just clever spirits that wanted to play with the world and see what would happen. And one of them, a very poetic sort of spirit that you can call Eva, decided to make a new kind of creature; one that would have a different kind of brain, who could express more complicated thoughts and ideas, and create like the rest of the spirits do.
Many spirits were intrigued with the idea, and offered to help Eva with her plan. They all brought things to add to the mix: wildflowers for beauty; the antlers of a deer for grace; honey for sweetness; a spark of living fire for creativity; hazelnuts for wisdom; wild grasses for flexibility; acorns for strength; feathers from all the songbirds for music and harmony; a goatskin drum for journeying and dancing; and many other gifts for the highest ideals and good of the new creatures.
But one spirit was not impressed with this course of action. His name could be Kaos, but he wasn’t necessarily a bad spirit. Maybe he was a little jealous of all the attention Eva’s project was getting, or maybe he just wanted to shake things up. Maybe he could see what destruction could be wrought by smart monkeys with poor impulse control. Whatever his motives, he wanted the humans to fail, and fail badly.
Kaos offered a shadow to Eva, reasoning – and rightly – that creatures need to be challenged with inner turmoil as well as outer strife in order to become the best they can be. Eva saw the wisdom of that thinking, and though it pained her, she placed the shadow just under the hearts of the creatures, because where else could it go and achieve the lofty goal Kaos put before her?
Ariadne, a spider spirit, wove beautiful covers for the beings out of such fine threads that each covering seemed to be a strong a supple skin. Several tiny beings were made in this manner – some male, some female, some neither, some both – and sewn tenderly into their weavings by Eva and Ariadne. Then the Mother of the North Wind blew breath into their bodies, and they were alive.
Time passed, and the new creatures grew, learned, failed, learned more, and ultimately prospered.
They learned to gather fruits, greens, and wild vegetables; to trap small animals, to gather nuts; and to hunt bigger game. They discovered how to make and control fire, and how to build shelters. They learned how to navigate by sky, and how to follow the sun through the seasons to where the best food was. They got smarter by the minute, it seemed to Eva and all the loving Godparents.
And then the ice age came, and the beings were challenged to their very limits. Those who learned how to survive it got even smarter, and some even travelled widely, exploring new lands exposed by the receding oceans. A few large groups ended up in a place called Beringea, and lived there quite happily and well for many generations. The tribes grew, intermarried, and became expert hunters, ensuring their tribes would prosper.
Eventually, the planet began to warm again, and the human tribes followed some herds across the land bridge, over the ice, and into the new land that was revealed by the melt. But there was a difference in them now; they moved through a world of dazzling light, a brilliant sun, reflecting off mountains of ice and snow, burning away the shadows below their hearts. They were smart, powerful, creative, strong, and clever – and free of the shadow that Kaos had given them. Eventually, the ice melted enough that the oceans rose, cutting off any possibility of a retreat from the new land for the intrepid travelers – but who in their right mind would want to go back? The place was a paradise!
Meanwhile, back in the old country, the shadow began to show itself, and War, Domination, Subjugation, and Slavery were invented. Haves created Have-Nots by taking everything they wanted by force. Women were oppressed into sexual and breeding slavery. Dominator cultures spread like a cancer through that world – but it didn’t spread to the new land where the Beringeans had gone. Besides, their shadows were completely burned away, and they had no desire to cultivate such a terrible way of living. Later conquerors called them “ignorant savages” without cracking a smile, can you imagine?
Kaos continues to fight against the New Worlders, sending wave after wave of challenge and adversity, and still they defy him. They have the power and the will to adapt and evolve into the next sentience, once the Old Worlders have destroyed themselves in attempting to dominate Middle Realm completely.
But the Old Worlders among us can defeat the shadow. Problem is, you have to defeat it every day. You have to choose every day to love, to revere all life, to be kind, to do what is right for the many, to share what you have with others, and accept what others desire to share with you. It can be done. It can even become a habit and then a way of life.
Know this, Children of the Old World: the Spirits of the Land will welcome you with open arms into their divinely “uncivilized” world if you choose to fight the shadow. We will help you, every step of the way.