Shamanism Made Easy: Awaken and Develop the Shamanic Force Within - Christa Mackinnon 2018

Establish your place of power
The shamanic journey
Awakening The Shamanic Force Within

So, now you are ready to do your first journey. This is to connect with your power place. Traditionally, the shaman’s power place is a place in nature where they have had strong spirit experiences, heard their calling or been initiated, or a place which came to them whilst dreaming. It is a sacred place to which the shaman pilgrimages regularly to renew their spirit connection and to honour it. In some traditions, the place of power is also the place to which the shaman warrior returns when they are dying, to enter the spirit world when leaving the body for the last time.

In contemporary shamanism the place of power is in most cases initially established as an imagined place. In shamanic terms, this place, if set up and worked with in certain ways, is real and powerful, as it exists on one of the planes of reality, just not the material one.

The power place is where we feel that forces that we do not fully understand support us in our quests. For most people, it is represented by a nature scene. Generally speaking, it is the place from which we journey, the place where we connect with Earth and spirit and communicate with spirit allies, the place we visit when in need of guidance, sanctuary or restoration. It is also a place where we can ’plant’ intents and dreams we would like to see manifest. Over time, your power place will be associated in your mind with the qualities it represents, and you can access its qualities at any given moment and work within it in many ways.

Exercise: Journey to connect with your place of power

· Prepare the room: light a candle, smudge or spray the space and switch off your phone.

· Clearly define your intent:

’I am journeying to the lower world to find and connect with my power place. I ask spirit to help me.’

· Call in spirit.

· Lie down or sit somewhere quietly. Switch on the drumming download.

· State your intent aloud a few times. Ask for spirit to help you with your journey.

· Travel down. You will arrive in a landscape. Observe it, explore it, get a feel for it. There might be a special area or place to which you feel drawn. Sit there for a while. This is your power place. You can change it if you wish by adding or removing things.

· When you hear the call-up beat, thank anyone you have met, come back and write the journey down.

Your power place is important. It is not static: it might change as you develop or you may change it deliberately over time, although the basic elements often stay the same. Mine has changed twice. It began as a place in Nepal, which is spiritually very important to me, but then it acquired some elements of a gorge in the Andes, where I had strong experiences during a mushroom ceremony, and lately a pyramid structure, which showed up during a retreat, seems to have established itself as a permanent fixture.