Shaman Pathways Elen of the Ways

Following the Deer Trods, the Ancient Shamanism of Britain

By Elen Sentier

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2013 Elen Sentier
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78099-559-5

Contents

About Elen Sentier…………………………………………………viiiMeetings………………………………………………………….11. Ice and Fire……………………………………………………32. Goddess of the North Wind………………………………………..163. Sovereignty…………………………………………………….224. The Deer Goddess of the Ancient Caledonians………………………..315. 2012 Scotland…………………………………………………..356. Following the Deer Trods…………………………………………607. Deer Stalking – Working with Elen…………………………………67

CHAPTER 1

Ice and Fire

Long ago and far away in space-time ice covered the Earth. Itwould feel strange to us now, we who live in a warm time whensnow only comes for a few weeks in winter, if at all.

In northerly climes like Scandinavia, parts of Russia, Canadaand America, snow may come for several months over the winterbut we have to go up into Arctic to find snow all the year round,and those lands are shrinking every year now because of globalwarming and climate change. We watch wonderful programmeslike Frozen Planet but we cannot imagine living there. If wereally stretch the imagination, our mind tells us that such anexistence would be terrible, frightening, cold and miserable. Weadmire the explorers and scientists who go there for manymonths at a time but we do not believe the frozen wastes to beplaces to live, to make great art and philosophy; we considerthem to be too bitterly cold to even think. Our ancestors didn’tshare these feelings as this beautiful carving shows.

This sculpture, known as the Swimming Reindeer, was created atleast 13,000 years ago, that’s three thousand years before the endof the last Ice Age. It’s carved from the tip of a mammoth tuskand shows a male and female reindeer with their heads raisedand legs extended. The depiction is remarkable in its naturalism;it conveys movement and displays the hunter’s knowledge ofanatomy. It was discovered in 1866 as two separate pieces andacquired by the British Museum in 1887.

The fragility of the connection between the two halves showsthat it was not a practical object but rather a masterpiece offigurative art. Its significance to the people who created itremains a mystery to archaeologists. For me, it is one of manythings which tell me the Reindeer Goddess was important tohumankind from back into very ancient times.

If we wanted to have this made for us now it would need craft-skillsof superb delicacy as well as an exquisite visionary talent …but it was made when the Earth was deep in an Ice Age. Ourancestors were not savages as was the perceived academicwisdom until quite recently; they were people of amazing culturewhich must, from the intricacy of such art, have had greatspiritual depth. There are not many artists nowadays who couldachieve such an evocative and skilled piece of work.

What would it be like to live the life of these people? How didthey see the world and know the gods, the powers, and theirelder brethren – the animals and plants and rocks?

Our Deer-Trod Following Ancestors

Reindeer have been around for a long time.

Wild reindeer have been a major resource for humansthroughout the northernmost parts of the northern hemispherefor tens of thousands of years, from the Middle Pleistocene.Norway and Greenland have unbroken traditions of huntingwild reindeer from the ice age up to the present day. In the nonforestedmountains of central Norway you can find the remainsof stone trapping pits, guiding fences, and bow rests builtespecially for hunting reindeer, that have likely been in use sincethe Stone Age.

In the North American continent reindeer are called caribou.Caribou is an important source of food, clothing, shelter andtools in the traditional lifestyle of the Inuit people, Northern FirstNations people, Alaska Natives, and the Kalaallit people ofGreenland. Many Gwich’in people, who depend on thePorcupine caribou, still follow traditional ways of cariboumanagement. These folk still follow the old ways that are similarto hunter-gatherer and pastoralist paths.

Before farming, the land was owned by none; it was known tobe for all, all life belonged to the Earth, including all animal,plant and mineral life as well as humans. The concept ofownership began with farming.

Hunting and gathering was the ancestral way of life forhumans for most of the six million years of our evolution fromapes. It began to change about 10,000 years ago when agriculturebegan; before that all modern humans, homo sapiens, werehunter-gatherers. It was a very different way of life to what weknow now as largely citified humans. Over the next fewthousand years hunter-gatherers were displaced by farmers and,to some extent, by pastoralist groups in most parts of the world.Only a few contemporary societies are still able to be hunter-gatherersand many of those supplement foraging with keepingor following animals.

Life was good for the hunter-gatherers. Palaeolithic hunter-gathererpeople didn’t suffer from famine and malnutrition likethe Neolithic farming tribes that followed them because they hadaccess to a far wider variety of plants and animals and fish. Thefamines experienced by both Neolithic and modern farmers wereand are caused, and intensified, by their dependence on a smallnumber of crops. The Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers didn’t sufferthe modern diseases of affluence either, diseases such as Type 2diabetes, coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease,because they ate mostly lean meats and plants, and engaged inlots of physical activity.

Archaeological evidence from the Dordogne region of Franceshows they used lunar calendars giving the phases of the moon.Solar calendars do not appear until the Neolithic period. But ourhunter-gatherer ancestors understood the seasons perfectly well,they knew how to follow the migration of animals like deer, andwild cattle and horses, far better than most of us do now.

At first, when the farmers began to take over and control theEarth, many hunter-gatherer groups continued their ways of life.Their numbers have continually declined as a result of pressurefrom growing agricultural and pastoral communities. As thenumber and size of agricultural societies increased, theyexpanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers,driving the hunter-gatherers out or forcing them to change intofarmers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to thedevelopment of the first forms of what we know as moderngovernment in agricultural centres such as the Fertile Crescent,Ancient India, Ancient China, Olmec, Sub-Saharan Africa andNorte Chico. The new farming societies also gave rise to theconcept of war through the idea of ownership.

Many of the remaining hunter-gatherer societies now live inarid regions or tropical forests. Those areas which were formerlyavailable to them were—and continue to be—encroached uponby the settlements of agriculturalists. The resulting competitionfor land use meant that hunter-gatherer societies either adoptedfarming or moved to other areas. Usually they were forced intolands much less suitable for their lifestyle and, in consequence,they became malnourished and sick, and so died out. Accordingto American scientist and author Jared Diamond the ignorantpractices of farmers, including overexploitation, caused manylarge mammal species to become extinct. This was furthercomplicated in 19th century America by the idiotic romanticconcept of “good animal” (pretty herbivore) and “bad animal”(wolf). The subsequent hunting of large predators which grew upwrecked the habitat balance which the hunter-gatherers andpastoralists had helped nature (the goddess) to maintain formillennia. Hunting wolves became a sort of religious war; itextends, still, to bears and big cats. The stupid and foolhardymodern destruction, such as began with the creation of the firstNational Park, Yellowstone, for material profit (i.e. tourism toline pockets) still goes on.

We see this still continuing today. Indeed there are stillarguments over the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstonealthough it has been proven that without wolves to balance theirnumbers the herbivores kill the forest. Intelligent scientists nowrealise how well the hunter-gatherer societies, who were thrownout of Yellowstone by the railway profiteers, worked with natureto maintain a proper ecological balance.

Another thing to note about hunter-gatherer society is thatthe division of labour was quite different to the way we havebeen taught to think of it. For our ancestors, man was notsuperior … but neither was woman.

Back in 1966 at the “Man the Hunter” conference in Chicago,anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore made the(then) radical suggestion that egalitarianism was a major characteristicof nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. Being mobile,following the herds and the seasons, along with the efficient useof resources, knocks on the head all the ego-ideas of male superiorityand female inferiority.

Personal material possessions were minimal, just what youneeded to live and likely included only things such as a knife andaxe, bow-drill hearth and maybe cord, a cookpot/carryall, andsome form of “poncho” that you could use as a hammock or tarp.Collecting excess possessions was unhelpful, wasteful, greedyand unnecessary; to do so would be to steal from the land’s ownresources which other creatures and plants would need. Ourancestors were “ultralight backpackers”. In their philosophy thepeople belonged to the land. It was only with the advent of farmingthat this concept was turned on its head to become the farmers’philosophy that people owned the land. This is a concept we areall familiar with nowadays. When following the herds, movingfrom place to place as the herds followed the seasons, was normalwe knew our connectedness with the Earth and the goddessmuch more clearly than we do now. Grasping, greed, the fear ofloss, the envy of another man’s field, all these were concepts thathad no place to exist before we decided to be owners and tocontrol the Earth.

At the “Man the Hunter” conference, Marshall Sahlinspresented a paper entitled Notes on the Original Affluent Society inwhich he challenged the popular view that hunter-gathererslived lives that were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” asThomas Hobbes had put it back in 1651. Sahlins showed thathunter-gatherers needed to work far fewer hours – now thoughtto be about 15 hours/week – than the later farmers in order toenjoy far more leisure than is nowadays typical for members ofany industrial society. Hunter-gatherers ate well and seasonally,so their bodies were well nourished by what is best at each timeof the year. Nowadays we have the rather childish attitudes ofbeing overly fussy and wanting “treats” all the time, such asstrawberries in midwinter. The hunter-gatherer affluence cameabout because they needed very little in the material sense inorder to be content, and to produce beautiful art which is anexpression of a deep philosophy … unlike us today.

Mutual exchange and sharing of resources, such as the meatgained from hunting or the berries harvested for preserving,wine and cordial, are important in hunter-gatherer societies. Inour modern way of classifying, labelling and putting into boxes,we sometimes describe such practices as gift economies althoughwe don’t really understand the concept of gifting. Gifting is anancient shamanic habit; we gift between each other, betweenourselves and other tribes; we gift the land and receive gifts fromthe land; and we gift between worlds. It’s a fundamental part ofshamanic practice to gift back to the land and to Otherworld aswell as to other people. This is another trait we have largely lostin modern society except at midwinter sun-return and birthdays.

There is a vast amount of ethnographic and archaeologicalevidence which demonstrates that the sexual division of labourin which men hunt and women gather wild fruits and vegetablesis uncommon and unlikely among hunter-gatherers worldwide.The evidence suggests gathering is often done by women but nosociety has ever been found in which men completely abstainfrom gathering easily available plants. Often women hunt thesmall game while men tend to hunt the large game, likelybecause the human male torso has more strength than the femaleand men may have more stamina for a long running chase. Butthere are quite a few documented exceptions to this; for instance,in the Philippines, about 85% of Aeta women hunt, and theyhunt the same quarry as men. Studies show that Aeta womenhunt in groups, and with dogs, and have a 31% success rate asopposed to 17% for men; their rates are even better when theycombine forces with men. The Jul’hoansi women in Namibiatrack the quarry for the men.

Recent archaeological research by anthropologist and archaeologistSteven Kuhn from the University of Arizona suggests thatthe sexual division of labour did not exist prior to the UpperPaleolithic. It seems to have developed very recently in humanhistory, probably with the beginning of land-ownership. Theidea that sexual division of labour arose to allow humans toacquire food and other resources more efficiently is a myth,likely instigated by power/land/property struggles rather thanfor any life-enhancing reasons.

As a result of the now near-universal human reliance uponagriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures areonly able to live in areas the farmers consider unsuitable foragricultural use. This change in how we work – with each otheras well as with the Earth – has brought us to a place where onesex dominates the other. We have lost our way … we no longerfollow the deer-trods.

Deer and Humans

The earliest fossil deer were found in Europe and date fromabout 34 million years ago.

This exquisite Lascaux cave painting is of the Irish Elk,Megaloceros giganteus who first appeared about 400,000 years ago,that’s in the time of archaic Homo sapiens ancestors. This giganticdeer stood over two metres tall at the shoulder, that’s nearlyseven foot in old money, they had the largest antlers of anyknown deer at over three and a half metres from tip to tip andweighed in at maybe 600 kg. There’s an impressive and significantcollection of Irish Elk skeletons at the Natural HistoryMuseum in Dublin.

The Lascaux painting is quite stunning and shows how verywell our ancestors knew deer. It was painted on the wall of a cavein southern France, far underground and hidden from everydaysight. To see it you made a journey into the womb of the Earth,in darkness; then, with the flame-lights lit, you would stand inthe presence of the Deer Spirit.

Undoubtedly we ate these deer, the butchered bones in cavesall over Britain and Europe attest to this. Archaeologists suggestthe paintings were a form of calling to the gods for help with thehunt and that’s a part of it but there’s more than that. Shamanicpeoples know hunting and killing a beast is a sacred task, yourbeast will show itself to you, stop maybe, make it quite obviousthat he or she is the one you should kill. People who live wildknow this whether they are knowingly working with spirit ornot, too many “odd things” happen so that you really feel you’repushing “coincidence” far too far. Unless you go out andexperience this for yourself it can be hard for modern city folk toappreciate.

Shamanic people everywhere know the interconnectedness ofall life … and this means what you eat and what eats you too.Our bodies and those of animals and plants are all made of thesame atoms that make up Mother Earth: the atoms that make upyour skin and organs and brain have all been atoms of rock andcabbage and cat and motor car and concrete and other people etc,etc … and they will be so again after you no longer need them.Spirit, your spirit, builds your body like a space-suit for living onPlanet Earth out of the stuff of Earth. Your spirit then inhabits thespace-suit for the duration of your incarnation and at the end,when your body dies, all the atoms go back into the Earth againto become other things.

When you’re in touch with your spirit and, even more so,when you know yourself to be that spirit rather than just yourlittle personal self you know this in your bones rather than inyour head. It’s all the stuff I was brought up with as normal andhas been so for awenyddion, spirit keepers, for time out of mind.Knowing this means you know to ask for permission to kill yourfood … and you kill a carrot every time you pull one up to eat it(or buy it in a shop) just as much as a cow or sheep of deer iskilled so you can eat meat. You and the cow and the sheep andthe deer and the carrot all share the same atoms; some of the stuffthat currently makes up your body may well have been atoms ina deer and, when you die, some of your atoms may go on to be acarrot. As awenydd you know this; you respect all of lifewhatever its shape and form; and you know that we all nourisheach other in a completely physical way, all the time.

I think these paintings are about all of that; a far morecomplex, and complete, idea of the world, the universe andeverything.
(Continues…)Excerpted from Shaman Pathways Elen of the Ways by Elen Sentier. Copyright © 2013 Elen Sentier. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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