To Bards and Shamans

Today at lunch, my friend. Jen, asks someone what Kabbalah is. In a church of the educated she asks someone who is not educated, and today, when I don’t feel like being rude I keep silence when he says in his bored way, “Oh, it’s just fortune telling and mysticism. Oh, he would have done so much better if he’d had the humility to say he didn’t know. These Christians and indeed, all of these religious people these days with their business suits and lukewarm religion! Or with their narrow religion.
How I tire of these people who make a god out of mediocrity and a Christ out of being middle class. Not only is their whole world grey, but they want our world to be grey too. Not only is their world a small one, but they want ours to be just as small! Let me stop before I When I hear tattoo artists speak of what they do as shamanistic, when I hear of counter cultural people who look for religious experience, divine experience far from church doors, I understand exactly what they mean.

Most people in this world are unfit for mystery. Do not tell your dreams to everyone. Do not share with the whole world your chief concerns or your heart or hearts. This is like a dragon turning up his underbelly to a knight.

To a young writer, like myself; top a shaman, to a poet, to a keeper of the mysteries: the world so desperately needs us. The world is so in need of those who can pass between the worlds and bring back healing in ritual, in story, in poetry and song. And that world doesn’t know it’s sick. For the road we walk there is so little pay off, and we may lose our way now an again. We may grow faint of heart or tired. We may even lose ourselves. No matter. London, everything has not been written yet. There is a place very deep in you where the power comes from. In you, my love, it is right beneath the surface. And if this place is in you, if it’s been building up in you like oil under the earth, for ages and ages, since before you were born, then how can it already be written. The world is filled with cheap voices, discount voices, little entertainments and easy answers. But it is waiting for something more substantial, little sister. It is waiting for your voice.