#71 Mistletoe And The Druids (An Intro To Stage 5 Shamanic Technique)

In this episode we look at the relationship between mistletoe and the druids and how this provide context to stage 5 shamanic technique.

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Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Welcome to the Woven Energy Podcast onReal Practical Shamanism with Me, Joseph Psychora
and as always Damon Smith. Weare here to talk about shamanism from the
ground up, and this week we'rehere for a Christmas special and we're going
to be talking about missile toe andthe Druids. Now, this is a
subject that I know pretty much nothingabout, so I'm going to be firmly

(00:26):
in the passenger seat for this one. But I'm very excited to hear what
David, David Damon has to say. So, but I believe before we
get started, we have some patreonsto thank. We do met well,
We've got all our patrons to thankas usual, but I just because we
did a massive thanking of people onepisode one hundred, the historic episode one

(00:48):
hundred of Heretics the other week.So I think a lot of our patrons
may feel thanked out at the moment. We'll see because that'sok quite a long
time. But we are just goingto thank the people that we need to
thank recently. You guys know whywe're saying thank you, So it's justin
Coral, Sam Roberta, Stephan Tapolski, jesse Borg Elton Mark Walker. Thanks

(01:10):
ever so much, guys, andto all of our patrons, you guys
are awesome. Yeah, thank youso much, and as always, you
can go to Woven Energy dot comno sorry, patreon dot com slash woven
Energy and you can support us overthere. And damon patreons and supporters,
what do we what do they get? So there's a bunch of different levels

(01:30):
on there, and they were madea long time ago and they would probably
need to revisit them, but weeverybody gets thanked, even the one dollar
patrons get thanked, and then there'sa couple of other levels. It's just
so we have a decent amount ofcontent now in the patroon members area,
a lot of the background to differentepisodes. But there's actually a bunch of

(01:53):
training videos in there now. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's like video
stuff, supplementary material to the Yeahyeah, and we've got it quite a
bit of the gathering of the tribe. And actually I had a question about
that during the week, which washave we released all the videos from the
gathering of the tribe? No,we haven't. And also we need to
start thinking about the gathering of thetribe twenty twenty four now don't we.

(02:14):
So, so yeah, there's stilla bunch of stuff to come on there.
I've also got a number of thepatrons are currently helping me do some
research and development work on an upcomingSpurad dance course that I'm working on.
So yeah, there's there's a bunchof stuff happening, and we tend to
stick it all in the patrons.Yeah, and the gathering of the tribe

(02:36):
is a it's like a live onlinealmost like a workshop, isn't it where
you take a subject and you reallyrun with it for the week. So
I believe this year you were talkingabout the Shaman's drum being the money.
That's you mean this year coming twentytwenty four will be the main topic,
that's right. Yeah. Last yearit was very Spurad dancing. We did.
We did a bunch of different kindsof Spurad dance. We did some

(02:58):
Malay bird dance, Mongolian, someJapanese. It was a smart gest border
spread dance last year. Yeah.So basically anybody following this podcast and following
along with what we're doing. Allof the material is on the podcast,
of course, but in Patreon wehave extra material supplementary material videos just to

(03:20):
hopefully make it a little bit easierto understand, and of course ask questions
and just generally get involved. Afantastic there is There is also a higher
level called Power Patron, and wehave a discussion group for you guys know
you are the power Patrons. Wetalk together online. Okay, So Mistletoe

(03:42):
and the Druids take it away,damon. I'm very excited to hear about
this. Yeah. So, well, it may be just a bit of
an excuse because it's Christmas, right, you know, yeah, and it
is a great, great Christmas tradition. It would be very very easy to
turn this episode into a heretics episode, which I don't want to do.
We might do it on heretics,so yeah, so yeah, let me
know when you do, because I'dso not too much history, not too

(04:09):
much anthropology on this one, becausethis is a woven endy podcast. So
we're talking about this tradition of missiletoe in the Western tradition where the it
has formed part of the Christmas traditionsince before Christmas was invented. It's kind

(04:30):
of a hangover from our ancient pastas human beings of people who live in
the house. I don't want tosay British people because that gets a nationality
and stuff. Yes, it's alsospread around the world. It's a common
thing for people to use missiletes adecoration at Christmas, and then there's a

(04:50):
whole tradition of kissing under the missiletoe, right, So what I would
say is that it's it's like theChristmas tree itself. It's a bit of
a hangover from more ancient traditions,pre Christian traditions that have perpetuated into the
present and become part of this celebrationof ritualized. Yeah. Yeah, ostensibly

(05:15):
the birth of Christ in the Christiantradition. But you know, if anyway,
I'll point you to the Herectics podcastif you're interested in that kind of
stuff. It's not a simple situation. We've done hours and hours of stuff
around this subject and bra Constantine andall that kind of stuff, the invention
of Christianity and all this kind ofthing on heretics. I'll point you over

(05:38):
there. But the tradition of themissile tool is useful for where we've got
to in the worldven ninety podcast.We've talked a lot about level one through
three techniques on this podcast historically overseveral years now, and we've been recently
more recently getting into level form.We've done several episodes on level four technique,

(06:00):
and we will continue to do episodeson level four technique. Interestingly,
or as a side note, ifyou don't know what I'm talking about level
one, two, three in fourtechnique, you're probably at the wrong point
in this podcast. You need tohead back to the start episode one and
start. It's worth just pointing outthat this podcast is more like reading a
book, right, It's like,it's pretty much you've got to start at

(06:25):
the beginning. But we do liketo slice in these episodes now and again
that are more general interest. Butyeah, it's like it's like learning a
subject from the beginning. So let'stalk about the missile tow tradition. Then
it goes back along a way.It's actually noted in quite ancient writings Greek
and Roman writings, has been associatedwith the religious leaders, the spiritual leaders

(06:53):
of the Celts in Europe, whichwould included this what is now the country
of Britain. Back in those days, I refer to it, referred to
it as the Isles, the Islesoff the western coast of Europe. But
you know, if you go backfar enough, they weren't even disconnected.
There was a land bridges, Sothat definition doesn't work very well either.
But I'm not talking when I sayBritain, I'm not talking about countries.

(07:15):
I'm talking about these these lands,and the inhabitants of these lands in pre
Christian times were Celts. I mean, the Celts weren't here to the best
of our knowledge. The Celtic traditionof the Celtic culture wasn't necessarily here for
a great deal of the time beforethe Romans arrived. That's a whole different

(07:36):
issue. But at one time therewas a religious, spiritual tradition in these
lands that was associated with a spiritualclass or caste called the Druids, who
were a group among the Celtic peoplesthat the Romans took for a kind of

(08:01):
priestly class or priestly caste. That'sobviously the Romans seeing the Celts through their
own eyes. Because the Celts didn'tuse writing, it may be that their
senior people, their leaders, hadthe ability to write, and there's some
indication that they had a sort ofsecret language that they could write in but

(08:24):
they also had a kind of banon writing down their secrets. It was
definitely a tradition of secrecy among theDruids, these spiritual leaders of the Celts.
The things that are known about themtherefore written down by other people,
the Greeks and the Romans and others. So I've got a bit of a

(08:46):
quote. Now. This is fromPliny the Elder, who's a Roman historian
in his Natural History, and itgoes like this, we should not admit
to mention the great admiration that thegalls, the goals of the Celts in
France have for it. As well. The druids, that is what they

(09:07):
call their magicians, hold nothing moresacred than the missile toe and a tree
on which it is growing, providedit is a hard timbered oak. Missile
toe is rare, and when foundit is gathered with great ceremony, and
particularly on the sixth day of themoon. That will be the sixth day

(09:28):
of the month healing the moon ina native word that means healing all things.
They prepare a ritual sacrifice and abanquet beneath a tree, and bring
up two white bulls whose horns arebound together for the first time on this
occasion a priest arrayed in white vestments. Hence why people think the druids wore

(09:50):
these great white cloaks that you seein modern contemporary druid imagery. Climbs the
tree and with a golden sickle cutsdown the missile t and if anybody's seen
those comics asterix the goal, you'llknow about this collecting mistletoe with the golden
sickle, which is caught in awhite cloak. They finally kill the victims.

(10:13):
The victim has been these two bullspraying to a god to render his
gift propitious to those whom he hason whom he has bestowed it. They
believe that mistletoe giving in drink willimpart for fertility to any animal that is
barren, and that is an antidoteto all poisons, which is kind of
ironic. So that's the end ofPliny's quote. It's kind of ironic that

(10:37):
mistletoe is actually poisonous, you know, yeah, okay, so a variably
poisonous, but it has actually hada tradition of use in traditional herbal medicine.
The image that we have of thedruids in the modern age, and
you know, there are contemporary groupsclaiming descend from the original Druids, and

(11:01):
there's some truth to that, andagain I refer you to the Heretics podcast.
For instance, we did an episodeon the hill figures, for instance,
the offering wipe, the horse strokedragon, depend on which way you
look at it, that was,and other hill figures were created by people
who perpetuated ancient traditions within the UK, the often being the oldest one that's

(11:24):
proper iron age, which would havebeen either prior to or contemporary with Celts
in the UK, possibly prior to, but also all the others, which
are two different extents. Hill figuresare pictorializing ancient spiritual traditions of this of

(11:46):
these lands that were created during theChristian era, sort of giving a lie
to the fact that the Christians completelywiped out this old Druidic religion or spiritual
tradition of these lands. Now I'mimmediately going to haste an add because you
did notice that there were things abouttying bulls horns together, and you know,

(12:07):
sacrificing bills and all that kind ofstuff that I'm not in any way
suggesting that Druidism itself, even thehistorical Druidism was. It was a particularly
shamanistic tradition, like all things originallyshamanistic tradition, traditions, spiritual traditions.
When people start living together in settledcommunities start to mutate and morph, they

(12:33):
start to take on the character ofsomething that undermined, not under mind,
under lies and supports the power ofthe elites within the society. It's very
clear from the descriptions that we dohave of the Druids that they were very
much an exoteric religious group. BecauseI was going to ask you because in

(12:54):
that passage they were called magicians,or they were referred to as magicians.
But in my mind, when yousay a priestly class, I was going
to ask you whether Druids equals Shamans, But definitely not in a joe basic
question. It may be that insome aspects of their religion, their exoteric

(13:16):
religion, which is a counterpart ofChristianity, right, because Christianity was already
around at the time when the Druidswere around, or at least the precursors
of Christianity. You know, we'retalking about stuff like the things in the
Deaditya scrolls, which are awfully similarto Christianity. There exoteric leaning approach to

(13:37):
the world may have preserved more ofthe underlying shamanistic traditions than perhaps, for
instance, are modern contemporary society now, because they were closer to it in
time. That's probably a better wayto put it. And this use of

(13:58):
missile to the symbolism of missiletoe isan example of that. I mean,
you know, the whole bull sacrificething and wicked men and all that kind
of thing. That's that's that's you'reburning. Burning people in a wicked man
and burning people at the stake arevery very similar activities, you know.
But in terms of the missile touragain, I feel that these things went

(14:20):
back further than the Celts, theywent back further than the Druids, and
so that the tradition, for instance, of missile toward Christmas is not just
all of the Christianity, it's olderthan the Druids as well. And I
like to explain why the plants thatwe call missileto actually break down into three

(14:41):
families of plants, the Lauranthese,the Misodendrocy, and the Santa Is.
In the start of it, SantaLas. I'm not saying I can pronounce
them that well, the Latin yms. They are all slow growing but very
persistent, and they ask what ailejust would call semi parasitic. They live

(15:07):
on a horse tree. They're not, you know, growing in the soil
with their own roots in the soil. They're on a horse tree. And
they live in a lot of forinstance, timber and crop trees and ornamental
trees. There's quite a wide varietyof trees that they can actually grow on.
And in biology they're known as hemiparasites, and in scientific terms that

(15:31):
means that they rely on host treesfor water and some nutrients, but they
actually do a lot of fort synthesis. They actually produce their own food through
fort synthesis. That's why they're notcalled full on parasites. They also tend
not to accept in very exceptional cases, they tend not to kill the host
tree. It's not really in theirinterest right. So, in temperate climes

(15:56):
they are pollinated, and this isquite important the missiletes. I mean they're
pollinated by wind and by insects,and in the tropics a lot of that
pollination is also done by birds.This is pollination we're talking about, not
seed distribution. In all cases,the key is that birds are the and

(16:18):
again I refer you to the Hereticspodcasts episodes on alchemy and the thing we
call the language of the birds,and you'll understand why I'm referring here.
But we're going to move on quickly. In all cases, it's bird distribution
of the seeds. The birds comeand eat these beautiful white fruits on the
missletoe. The seeds are inside thosefruits, and the seeds then the birds

(16:41):
fly away and the seeds are intheir droppings and they drop on other trees.
But also a key aspect of thisis the seeds of missiletoe are very
sticky, and when the birds eatingthe fruit, they tend to stick to
the beak, and birds have thebehavior of rubbing off the seeds of their
beak against the back of a tree. Right, this is the behavior of

(17:03):
the birds, and you can seehow the missiletoe gets started on a new
horse tree. The bird eats thefruit on one tree, flies to another
one. The seeds stuck to itsbeak, which irritates it, so it
rubs it off against the back ofthat tree. And then the seed of
the new missile toe is sown ona new horse tree. That's pretty much
how that works. And these whiteberries, obviously they're very pretty. You've

(17:26):
seen them. They are the colorof snow. They are taking water from
the horse tree, often using hydrostaticpressure, you know, in the same
way that water moves up the xylumof any tree. But also they use

(17:51):
hydrostatic pressure some of the some ofthe species. I've got the name of
one genus that does this is good, oh sooth four bim. They these
ones can actually use the hydrostax bassireto shoot their seeds quite violently away from
the mistletoe plants without the use ofa bird. But flying is still involved

(18:14):
because these seeds of this particular groupof missile toes can can be shot away
up to fifty miles an hour,which is great great nature is just unbelievable,
isn't it Insane? Is not unbelievable? Yeah, So, horst plants
range from region to region exactly whatthese host plants are. But they can

(18:37):
be very very It's not just trees. I mean, you're the image of
the druid of going up climbing upthe tree with his golden sickle. But
missile toes are very adaptable. Theycan grow in ferns, They can grow
in grasses as well as trees.They can also use other missile toes as

(18:59):
hosts. You got a missile toeon a host tree, and then a
missile tour on the missile to adifferent kind of mistletoe on the mistletone.
So on that type of thing.And as I said, they rarely kill
the host tree, and that wouldonly happen usually when the host is already
diseased and they're not. You know, one of the things that we have
to do as kind of me asmake human beings is put our kind of

(19:22):
judgments and prejudice as aside ooh,parasites, you know that kind of thing.
That doesn't sound very nice, Butthere's other ways to look at these
things. If a host tree wasalready diseased, then the fact that they're
taking water and some nutrients away fromthe tree would be damaging to the tree.

(19:44):
And they can also decrease the reproductiveability of the host tree in a
similar kind of way. They alsoform grows. The host trees also formed
growth in response to the missile tools. And sometimes these form structures which you
know is which is brooms. Theyare so here's our link to Halloween and

(20:04):
all that stuff. Missile tools arenative on every continent in the world.
That doesn't mean they've been distributed thereby human beings, you know, human
action. They're native to every countryin the world except Antarctica for obvious reasons.
So it's a very very wide spreadway to live. They are toxic,

(20:30):
and the toxicity varies not just basedon which species of missiletoe you're talking
about, but also what the horsetree is. Different horse trees give rise
to different levels of toxicity in themissile toe, which I find quite interesting.
But it's not every missile toe thatpeople think of when they think of
Christmas, right, they think of, you know, Santa Claus and his

(20:52):
elves and his sleigh and the missiletoe hanging I guess above the fireplace or
somewhere in a Victorian house. Yeah, And apparently during the Victorian era this
tradition of kissing under the missile toethat was perpetuated by the servants in the
houses of the rich, apparently.So that's quite interesting. And the variety

(21:15):
of missiletoe that everybody thinks of asa Christmas decoration is this thing Viscum album,
which is distributed all over Britain andall the way across northern Europe,
across northern Asia where it's native toall of these places, and it grows
on trees like Hawthorn's willows, Linden'spoplars, apple trees, those sort of
trees. Yeah, it makes abush which you can see in these trees,

(21:41):
especially if it's going on deciduous trees. Well, this is a good
time of year if you mixed deciduouswoodland. It's easy a spot because it's
not deciduous, it's evergreen. Soyou see a deciduous tree that's lost all
its leaves and you see these clumpsof missiletoe up in the branches. It's
quite a spot on that basis,and I guess that's how the Druids found

(22:02):
it. It's a good thing tospot during winter. Obviously there were harvesting
missiletoe, which is which includes berries, right, white berries, at around
this time of year running up toChristmas, which means that if flowers very
early, right, if flowers inearly winter, which would have had some
sort of symbolic meaning. Probably intheir tradition, it's marking the end of

(22:27):
the year, isn't it. Soit's like the flowers, the flowers and
the berries that mark the end ofthe year. We celebrate late in the
year to cheer everybody up around Christmas. Can you imagine what winter I think
I've spent this before. Can youimagine what winter would be like without Christmas?
You know, it would be thegreatest. You know, it'd be
a bit of a downer, especiallyfor an agricultural society. Right, they're

(22:49):
nothing growing, there's nothing happening,you know. So, but so what
do we do? We make oneof the most fun I love Christmas,
you know, a big fan ofit. We make the most fun wonderful
time of the year in the placewhere everybody's going to be most depressed,
which is banging the middle of winter. Nothing's happening. And so in a

(23:10):
way, the missiletoe is also asymbol of this. It's a symbol of
this growth, that is, thisspring like growth that's happening late in the
winter, and that would link throughin naturalistic terms to those little flowers that
appear in the hedgerows early in thespring. You know. So they worship
because the druids. The druids worshipsthe wrong word, but they respect the

(23:33):
mistletoe because it's one of the veryfew things that grow in the middle of
winter. Then yes, in termsof that, it's fertility, right,
And remember that missiletoe has also beenassociated with fertility. People are taking this
toxin supposedly to make themselves more fertile. Don't recommend it myself, but you
never know. Yeah, but it'sassociated with fertility. And again it's that

(23:53):
new growth, it's that spring likeaction, and it's a source of wonder,
isn't it. So there's no linkhere because I'm curious. I'm curious
how and why it's considered a healingproperty when in actuality it's toxic. And
I was thinking maybe that, So, first of all, toxic eating eating

(24:17):
a missiletoe berry is not going tokill you. Or were they used?
Were they was missiletoe used as acatalyst as a shamanic technique catalyst? Undoubtedly
the druids used it like that becauselike you say, and like you said
in a previous episode, it's notthat they a catalyst just provides some change

(24:41):
in the system to to almost usecheese you used I remember starkly you use
cheese as the example. Sugar Youcan use sugar as a catalyst, you
know. And of course we thinkof silas cyburn, and we think of
all sorts of other things, Butmy mind just immediately went to missiletoe being
so so they would have used it. But I strongly suspect we don't know,

(25:02):
because actually the amount we know aboutthe historical Druids, the ones that
were here when the Romans arrived,is absolutely microscopic, how much we know
about those guys. There's a lotof traditions associated with the Druids, but
my suspicion is based on other traditionsthat were going on in Europe at the
time, as mistletoe would have beenan ingredient in a psychoactive concoction, one

(25:23):
of several that was used by theDruids, because I don't think it would
be a very good thing by itself, very useful for that type of thing
by itself. But you never know. But what I do know is that
it's been used throughout time again intraditional medicine to treat a whole bunch of
different things, so for instance,anxiety boosting the immune system, cardiovascular help,

(25:48):
treatment for epilepsy. It was widelyregarded in Europe for centuries that it
was one of the best treatments forepilepsy and with some merit or not.
I don't know. It's the simpleanswer. I really don't know. I
mean, it's something could be looked. I could look into. Have access

(26:11):
to a bunch of because you givemy work with the university, I have
access to a bunch of scientific journals. I can look into that see if
there's any merit in it. Treatmentfor so so, yeah, watch this
space treatment for infertility, as we'vementioned already, h treatment for high blood
pressure, relief for arthritis and soand also in more recent times cancer treatment,

(26:33):
because isn't everything used for cancer treatment. So what I mean is that
people have believed that missiletoe is usefulmedditionally, whether or not it actually is.
It's something I haven't really looked intoin a very big way, and
in a in a way from ashamanist point of view, that doesn't really

(26:56):
matter very much. And what reallymatters is the symbols of the mettletoe in
terms of understanding high level technique inshamanism, which is what will will come
on to. So this idea thatViscum Album was involved in the spiritual life
of the Celts and then it hasbecome for a long time involved in the

(27:19):
spiritual life, because Christianity is thespiritual life of the Europeans, like it
or not, and so it itmaintains that. And when Christianity came into
European countries, it didn't sweep awaywhat went before, it took it on.
And even when it was created,you know, modern Christianity was effectively

(27:40):
invented by the Infra Constantine. Andeven when it was created, it took
a lot of pre existing stuff,for instance, Mithlism, We've talked about
a lot on heretics. It tooka lot of pre of existing stuff and
absorbed it. And when Christianity spreadto countries like for instance, Ireland or
Britain or other countries in Europe,the it spread quite rapidly, not because

(28:11):
it was everybody was saying, oh, I've just realized Christianity is a much
better religion than my folk religion.It spread rapidly because the missionaries weren't stupid.
In fact, they're incredibly effective.And the people who they targeted with
their evangelism for the new religion werethe elites, were the leaders of the

(28:32):
society. And if you get theking to convert. Then you know,
everyone in those days, everyone prettymuch had to convert, whether they liked
it or not. That's pretty muchhow they went about it. And that's
why you get these saints who goaround converting whole countries seemingly overnight. They
haven't converted the whole country, farfrom it. They've converted the leadership of
that country to Christianity. That's whatthey did. So the missile tours are

(29:00):
symbol of a spiritual tradition goes backa long way. And as I've said,
my feeling is that it went backpre Celtic, it went back pre
Duridic because of what it represents inshamanistic terms. It's a plant that absorbs,

(29:22):
that depends upon a tree for itslife. It absorbs stuff from the
tree, water for sure, andsome nutrients, but it has its own
way of life. It has itson well, it has its own ability
to do things as well. It'snot depending on the horse tree entirely in
that way. For instance, itsown synthesis. It can make its own

(29:47):
food, it can absorb sunlighting anddo things under its own power. And
this is what I said, thisis why in scientifically they called hemi parasites.
The point being here that you've gota kind of analogy for a shaman.
If you think of the missiletoe asthe shaman and the horse tree as

(30:07):
the world tree or as mother nature. There's a thing called a whistorium.
And what the wholestorium is. It'sa heavily modified root on the missiletoe that
penetrates the bark of the horse treeand forms a connection through which the water
and the nutrients pass. If youlook at it under a microscope. You

(30:30):
know, if you take a sectionthrough a branch, for instance, with
a missletoe on it, and youlook at the hostorium in cross section with
the branch in cross section, youcan see that there's not really a clear
join there anywhere the tissues of thehorse tree. And when we do this

(30:52):
biology, if we were wanting tolook at that under a microscope, we
actually have to use dyes to colorthe different bits to see which bit is
the missile toe on which bit isthe horse tree. There's a merging there.
There's a tea bag in the oceantype of effect going on. It's
not like there's just like a socketand that the missile tour has plugged into
it, or it's like, youknow, like this sort of idea,

(31:15):
you know those aliens that come downfrom our space and they put they put
something in your head and sucky brainsout. It's nothing like that at all.
It's the tree and the missile toeare fully merged into each other through
the hostorium and in esoteric artwork inthe European traditions, so for instance,
especially in the Rosi Cruscian tradition,the wh historium has been shown as resembling

(31:38):
a place center, like the babyin the womb. It's connection to the
mother, and it's been building.The historium has been built in spiritual traditions
in very much this kind of away, you think that it's the percenter,
and therefore, in a way,the missiletoe is the baby of the
horse tree. If you think ofthat in terms of a shaman, what

(32:02):
is a shaman trying to achieve?A cham's trying to achieve a strong connection
with nature, a connection with naturethat is stronger than that that's enjoyed by
the average human being. So thissymbolism that you get in the Rose Christian
tradition with hostoria connecting the esoteric practitionerto the womb of nature, to the

(32:30):
world tree of nature. Is whatthe missile toe thing is all about.
In shaman terms. It's a symbolof the connection of the shaman to nature.
The missile tour is connected to thehorse tree through the hostorium, and
the shaman is connected to the worldtree through the hostorium. That makes some

(32:52):
kind of sense, yeah, itdoes. So the thing is that missile
toe is quite good at making hisYeah, oh, hostoria. Sorry,
missile tour is quite good at that. It's kind of bigd and its genes
and it doesn't have to think aboutit very much. But for human beings
who've come under the influence of themiasma, we also are good at making

(33:14):
that historian naturally as wild animals,but as human beings who are chaismatics,
who have been influenced by the developmentof civilization, by the development of exoteric
religion, belief systems. You know, you can go into modern times,
capitalism, materialism, all that kindof stuff. We get increasingly bad at

(33:37):
that. So one of the waysof asking the whole shaman question is what's
the shaman's historian? What is it? What is it that's going to connect
the shaman to nature. That connectsthe shaman's life and spirit and energy to
the life and spirit and energy ofthe natural world in the same way that

(33:57):
thestorium connects the missile to the horsetree. And I really like that analogy
that the horse tree is the worldtree and the missiletoe is the shaman.
Does that make some kind of sense. Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting
how when we get more cut offfrom nature, to get that back,

(34:19):
we'll look to analogy then, youknow, and then these things like missiletoe
appear as almost like that gives usthat sense of connection which has been missing.
Okay, guys, so we've justhad a little bit of a problem
with the recording set up. Apologiesfor that. So if you've already heard
some of what I'm about to say, then don't we put it. I'm

(34:40):
just going to say twice what wewere trying to get over that. Joe
mentioned the idea of an allegory nanalogy for the shaman's relationship to nature.
The shaman is represented by the missiletoeand the world tree. Nature is represented

(35:01):
by the horse tree and the modifiedroute that connects the missile too to the
world tree is the historium. Thestorium in nature resembles a placenta, and
this has this analogy has been usedin esoteric circles, especially Rosicrucianism, as

(35:30):
represented in the relationship that the practitionerdevelops with nature. There has to be
a connection. There has to besome connection between the shaman and nature,
just like there is between the missiletopand the horse tree in terms of the
historium. So when you look atthe tissues of historium under a microscope,

(35:52):
as I think I said, youcan see how amazingly closely merged the root
of the missile tour is and thehorse tree is. It's hard to tell
which is which. And so ifyou think of this as parasitical action,
it's not quite right. If yousay that the missile toll is a parasite

(36:16):
on the horse tree, it hasa kind of negative implication. But also
if you think of human beings asa parasite on nature, that would be
a very very similar kind of statement. And this is what I mean by
the influence of the Maasthma in theway that we think about these things.
It's not actually true. And thereare things that missile toe bring to the

(36:43):
horse tree that are beneficial to thehorse tree in the way that there are
things that human beings can bring tothe world and shams can bring to the
world that are beneficial to nature.And one of those, for instance,
is that missile troe draws in thebirds. It draws in birds and other
wildlife. Those birds of the wildlifecan act as guardians if you like,

(37:07):
of the tree. Birds that eatthe seeds are there, but they're also
aiding in the dispersal of the pollen. They're also providing fertilizer for the soil
that the trees growing in terms ofthe birds droppings and there following that the

(37:29):
birds are actually bringing a lot ofbenefits to the tree, and the birds
wouldn't be there without the missiletoe.That's the key point. They're also the
mistletoe is also contributing to the overallecosystem by providing food and shelter for various
species within the environment. Trees arek types. They do not exist in

(37:50):
isolation. They grow within a complexecosystem and the maintenance of that ecosystem is
assisted by the missiletoe. And asI've said, the medicinal use the mistletoe
and the spiritual use of mistletoe inearly communities would prevent because you know,

(38:13):
Britain was the forested very early.You know, when you go over the
Pennines from as you know well jobfrom Leeds over to Manchester, you see
how bare a lot of that landis that was all forested. That was
all forested back in the day inthose early communities. If a tree was
the kind of tree where mistletoe grew, there's no way they'd be cutting that

(38:37):
tree down. They'd be cutting adifferent tree down. That's another way that
the missletoe protected the tree from humans. So in becoming a shaman, you
have to develop your own hostorium.And this is key to what we've been

(38:57):
talking about on recent episodes of theWoven Energy podcast. We've been talking about
energy changes that you can embody inyour shamaic technique at level four and well
you learn them at level three andyou start creating a weave a good character
of them at level four. Thatweave you can think of as your side
of that hostorium. It's the bitthat's going to go down into the back

(39:23):
of the tree and connect to thetree's tissues. The level five technique is
when your weave connects with the spiritualxylom and floam of the horse tree,
the horse tree being the world treeyou drink of the world lies exactly.
And that's how the shamness Miki describedit. She called it the jiki mutsu,

(39:45):
the heavenly dew that you drink offrom nature. And so level five
technique is about the part where yourhostorium that you're developing through your level for
technique starts to bed down into thetissues, the xylum and the flow and

(40:07):
the energy weave that exists within nature. And that's why Missle Toy is such
a great analogy for what goes onin higher level shamanic technique because you want
it to that the good that you'recreating in your level four technique, the
energy changes, and we're not donewith energy changes, and that there will
be lots more Level four episodes tocome, but just to give a preview

(40:28):
of the kind of technique that wewill be talking about when we get to
level five, this is what it'sall about. It's those crossover points between
the weave your historium. Rather thanusing your weave, let's call it your
historium that you're creating with your spurtdown so or your other level four technique.
The crossing points, the points wherethey lie alongside the xylum and flow

(40:51):
of the host tree of the worldtree. Those crossing points start to become
and a world way to describe it, because it's not a thing that's visual,
but they start to become brighter,they start to glow or become the
main thing that is exists within yourspirit dance. When you start getting really

(41:13):
good at it, they start totake over from your weave, the energy
patterns, which you know at levelthree and level four. It's that weave
as to a large extent, beingcreated under your own initiative as a shaman,
as a practicing shaman. But throughthe internalization of the level four technique,
say it's spread dance or something else, you get good at that,

(41:37):
you become practiced with it so thatyou dissolve within it, You completely dissolve
within it. These crossing points ofyour weave and the weave of nature become
more and more obvious to you.And this is where level five techniques starts.
You start building a meaningful historian.We've called those crossing points of the

(41:58):
vessel. Right, that's what weYeah, it's like this, and we've
used the term it's almost like it'salmost like weaving a structure together. Well,
that's what you're doing with your that'swhat you're doing with your level for
technique. Well, what I'm sayingis you're weaving that structure. Nature,
before you ever arrived, has wovena structure of its own, in which

(42:21):
your structure starts participating and intertwining with, twining with exactly, and it's through
that interaction that the vessel is created. You don't create the vessel. Nature
doesn't really create the vessel. Itdoes in a sense because you come from
nature and you're going back to amore natural state, but you it doesn't
create the vessel deliberately. It's thatcrossover. It's that interaction between the two

(42:45):
sides, in the same way thatthe missile tone and the tissues of the
tree interact. It's the building ofthat historium. That vessel is a joint
it's it arises jointly from the actionof the shaman and from the action of
nature, participating together in a holisticsense, and without either one it couldn't

(43:07):
exist. And so the sense ofthis this commonality in the spirit dance technique,
where both you and nature are dancingtogether with increasingly strong and increasingly obvious

(43:28):
to you points of crossover between youand shared between you, the eye the
me starts to go away that throughthis historium to a certain extent, like
the placenta and the baby, connectingthe baby to the mother inside the womb

(43:52):
at that point in time to ina certain way, they're not separate from
each other, the mother and thechild. They are together in a sense
that the shaman becomes together with naturethrough the level five technique. So obviously

(44:13):
level five technique builds upon level fourtechnique, It builds upon those crossover points
in the weave. But you cansee this as the start of the spirit
of the shaman through their level fourtechnique, creating core, creating the vessel,
the historium and whirl tree and shamanall being one and the same thing,

(44:36):
or gradually becoming one and the samething and slipping onto that vessel is
what enables the higher levels of shamanictechnique. The ability to slip onto that
vessel in that it becomes it goesfrom being an attachment to nature to being
the be all and end all ofwhat is happening in the shamanic technique.

(44:59):
But the shaman is no longer thedriving force, the sole driving force behind
the activity is that have been upto level four. Nature is as much
a driving force as the shaman is. That's probably the best way to put
it. And so that the analogyof the missile toe and as historium to

(45:22):
the horse tree and the shaman andthe shaman's level five technique and the world
Tree, it's the same thing.They're becoming one and the same thing,
but they're not fully there yet.There's not a full dissolution. That's level
seven, right, There's not thisfull dissolution within nature within the world tree,

(45:45):
but there is a crossover, thereis a placenta, there is a
historium between the two. And whenyou start practicing level five techniques, we're
going to do a full more levelfour techniques before we get under level five
and start introducing level five techniques.But that is their purpose is to increase
the degree of that is to moveyou to a point where you've formed a

(46:07):
connection. You can start to detect, see, feel, experience these crossover
points, and they're becoming increasingly ifyou think about in visual terms, they're
becoming increasingly bright, although it's nota visual thing. A long time ago,
I remember, I remember you talkingabout level five and the vessel and

(46:30):
you said, forgive me if Iif my memory is a bit off,
but you said something along the linesof that it will be immediately obvious to
you. It's something that when ithappens, it's just obvious what it is.
It's very obvious. And until you'vesuccumbed to your natural inclination as a

(46:50):
miasmatic, you and BIGG say,what does this mean? As soon as
you think that it all collapses.Yes, as long as you don't do
that, it will persist. Yeah, And that's something The what does it
mean question is something you've got tostay away from as a shaman, especially
if you I know, we havea lot of people who've been practicing the
technique for a long time, someof our patrons who are blessed them.

(47:13):
They post videos and stuff of themdoing their spurt dance and it looks amazing,
absolutely amazing that you know, becauseremember the conversation we had, can
you actually can you actually learn shamanismfrom podcasts? And I was pretty dead
set certain that you couldn't early on. I'm not so sure anymore. I'm
absolutely not assure anymore after all thistime. So Joe was right and I

(47:34):
was wrong. It's a case ofwhere where there's a will is a way.
Yeah, and I think you know, yeah, But that's the point
of level five technique is to amplifythat, to magnify it, to sync
into the historian further and further andfurther. And once that starts to become

(47:55):
you think of the historian firmly rootingitself, growing and growing and firmly rooting
itself with a tree. You canthink of that as the shamanic pathway moving
along the shaman moving along the Shamanicpathway, or the esotericist move because they
have the same concept and resecretionism,moving along the esoteric pathway, becoming more

(48:15):
and more embedded within nature. Andsure, like the storium, the historium
isn't the be all and end allof the missiletoe. Just like the bark
that it that the historium goes through, and the xylum and floam that it
joins with are not the be alland end all of the tree. Sure,
the historium in the vessel is notthe be all and end all of

(48:36):
the shaman and the will. Youknow, the the well tree is part
of the vessel, is not thebe and end all of the whorl tree.
But it does form that point ofconnection. And that is what level
five technique is is absolutely all about. Is that that's historium like connection that

(48:57):
happens with through long and dedicated practiceof shamanic technique or without longer dedicated practice
shamanic technique if you happen not tolive in a civilized, settled society with
lots of religious miasma and stuff andother types of masthma put on you.
But this is the word that we'veused a lot earlier on in the podcast.
We used this word modoch. Wesaid the ability this amount to slip

(49:22):
onto the vessel. Well, here'sa complete So you think of a vessel
as a you know, like wetold the story about the Chilean the vessels
that the Chinese unicorn, where theshaman rides on the back of the Chilean
off to the underrealm. That soundsthat's showing it in terms of a children's
story or an old myth or something, isn't it but the missile toe.

(49:42):
Here's something that actually does this,right, missile tooo Is this for real
in the real world, solid factthat the missile toe does create this incredibly
close and intimate connection with the horsetree, which is exactly what the shaman's
trying to do. Fascinating how it'snot how it's no coincidence that it's become

(50:02):
this sort of revered item. Andand you know, I we find these
things though, to make these connectionsback to nature somehow, But it's also
had that It's also had that secondaryuse, hasn't it In Western civilization?
The combating of prudishness, right?You know the Victorians are famously prudish,

(50:28):
But then if we look at whatthey actually did, it was all it
was all on the surface, wasn'tit. They were definitely not prudish behind
closed doors and the missile toe thatwhole you think that other again, it's
about joining us, about bringing peopletogether. You know, the two leaves
of the missile toe this software representthe union between two people, don't They
Like a couple getting together and theneves sort of oppose each other, but

(50:52):
they lean towards each other. Thatthat's a great symbol and maybe that's why
it's also been used in this kindof acting or joining symbol within shamanic and
esotic traditions. The missile toe ina prudish society which is heavily miasmatic,
which is, you know, Imean, Christianity was making people feel far

(51:14):
worse about themselves during the Victorian erathan it does today. But probably it
still makes people feel quite bad aboutthemselves. It's all Adam and even the
fig leaves thing. Right. Thebottom line is if couples don't get together,
the human race doesn't perpetuate, right, it just doesn't. And in
a society where it's seen there's abit off to be, you know,

(51:34):
kissing somebody, the socially acceptable mechanismsto which that can actually happen, that
two people can show each other thatthey like each other, the institution of
the missile tow at Christmas, inthat sense, it has another great joining
function within a very prudish society,right you know. So yeah, so

(51:54):
that's a thing that we're that missiletoe benefit. This Victoria's big time.
I think it's just one connection afteranother, isn't it. It's quite incredible.
So to put this in context,we're talking about stage five. Stage
five is the modoc slipping onto thevessel. Yeah, so just I don't

(52:19):
want you to go into tremendous detailobviously, but just to put in context,
then stage six is the eye lolethe journey. No, so stage
five is indeed about creating the vesseland slipping on the vessel. Yeah.
You see, you don't create thevessel under your own power. You create
the guruk to a certain extent,under your own power the weave. Right,

(52:43):
that's level four, that's what we'vebeen talking about, and level three.
Level three you're learning the technique.Level four you're applying the technique right
to create your own weave. Butthen through that technique at level four,
you start to experience this crossover withthe pre existing weave that's going on within
nature. And then those crossover pointsbecome the foundation. They've become the clay

(53:06):
from which, if you want tothink, from which the vessel arises on
nature's Potard's wheel. And that's whatlevel five is about, is slipping,
allowing that vessel to form, amplifyingit, and slipping onto it. Yes,
once you've achieved that state, whichis a you know, it's it's
beyond the deep state of cellisity.It's something beyond that. It's a deep

(53:27):
state of jellusity, not just withinyou and within nature, but it becomes
a crossover state where the distinction betweenyou and nature is starting. It hasn't
completely vanished, but it's starting tovanish. The distinction between the missiletoe and
the tree in the historium is notentirely clear at first glance anyway, So

(53:49):
that that is indeed what stage fiveis all about. But the journey is
a single or a single group ofexams of the kind of techniques as a
shaman that you can apply having achievedthat state, having achieved that state of
modoc Does that make sense? Butthere are the others. There are others

(54:12):
which we're going to talk about,quote unquote. The journey is an example
of stage it's a big group ofexamples. It's a big group of examples
because there's a lot of ways todo the examples. But another example of
stage six technique would be Cami gakari, which was a kind of technique that
that Miki practiced. So there isthere are other examples of it than just

(54:37):
ilah, which is the is thefamous one, the famous spirit journey.
But here we're talking about the realspirit journey, right, which is,
you know, not the you know, I imagine you're floating through the clouds.
Not. We're not talking about animaginal We're talking about the real deal
here, and it does real practicalwell, the type of spirit journey that

(55:00):
doesn't evolve any imagination whatsoever. That'sthe one where, that's the one we're
after. And unfortunately it's not easier. It takes an awful lot of practice.
It's a hard, hard thing.I mean I find going into us
propostitialisity quite easy these days. Iwould never say that I found elil easy.
It's hard. Even after these youknow, thirty something years of practice

(55:22):
and shamanism, I still don't findit that easy. So it's something that
needs a lot of work, especiallyfor people like us, who are people
like us, well, we don'tlive in gatherer societies out in the you
know, beautiful nature in the gardenersit's described in the garden of Evening,

(55:44):
and we live in houses and officesand streets, and even when we do
live in the countryside, like me, we have to get away from the
computer, we have to get upthere and get out across the moor.
You know, the miasma comes heavilyinto this room that I'm sitting in right
now every day in the form ofmy work and the people I interact with
and all that see you through acomputer screenes, I get the miasma and

(56:07):
high bag. I like that.So yeah, yes, I mean that's
pretty much all I want to sayabout Missile to. I don't want to
start getting it the details of levelfive technique because we haven't done any level
enough level four technique to do thatyet. But what I did want to

(56:29):
do with this one giving her aChristmas and you know, goodwill to all
men and stuff and best wishes toeverybody that listens to this podcast. You
guys are awesome. Keep us goingfor the Christmas season, is what?
You know that we've talked about Levelfour? What's level five about? And
I think Missile Toe is a goodlead into that. Yeah, what's further

(56:50):
along the tunnel? What's to comefor all this hard work that we put
in? Fantastic Well, I wantto wish every body and merry Christmas of
course, and a happy New Years. Been a good episode, Damon,
Is there anything else you want toleave us with or no. Out of
that, I'll also say Mary mythwastmass and point people at the hard Ex
podcast. Yes, that was lastyear, wasn't it. That was a

(57:15):
I can't remember what year it was, but I think we're done with last
a few times but yeah, probably, Yeah, fantastic. Well, have
a good one guys, and wewill see you when we see you.
Thank you.