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 Though the Underworld is a place of power and beauty, it also reflects your life and spiritual connection and there can be problems that may need sorting out. If your journeying stays restricted to power animal retrievals and exploration for fun you may not even be aware of those problems in your Underworld. They aren't always obvious and easy to detect. Though the Underworld is probably the most visited and best-known of all the Otherworld places -- almost every course on shamanism involves journeying in the Underworld -- its true secrets are revealed to but a few. Those who learn the secrets of the Underworld hold the key to truly transform their lives by rooting out the negative patterns. What is the Underworld like? The Underworld should be a place of untouched nature and pristine beauty. I say should be, because there are exceptions. Under certain circumstances -- sorcery and black magick being the main ones -- a person's Underworld can become dark and polluted. But these are the exceptions. Normally the Underworld is nature at its most beautiful, untouched by human "civilisation" (sometimes I think the best synonym for “civilisation” is “desecration”!). The Underworld has different regions and you may find forests, jungles, oceans and rivers, mountains and plains and even deserts there. What you don't find in the Underworld are cars, concrete, buildings, roads and technology. If this is what you see when you journey to your "Underworld" then you have lost your way and have journeyed to the Middle World by mistake! A lady I knew once told me of her "Underworld" experience, which involved a whole bunch of Bavarians in lederhosen, drinking beer and eating pretzels on tables decked in Bavarian white and blue! From her description of the experience it was clear that she had journeyed to the Middle World, which is not a safe place to be for a beginner -- nor is it a place of empowerment! How do I get there? To access the Underworld the shaman descends into the earth with her spirit body. There are different methods of doing that and various places to start. Some teachers recommend starting one's journey to the Underworld at the World Tree also known as the axis mundis. This however is not a good and safe method. Why? The World Tree is a public place where anybody and anything can visit. If you create an entrance to your personal Underworld at the World Tree anybody can get to your Underworld and possibly do great harm there. Would you let your house keys and your address lie around in a public place? Leaving the entrance to your Underworld exposed can be even more disastrous than giving a stranger your house keys. Somebody who knows how to do shamanic tracking can easily find the entrance to your personal Underworld by following your energetic signature. A sorcerer with mal-intent, who gains access to your Underworld, can do you great harm and in the worst case scenario, could ruin your life! I would not be warning you of this if it wasn't a real danger. Unfortunately I have personally experienced this. You can read more about this in my essays Vampires Suck! and "Sham Shamans" (soon to come). You may also access them via the Essays, Magick or Shamanism Page. A much safer way to get to your Underworld is to start at a personal safe place. You yourself create your own safe place. How to do that and some more information on the safe place can be found on a separate page titled "Safe Place". Y Your Underworld is Unique Everybody's Underworld looks different. Your Underworld is as uniquely yours as your fingerprint. Depending on your past lives and other factors, your Underworld may look like Africa, Inhabitants of the Underworld You will find many animals in your Underworld. Most of them are friendly and some are your power animals. When an animal is fierce and aggressive go out of its way, or, if it is blocking you from something important and you are strong enough, fight it! Do not take an unfriendly animal with hostile behaviour as your power animal. In the Underworld as with all journeying you must use your intuition and your brains! If something feels wrong, be wary! However, religious conditioning can sometimes bring up strong negative feelings against a friendly helpful being! A good friend of mine was once told that she had an anaconda power animal waiting for her. My friend loathed snakes. Had she met it in her Underworld unprepared she would definitely have feared and avoided it. However she managed to embrace the power of the serpent and it is her main power animal now. Christianity has labelled some animals as evil, the snake being the first and foremost. The snake is however the sacred animal of the Goddess and that is exactly why Christianity has such an issue with snakes. Part of your work as a shaman is to free yourself from all religious conditioning -- which restricts and binds your power and keeps you in blindness and ignorance, and far away from the Oneness with All-that-Is. So when you encounter beings you don't like, you will have to distinguish between dislike caused by your conditioning and fears, and true intuition. If you already have one or several power animals, this is much easier, as the behaviour of your power animal will indicate whether the being in front of you can be trusted or not. In case of doubt be friendly and polite but reserved and cautious. Among the many plants in your Underworld you will also find your personal power plants. Those can be your companions on journeys as well. The spirit of the plant can look very different from the way the actual plant looks in physical reality. It can take the form of an animal, insect or even be dragon-like, depending on what plant it is. When you are working intimately with the spirit of a plant you will get to know its spirit form. This work takes a bit more experience than the work with power animals. Do not take a plant spirit with you to your safe place unless you are absolutely certain that it is your power plant, has indicated it wants to work with you, and, unless you are experienced enough to know whether it really is what it appears to be. Keep in mind, beings in the spirit world can disguise themselves, change their shape, and delude you if you are inexperienced and/or gullible! Besides power animals and power plants you may find elementals of various sorts. They can be good or bad elementals. We aren't talking about the elementals of earth, air fire and water here, but of elementals of relationships (both desirable and undesirable relationships), or elementals of your habits and addictions. Working with those elementals is advanced work though and beyond the scope of this essay. There can be humans in your Underworld as well. If you find a tribe of say, Native Americans, it may be because you have a strong Native American influence from past lives. Before trusting anybody blindly get to know them over a period of time first, and develop personal relationships and friendships, as you would in "real life" as well. Should you find any negative tribes, such as cannibals, then you can assume that you are under psychic attack and have had contact with a sorcerer shaman. Remember it is your Underworld, do not let negative forces take residence there!!! Should you find your parents, your boss, your ex-lover in your Underworld, etc, then they have taken power from you and are still taking it now on an energetic level. You will have to get rid of them! The general rule is that there shouldn't be any people in your Underworld, unless they are personal guides, and friends from traditions you have a strong connection with. With anything else, be wary. Certain sorcerer-shamans will make a connection to your Underworld and let their vampiric tribe in, which results in your power and vitality, even your spirituality being drained away without you knowing what is happening. If you are under psychic attack you may also find demons and entities in your Underworld. Make sure you kill them all and if you can't do that on your own, seek help from a skilled shaman who knows how to deal with black magick and has integrity! How can you be sure of not ending up with another bad egg among shamans? Read my article “Sham Shamans”, which tells you, how to distinguish a real shaman from a trickster! Your Travelling Tool Kit To make journeying -- whether in the Underworld or in other places -- a safe experience you should have a few things in your travelling “tool kit”. First tool: common sense. Unfortunately this is sadly lacking in people nowadays, hence suing and legal action have become so wide-spread, simply because people do not want to take responsibility for themselves, don't even want to think for themselves! This is not the way of the shaman, nor the path of the warrior. A warrior takes full responsibility for all her/his actions! Be a warrior not a wimp! Think before you act! Though you need to still the rational mind for journeying, that doesn't mean you should dispense with all reason! Before you give your trust, test the ones you give it to, unless they have already proven themselves on several occasions. You should have a balance between caution and trust when journeying, as in daily life. Do not be totally mistrusting nor gullible and naive. Weigh the pros and cons of giving your trust by considering what you stand to lose if you trust that being and do what it wants, against the possible damage done if you make a mistake in judgement. Second tool: intuition. If your intuition generally is poor, develop if further by working with the Goddess, the moon energy, with your dreams, or similar methods. Make sure you know the difference between an unreasonable fear, such as your fear of spiders, or fear caused by religious conditioning (scared of that hag?) versus a true premonition of danger. The spider in your Underworld could be a friendly being, it could even be your power animal - you just happen to hate spiders - or it could be some kind of spider-shaped entity. The scary old hag could be a powerful ally, or the Goddess in her crone aspect, testing you (and tested you will be on this path! The gods weed out the weak, the wimps and the wavering quite quickly on this path!). In the end it is you who must decide who is friend or foe. And your intuition is your primary tool to find out the truth. In time you will be able to know instantly, until then, practice! Use your intuition in daily life and in your interactions with people. Take note what your inner voice and your feelings tell you and soon your intuition will improve. Eventually anybody should be able to develop a reasonable level of intuition. And if your intuition is already good, no harm done to develop it even further! Until you can trust your intuition, play safe, use caution and your Third tool: discrimination. Develop the power of your mind to recognise incongruities. A being may speak sweetly, and cater to your ego, but some of their actions may not be in line with their words. (The same applies to false teachers by the way!) Something small may give the game away, and if you are observant enough and your mind is sharp enough to detect that, you can avoid falling into a lot of traps. Discrimination should always work with intuition. The two do not preclude each other but work together nicely. And lastly, take your trusted power animal(s) with you! Your power animal(s) know the Otherworld well and will warn you of dangers, point out places to go and show you objects of power, and they help you fight where necessary. As spirit beings your power animals see the spirit in others, rather than being deluded by the outer form of a being. Your power animals sense the essence and truth behind the physical form and outer appearance and won't be deluded easily. Your power animals can be invaluable to you when journeying in the Otherworld. Here ends our short excursion to the Underworld! A few words about the greatest danger: The Ostrich Syndrome
One of the greatest dangers of the New Age is that people have become afraid of the
dark or anything that appears as dark. I am going to write an essay about this
-- eventually, as there is so much I must write. The Underworld is perceived by
many as a "dark" place. Even the term “Underworld” brings up
Christian ideas of a hell region for many. They couldn't be more wrong. The
Underworld is a place of beauty and power. But now that you have read above
what I have said about demons, entities and sorcerer-shamans, you may wonder
whether it is really safe and why am I writing about these things then? Because
there is a danger, and it's real, and I don't want you to get hurt or damaged
and then turn away from shamanism altogether, as some of my friends did.
Underworld,
Otherworld, shamanism, shaman, power animals, power plants, primal power, power
and beauty, journeying, power animal retrieval, demon, entities, spirit body,
World Tree, shamanic tracking, safe place, guides, plant spirits, elemental, elementals, sorcerer,
sorcerers, sorcerer shaman, black magick, path of the warrior, way of the
shaman, Goddess, ally, discrimination, intuition, danger, sorcery, vampirism,
warrior shaman, dark shamans |
