The Urban Shaman Journey

What is the Urban Shaman Journey?

WE ARE A SMALL GROUP of like-minded women who will meet together for a 13-month period to practice bringing heart, soul and spirit into our work and everyday lives. We will learn and practice rituals and exercises designed to connect us more deeply with the earth. Together we will partner with natural forces to make our desires and dreams manifest. Think of this as a new kind of adventure for the imagination and creative spirit.

As your guide, I am foremost a servant of the Goddess myself. Her intention for me was made clear through dreams and inner guidance. I am to do her work in the way that I have learned, and one way is through the Women’s Mysteries journeys. No one of us knows as much as all of us together, and each one of us, unique and individual, holds pieces of the mystery. My role is to create the container/temenos, structure the journey through tasks and rituals, and guide the group justly and gently through all of the means my 35 years of training in psychology, group dynamics and spiritual practices have granted me.

I will be available to Urban Shaman women both in the retreats and intensives, and offer two one-hour private conversations as needed.

I WHO AM THE BEAUTY OF THE GREEN EARTH and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me. For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe. From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return. Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth andreverence within you. And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not unless you know the Mystery: for if that which and yearning will avail you not unless you know the Mystery: for if that which and yearning will avail you not unless you know the Mystery: for if that which I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

—“Charge of The Star Goddess” from The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk

Goals and Expectations

Our goals on the Urban Shaman Journey are to:
• bring magic, ritual, spirit and heart into everything you do
• walk a practical path with spiritual feet and live in your everyday world with heart, spirit, peace and right livelihood
• learn a new skill, tool or ritual every month for living, healing and expressing what really matters in your life

In our time together, you can expect to:

• develop or enhance your rituals and spiritual practices
• learn prayers, chants and songs
• form a healing circle, create altars and walk the labyrinth
• share and interpret our dreams in a special technique, dreamspeak
• enact myth and story in the Theater of the Imagination
• spend time in meditation and in visioning alone and together
• cook, relax, laugh and deepen our friendship together
• learn “fierce writing,” a specially-designed way to confront the self
• work with the group and one’s personal shadow

The Weekend Retreat Experience

OUR RETREATS AT THE SEA RANCH are “times-out-of time” to retreat, refresh oneself and remember what really matters. We have forgotten the magic we used to know, how to heal ourselves and others through our connections to the cycle of the seasons and the energies connecting our lives, the earth and all its elements and the planets. We have forgotten the sense of the wild and multitudinous “other”-ness. In ancient cultures both men and women initiates into mysteries removed themselves from their ordinary lives and entered into extraordinary time. Similarly, in a place like The Sea Ranch, we can enter into such a time.

With the great mother sea as a backdrop, we shed everyday concerns and enter a special world. By hiking through the forest or along the beach, soaking in the warm waters of the hot tub, walking the labyrinth daily and sleeping under the moon and stars, we recollect the ways our ancestors made magic that brought about change. We remember that our immediate world remains the dwelling place of the gods or the numinous powers that can either sustain or extinguish human life. We recognize once more the animate powers surrounding us that have significance equal to our own. Our awareness is directed into the depths of the landscape and the living dream that we share with the soaring hawk, the spider and the stone with lichen growing on its coarse surface. We have space and time to find our way back to our deep-rooted knowing and our connection to everything that exists along with us.

“The way you change will change the world.”
—Rowan Bourne

Areas of Learning

Circle Work—We will learn to draw energies together, cast a circle, and call upon and align with the energies associated with the five directions: north, south, east, west and center. We will practice techniques used in circles to bring specific healing to those in need.

Divining Tools—We will practice using tarot, runes, angel cards, Celtic coins and the I-Ching as potential means of guidance.

Intentions, Visioning and Manifestation—By learning magical tools and practices, we strengthen our ability to intuit and create tangible, positive results in the world and our lives. To make it real, you first have to imagine it, then you have to believe in the outcome.

Magic—We will recognize our innate ability and responsibility to create magic in the world.

Meditation—We will experience a variety of ways to “pray” through meditation besides sitting and walking, including dancing prayer, visioning through the vision quest, drumming (trance and ecstatic) and writing practice. One of the most important meditations we engage in is labyrinth walking.

Sacred Art—We will use the visual arts as a way of prayer and manifestation. In the past we have made “tool boxes,” prayer beads, dreamcatchers, Talking Sticks, altars, spirit dolls, shields, armor and smudge sticks. All of our art is a way to create our magic and is integral to our process and path.

Sacred Poetry—We will familiarize ourselves with an array of ecstatic poets and use their works as inspiration and prayer.

Sacred Space—We will create and maintain sacred spaces in our homes and at work.

Shadow Work—We will learn skills to work with the negative aspects in people and ourselves in all realms of our lives. We identify projection, how it is used by us and others, and through ritual forms we learn to transform, limit or accept negative influences in our lives

Writing Practice—We will use a specially designed writing process, Fierce Writing, as a tool to contact our soul and spirit.