Last weekend I completed a Shaman's Doorway course with Northern Drum, which is an introduction course that operates as a stepping stone to all of their teachings. 

'Well, what's extraordinary about that Simon?' I hear you say. To be honest, it was actually the second time that I have completed the course with them. Many moons ago, some 9 years and 3 months to be precise, I embarked on somewhat of a baptism of fire onto my shamanic pathway. For in late April 2013 not only did I open myself up to the teachings of Chis Luttichau but that of Mac Macartney too. 

For some strange reason, that only myself and the Universe truly know, I decided to do Embercombe's Journey Program right on the back of my first Shaman's Doorway experience. I literally drove from the completion of Chris' course in Sancreed, Cornwall to Higher Ashton, Devon on the same afternoon, traversing some 120 miles in total, so as to amalgamate seven days of personal development work together. 

I had met Mac some five years previously when I approached him about Authentic Leadership, which I had just learnt about through Neil Crofts. I rather naively thought at the time that this was a fairly new and innovative leadership concept.

I remember walking into Mac's living room the day that we agreed to meet just thinking that I must be a natural shoe in to life at Embercombe, the fact that I knew about Authentic Leadership and Mac practiced it, both were a natural fit for one another as far as I was concerned and an immediate collaboration together was surely the only course of action ahead!

To say that I was a little wet behind the ears was a bit of an understatement I think. Mac tried his best to paint a little more realistic picture of the likely way forward for me given the fact that Authentic Leadership had been around for the best part of two decades as far as he was concerned and he had all the team he needed all around him already. He advised me that a pathway that involved volunteering at Embercombe Friends Weekends from 2008 - 13 was perhaps a better way to start my association with the Valley Of The Fire than what I first envisaged.  

Gathering together my shattered illusions I set out upon that trail instead, and met a huge number of incredible people connected to Embercombe in the process. 

In my early training with Neil, he introduced me to a nature based practice that I later found out, is what First Nation people call, a Medicine Walk. A stroll out into nature that is designed to ask a question of the flora and fauna all around us and then to witness the answer that comes back to us through synchronicity and metaphor. It was an exercise that made my heart sing, as if it was given to me as a tool for me to use for the rest of my life for my own sake and that of others too. 

Having had a taste of this one nature based practice it only whetted my appetite for more. I enquired with all sorts of organisations like Bill Plotkin's Animas Valley Institute and even Embercombe itself to do an apprenticeship in this field. However, it was only through taking a walk with Mac one day on his land that the possibility of engaging with Northern Drum arose. Mac recommended Chris to me as they both shared the same Native American teachers, the Metis people. 

Having both men as guides, utilising both of their strengths and wisdom in order to help me along my own personal path seemed like the way to go for me and hence when the possibility of engaging in both schools of thought within a week presented itself to me I jumped at the chance to engage with it all. 

However, a twist in the story lay up ahead that I wasn't wholly prepared for. It was spelled out to me, in no uncertain fashion, upon The Journey Program itself how much I projected in Mac's direction with my own life purpose, vision and dream.

Being presented with the mirror that I was given to look at myself through came somewhat of a shock to me. I no longer liked the look of what I was seeing and I immediately became very conscious of how I was being and behaving around Mac. I became fearful of my own positive or 'golden' shadow, my own potential. I wasn't living my own full life. 

I began to realise that even though I had embarked on two community builds that year to continue to offer support to Embercombe in the building of The Linhay, which I had pledged to do through its match funding application, I was finding it increasingly difficult to be on the land and remain in the company of the founder of the organisation itself. I had lost the ability to communicate with Mac, man to man, brother to brother. 

I knew I had to step away no matter how much of a wrench it felt like at the time, for how long I was not sure. Part of me wondered if I would ever return. I had to go and find myself as a person in my own way. To really become aware of my own strengths and weaknesses and where I sat on the whole spectrum of masculinity. I had to fully immerse myself within not only a Vision Quest Guardianship Training through Northern Drum but also a longer term Three Year Shamanic Training with them too.

It was only through this experience that I began to find out the man I was destined to be. Through that process I would discover a joy of flowers, of all things, the essences of which would become my ultimate teachers and to whom I had to connect with more deeply to be closer to both the feminine and masculine aspects of myself, to bring myself back into a place of wholeness and balance.

So that was the way of things for a while, as a fully accredited Shamanic and Flower Essence Practitioner trying to build up the Allies Of Nature brand with all of the experiences that I had accumulated in my own life. That was before I started to hear the land of Embercombe whisper to me again on the wind.

Mac, himself, from time to time would pop up on my radar, in one of my dreams perhaps, or there was this course or that program from the Embercombe newsletter that peeked my interest, until that is an opportunity to back row on The Journey Program came in my direction with an unmistakable shout that I just couldn't ignore. My soul was ushering me home and I seemingly just had to attend that September, for reasons I could not fathom. It was such a simple way to re-engage too where all other routes to a return had proven to be far more difficult to negotiate. 

Little did I know on re-entering the gates at the top of the hill as to what the real purpose for my re-engagement was. Apart form bringing a fair degree of peace to my own and Mac's connection I believe, I was soon being presented with an opportunity to have a look at an Embercombe Men's Weekend that was struggling to fill its places. It was an invitation that was being offered to me by our much loved, and now sadly departed, Fiona Barnes. 

I saw a sign upon the Embercombe land that week, or more accurately in the heavens above, that was calling me like no other thing had done before. I had witnessed the constellation of Orion in the sky when exiting the furthest yurt in the West village at 4.00am to take a stroll into the wood. As I looked up to the mythic character above, so a shooting star flashed through that part of the zodiac. It was an omen for sure I thought, of what was to come next in my life, even if I wasn't fully aware of the significance of it at the time. 

In the end it wouldn't seemingly matter that I pitched an alternative Men's Weekend idea to the core team and for this notion to seemingly fall on stoney ground compared to what other people's offers were like of a similar ilk. The die had been cast in my own heart, for my own purpose had been discovered, I had found my true love. 

The Orion Reborn Mens Program had been conceived and although it would still take time to form within the creative womb and be birthed, when it finally came fully out into the light it started to become a project of real gravitas and integrity for me. 

Operating outside of the confines of Embercombe was liberating, soon a new, more aligned venue for the concept would present itself to me to host the program, along with a chef totally onboard with the ethos and then four women began to appear to hold space with me in what I am now calling 'next level' men's work. That is men's work that is to be witnessed by women and not solely to be conducted within a male only environment.  

The myth of Orion has been slowly percolating away within me since last autumn when I first really became aware of it. More fervently it began to come forward after serendipitously visiting the Aboriginal Songlines exhibition in Plymouth in February where I synchronistically bumped into Rachel Fleming of Embercombe too, someone who I had given a complimentary Medicine Walk to when she was the editor of Source Magazine that I believe helped light her own path forward back then.

Orion, in Greek Mythology, is known as 'The Great Hunter', however he is so good at hunting that he brags that he can hunt any species to extinction. Mother Earth doesn't take very kindly to this notion and hence sends a scorpion to poison and thus kill him and so he is then banished to the heavens seemingly forever.

However, a more fuller story according to the Aboriginal Songlines is that Orion was a male figure that pursued 'The Seven Sisters', the seven archetypes of women, across the planet for his own gain, driven by lust and desire, so much so that he ended up taking Merope against her will. Orion is a raper and pillager of the Earth and the deep feminine. This is ultimately a story of toxic masculinity.

This myth is played out upon the heavens nightly as Orion pursues The Seven Sisters, The Pleiades, across the night sky through Taurus as a reminder to us all of the toxic masculinity that is still in existence around the globe today.

When Orion eventually comes back to Earth however and is reincarnated, or reborn, he attempts to avenge the atrocities he has administered in the past by becoming the protector and guardian of the planet instead. He embodies a more divine way of being, to truly honour the deep feminine. He therefore begins to chart the necessary transformational journey that all men have to face today if wishing to bring more alignment to our way of being and happiness back into our hearts. 

As part of my second Shaman's Doorway experience this past weekend I took a Medicine Walk around the lanes of Manaton asking nature the question as to whether I was on the right path with the Orion Reborn Mens Program and how to fill the course for the start date in November. I got presented with a whole smorgasbord of inspiration saying that everything I was currently doing was all as it should be. One of the most notable sightings of which was a thrush that had just recently caught a snail and was in the process of eating it. The tap, tap, tap of the snail shell hitting the road had gathered my attention.

My teacher Chris had told me that if you see any hunter within nature swoop down and catch its prey whilst you are on a Medicine Walk then that normally means that you are right on track to what you are meant to be doing in life and here was such a sign to back up at least three other signs I had seen of a similar nature in previous weeks, with numerous cats and kestrels catching all sorts of mice and shrews. 

The Journey ahead now seems set to me and maybe at last I am beginning to fully embody the pledge I made at the end of the Journey program itself 'to live a sacred life and so help create a sacred body for the Earth, giving a voice to all the inhabitants of the Earth that as yet cannot speak for themselves' and this is my joyful vow.

And so I must continue upon my joyous way in bringing this program more fully into existence for the benefit of one and all honouring the second sacred law of the First Nation people that 'Everything Is First Born Of Woman'. 

I now see my two Shaman Doorway experiences as bookending my journey from caterpillar to butterfly. One allowing me to enter into the wilderness of my chrysalis for the transformation to begin the other to complete that passage of my life where I am able to exit more fully into freedom, to truly fly with all the gifts that I have to offer the world and be in a place of true servitude to both humans and the planet alike. 

A tribute to the sisterhood, of all you provide and do.
To nurture and to nourish us, from the many to the few. 
To welcome us in bucket loads, allowing us such peace and rest.
Where we drop into to your comfort zone, and feel so ever blessed. 

Your support is such a treasure, it touches us so deep.
Our hearts are opened ever wide, to which phoenix tears do seep.
We know you have our back you see, to you we can so trust.
To keep us in the here and now, to boom and not go bust. 

You have become dear family, in the journey to return us home.
To an ancient knowing, healing quest, one of lifelong roam. 
In housing squirrel, shaman of our forest, gatherer of our nut.
You lift our spirits soaring high, pulling us out of our deepest rut. 

The seed pods that you have given us, such inspiration they do bring.
Of all the gifts we have to give, of all the songs we have to sing.
Deep breaths we sigh within your presence, as we sink into your wood.
To dream of projects still to come, to realise if we could. 

With red ribbon we do honour you, with our life we do so pledge.
We give you all of our waters, harmonised with love, in wedge. 
We glorify you with our urine, we sanctify you with our piss. 
Because without you in the forest, we’d never rescue our remiss.

We witness nuthatch upon your branch, swallow upon your twig. 
We appreciate the marriage we have, of a commitment oh so big.
Of the deepest, sincerest feminine, where even sun can come and bask.
Where fire and water do so meld, all contained within one nature’s flask.

​By Simon Blackler
Copyright © Simon Blackler 2021

​If you care to comment on this poem at all and the emotions that it brings up for you then please feel free to do so below.

Many of you may well know by now that I have lived a large portion of my life being bullied, living under the influence of one oppressor or another, in a criticised or controlled environment. 

Little did I realise that in subjecting myself to this sustained conditioning, that it could in fact be detrimental to my physical health in the long term, as much as it had contributed to my poor mental health from the outset. This was despite the amount of personal development that I had done over my lifetime to try to counteract it. 

Over the past couple of years I have become more aware of a stiffness appearing in my lower limbs, in my forearms and in my shins. I also had a similar feeling appearing in my back which was accompanied, on occasion, by a more nagging pain. 

I intuitively diagnosed for myself that what I was feeling was something spiritual in nature. This was most likely induced by a fear based trauma, connected to my bullying story. I felt that if I could only, in one way shape or form, find my way to infusing myself with love, or being able to love myself more, I might be able to shift this deadness within to feel far more lively again. Then I could free myself of this residual cobweb, these sticky silken strands about me, that were still remaining from the chrysalis shell I was trying to get out of, and my former caterpillar life. 

There are techniques to shift this type of pain within shamanic practice, trauma and addiction type work, which I can administer to my clients but it can be a far more difficult task to treat oneself, beyond ingesting flower essences, unless you can find another shamanic practitioner or complimentary therapist to help you. 

Fortunately for myself spirit seemingly wished to guide me towards experiencing three different therapists in the course of two years who all seem, in combination, to have initiated the shift needed within me, for me to begin to liberate myself. 

First of all I visited a lady called Kate Maryon, who synchronistically lives in a house called Walnut Barn. When engaging in her therapy sessions it soon became obvious to me that the symptoms that I was experiencing, all aligned together when I folded myself into the shape of a Walnut! When I cowered myself up into a fetal position the pain in my forearms sat right alongside the pain in my shins. Once more immediately opposite lay a hinge in the small of my back that carried pain also, these were my stress points.

Small is the operative word here I feel. For when we play small and go into our shell throughout our life, subconsciously at some point our soul realises that this doesn't really suit us anymore, even if the ego has depicted this should be a survival technique for us to adopt up to now. We naturally want to be bigger, to unfold, to move from the caterpillar we have always been, to becoming the butterfly we were meant to be. Our Walnut therefore wishes to be cracked open. 

Also through Kate's work I came up with a fairly comic, but affectionate name for my inner critic, the aspect of ourselves that wants to keep us small. I nicknamed him 'The Nutcracker'. 

This rather poignantly relates to a sketch from the Blackadder series in the 1980's where Lord Edmund Blackadder asks Baldrick, his faithful servant, 'Where is the Nutcracker?' and Baldrick replies to him 'Oh it's his day off!'. 

Although we may smirk and laugh at this statement, this program was aired in my early teens, whilst attending secondary school. This was one of the heights of the bullying periods experienced within my life. I lived in a house with my parents across the street from my first obvious foe who existed outside of my own immediate household. Seemingly envious of a loving family and a privately owned house it was put forward that I lived in a stately home, compared to him, with servants, a butler and therefore a 'Nutcracker' that existed in human form that was at my service. I became the butt of all of his and my traitorous friend's jokes. 

'The Nutcracker' however when manifesting as the inner critic doesn't aim to crack the hardshell that protects the tasty kernel of goodness that lies within, it just aims to hold it in its grip with a pincer like movement, a vice, that restricts movement of the Walnut to zero.

Over time this creates heavy energy that is absorbed into the body and deep energy work is needed in order to be able to shift this fear based phenomenon into a more dispersive loving feeling. 

Some months after Kate's awareness raising sessions and workshops I serendipitously came into contact with another woman called Sarah Jennings and her Visibility Gateway course. I felt I needed to engage in this training because something was holding me back from being the person I really wanted to be. There was a mask, or veil, hiding my true light. Again this was most likely caused by the bullying scenario I had encountered in the past and the critical, controlling behaviour that I was still experiencing in my life. 

Sarah uses LEAP Kinesiology in an absolutely amazing fashion that connects us to our meridians, amongst other things, throughout our body. By massaging these sacred spots within our make up, we begin to free up this stuck, fear based energy and start to feel an element of freedom within. The rigid deadness that accompanies our everyday existence begins to loosen, and a tingle of energy connected to our life force starts to shift and shake about us. 

This type of therapy began to give me relief, with a feeling that the key was beginning to turn and I was starting to unlock myself. 

However on completing her course I still felt that even though the energy was now shifting I hadn't really cracked the Walnut. So, I was eventually steered by spirit into the path of Michaela Williams.

Michaela practices a Superconscious Trance Healing technique by way of her QRISTA Method that when combined with a certain energy frequency meditation track compiled by shamanic practitioner Richard Down really cuts to the chase. In listening to Michaela's recording of the session, not once, or twice, but three times I had the feeling of stiffness within me disappear. I am now 100% better, I am not noticing the stiffness anymore, which I am absolutely thrilled about, as now I feel free to do the work I am meant to be doing on the planet. 

When we begin to work with spirit in this way and connect more so with our internal, intuitive guide system we can be led to the practices and practitioners that we need to encounter in order to be able to heal ourselves of the conditioning, bullying and trauma that we have experienced up to present day. 

I cannot tell you how liberated I feel now, but I have an incredibly strong spiritual resonance emitting from me as I write this post to you today that would explain to me that actually I am writing about a sacred truth that is coming from deep within me. A special gift that I have to give to the world where I can assist you in finding this spiritual truth for yourself, when you connect with it internally too. 

It is only though experiencing these type of practices and wider shamanic healing, flower essences and life coaching or similar complimentary modalities that we can move beyond fear and return to love, transforming our 'Nutcrackers' and 'Walnuts' into nutritious kernels of food for our souls. 

If I can't help you myself with my shamanic practice I will refer you to any complimentary therapist I care to recommend for your own healing benefit of which any of these three ladies above come very firmly into that reckoning. 

​If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you then please feel free to do so below.

One of the paradoxes of my bullying story is that I actually feel somewhat blessed to have been able to live my life in fairly comfortable accommodation throughout. In these places nature has always been at my beck and call and I have felt well looked after, nurtured and nourished, even over-nurtured at times too perhaps.

For sure, I consider myself to have led a privileged life, one where I have been perhaps spared the ravages of reality and an ordinary existence thus far by sheltering within my parental home for a period of time that has far exceeded the perceived norm by others. 

This however has led to its own pitfalls and problems, living within my own comfort zone and also finding envy at every turn from peers, contemporaries and dare I say relatives too. I have come to realise that being privileged or being in a privileged position is not necessarily a privilege.   

The shaman exists on the edge of society, where he or she is able to view community from the periphery, upon the margins. I have always lived on the edge of town. I have felt most at home with clear access to fields, grassland, moorland, woods and shoreline. It is here that one can properly commune with nature and start to see where the social models we live under are failing, or going wrong altogether, and hence the apparent reason for me to want to remain separate from all of that. 

Together with that there is the 'Angry Shaman' archetype that believes because he or she, in previous lives, would have been looked after as part of the community, cared for, in exchange for his or her services, that in some way shape or form that ought to be happening in the here and now today. Instead of which in a modern world things don't exist in that way at all and a monetary exchange is now required in order for the shamanic practitioner to remain sustainable him or herself. This can be a difficult thing to get one's head around as a contemporary medicine man.

My living accommodation, rather sadly, has for a long time been viewed by my friends and foes as a place where a great deal of projection can be placed upon it. Projection, as I have come to realise later in life, is just another form of bullying. When it is perceived that things are such a way when in reality they are far from it. 

This is not to disguise actual bullying because this was apparent too throughout all of my upbringing and was first witnessed, outside the family unit, when a betrayal by a so called friend led to more than two years of tyranny from brothers in arms. 

The boy that I had befriended in the early part of secondary school used to come and play with me at my own house, the first parental home that I grew up in. That was before one day I saw his bike not parked outside of my gate but propped up against the wall of a notorious lad across the street. Someone who had perhaps always looked longingly in my direction, festering a degree of envy towards the perceived lifestyle I seemingly led, with two doting, loving parents. 

It is a potent mix when a traitorous friend combines forces with an envious foe, living in such close proximity to my own existence. 

It was the early 80's and one of the most popular programmes on TV at the time for any would be teenager was the Blackadder series. In it, within one of the sketches, Lord Edmund Blackadder asks Baldrick his servent 'Where is the Nutcracker?', of which Baldrick replies saying, 'Oh, it's his day off!'

A fairly innocuous statement one would imagine, one that is pretty funny for most, indeed myself too no doubt when I first heard it and yet it was subsequently used as weapon of destruction towards me to cause me ridicule as to what my family life was like down the road, just because I lived in a slightly bigger, privately owned, detached house compared to my playground buddy's council house alternative. 

My father in his own life journey had done very well for himself, working his way up through the ranks of his business, earning 50p a week when he first started with the company right up to being senior partner some 40 years later, working for the same firm all of his salaried life. He was then able to leave the business on his own terms and move into a fairly abundant retirement without any real financial worries. 

On his upward curve through life, taking his family with him, I was able to live in better houses than the majority of my immediate friends. The second house I lived in, was a six bedroom house stood in at least one acre of grounds that included a tennis court within the garden. 

I like to feel, that naturally, I am a person of a generous nature and wish to share my bounty with others. I have a fairly open, honest and authentic streak within me that endeavours to welcome people into my life. I have found also however that in my openness I can leave myself quite vulnerable and exposed to those that are perhaps not fully appreciative of me and my circumstances. 

I have thrown many a party when I have been allowed the space, inviting a number of guests inside my own four walls, some great evenings have been had, cooking fantastic meals, offering wine, women and song. I jest, it wasn't quite like that. 

However in inviting people into my parents residence, in the same way that I was ridiculed for seemingly having a 'Nutcracker' at my service, I was then deemed to live on 'The Blackler Estate' where we had wildebeest and other game from the African Plains running about here, there and everywhere within the Serengeti upon the back lawn. 

Was this innocent jesting one asks? Or was there more poisoned arrows, cloaked within those statements of envy and jealousy? Certainly as they followed the then distant 'Nutcracker' jibes I found them quite hurtful, until later in life when I was able to bring a whole lot of healing to the issue at hand and realised that my buttons weren't so easily pressed any more.  

In the shadow work that I engaged with through David Richo and his book 'Shadow Dance' I gained enlightenment in the fact that envy just masks the qualities of admiration. A quality that is readily at hand for us to absorb back into ourselves when we take the negative aspect of the shadow and transform it into the positive alternative instead.

The irony now is that I find myself at times envious of others, and have to remind myself or bring myself back to a mode of first attention to realise that this is just admiration and I am capable of living and leading my own life in just the same way that this person is, should I deem that to be the path that I wish to take also. 

So, in short that person is acting as a guide to my higher self and what is possible for me in my own life once I start to put my mind in that direction and take self responsibility for the benefit of all. It is only then that I can start to bring parity to my life and lead a happier existence, free of the cages I otherwise find myself in, it will be the same for you too. 

I cover issues like this in my Transformational Talk sessions as part of the Shamanic Practices that I offer. If you are interested in investigating issues like this yourself I can help you once you click on the links below and we answer The Call To Adventure together as part of my Introduction Services. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

One of the more positive things to have come out of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 has been our ability to reconnect with nature. 

Faced with vast periods of time spent alone at home, stuck between four walls, with only a tablet or phone screen for company, we have yearned for the great outdoors and taken every opportunity to go out and fill our lungs with fresh air and deepen our connection with the world around us. 

If we have been unable to venture into the wilderness like before then we have become more aware of what has been happening on our own doorstep. We have begun to value intimate time spent with bird, bee, flower and tree in the gardens, fields and hedgerows close to where we live. 

We have learnt that experiencing a restrictive, controlled, bullied existence is not a healthy one for us, short or long term, as many an oppressed individual would testify. It can lead to poor mental health, stress, anxiety and depression. Here we live our lives as fragmented souls cut off from our true selves and wider community, no amount of consuming can ever fill the void left behind. 

Whether we wish to live a life closer to our own nature or that of the planet itself, the plants and animals are just waiting for an opportunity to become more acquainted with us, to act as our allies. 

Flower essence and shamanic practitioners are trained to tune into what these allies want to communicate to us at a more profound level. They do this through capturing the spirit of the plant through a bowl of holy spring water and then sampling it or just understanding what an animal’s unique power and essence is from the characteristics and behaviours that it wishes to display to us all. 

This knowledge can then filter into a more expansive body of shamanic practices and healing techniques designed to restore any qualities we are lacking, bringing us back to a state of wholeness and balance, helping us to vibrate at a higher level of energy frequency to that which we do now, moving ourselves from a place of fear to one of love. 

If you would like to reconnect to nature yourself and want to tap into what the flora and fauna is wanting to communicate to you why not join me on a Medicine Walk or engage in a Flower Essence Consultation to discover 'The Essence Of Who You Are', these are the best routes into discovering the Great Mystery of how we are all interrelated and connected. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.