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I offer you the great Stag sacrifice!
I place it under your Tree of Life.
Bless me with years worth living!
Bless me with days worth living!
Give my daughters long long lives!
Give my sons long long lives!
Give my arrow powers of the seven good luck!
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Give my spear powers of the seven good luck!
(Shaman song from Osztjak tradition)
Before white people were Christianized, before Europe was taken by the sword of the great Byzantine Empire, before
Rome extended its imperial grasp around Western Europe, white people followed a native European nature religion.
This was a varied and ethnically diverse form of shamanism that related to the earth as a living god. The very word
"shamanism" originated in Europe.
Constantine ruled the Roman Empire during the fourth century AD. His empire included most of the population of the
continent. He opened the door to Christianity by making it a state religion and decreeing that Christian churches could
hold property. This imported Middle Eastern religion had a feature very similar to what Europeans were used to at the
time: a god who dies and is reborn. This was the old story of the Nature God of many names, the son of the earth, the
Green Man, Pan, Zagreus, the corn god, and Dionysus. Europeans simply went on with their old practices and added
the new.
But there was a significant difference in the new faith. Its followers shed the meek and mild attitudes of the original
Christians, and developed a spiritual-imperialist theology. This new spirituality said, "If you do not worship our god as
we tell you, you are of the devil and therefore we are justified in killing you and sending you to our god for
punishment." Europeans didn't know how to repel this kind of reasoning. Like Native Americans, Native Europeans
couldn't understand a Great Spirit that would
force anybody to become a follower, or that this Great Spirit from the Middle East would be cruel, possessive and
jealous. These attributes were not divine; they were the qualities of the church lords' imperialist thinking.
So the peasants reacted by going underground, practicing their Craft on the nature holy days and going to church
Sunday mornings. But then came the awesome, consolidated power of church and state. During this period, which
lasted from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, the church had the power of the state. The Christian hierarchy
could arrest and torture anyone to extract "confession". The peasants, whose land the church coveted, were often the
target. This is known as the "Burning Times"; the shamans were renamed witches and their nature worship labeled
Satanism. True Satanism didn't even exist until the seventeenth century, and then only as a backlash to the Inquisition,
which tortured and burned its innocent victims over "the Devil," a concept foreign to pagan mythology. Nine million
men, women and children were burned alive in Europe to rid the land of the last vestiges of nature religions and gain
the property of the accused.
My family has painful records of how my ancestors were tortured and killed: how they had to dig their own graves
and lie in them, buried alive, only their faces showing, which the Christians then bashed in with iron rods. My heart is
filled with eternal distrust toward a religion that sanctioned that genocide. Europeans killing each other over a book
from the Middle East!
When they ran out of witches, the Christians looked to the ' 'savages' ' of Africa and became slave traffickers. Then
onward to the New World, where they became Indian killers. Today they own television stations and preach the
"gospel" of imperialism. Their new activism has taken them to Central America, where they hope to subdue with New
Right evangelism what the USA can't conquer with arms, contras and death squads.
Let's look at our own heritage. We know more about Native American shamanism than our own. We have honorable
spiritual roots, so let's reclaim them! White people worshiped Life and the elements of nature; they prophesied by the
birds and the winds; they practiced rune magic. Most significantly, they used song and dance as magical tools. For
example, they used song to gain the love of a man or woman, and they danced to invoke the favors of the earth for
healthy crops and children. They even used music to commune with ancestor spirits. The only relic we have from
those times is our Goddess embroidery, worn by brides at country weddings and folk dances, often ending up in the
National Folk Ensembles. Take a look at visiting folk dance groups from Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia or
Yugoslavia. You will see how the principles of the Old Nature Religion are acted out in sacred dances which survived
centuries of persecution. The four corners of the universe, the four elements and the center are very
clearly danced in these performances. Women perform the dances of puberty rites, blessing the brides and the mothers.
Both sexes dance out the divine wedding in an ecstasy of women's whirling red skirts, and the black pants and white
shirts of the men. There is no shortage of dances celebrating flirting and finding a partner. Competition between the
sexes-trying to outdo each other in difficult dance steps is another favorite theme.
A shaman was chosen in the womb. There was often something physically unusual about the baby and the family knew
they had a special child. Sometimes the babies had an extra bone in the form of a tooth, or as the children grew, they
displayed a special talent for dancing or singing, or perhaps wild animals gathered around them without harming them.
Sometimes a shaman child was sickly; there are many tales of great shamans who spent their entire childhood in bed,
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weak and coughing. These children were harder to recognize, but by the age of seven (a lucky number to shamans),
the invisible world came and "stole" them to educate them in shamanism. The family was expected to let the child go
without a fuss, because it was a great honor to be chosen. The shaman child was returned to the community at age
thirteen, another lucky number of old Europe, and found her or his function in the tribe.
What did they learn from the shamans? They all reported a common story, of being taken up the Tree of Life, step by
step, and introduced to the masters of the elements air, fire, water and earth. They learned from each master how to use
their powers to serve the people. Then came the last step; the young shamans reported having been dismembered, torn
limb from limb, without pain. When they had experienced total annihilation, their teachers pieced them back together.
Those children who had been sickly became the healers, and were never sick again.
In the old nature religion, shamans were of both sexes. However, the paths of female and male shamans were very
different. Male shamans often had to wage duels over territory while great thunderstorms raged over the land and the
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