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Welcome
to
Seventh Direction Publishing, our
newest
way
of sharing our experiences with you... in book form! These titles
reflect our
decades of experience in shamanism. Look for new additions as we write,
edit, illustrate and publish our journeys in paper and ebook
formats.
Articles
The
following articles are available in .pdf
format for your
personal use; they are copyrighted and may not be duplicated
in any medium without permission. We welcome your feedback--let
us know whether you found them useful and (we hope) interesting.
Email us
with your comments at crow@church-of-earth-healing.org.
Grounding,
Centering & Shielding
by Crow Swimsaway, PhD (.pdf file)
Soul
Mates or Soul Exchange? by Bekki
Shining Bearheart, LMT (.pdf file)
One
Experience of Drumming in
the Temple by Crow Swimsaway, PhD (.pdf file)
Books
All of our books
are available by mail, and at our workshops and other venues. For more
information please call (740/664-5050) or email us
(crow@church-of-earth-healing.org), or place an order.
For pricing and
shipping costs see individual books. For 2 or more books, Book Rate is
$5.30 and Priority is $11.85.
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Books
AVAILABLE NOW
Bear Walks, Crow
Talks
by
Bekki Shining Bearheart, LMT & Crow
Swimsaway, PhD
This
book is a valuable addition to every library
of
contemporary shamanism. It is a well illustrated
compilation of work from fifteen years of shamanic teaching and
healing by Bekki and Crow, teachers and practitioners
totally involved with their work.
heavily
illustrated, 111+ pages, comb binding and
plastic
cover
$21
Shipping: Book Rate $2.75/Priority $4.60 (USPO Continental US)
Rooted in the Heart,
Seeded in
the Soul:
Contemporary shamans working with plant spirits (2nd edition)
by
Crow Swimsaway, PhD & Bekki Shining
Bearheart, LMT
with added journeys by Jan Mittleman, LMT
and a new article by Ramon Lopez, PhD
This
work has grown
from Bekki and Crow's workshop on working with plant spirits, a
powerful and popular workshop taught at the Chicago College of
Healing Arts, Dragon Waters, Healing Heart Herbals, United Plant Savers
Annual Conferences and the West Virginia Herb Association
Annual Fall Conference.
60 +
pages, comb
binding and plastic cover
$18.00
Shipping: Priority $2.75
(USPO Continental USA)
Fundamentals
of
Shamanism: A
Collection for Students of Shamanism from The Church of Earth Healing
This
collection includes ten articles used with students
studying with
Bekki and Crow, plus a current list of Shamanic Workshops offered by
the Church of Earth Healing and a list of recommended books.
These articles are also useful to anyone pursuing shamanic studies. All
of the
articles in this monograph appear, in somewhat differently edited form,
in Bear
Walks, Crow Talks.
40 pages,
stapled, no binding or cover
$6.00
Shipping: Priority $2.20 (USPO Continental USA)
Spirit
Knife,
Soul Bone: The Ancient
Shamanic Art of Extracting Negative Energies
by
Crow Swimsaway, PhD
This is the
first contemporary book about the ancient and
powerful shamanic healing technique known as extraction. Composed by an
internationally noted shamanic
practitioner,
teacher and author, Spirit Knife describes
extraction techniques in current use. Stories of extractions from
several centuries and many peoples
around
the world provide important background for modern practices. While
reading of powerful healings gained by
removing toxic
crystals, piercing bones, cutting blades, and--perhaps--malevolent
spirits, you can judge whether extraction might aid your own healing.
In Spirit
Knife, Soul Bone, sources of
destructive intrusions are
examined at length. The chapter
"Awareness is Half of Prevention" offers detailed guidelines for
avoiding intrusions. Like
all the major shamanic healing techniques, extraction is not and has
never been
self-applied. Still, understanding how extraction works and how
necessary it may be, set against
the complete portrayal of shamanic healing provided by Spirit
Knife, makes the choices for your own healing safer and more
effective.
$18
Shipping: Book Rate $4.10/Priority $5.60 (USPO Continental USA)
For more on
Spirit Knife, go here.
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Books COMING
SOON
Adventures
with
the Shaman's Daughter:
A personal exploration
of the shamanic phenomena of the Spirit Lover
by Crow Swimsaway, PhD
In traditional shamanic cultures, the shaman
is
known to have
many connections with
Spirit including allies, teachers, guides and ancestors. The shaman is
essentially powerless without these connections; indeed, it
is they who perform the vast majority of the healing work for which the
practitioner receives praise from her or his community.
Few neoshamanic practitioners acknowledge the
crucial
function of the Spirit Lover for shamanic healing. For
numerous shamanic peoples, a shaman without a
mate in Spirit is of secondary quality; able to do
some work, but without the power to fully
perform the deepest of healing tasks.
Adventures
with the Shaman's Daughter tells the
tale of one practitioner's experiences in Spirit with a passionate,
loving and deeply knowledgeable woman. As the
spirit lover relationship grows, the 'Shaman's Daughter' grows to
become
the Shaman for her village. Her
growth is matched and intimately aided by that of her warmest friend,
the daughter of the village Priest.
EXCERPT from Adventures with the Shaman's
Daughter
The shaman lay on the platform covered by a
softly
tanned
light coloured
deer skin. Close to him lay a woman. She was moving about restlessly
and was hot
with a
fever; her red sweating face gleamed in the fire light. The shaman's
apprentice,
the one whom I had met, was helping to cool her, wiping her face and
giving her
sips of a dark colored tea from a rough ceramic cup.
My arrival was timely; the healing was
reaching a
climax. The
shaman was completely covered by the skin but his spasmodic movements
could be
seen as the drumming continued. Suddenly
he jerked powerfully and the skin slipped aside off of the platform. He
cried
out and began hitting the platform around himself as well as the skin
as it
slipped away. He jerked upright then rose and went immediately to the
woman whom
he began hitting with what looked like a drum beater: a thin two foot
long stick
with a padded ball at one end. As
he beat her he pulled her up, first to sitting, then to one knee and
finally to
her feet.
His apprentice helped
hold the woman upright while he continued to hit her very rapidly all
over. The blows did not seem to hurt the
woman but she looked only
semiconscious. As he drummed on
her, he was shouting (I could not understand his words) and jumping
around
wildly: it was clear that he was driving something out of her.
Soon
a hazy shape, almost human in outline, formed in front of her,
confronting the
shaman, and the woman began coughing so strongly that her whole body
jerked back
and forth in the apprentice's arms. Immediately
the shaman began to fight the hazy form. The
fight looked like a martial arts dance and a violent one. The action
took the possessing form away from the woman,
who looked
exhausted. Her partially open eyes
closed and slowly, cushioned by the apprentice, she slid down onto the
furs
which covered the platform and lay still.
The
fighting dance continued back and forth, jerking around the platform,
the shaman
punching, kicking and jumping vigorously and rhythmically. His
movements were,
in some part, in rhythm with and motivated by the drumming, which got
much
louder during the fight. Somehow the shaman managed to keep his footing
on the
platform. In a few moments he won
the fight, the hazy form dispersed and he went to kneel beside the
woman,
breathing heavily.
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NOTE: We have just confirmed that Capall
Bann, British publisher of esoteric titles, has accepted this
manuscript. We expect it to be published in September.
A Circle of
the Ancestors
by Crow
Swimsaway
This book
is a deeply personal exploration of how shamanic
connections to our ancestors can help us. It
draws on lively journals of ancestor journeys (containing over
100 journeys) performed by Crow as he developed
his connections with a powerful herbalist in ancient Etruria, a
young woman shaman who lived 2000 years ago in Northern England, and
several
mysterious Gypsies who dispensed healing from their caravans in Eastern
Europe.
A Circle of
Ancestors explores tribal ancestor practices, but
more exciting are the
examples of verified knowledge of lost ancestral connections. Our
students often find they can trace unknown or uncertain
aspects of their heritage though shamanic ancestor work.
The
significance of the ancestors as
major shamanic spiritual connections deserves more recognition. In any
tribal cultures, the ancestors are more powerful helpers than
allies, teachers or guides; complimenting, supplementing and sometimes
supplanting
these other connections in the healing and divinatory work of the
shaman.
In
1995, Bekki Shining Bearheart LMT was guided by her ancestors to create
and teach Circle of the Ancestors. This
is one of the most powerful and popular workshops offered by the Church
of Earth Healing; it is often taken by CEH students soon after the
Fundamentals
of Shamanic Practice (Introductory) weekend because it is such an
important step in their development. This book is a
direct product of a decade of ancestor journeying and teaching.
EXCERPT from A
Circle
of the Ancestors
She [my
Etruscan ancestress] was a little exasperated
with me but did share
a wonderful Full Moon Ritual which she often uses. I
asked if she did this every full moon and she laughed a
bit at the idea. My feeling is that she does it when
she is in the appropriate mind. I do not yet know what
places my Ancestress in any given mental state but she seems to live
very much in the moment and the feelings of the moment.
Her Full Moon Ritual is an all day ritual. It
begins when the sun rises and she is up and outside to greet the actual
moment
the sphere breaks over the hill behind her house. She
usually starts the ritual standing on the terrace at
the south end of
the hut, looking up the hill. As
soon as the upper edge of the sun comes into her sight she begins to
dance. This is a very sinuous, swaying
dance, of medium tempo. Her whole body
moves from side to side in gentle curves
and her eyes
never leave the sun. She hums quietly to herself as she moves.
A
smoldering herbal smudge, at least partly mugwort, in a ceramic bowl,
is
important for this ritual as are spherical fruits. The smudge is lit
when she first goes outside and it is
kept going slowly
all day, being fed from a basket of the herbs. It
smolders continuously, at least until the full moon
rises in the
evening. She carries a basket of
fruit outside with her before the dawn. She
let me know that she can get some sort of spherical fruit almost any
time of
year and always includes them in the ritual. The
more spherical the
better. Today she is using very
rounded, dark purple plums. Properly shaped fruit is very important as
an
offering to the sun and to the moon.
As
she dances she seems to become more and more in trance with her eyes
closing
partly and her movements slowing a little. As
the sun continues to rise, she picks
up the bowl of smoldering herbs and dances with it for some
time, raising and lowering it and holding it high toward the sun. Next
she does the same thing with the whole
basket full of
fruit. Then
she places the basket at her feet and takes a plum in each hand and
dances that
way for a while. This part of the dance ends when she sinks slowly to
the stones
of the terrace and, still looking very much like she is in trance, eats
the two
plums she is holding, one after the other.
It
is fascinating--so entrancing that I feel myself moving into her state
of mind--to watch the dance which goes on until the whole disc of the
sun is
well over
the hill behind the house. She does
not move for some time but relaxes where she has settled and sits
calmly with
her legs curved to one side. When
she does rise and take the fruit and smudge inside, she remains in the
trance state, which I will call her full moon mind. She stays
in this
condition throughout the day.
In the
evening she greets the rising full
moon in almost exactly the same
way that she greeted the sun. The
dance is longer and more elaborate in movements with more variation in
tempo,
but the general format, including her orientation on the lunar body and
the way the smudge and the fruit are used,
is much the same. The dance to the moon ends as the morning one did,
with her resting on the floor of the
terrace. After resting a while, she
enters her house, still apparently in full moon mind trance. I
have the impression that there is nothing
more to the ritual but she
does not invite me inside and I leave her and make the return journey
at this point.
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