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With the passing of
Crow in 2018, most of our
publication has ceased.
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)
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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.
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.
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.
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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 Shamanism (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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