In the process of guiding vision quests, I share a cornucopia of rituals, exercises, or ceremonies which people may do – or not – as part of their solo time. The following – Presenting Your Ego to a Tree — can be fun, as well as quite revealing.
It begins by having people go onto the land and wander until they each find a tree that “speaks to them,” a… Read More »
Black Elk was a ‘wichasa wakhan’ — medicine or holy man — of the Oglala Lakota, born in late 1863 on the Little Powder River in Wyoming. He had been taken ill at age nine, unresponsive and lying in a coma for several days.… Read More »
The Other Story:
Over the past several days, I’ve been editing a training manual I created for a men’s program — the Mythic Warrior – that encompassed nine weekends, one per month. The manual includes “the game plan” — the list of rituals, processes, and exercises planned for each weekend – a section on Rituals and Exercises describing how to set up, perform, and lead each of the processes, as… Read More »
For a long time now I’ve been immersed in, and guided by, the Heroic Journey archetype. I’ve taught its outline in preparation for vision quests, used its organizational structure as a template for writing a book, and applied it as a… Read More »
Hearing each day about wildfires raging across the West, I thought to share this piece… written on a vision quest while a fire raged on a mesa above us…
It’s a new beginning, a new day. A barrel cactus blooms, an eruption of vermilion splashed on the sage-green palette of this desert… gentle, subtle, and quiet in its beauty. Sunlight dances on spider webs, and a prickly pear raises its… Read More »
