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Healing Mother Earth: A Shamanic Experience

by Irina H. Corten

According to ancient shamanic traditions, everithing that exists has a soul, even things western culture considers "inanimate". The Earth, then, has a soul, which can be traumatized by our abuses. To heal our planet, the author of this article, a practitioner of shamanism, suggests a particularly effective ritual...

Earth has been venerated as a living being and a spiritual entity of great importance in traditional cultures throughout the world. "Mother" is the epithet often used for her in these cultures, be they Native American, African, Asian or Australian Aboriginal. Sadly, this attitude has not prevailed in modern industrial societies, and Earth has been grossly abused as a result.

Those of us who are concerned about this predicament can make a collective or personal effort to heal our Mother. How we do it is up to us as individuals.

Earth's Soul Retrieval

My choice, as a student of shamanism, was to learn the technique of soul retrieval for the land.

In shamanism, soul is defined as vital energy or essence that animates our world--humans, animals, plants and also things that in Western culture are considered inanimate, such as rocks, water and earth. Soul dwells within these physical forms but has the ability to move out into other dimensions.

This happens when the entity dies or is destroyed, or when it suffers a trauma. In case of trauma, only a part of the indwelling life force goes away, and it is the task of the shaman to restore it.

This is accomplished through a visionary journey in which the shaman retrieves the missing soul part and, in the case of land, also brings back a healing ritual.

In traditional shamanic societies, it was believed that land could lose its soul as a result of a curse, a violent tribal conflict or a natural catastrophe that caused destruction to the area. Nowadays, there are other causes of trauma and soul loss, such as the dumping of toxic waste, nuclear testing, mining or construction work involving excavation and covering the earth with cement.

The soul of the land can also be driven away simply by our disrespectful and uncaring attitude toward it.

The Shamanic Healin Ritual

A couple of years ago, I attended a workshop where land-healing methods were studied. Our teacher was a practitioner of core shamanism. This approach holds that, despite variations in culture-specific details, the underlying spiritual principles of shamanism are universal and adaptable to the needs of modern society.

We were told that, when indigenous shamans wish to obtain a ritual for healing a piece of land, they enter an altered state of consciousness and journey to the spirits of their ancestors.

Before we tried this technique, our teacher explained that, because Americans come from different ethnic backgrounds, the rituals in our individual journeys could contain some culture-specific components. She said that this would not present a problem, because ancestral spirits of all nations are there to help us heal Mother Earth at large.

Being of Russian lineage, I took a visionary journey to the land of my birth in olden times. My ancestor appeared to me as an elderly peasant in the woods of Northern Russia. He was dressed in a white linen tunic belted with a rope. He had a craggy face, long white hair and a thin white beard. I stated the purpose of my journey and asked him to give me a ritual. Telling me to call him Grandfather, he took me by the hand and led me deep into the heart of the forest.

The Blessing of the Bear Spirit

We came to a grassy glade, in the middle of which there was a small pool of water fed by an underground spring. Grandfather bade me to sit down and took out a wooden whistle. "Always call on Bear Spirit to bless the land. Bear is the lord of the forest, no one is mightier than he." He then whistled three times, and a huge woolly brown bear came out of the woods.

He rose up and walked upright, marking a wide circle. He walked this circle four times and then approached Grandfather. A basket filled with wild raspberries appeared in the old man's hands. This was an offering to Bear.

Bear took the basket and disappeared into the woods.

Grandfather told me that a land healing ritual should always begin by invoking Bear and having him walk around the circle four times. For this, the animal should be thanked with a gift.

The subsequent steps of the ritual were as follows. Grandfather instructed me to invoke one of the four Elements and ask to be shown how to restore soul to a piece of land. Because we were near a spring, I decided to summon Water. Appearing as a goddess shrouded in a misty veil, she gave me a bowl filled with rain water and a large bird feather.

She said that this water was empowered with Soul, and I was to sprinkle it on the ground with the feather. I did as she said, and saw red flowers coming out of the earth where the drops fell. Grandfather told me that the most important aspect of the ritual was not in the details, but in the strength of my intent. "If you do it with love," he said, "the land will be healed."

An Effective Ritual

Back from the workshop, I performed the ritual on my own property--a modest-sized city lot. Although I had never abused this land in any way, I thought that it might harbor some negative memories of the past. I did the preliminary part of honoring the Bear and summoning the Water Goddess inwardly, and the sprinkling of water on the earth outwardly. It was late fall.

The following spring, grass sprouted on my lawn thicker and greener than ever before. My young birch and fir trees grew twice as fast as usual, and the property was blessed with many nesting birds, including a family of cardinals in the juniper tree outside my bedroom window, and a family of thrushes under the awning. Since then, several friends have asked me to do the ritual for them.

The ancestral spirits of Russia have been happily at work, healing Minnesota land!

Copyright © 1999 Irina H. Corten