The Medicine of Death is not only about dying but about our living.
This page is meant for all that encounter its message for it is intended to
be for the living as well as those who are encountering their possible
passage from life.
Encounters with death, that stalks us all, each hour, each day, each
year, for we all die, no exceptions, can be our greatest teacher for living
and our passing from this life. How do we want to engage with death? Are
we victim or blessed with power?
The Medicine of Death offers us the possibility to awaken to the gifts of
our encounter with life. This page is not only a shamanic approach to life
threatening illness, anticipated death, grief, ceremony, counseling,
hypnosis/imagery, soul retrieval and extraction for those who are facing
the reality of their death, numbered days, but it is also, hopefully, a gift to
all, for we all will die. It is important not to focus on the fear of death but
to be advised by death on how to live, how to die free, well, with dignity
and power.
This page is meant for all that encounter its message for it is intended to
be for the living as well as those who are encountering their possible
passage from life.
Encounters with death, that stalks us all, each hour, each day, each
year, for we all die, no exceptions, can be our greatest teacher for living
and our passing from this life. How do we want to engage with death? Are
we victim or blessed with power?
The Medicine of Death offers us the possibility to awaken to the gifts of
our encounter with life. This page is not only a shamanic approach to life
threatening illness, anticipated death, grief, ceremony, counseling,
hypnosis/imagery, soul retrieval and extraction for those who are facing
the reality of their death, numbered days, but it is also, hopefully, a gift to
all, for we all will die. It is important not to focus on the fear of death but
to be advised by death on how to live, how to die free, well, with dignity
and power.
 | |  | |  | |  |
Near Death Experience, Life Threatening Illness, Anticipated Death, End of Life Passage and Psychopomp teachings will be
offered soon, through Lee at Sacred Way.
Lee has worked extensively with death and dying, counseling for the end of life threshold and creating ceremonial passage.
More information will be forthcoming on Shamanic perspective on death and dying, psychopomp and releasement ceremony on
this web page.
offered soon, through Lee at Sacred Way.
Lee has worked extensively with death and dying, counseling for the end of life threshold and creating ceremonial passage.
More information will be forthcoming on Shamanic perspective on death and dying, psychopomp and releasement ceremony on
this web page.
THE MEDICINE OF DEATH
Shamanic Perspectives on Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
Shamanic Perspectives on Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
I would like to share with you some excerpts from my journals, possibly for my own healing but hopefully a gift to you in your dealing with
(which caused a bit of question from the review board as they thought I had the title reversed), or from my personal I would like to share
with you some excerpts from my journals, possibly for my own healing but hopefully a gift to you in encounters with death, or from the
Expressions of Healing, a state wide art exhibit I organized after surviving breast cancer in 1993. Rather, encounters with death, or from the
Expressions of Healing, a state wide art exhibit I organized after surviving breast cancer in 1993. Rather, let me share with you some of my
personal experiences with death in the year of 2007, with the hope that it is helpful for you.
While engaging in the sacred ayahuasca plant ceremony in a Shipibo jungle village of the Peruvian Amazon, the vine of dead spoke to me in
vision and with voice. I sat on a wooden deck looking out at the night jungle where soft lights and shadows filtered through the trees. At
first, I thought the light and images seemed to have its source from a light far in the distance. All that reasoning drifted away as I
surrendered to the plant's medicine.
The light began to dance images, forming the gifts of vision provided by the spirited plant. Tiny, symmetrical, intricate patterns of dots made
a spider web grid between me and whatever I looked at. From up in the trees, an owl image formed and I acknowledged it presence, hearing
it call to me by my spirit name, Owl Medicine Woman.
Owl, looking straight into my eyes, conveyed to me that my work is "The Medicine of Death" and then its shape shifted into jaguar. Jaguar
appeared, holding a cloth in it mouth, like a stork, containing a baby. What a curious, somewhat humorous presentation of a jaguar stork. I
wondered what the jaguar was going to do with the baby. There was an altar in the tree limb below the Jaguar and it tipped up and down like
a teeter-totter, seemingly beckoning jaguar to place the baby onto the altar. Jaguar lowered the cloth holding the baby, hesitating for a
moment, but did not place it onto the altar. Instead, jaguar rocked back and forth, lowering and then retracting the baby several times,
never placing it upon the altar.
Finally jaguar retracted the baby for the last time, keeping the blanketed baby firmly gripped in the hold of its mouth and then leaped up to a
higher limb of the tree far above the altar. I asked jaguar to explain the meaning of this vision. In place of jaguar's response, the vine
medicine began to speak telling me to journal its medicine revealed. These are its spirited words.
"Listen", said the vine, "Hear the birds of the night call to you. I will guide you in The Medicine of Death. You carry the
medicine of death. You were initiated with the medicine of death from before your physical conception. The medicine of death,
like ayahuasca, gifts opportunities to experience spiritual expansion in its inclusion with creation. Just as your engaging with the
spirit of my vine brings you visions into creation's web. Know that I am in you and will always be within you, no separation between
life and death for they are one. Like a birth of realization that you, and all humans are creation itself. All are one, not separate.
There is no separation from the stone beside your foot just now and the medicine within my vine. The medicine of death shows you
the condition of your soul, your energy, your mission. So, if you are calm, if you are steady, if you are helping others, it is because
you are in alighnment with creation, your true spirit, not separated from it. Death and life are one but perceived as opposites,
separated only by the perceptions within the field of duality, within space and time.
Encounters with death are medicines for living. Death can be teacher, advisor on the art of living, but death can also be a gifted
encounter with it turning the soul's energy body of the survivors to a higher vibration. This is the gift that death brings to the process
of evolutionary creation. This opportunity can be witnessed by those who have changed their life, their seeking, their perception,
their work, their passions, and their spiritual beliefs to a higher octave of being. This is a result of being touched by the light energy
of those who pass from this ream and into the ream of light, outside of time and space or through the light in, what you call, a near
death experience.
Watch closely as the spirit sheds the work of the soul. A spark of light can be seen, like a glowing halo that encompasses the body,
expanding and encompassing those within the room. This is death's gift of bringing mankind closer to becoming beings of light. Death
is an evolutionary process..."
Through the teachings from the medicine of death, throughout my medicine work and that of the voice of death's spirit, I have become aware
that the spirit of the departing leaves its body and returns to its nature of light and love. This is the time in which grieving survivors feel the
loss of the physical touch but can feel the light of their loved one within their heart. This too is an evolutionary state of love. Love and light
is what all of creation and the Great Spirit is.
In our daily routine, in the stress from our "doing", we forget our "being". We may find ourselves on "automatic pilot" until encounters
Inca of Peru had an expression, "The flowering of my tears" which expressed all the growth potential of understanding, compassion,
appreciation, after a long period of suffering and grief. During the long, dark night of sorrow, our tears water the seeds for the flowering of
our spirit to grow.
Think back to your flowering of tears, your encounters with death through anger, fear, threats to your life, shock, loss of a loved one, and
more. Once death is integrated into our life as medicine, we are set free to see its perfection and the medicine of healing and growth it can
bring to our soul, our spirit, and the evolutionary process we are all engaged in.
I am grateful I have been called to work with the Medicine of Death. The vine of dead gifted the title. The Medicine of Death and its
medicine has taken me many months of working with the spirit of the vine, that resides within me now, to come to a greater appreciation and
understanding of the title's meaning. These are the teachings that Great Spirit has called me to live and to share. I have helped with others
who are dying, done ceremony for those who have passed and counseled those who are grieving their loss. I have experienced the moment of
the last breath of two of my grandparents, have counseled and been present to the death of my parents, my grandson, counseled the passing
of my in-laws and my sister who died at the same age I am now. I have experienced the loss of four pregnancies, rape, surviving three near
death encounters, cancer, memories of passage from past lives, death threats to my life and of my family, coached those who are preparing to
take their last breath, and carried out their ceremonial design when they passed, and counseled those with life threatening illnesses. I have
personally experienced these teachings and have been also gifted by Great spirit through the Medicine of death and the great encounters with
the spirit knowledge of life and death known as ayahuasca. But it was the encounter with the passing of my grandson that brought all these
teachings deeper into my heart and understanding.
It was a one o'clock in the morning phone call that brought me into my medicine body. The Medicine of Death was calling me. The doorway
leading beyond time was opening. My five month old grandson had stopped breathing (SIDS) and was being transported by helicopter to
Minneapolis Children's Hospital where my daughter, his mother, was on duty.
When I arrived at the emergency I found my daughter holding her son closely over her heart, his head resting on her shoulder. He passed
from this life but his presence, his life force and light was felt throughout the room. There was a slight movement of air, like the sweep of a
feather, which has always been a signal for me, from Spirit, to pay attention and begin the medicine work.
A song came to me immediately. It is a song that had come to me again and again on a vision quest in the mountains of Mexico several years
ago. It was at the vision quest that i was gifted owl medicine and the name Owl medicine Woman by the medicine people in the mountains.
Gently, quietly, within my spirit ear I could hear that song, the song of the spirits in the wind. "Spirit of the wind come to me, spirit of the
wind come to me, spirit of the wind come to me and carry me home."
The song signaled me to enter into my shaman's body and begin the death rites. Opening my mesa, my sacred altar, I felt the comfort of the
mesa medicine strength. Immediately, one of the medicine stones I had received from my Sami ancestor's, land of Lapland, above the arctic
circle in Sweden, called to me. The stone spoke and its voice was clear. The black heart shaped stone guided me to place it on my grandson's
back, behind his heart chakra, and guide my daughter's hand to hold it there. As I prayed in Sami Song and shook my rattle around them
both, i could feel the spirit of my grandson with us, no longer in five month old form, no longer limited by size and age, but in an expanded
soul's consciousness. His presence was that of a mature angel, aware of all that was going on, all that was being said and felt. I could see a
cord of light radiate out from his tiny body going into my daughters hand holding the stone and connecting it with a light force that enveloped
them both. His light spread beyond them, encompassing my son-in-law and my grandson's spirit glowed throughout the room. The teachings
of the vine, The Medicine of Death were evident.
The Spirit of the gentle wind passed over me again. It was then that my daughter was able to release him from her hold. I carefully
unwound the chakras of his physical body, unwinding their connections to his auric body and then gently severed the cord that appeared to
connect him to his physical body. He hovered there, a few feet above his physical body, and I beckoned his spirit to come with us as we left
the hospital for the trip home.
His light is close, we feel his presence. Discussions about death, expressions of the deeper meaning of life and our spiritual journeys are
manifesting within our family, with our friends and with many others who had not met my grandson but feel the medicine. He has inspired
me to write and share these stories. During this time of his transitioning between dimensions he is gifting many with his Medicine of Death.
Copyright 2008 Sacred Way