My Word is Mighty E-Book

Nana Nauwald

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 226

Beschreibung

The Power of Healing with Strengthening and Protecting Words Shamans in indigenous communities and healing practitioners in our culture work with word magic and magic words. Behind the ritual words in spells, invocations, prayers and chants there are often hidden powers. The word is embodied thought, which becomes action in the word and creates reality. How important it is to become aware of the effect of words is also shown by the dark side of word magic: harm spells, harm words in medicine, verbal beatings in education and bullying. Based on more than thirty years of experience in shamanic work, Nana Nauwald shows practical ways to healing, strengthening and protecting words and rituals that everyone can use in everyday life and for their own ritual work.

Leseprobe

Content

What can happen when a fox thinks, a coyote howls, a spider sings, a goddess speaks

The beginning: the word

The beginning: the thought

The beginning: one tone

My Word is great, my Saying is strong!

Good words have their power from the spirits of nature

The secret language of the shamans

Magic words in spiritual traditions

Why my parrot does not talk to me

Inspirations for healing word medicine

Where the words come from?

The words come from the spirits - a Shipibo shaman tells

The words come from our shaman ancestors - a Buryat shaman tells

If I sing, yes then I can help her!

The song of the shamans

Ritual inspirations: healing magic songs and leaf singing

The healing breath gives wings to the word

Tobacco clouds over my head

The word is carried by the breath - talking on, blow, whisper

Colorful threads and healing words

The dark side of the word

Words as damage spell

A damage spell in orange juice

Ritual inspirations for activating change

A protective cloak of magic words

Multi-culti word protection cloaks

Protective words: God, spirits and the genes

I call the power of the bear

The spirits I called ...

"duudalgi" - The Buryat shaman calls the spirits.

Ritual inspiration: I myself awaken my power from within

Word closure

Acknowledgement

The author

Literature

When no longer numbers and

figures

Are keys of all

creatures

When they sing like that,

or kiss,

More than the deep scholars

know,

When the world

turns to free life

And in the world is

returned,

When then again light and

shadow

To real clarity again

unite,

And one in fairy tales and

poems

Recognizes the true world

stories,

Then flies before A secret word

The whole upside down being

away.

FriedrichvonHardenberg alias Novalis (1776-1801)

What can happen when a fox thinks a coyote howls, a spider sings, a goddess speaks

"The creator silver fox was

the only living being,

there was no earth yet, the

water alone filled

everything.

How will I do it?" the Silver

Fox asked himself. So he

set about singing to find it.

He was singing up there in

heaven. He held in his hand

the first piece of earth that

he had created solely with

his thoughts,

made it grow there

through his singing

and then hurled it into the

empty space."

From the Creation Myth of the Achumawi People, California

I have experienced wondrous things over the past seventeen years as a guest in the shamanic worlds of indigenous communities in South America. My initial confidence that I would know and even understand something after a few stays evaporated more and more with the challenge not only to experience the realities of the spiritual worlds, but above all to see the everyday reality of life of these communities and their healers without romanticizing glasses.

"How will you understand anything about my spiritual world if you don't even know anything about my everyday world?" This question of the old shaman in my host village in the Peruvian Amazon was a salutary impulse to let my urge for knowledge with all its ideas and expectations, which was initially very much determined by the longing for spiritual, mystical adventures and the search for healing methods close to nature, shrink more and more. Beyond all ideas, a space opened up in which I met - and still meet - the manifold realities of spirit and its manifestations in and around me with all my senses and in all levels of consciousness accessible to me.

Thus, through the experiences in the outer and inner shamanic worlds, I have become a guest richly gifted with insight and growth. The received gift contains above all manifold suggestions for an intensive, challenging turning towards and connection to my own, European shamanic roots. And this gift also contains a sensing and listening guide that lets me become more and more clairaudient and clear-sighted in order to listen to the language, the sound of my fellow creatures - and to be especially clairaudient for the effect of thoughts and words.

The beginning: the word

The fact that I have ever integrated into the fabric of my world view "Everything that is has a spirit and a consciousness corresponding to its essence" also the old threads of the Christian faith, which are well known to me.

I did not think of this before I started my search for the effect of the word in shamanic rituals. But everyone in the culture shaped by Christianity is well acquainted with the divine words of the Bible with which the act of creation is told:

"In the beginning was the Word."

These magic words handed down to us testify how the God of the Christians made all manifestations of life arise from the power of His Word, which was Himself. The word was "deed".

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with

God, and God was the Word. The same was in the

beginning with God. All things were made by the same

thing, and without the same thing was not anything

made that is made."

Gospel of John, 1-3

And it is also a biblical creation word, which is one of the oldest magic words handed down to us:

"Let there be light! And there was light.

1. Genesis 1.3

However, not only in the context of Christian faith the "Word" created the light and the world. "Let there be light!" This command is also found in the creation story of the Quiché Maya people of Guatemala, told in Popol Vuh - The Book of the Council:

"In darkness and night Tepeu and Gucumatz came together and talked. So speaking they consulted and reasoned: they agreed, and their words and thoughts they balanced ... Thus they spoke.

Let there be light! That heaven and earth may be illuminated! Not glory nor greatness will be until man appears, until man is created'.

Thus they spoke.

On it they created the earth. The truth is that

they created the earth.

'Earth!" they said, and in an instant it was created."

Word magic, magic word, word medicine. These terms are based on the knowledge anchored in all faith contexts: The word is action and creates realities outside as well as inside. The effecting of reality by magic words is always connected with the intention to change an existing condition.

The more the word-reality worlds open up to me, the more I am amazed at the effect-reality of my thoughts and words. My experiences have taught me that it is so. Also, even if I do not really understand it, this effecting reality.

In the gods' worlds of ancient Egypt, this knowledge - the knowledge of all shamanic traditions about the effect of words and thoughts - was also an important part of their spiritual world. Controller of this magic word knowledge was here the goddess Isis, also called the "magic realm". She transformed and created realities through the power of her words and her ability to infuse breath of life into people and things. "Her mouth has spells of life, what flows from it happens in a moment," the myths say. Creation and maintenance of life through words! Are these just "old" stories?

The beginning: the thought

In some of the ancient creation myths, it is told that it was the feeling of loneliness in the great universe that motivated the mind of the first creation to think of "life". This is also reported in the Indian Brihat Katha Upanishad:

"In the beginning, there is nothing but the One who thinks the deep thoughts of eternity. The thoughts become the words: I am!

There is nothing else.

With the utterance of these words, the one realizes that he is completely alone and thus great loneliness and sadness overcomes him."

Regardless of whether later people assigned the qualities female or male to this creative power, they acted and created life by giving their thoughts through sounds into the emptiness of the universe - and from the sounds the "world" with all its beings came into being.

In the Finnish heroic poem "The Kalevala," the female creative force, Luonnatar, drifts lonely through the emptiness of the sky. Longing for communion with other living beings, she cries out, "Is there nothing else?" Her voice echoed across the vast sea, as white feathers and wings grew from her words. Thus the sound of Luonnatar's voice became a white bird. This laid two eggs on her knees, the eggshells became the earth, the sky - the sun and moon became egg yolks and the whites of the egg. When there was land, Luonnatar began to form the world.

It was not only distant, exalted deities who spoke "magic words of creation". Coyote, silver fox, wolf, raven, rainbow snake and some more beings are in no way inferior to gods and goddesses in the creation of world by thought, word, sound.

Of all things, a spider, this animal not very popular in our culture, is the mother of the first creation in the tradition of the Hopi people!

To honor them, and to draw attention to the power of the Gethank, I tell their story here:

Spider woman lived in a place where there was only her. There was neither light nor darkness. There was only the spider. She was a very wise woman whose power was beyond imagination. Her power was omnipotent, it was purer and cleaner than nothingness. It was the power of thought, it had no form or movement, it was the power that created all that is. Alone with her power, she thought about it, thought about how she could sing about it, dream about it. And she wished for someone who could share her dream song with her. So she thought about the power and felt in it a curling that became firmer, more and more spidery. It became a place. She called the place Northwest. Later it curled more and more strongly and covered the earth with spider lines of the force. From her power, human beings formed, with wrinkled skin and brains in honor of that moment when Spider Woman and the Force made the song from which new life formed. She sang and sang. She sang the power that was in her heart, the movement of the many verses and dance. The power is everywhere. It has no name, it is only power, the mystery. Spider Woman sang everything that is in our world to life and named every being. She asked all the beings she created to sing in their turn and create new life. Even the planets sang and new beings awoke and joined in the mighty chorus of life with their thoughts and feelings to sing new life.

"How will I do it?" The silver fox was not the only one to ask himself this question, and he pondered over it before he did "it": the creation of something that had not been there before.

"How will I do it?" This is certainly what many healing people ask themselves in the face of the challenge that comes to them with each patient to find the coherent way for them. Are not those who support patients with thoughts, words, ritual actions in coming back to their state of power also "creators"?

Knowledge of the power of thoughts and words is central to many spiritual traditions. "Words and thoughts influence the real environment," says the Navajo people of the southwestern United States. I create reality through my word - which an inconceivably boundless thought! And also out of the boundlessness of my thoughts "reality" arises.

But how it is possible that my thoughts can be translated into language and be spoken, I do not know, and the physiological explanation of the origin of sounds and language does not explain that either.

How are sounds created and how do they become language?

When exhaling, the air flows through the glottis past the vocal cords. When inhaling, the glottis remains wide open so that the air can enter the lungs unhindered. Sounds are produced during exhalation. To form the voice, the vocal cords are placed against each other and vibrated by forcing the air through them.

Vowels are formed by opening and closing the vocal chords or by tensing the vocal cords. Consonants are formed by noise in the mouth space for example with the help of the palate, the tongue.

Besides amazement and foreboding, the sound of an awe also resonates in me, I become aware of the responsibility in relation to my words and thoughts especially in healing rituals. If the spiritual forces with which I feel connected are real reality for me, not imagination, then I am not only responsible in my work towards people. My work through word and action then also has an effect on the field of consciousness. This thought makes me a bit dizzy ...

The beginning: a sound

Oh, sometimes I would like to be this creator-coyote and would recreate myself and my environment by my own sounds from time to time, of course a bit more perfect than the present reality is...

"When it all began, it was impenetrably black and silent. Then, into the silence, a soft sound was heard. It grew, it became louder and stronger, until finally it filled the darkness completely.

It was the howling of Coyote. Coyote arose around his howling.

He blinked into the darkness. 'My legs want to walk, but I can't walk in the dark!' he said.

With his breath, he created a wind that took the form of a mushell. He turned the shell over, flung it into the air with a jerk of his head and thus created the sky.

Coyote separated the day from the night. He howled and created by his howling a disk of burning gold, the sun, and a disk of shimmering silver, the moon.

'My legs want to run, but there's nothing to run on!' he said. Coyote bared his teeth and growled. The harsh sound of his growl became rocks and hills and mountains.

Cojote's growl became quieter. This growl became forests and prairies.

Coyote looked at the new world, blinking. 'My legs want to run, but I have no one to run with!' he said. So he yowled. Rabbits, deer and buffalo ran across the prairies, giant bears caught salmon in the rivers and eagles circled about mountain lions.

'My legs want to run, but there is no one to run from!' said Coyote. He found a river with a high bank of soft red clay, dug in it and made clay piles. Then he blew his breath over these piles. They began to move, growing and changing shape, until finally they became the first humans.

'Wake up!' cried Coyote. 'You must gather grain and fruit to eat; you must hunt animals to have meat, you must populate the world with your children. And wherever you go, I will run away from you. You will never catch me, but at night you will hear me howling at the moon.'

And Coyote ran through the world he had created, barking and howling for joy."

From the southwest of North America

Silver fox, spider woman, coyote and so quite a few gods and goddesses must have been the "power" itself, otherwise the actions arising from the power would not have been so strong. Unfortunately I am neither silver fox nor spider woman, and so it is a lifelong challenge for me to "work on myself", in order to be again and again not only "in" my power, but to be "the" power itself.

To be what I think; to be what I say; to be what I do - when I am in this state, then I am firmly woven into the spiritual web of the spider woman. Then I could easily "pull large sea creatures to the shore" as said by the shamans, noida, of the Saami in the far north. But what will I do with the big sea animals then? I will probably first try out the murmuring of spells on the forest owls and so lure them back onto our property ...

"All in Norway are devout Christians, except for those who live in the far north by the sea. These are still so skilled in magic arts and incantations that they claim to know what everyone in the whole world is up to. By muttering words with magic power, they draw large sea creatures to the shore."

Adam of Bremen (1044-ca. 1080)

My word is great, my saying is strong!

The language

"Illuminated by the reflection of

his own heart,

the First Father of the Guaraní people

stood up in the dark.

and created the flames and the

delicate mist.

He created love,

but had no one to give it to.

He created the language,

but had no one to listen to him. Then he

told the deities to build up the world

and provide fire, dense fog, rain

and wind.

For this purpose, he gave them a

melody and the text of the sacred

hymn,

so that they could bring women and men to life.

Thus love became a covenant,

language gained life

and the First Father was delivered

from his loneliness.

Still today it accompanies the men

and women who walk and sing: We

set foot on this earth, we set foot on

this shimmering earth."

Eduardo Galeano, Memories of the Fire

Good words have their power from the spirits of nature

To let the "wrong being" fly away from "a secret word" and to bring the "being" back to its corresponding "right" state in spirit, soul and body is the task of medicine women and medicine men in shamanic traditions. This medicine includes more than just the restoration of health. The deep-rooted involvement in the social and spiritual network of the community - with the ancestors and the manifold spirit of animals, plants, elements - are the basic prerequisites for the practice and effectiveness of medicine in shamanism. The word, the intention of the healer expressed in audible sound, is, next to plant medicine, the most powerful agent in shamanism.

The word, applied in a spiritual context and out of the connection with the spiritual field, can become word medicine if it leads into an inner touch. In many healing cults it is anchored knowledge that the magic words flow into the hands and have a healing effect through their movements (magic gesture) as well as touching the person seeking help:

Shamans and other healers lay hands on.

Priests and parish priests raise their hands in blessing, and a hand gesture indicates that they are crossing themselves. When the pope spreads out his arms for the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing, he blesses around 1.1 billion Catholics with word and gesture.

The Kabbalistic Our Father is accompanied by movements and gestures.

In Islam, body movements accompany the words of prayer.

In Buddhism, the posture of the arms and legs and also the gestures of the hands enhance the effect of the words of prayer.

In the rituals of Umbanda and in Vodun (Voodoo) the presence of an Orisha in the human being is also reflected in the posture of the hands, fingers and body movements belonging to the respective spiritual power.

What is more important in a healing ceremony, the word or the sound, the chant of the shaman?

Both, that is the statement of the indigenous shamanesses in South America and Siberia, whom I asked about this. All of them also pointed out that not only the healer has to be deeply connected with her word and the sound of her song. It is important that the patient be ready for it and focus on letting the words and chant flow into them. Conscious receiving while listening increases the possibilities of effect of the absorbed vibrations.

Health in the shamanic worldview is a state of harmony in which the human being is in relation to his own spirit, his social community, the ancestors, the surrounding nature and the spiritual forces. This state is not an exclusively personal state. The personal state of being is, as for example in the worldview of the Navajo people, connected with the whole universe. The general cause of an illness, in the Navajo view, is that the harmony of the world has been disturbed by events in which the sick person is involved. From the loss of harmony springs suffering. Whoever contributes to the maintenance of harmony, of beauty, and restores it when it has been lost, works for the universe as a whole and its basic order. Such a ritual usually ends with the words: "In beauty it is fully ended" or "The beauty is restored".

"The fact that self-healing tendencies kick in almost automatically when we are confronted with a convincing helper has been for humans during their evolution. a survival advantage.

In the hunter-gatherer period, for example, the shamans took care of this. I am convinced that one of the decisive survival advantages of Homo sapiens was his ability to survive even in the early Stone Age without specific medicines - precisely through the religious healing ritual."

Eckard Straube, Psychologist,

in: Interview Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010

Also in the Mapuche people in southern Chile, the awareness of the importance of the connection to the spiritual forces of nature, in everyday life and in their ceremonies is still alive. It does not matter whether they belong to a Christian church or not.

The spirits of nature (ngen) are companions in their everyday activities, are asked for protection or permission in many pursuits. Everything in nature has a spirit, energy and life of its own. The Mapuche believe that in each of the elements and in the flora and fauna there is a spirit. He is a guardian of the elements and beings in which he lives. He cares for them, protects them and maintains them, ensuring their continued existence. They are spirits with good powers, who live on the earth plane and are active only in the free nature. They only come into contact with humans when they enter their sphere of power. The ngen appear to the Mapuche in the form of people, animals or plants.

If the Mapuche enters an area protected by the nature spirit because he needs something from this area, he must ask the respective ngen for permission and explain the amount needed. Afterwards, he should thank the ngen and, if possible, give a small gift of gratitude, according to the principle of reciprocity. Thus I could experience how a Mapuche woman asked the spirit of the water with a bow and words for permission to go into the water before she bathed in the sea.

Also in their imagination everything that has to do with health (and illness) can only be understood and explained as a balance between the forces of good and evil. And not only to maintain, to renew this balance in the individual and thus in the community, the shaman (machi) plays a very important role among the Mapuche.

In the language of the Guaraní people, Brazil, means

"Word" (ñe'˜e) also means "soul. "The Guaraní say: "Whoever lies to the word or spurns it, betrays the soul. This is the importance they give to the word!

We humans cannot imitate, import or copy the world view of the cultures shaped by the spirit of shamanism from other cultures. The spiritual worlds and the healing rituals, words and chants that unfold from them are connected with all elements of life in the folks still living with shamanism.

The "inner" meanings of the words, the hidden connections of the conceptualities, the not visible, not audible connections between spirits and people cannot be understood with the thinking of other cultures, cannot be translated with concepts of other cultures.

The sorcerer's apprentice in "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also tries to work "miracles" by imitating and repeating the words of his master - but unfortunately the "words and works" did not work for him either, which did not come from himself:

"And now his spirits shall also live

according to my will.

His word and works I

notice and the custom,

and with strength of mind

I do wonders too."

Similar to the sorcerer's apprentice, I also felt the same way when I tried to sing a healing chant of the old Shipibo master shaman. "My words come from my shamanic ancestors. I am from a different world than you, you are from a different spirit, you must speak in your own words and sing your own songs," was the old man's response to my attempt at spirit singing. So I took a deep breath and gradually began to awaken words in my mind, to expand my own power.

More and more often I experience how people who have spent some weeks in a Peruvian ayahuasca center boast to be able to chant icaros in Shipibo language and therefore to be an initiated shaman immediately. A reference to the x times they drank ayahuasca is meant to underscore the claim of being a shaman.

It can be very healing, in a shamanic ritual, to drink the "liane of soul" and experience deep insights into their own being and life.

Becoming a shaman is still a long way of learning and not dependent on whether and how often she "drinks", not even in Peru. Also in Russia I am increasingly confronted with seeing spiritual longing fulfilled in Peru and in drinking Ayahuasca - without considering the own Siberian shamanic cultures.

I was lastingly impressed by an experience in Irkutsk, Siberia: On the 16th floor of a house with a breathtaking view of the confluence of the Irkut River and the Angara River, I gave a one-day seminar on "Ritual Body Postures" according to Dr. Felicitas Goodman. Participants in the seminar were also three young men, who told me in the break, beaming, that they had just spent two weeks in Peru, high in the Andes, in Cusco. Near Cusco, they had drunk Ayahuasca several times at a shaman's house. When I asked them if they knew where the plants they drank grew, they said: "Yes, they grow in the jungle. But we were afraid to go there." Knowing some shamans there, I asked the name of the shaman and could not believe my ears: they gave the name of a young woman from Great Britain who has been giving Ayahuasca to tourists there for some time. I did not answer their question to me whether I would advise them to invite this "shamaness" to Irkutsk. After the end of my seminar they did not ask me about it again ...

And only a few hours drive away from this skyscraper they live, the still working Buryat Shamans in their tradition!