WHY IS CEREMONY and ritual so IMPORTANT FOR US RIGHT NOW?
At Ellasfield, we create rituals and ceremonies to help you enter into a relationship with your ancestors. But why would you want to connect with the long-dead generations who’ve gone before you, anyway? I asked myself that same valid question a few years ago before I immersed myself in the shamanic path and its relationship with the spirit of everything around us.
For more than twenty years, I had felt a strong sense of inner turmoil. I knew the day-to-day of my life felt brittle and empty, and I deeply yearned for something more. But what? I had delved into the world of mindfulness, which had provided a safe and nurturing based for me to start taking care of myself and relating to myself in a more compassionate and considered way, but there still lurked a dissatisfaction and gnawing sense that I was missing the point to it all. This deep discomfort in my own skin led me to embark on a heroine’s quest to discover answers to these questions and to find out if I had any real depth or substance to me.
The shamanic path had called to me for several years, ever since my grandmother ignited a love of nature and a sense of something much larger than me in the world around me. I had read books on shamanism and animism but nothing had grabbed my attention for long enough until my psychotherapist talked about Second Sight Healing and the training they offered. In that moment, my instinct told me I had to undertake this shamanic training and push myself further than the fearful comfort zone I was living in.
What followed changed the way in which I relate to everything. During the three-year training I learned more about the invisible spirit realms, the Medicine Wheel and the four elements. I sat in ceremony with indigenous people and connected with the world in a whole new way. I literally came into relationship with everything around me - including all material items, from the house I live in and the car I drive, to the food I eat, the trees, plants and all living beings that I share Kettlesbridge Farm with, even the land we all live on and the water running through it.
Completing the training, which culminated in a pilgrimage to sacred sites in Wales and an overnight ceremony on the Peseli Hills, helped me realise that the individualistic way in which our culture had permeated my subconscious, and the systems that support this notion, had kept me prisoner. Until now, I had been a fearful, powerless, empty shell of a person with a lineage that also experienced the same, especially my grandmothers and their mothers.
This experience led me to remember how we can - and must - heal our sick and wounded bloodline. Initially, this can be done with ritual and ceremony as an entry point into forming relations with our wise, fully-healed and compassionate ancestors who sit alongside the many wise minds of the ancient sages. Then, once we have experienced a connection and conversation with them, we can ask how they can support us in healing the generations in front of them, one by one, until we arrive at ourselves. This is where we can then ask for help within our own human experience and find a much deeper and richer way of living. We can start healing the cultural and societal wounds that are contributing to the madness we are living through today. Who’s in?
