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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Getting Unstuck Part Four: The Lies We Tell

We all experience stuckness at some point in life and there is an art to getting out of it. You can become the person who accesses the latent power in your mess and effectively redirects it into living your deeper purpose. But not if you persist in lying to yourself. There is an, unconscious lie being propagated in our inner narrative about our capacity for healing and transformation. In part four of the "Getting Unstuck" series, host and shaman, Christina Pratt, draws on 30 years of successful trauma healing and deep-state transformation to exposes the lies that are alive and well and growing in the contemporary healing dialogue. She shares how the crazy logic of Trickster thinking teaches us to hear our own lies as messages from our fragmented self.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Gift of the Dreamtime with Kelley Harrell

For those of you interested in shamanism you can experience a shaman finding her shaman legs, reshaping the workings of her mind, and awakening her courageous heart in the re-release of Gift of the Dreamtime. For the rest of you this is a story of healing. It is an inspiration for those who have suffered great trauma, like incest, chronic violence, or the soul loss induced by the daily, normal horrors of war, and refuse to be hobbled or accept anything less than the life you came here to live. Join us this week as author and neoshaman, Kelley Harrell shares her experiences and insights with host, Christina Pratt. Kelley has served her local community in North Carolina and an international client base since 2000 through Soul Intent Arts. In her own words, “My path of shamanism is original and claims no culture other than the one of my creation. I do not seek to teach a branded path of shamanism, but to present the map for you to create your own. Through private sessions, classes, and Distance Mystery School, I’m here to create a new tribe of support for children and adults whose lives are blessed with an uncontainable inner knowing. This is The Tribe of the Modern Mystic.”

**This show originally aired July 22, 2012.**

Tuesday, September 4, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Esoterica

Focus on the Children

The Catholic Church is exposed. A number of wide-ranging, deeply researched reports of molestation, rape, abuse, corruption, and concealment have been released in close enough time to one another that the magnitude of the horror might actually—for the average American, anyway—sink in. It all feels monumental, if also powered in part by coincidence. The recently published Pennsylvania report, in which a grand jury details the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests and systematically argues that church officials were complicit, was two years in the making. It didn’t need to be released two weeks before BuzzFeed published Christine Kenneally’s yearslong investigation into the abuse of children—some of whom didn’t survive—by nuns and priests at St. Joseph’s Catholic orphanage. But it was, and the effects of those stories are stacking up. These two reports came out just three months after every Chilean bishop offered to resign over a massive sex abuse scandal, and a year or so after Netflix documentary series The Keepers revisited an unsolved murder and allegations of abuse in a Baltimore Catholic school. That these are all different—but all cover the same institutional atrocity—is the kind of perfect storm that may get us to focus in ways that the abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide has not managed to. Humans find numbers like that hard to absorb.

But we respond well to drama, and there are two competing stories right now about the Catholic Church. Call it the people vs. the palace. Alongside this tide of testimony from long-suffering victims and determined investigators, there’s the theater of ex–papal nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò’s “memo” calling for (among other things) the resignation of Pope Francis. Viganò is a hard-line conservative known for helping to arrange Pope Francis’ notorious meeting with anti-gay-marriage activist Kim Davis—which exacerbated tensions Pope Francis and Viganò. (The pope has been generally rather accepting of homosexuality; his U.S. visit included a private audience with a gay man and his partner.) Viganò timed his memo to catch the pope at a strategic weak point. Already reeling from the church scandals, Pope Francis was also visiting Ireland, which recently legalized abortion, indexing a growing distance from the faith. He was vulnerable. If this political maneuvering feels gilded and distasteful, it should. The more you read of the abuses, and of church officials shrugging it off, the less interesting the petty details of Vatican palace intrigue become. Of course the abuse of children would become yet another occasion for liberals and conservatives to plot against each other.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

The Runic Book of Days with Kelley Harrel

"Our most challenging task as humans is finding meaning in our self and the world around us," says Kelley Harrell, author of Runic Book of Days. This means, how do we stand, fully conscious in our personal power in our everyday actions of life? In her new book, Harrel offers the runes as a contemporary tool to assist us in answering that question. The runes are an ancient, deeply revelatory oracle that captures the essence of the process of the soul embodied and then delivers the wisdom needed to live it in small, relatable morsels. Join us this week as modern shaman and author, Kelley Harrel, joins host, Christina Pratt, to explain that to work with the runes systematically through the seasons, allows a cycle of initiation to emerge.

This week's guest:
Kelley Harrell

Kelley Harrell is an author and modern shaman in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. A lifelong intuitive and deathwalker, she has worked with a local and international client base since 2000. She holds a Masters in Religious Studies, and is an ordained interfaith minister. Her work is Nature-based, and is focused through the lenses of animism, Seiðr, and Druidry. She works closely with the Elder Futhark Runes and divine Nature Spirits of eastern North Carolina. Her shamanic practice is Soul Intent Arts. Kelley advocates for social justice through sacred activism, and is vigorously involved with the worlds in and around her.

Tuesday, August 28, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Esoterica

Satanic Temple statue unveiled at the Arkansas State Capitol

Dozens attended a rally held by the Satanic Temple at the Arkansas State Capitol on Thursday.

The rally comes after the Arkansas legislature approved the placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the Capitol grounds.

During the Satanic Temple's Rally for the First Amendment, a more than 8-feet-tall Baphomet statue was unveiled.

. . .

Following the installation of the Ten Commandments monument, the Satanic Temple filed a lawsuit to have its statue placed on the same grounds in the name of religious pluralism and the First Amendment.

During the 2017 legislative session, the Satanic Temple sent a letter to Arkansas legislators asking for lawmakers to sponsor a bill that would allow a Baphomet statue on Capitol grounds, but not one lawmaker responded.

In Pennsylvania, A Reckoning

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The headlines alone make make my gorge rise:

• Priests used gold crosses to ID kids as abuse targets... 
• Priests Produced Child Pornography on Church Property...
• Church helped priest accused of sex abuse get Disney World gig

Disney World! Who would knowingly help a pedophile get a job at Disney World?!!! The Catholic Church, that's who.

Like people all across the country, and probably much of the world, I have been processing, over the past week, the horrible revelations to come out of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on priestly abuse throughout the state. At least 300 "predator priests" abused at least 1,000 children (their findings acknowledge that the actual number is probably much higher), over a seventy year period. And the Church establishment, as it has done in so many dioceses around the world, conspired to keep it all covered up. They moved offending priests around to different jobs many of which still gave them access to minors, they hid records under lock and key, and they threw the victims under a bus. Same story, different state. Yet somehow this time feels so much worse.

If the Catholic sexual abuse scandal that came to light in 2002 slowly unspooled through news reports, Pennsylvania's grand jury report landed like an atom bomb, dropping its online horrors all at once. With some redactions, the report was readily available for everyone to read and share: the accusations of sexual deviance, shameless lies and deceitful churchmen.

"What we have now is people freely expressing their outrage on Facebook and Twitter," said Greg Kandra, a Catholic deacon in Brooklyn, New York. "The anger is palpable. This is like 2002 on steroids."

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Wild Fires, Climate Change, and Shamanism with Ana Larramendi

As the wild fires rage throughout the western North America for another season, how do we respond? The destruction is real and truly devastating, and, at the same time, we are the creators of this scenario. Where is our responsibility and how to we exercise it? From a shamanic perspective a human is one of billions of organisms that inhabit and make up the planet we call Earth. To the elementals and nature spirits we are all part of the community of living things. Our most effective actions will be as part of that larger community. Join us this week as practitioner, Ana Larramendi, joins host Christina Pratt to explore how we can use our shamanic skills to assist nature in doing the corrective measures needed to balance what is out of balance. How do we ask the permission from the land spirits to intervene? And what do we do when we are told "no"?

This week's guest:
Ana Larramendi

Ana Larramendi has spent her life weaving together her spirituality with nature skills to create a skill-set of tools for land healing and teaching students to detect and heal earth trauma. Of Spanish and Basque ancestry and born in Spain, Ana is a full-time shamanic teacher and healer, at The Hollow Bone, a private practice in Madison, Wisconsin. She offers a full range of shamanic healing forms, space clearing, and various land healing practices and offers a range of shamanic course work and her Earth Tenders Apprenticeship for more advanced practitioners.

Ana has been studying shamanic traditions since 1989 and is an international teacher of shamanic healing practices. She is a minister, public speaker, Vision Quest leader, wilderness enthusiast, ceremonialist, chef, translator and an initiated mesa carrier in the Inka tradition. Ana has studied extensively with teachers from many traditions including: Alberto Villoldo, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Sandra Ingerman, Angeles Arrien, Betsy Bergstrom, Tom Cowan, Dr. Larry Peters, Marko Pogaĉnik, indigenous Alto Misayoqs of the Andes, and Weather Shamanism with Nan Moss and the late David Corbin. She also studied for 6 years with Tom Brown Jr. of the Tracker School, learning tracking, survival and wilderness awareness skills.

Ana has been a lecturer for the University of Wisconsin Medical School, as well as teacher and Peruvian guide for Madison Area Technical College. She is a founding member of the Society for Shamanic Practice and was a keynote presenter for their first annual conference in 2005. Ana's work has been published in The Journal of Shamanic Practice.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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What Astrology Says is in Store for the Second Half of 2018

For me, 2018 has passed in a whirlwind, and as we approach the end of the year I am feeling the pressure to move forward with my ambitions and goals. While I am a firm believer that we shape our own destinies, knowing how the stars will influence what is happening in the world and in my life helps me prepare and better deal with the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that cross my path.

This may be especially important in the second half of 2018, which promises to be a time of change, regardless of your zodiac sign. Find out what your sign can expect in the coming months to help you maximise your potential as the year draws to a close.

Fire Signs – Aries, Leo and Sagittarius

While you have probably felt like you have had a lot on your plate in the first half of the year, in the latter part of 2018 you may suddenly feel like you have more time on your hands. But don’t let your energy levels and focus drop. Invest this time in hobbies and creative outlets that have taken a back seat so far this year.

But while you are powering through, don’t forget to take time to relax. With Mars in retrograde you might feel drained of energy, so implement self-care routines to help you stay on an even keel.

With Uranus moving into the Taurus constellation, you might see some big, and possibly shocking, changes at the end of 2018. While worrying will be inevitable, these are changes that you need in your life, even if you can’t see it right away. Take this as an opportunity to step back and really understand what is important to you, and how these unexpected changes might be a blessing.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

The Power of Blessing

Blessings are the way to give life to that which you value, to give it strength and help it to survive and to thrive. Through blessings we can give life and protection to what is new and uncertain. They are a way to give strength to that which doesn't have strength yet, like a new story for a new world, and to give it time to take shape and build resonance. Blessings can be a formal, complex ritual process or a simple act of love, like calling on the spirits of the family totem to protect a child as she leaves for school. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the power of blessings and how we can use them with intention to create change in these challenging times. Blessings call on energies of the invisible world, like elementals, nature spirits, and angels, and ask for their participation in our lives in specific ways. Whether simple or grand, our blessings are most powerful when they are an expression of a deep relationship with spirit, one that we have already cultivated with our faith, gratitude, and practice.

**This show originally aired August 30, 2016.**

Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

The Power of Faith

Faith does not require religion and is often stronger without it. Faith is the power to stand in the Unknown with uncertainty and discomfort and take a new step forward anyway... and then another... and then another. It is the power to do what hasn't been done and what feels impossible. We must cultivate the capacity for faith, barrels of it, or we will not be able to be the change that we seek. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores faith and the need to cultivate faith that does not inspire separation from others via religion, race, or nationality. To rise to the challenges of our time we must know without ever getting proof that we were born to be the medicine for the illness, disease, and unrest of our time. And that it will require faith, again and again, to surrender who we are for who we could become so that we can be that medicine. Faith is power.

**This show originally aired August 23, 2016.**

Tuesday, August 7, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Teal Swan: Cult or Movement?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

People keep calling teal the c-word, cult leader, and dammit, she's addressed this! Way back in 2014, she put this matter to rest, with a blog post addressing, point by point, the cult criteria that she in no way meets. Earlier that year I had written a blog post, myself, comparing her organization to a number of cult criteria checklists, and I came to a different conclusion. I started blogging about teal way back when, because I saw a number of red flags that warned of a cult in formation, starting with the coerced, public "confession" of her ex-boyfriend to "sociopathy." Since that time, she has grown ever more culty and her long-sought mainstream coverage has acknowledged that fact. She did not help herself with her own commentary in the recent podcast series "The Gateway," wherein she told Gizmodo reporter Jennings Brown:

I have the perfect recipe for a cult. Perfect. Recipe.

No, her foray into mainstream press coverage has not gone well and now comes an article from Vice, which puts her cult leader status and her disturbing position on suicide under a microscope. And irony of ironies (note the correct use of the term), the cult expert Vice interviewed for the article is the very one whose checklist teal used to exonerate herself in that blog post, Janja Lalich, PhD. Unlike teal, Lalich appears to have concluded that teal meets the criteria of a cult leader, a dangerous one.

Though Teal has denied cult allegations, her massive social media influence and controversial practices around depression and suicide—sometimes encouraging students to imagine their own deaths in detail—have placed her on the dangerous side of Lalich’s cult radar.

. . .

Lalich sees this kind of dramatic therapy as a way to manipulate vulnerable people. “They can get very unstable, and that’s what she’s counting on,” she said. “Cult leaders will always get their people to what I call ‘reframe their lives.’ They reinterpret their lives so they see everything from before the cult as messed up, and only by staying with the cult leader will they get straightened out.” (To this day, many members of the “Teal Tribe” say they are only alive today because of her teachings.)