A discussion around the scholarly debates on the term and the case of a ‘Celtic’ folk healer in Northeast Scotland.
Join Dr Sakis Barmpalexis, PhD in Ethnology (and Folklore) from the Elphinstone Institute, as he offers an in-depth analysis of the term ‘Celtic shamanism’, both as a combined term and separately when used to refer to spiritual shamanistic healing traditions in Scotland.
The presentation covers the long-lasting debates that have taken place within the academic world around the historical accuracy of the term(s) and will also examine the various ways the term has defined (and still defines) the approaches of the people involved within the contemporary ‘Celtic’ pagan movement. Dr Barmpalexis also looks at the life and work of a contemporary ‘Celtic’ folk healer with shamanistic knowledge and his work alongside his followers and clients in the wider area of Northeast Scotland.
Dr Barmpalexis is currently an Honorary Research Fellow and a Visiting Lecturer at the Elphinstone Institute, and a postdoctoral researcher at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
hi thanks for having me um I’m s Alexis um um I have a PhD in ethnology from the University of Aline and um currently I am an honorary research fellow for the elfone institute at the University of albertin and also a postd doctoral researcher for the National capodistrian University of Athens so tonight’s talk is going to be about Celtic shamanism and whether it is an historically accurate term so in late March 2014 while researching my Master’s dissertation on neopaganism in Scotland I met an eccentric looking tall well-built wizard-like figure with long gray hair a thick beard and vibrant hippie clothes named Terry mace were both at the holistic waste Festival a traveling holistic health and spirituality Festival that visits aerin every March and October mace introduced himself as a contemporary Shaman and kindly agreed to talk to me about paganism and Shamanism but on condition that I first experienced his work he invited me along with others to his house in Kalen Mor over a weekend in April 2014 for a 3-day Gathering of rituals and ceremonies it turned out to be one of the most fascinating experiences in my life it was 3 days of rituals of exorcism shape shifting fortune telling and Redemption amidst violent thunderstorms this introduction to Shamanism H healing practices paved the way to more extensive research of the phenomenon in Northeast Scotland during the course of six years lasting until early 2020 I was fortunate to interview record and participate in uals alongside two more such individuals Andrew Ste and Norman Duncan these individuals belong to the recent emerging phenomenon of the so-called neosan these individuals they offer syncretic practices mixing Ting orted from elsewhere some manistic techniques and wall views after their creative engagements alongside experienced local healers with Western Concepts ideas and reinventions or reconstructions of past traditions and and and they recontextualized everything according to what is relevant to their land and era my ethnographic evolvement with the three practitioners and their communities shaped the three key doctoral research questions how do the life Journeys training work and lives of the three healers compare with those that are assigned to the crosscultural shamanic healer moreover how are they practices are the are their practices influenced and shaped by the postmodern landscape in contemporary spirituality and finally are these healers part of a historically recorded Scottish or Celtic Shamanism that evolved throughout time or merely emerging phenomena based on individualized practices Co coexisting in the same geographical region this last question is the topic of our discussion tonight and especially the part as the title suggests of Celtic Shamanism did did it exist and if yes how did it look like moreover what is considered Celtic and what is considered shamanic shamanistic or Shamanism and finally how do the two terms shape the life and work of contemporary healers in Scotland we’ll start by looking at Shamanism first the consensus for the origins of the term Shaman is that it deres from the northern Asian tongus speaking aeni people you see in the it’s the light blue H region in Siberia and Mongolia who used the word Shaman meaning someone who is excited moved or raised to refer to their local practitioners the work the word was adopted by Russians coming in contact with these peoples uh it was first introduced to European intellectual circles in the late 17th century by a Dutch traveler named Nikolas viten ven described the San as humans dressed in animal skins and head dresses made of antlers beating drums while performing amidst their Community settings these depictions of otherness and exoticness fascinated European scholars and explorers who impart on expeditions to discover similar figures elsewhere the first ethnographic accounts of practices similar to the tus saman started started being published during the 19th century soon the angiz term Shaman as generated from the German translation of the term became Central in the European academic circles and was gradually applied to all similar practices cross culturally there are four identical features found in the cross culture of Shaman they all have the ability to go into an other state of consciousness or trans state in order to gain access to a culture defined Spirit spiritual world and receive Knowledge from Spirits to help others their main function is that of the Healer they receive yearlong training before returning to their communities and finally they do all this in the context of a ritual features that are also to be found in the Life journey of the three individuals of the research taking into consideration all the above my definition of shamanism for my resets went as following a phenomenon based on Regional representations of similar phenomena across the world whose core feature is the presence of a local spiritual practitioner the shaman with spe special techniques and functions however the geographic expansion of the term to almost everywhere in the world made the phenomenon feel a bit abstract the main issue was and still is that locally structured Traditions were all Blended together under a single term as Anthropologist Michael winkelman points out the differences and diversities could be traced with respect to the type of societies in which they were found in terms of their training the nature of the powers the characteristics of their alter State of Consciousness the types of healing that they do and the relationships to Social Power institutions in 1987 winkelman and Douglas white using the standard crosscultural sample as created by moch and white in 1969 examined the ethnographic data they gathered for more than 100 magical religious practitioners from 45 different societies these practitioners were assessed according to their unique traits were compared to each other and finally were divided into four types according to the distinct fixures they possessed the four types according to winkelman White were members of the shaman complex priests mediums Sears and divers and finally malevolent witches and sorcerers the first group was further subcategorized they called all practitioners shamanistic healers and divided them into three subclasses the shamans the shaman healers and the healers they suggest suggested that what they all had in common was this utilization of the Trans State for communicating with the spirit world on behalf of the community mainly for healing or divination purposes however what distinguishes the shaman from the other two types according to the scheme is the fact that the shaman is mainly found in Hunter gather and fishing communities and it’s slightly more complex nomadic Horticultural and pastoral societies with little political integration and the absence of social classes similarly there have been also other scholarly attempts to address and underline the plurality and locality of aike phenomena from across the world many for example suggested that we should rather speak of shamanism in pra instead of single Shamanism however despite these rather significant efforts to emphasize multi multitude and diversity the term Shamanism was already academically academically established and eventually applied for the practices of communities in the Arctic and subarctic North America Central and South America Mongolia Tibet Central Asia Nepal China Korea IND India and Indonesia who which are considered to be the core regions of the phenomenon while there has been a debate over whether the term should be applied also for Africa First Nation and Native American people the P Pacific Islanders the Australian aboriginals and the northern European communities of the Scandinavian Sami and pre-christian Celtic Britain which bring us brings us to the other part of tonight’s discussion what is Celtic let’s examine here historically conceptually and academ academically the issues that have been raised in regard to All Things Celtic Celtic is a term applied to describe a geographically diverse group of pre-christian European peoples found in France Northwestern Spain and the British Isles the main issue with the ks has always been the fact that in transmission of their traditions and practices was only passed orally this has raised main many debates within Academia initially regarding their Origins did they appear in the bronch era in the north of Alps region of unfelt halad and then due to conflicts had to travel westwards as most 20th century theor suggest or has the Celtic epicenter has always been goal where mod Francis as more recent Celtic sit like Sims Williams in 2020 theories packed up by ancient Greek and Roman historiography Julius Caesar whose Memoirs are considered one of the most important pieces of evidence regarding the ks mentions that the occupied goals refer to themselves as KS or Kelty the goals he also points out sh many similarities in their lifestylish beliefs and practices with their Neighbors in the British Isles therefore should they have been CS as well and if yes what were their similarities historical theologists Oliver Davis and Thomas Olin suggest that what made the Cults culturally distinct was the fact that they were locally restricted they linked exclusively on oral Trad transmission and they had a strong tradition of poetry mythology and imagery these features are also verified in Caesar’s accounts there have however been academic voices that promoted a different Viewpoint for example British archaeologist Simon James wrote in 1998 that recent archaeological findings indicate that the Iron Age British peoples were actually a mosaic of different cultures with distinct Traditions while historian Ronald Hatton adds that most of Caesar’s accounts were based on heay with the fall of the Roman Empire and the eventual emergence of Christianity the Alle Celtic tribes became even more restricted geographically while the use of the Lo of their local idioms and Customs was pushed further in the margins despite the historical ambiguity of the Kels and early modern Revival of celticism emerging Britain Ireland France and also overseas in the in during the 18th century Joon defines celticism as not the study of the ks and the history but the study of the reputation and of the meanings and connotation ascribed to the term Celtic to the extent that Celtic is an idea with a wide and variable application celticism becomes a complex and significant issue in the European history of ideas the history of what people wanted the term to mean inspired by the notion of well scholar and loyed in 1707 that the ancient and modern languages of Ireland Scotland Wales Cornwall and Britany all belonged to the same linguistic family the 18th century revivalists shed the idea of a United Celtic culture as a distinct ethnic group with commonality and custom and belief since the 19th century Celtic identity and spirituality have become popular in Pagan religiosity Mario Bowman argues that the Romantic ideas of a unified Celtic past paved the way for the idea of a Celtic Celtic Spirit as found within contemporary spiritualities even among people with no direct linkage with the Celtic ethnic group ethnic Roots within the various contemporary Celtic spiritual movements one can trace attempts both individual and communal to to recontextualize Al’s past Traditions while highly important are also the self the ideas of self-identity discovery of roots and the signif significant signific significance of ancient sides contemporary ktic spirituality movements have been however criticized by Scholars for a number of reasons they are accused for instance of owing owing more to New Age H than to archaeological or historical evidence of romanticizing Celtic tradition uh traditions and of depicting the K as a noble savat marginal figure uncorrupted by society and power Malcolm Chapman summarized this phenomenon Romanticism created the fren Celtic minorities as figures of wish fulfillment of opposition to the prevailing philosophy and actuality of industrializing England the kelt was a magical figure a Bart a warrior and an enchanter beyond the rich of this world and an object of love and yearning for those doomed to wander among material things in the cold light of Reason however other Scholars such as Alexandra bolm add another add another dimension to the discussion suggesting that these modern expressions of Celtic rather than being condemned as inauthentic IDE idealized or fictitious efforts actually deserve attention attention alongside the more traditional topics of Celtic scholarship and also that the romanticization of the Kels was not an exclusivity of the Pagan movement Traditions but can be found among Scholars as well for instance archaeologist and Celtic scholar an Ros argued that although the Celtic people did not share a common central religious system the rituals and ceremonies were almost identical while the importance of the natural Supernatural was so integral to their belief systems that it became the basic layer of their spirituality Ross actually conclud Ed that all these indicate a basic religious homogeneity which is indeed remarkable ideas like those of Ross are considered by other Scholars as as results of inadmissible evidence of psychic Psy scholarship while also indicate a romantic idealization a guilt induced acknowledgement of marginalized cultures and an excessive fascination with the outsider and the other a rather active member of the Contemporary Celtic spiritual movement is the folk healer of our discussion Andrew Ste born in East Anglia but of Scottish descent he has roots from the highlands clans of Davidson and tins and also absolutely brilliant in what he’s doing Ste became an apprentice of healing ways for more than a decade H while residing in the United States in the late 20th century alongside laota chipa and Blackfoot medic people Ste Lear the local Traditions while alongside contemporary Celtic shamanistic healer Tom Cohan he was initiated into Celtic worldviews however almost 25 years ago while leading pilgrimages in the British Island British ises he started receiving calls from Spirits of his homeland to return and reconnect British people to their lands since then Ste has been weaving the medicine for others as he puts it teach it teaching the tales myths and wisdom of the P Christian Celtic Cosmos he has been leading pilgrimages all over Britain as well as workshops and year-long apprenticeships while also publishing books and releasing CDs of his own songs and stories as offered to him by the spirits ahed Ste in November 2015 when he invited me to his three-day ceremony named wild handun as inspired by the Mythic tale of a soul ravening Night Flight the beong in the woods of lafan albertin Shai St wild hand celebration had three main goals to sink the Soul’s home to pick up the bones of the dead and sweep the Ws clean While most wild hand mythical assignments have been made with mythical figures such as Odin or herna the hunter um Ste Associates it with a CTIC God L and The Saga of the Second Battle of Maura namely the Mythic battle between the foror and the TW danan the first inhabitants of Ireland according to Irish mythology when the latter rebelled against the former oppression and prevailed due to The Bravery of Lou the 2015 wild hand ceremony was teed 18th in a 10year span and its main goal was to to to connect all participants to their ancestors and their land since receiving the call of the Celtic Spirits in 1998 Steed has been entirely committed spiritually to his Roots he has been following the Green Road Green Road as he describes his own spiritual path influenced by the concept of the Red Road the overgeneralized spiritual metaphor used and in some instances culturally appropriated by new age or and new Pagan communities for the beliefs and teachings of native ameran peoples as the right path of Life Ste told me in 2015 that he uses the term Green Road or uality simply as a frame of reference to describe our own meaning the local Irish and Scottish indigenous Pathways whose blueprint is in the stories his inspiration to follow this path in life also had its Origins from Celtic stories it came and still comes from the word amran which he discovered while spiritually connecting to the Second Battle of mura he told me about this connection if you read the CLE Battle of Mya there’s a word that’s that’s written and I haven’t seen it written anywhere else and they say that before the battle the Smith the Healer omma who is the poet the Daga and L go up on a hill they spent a year and a day working with amran and amran from my own research when I found out what it meant was a time and place for sacred chanting and then I realized that I’ve been weaving amran all my life it’s medicine a work with the dragon lines that is the the straight lines uh that are thought of connecting uh the British uh secred sites it’s work that I can weave into the sea and into the land for cleansing stit cosmology is therefore almost entirely based on the Celtic on the first Celtic mythological cycle the set of Mythic stories about the lives and deeds of the d a race of Godlike people who immigrated to Ireland in five different migrating ways Wes and stayed there as their inhabitants until their the appearance of mortal men which caused the retreat into spiritual world as Sith fairies but how does TH connect with them spiritually he explains how he uses the techniques he had learned alongside his teachers overseas the spirit songs it’s not just Andrew sitting down to to write a bunch of songs Spirit came through Brig came through ban came through man mle came through I mean I was on Iona on a in a cave in a tidal cave and I spent the day Quest questing inside the cave while the sea had retreated and before it came back in again Manana mle brought this absolutely gorgeous song through me about how he comes twice a day to make love to the bones of the land he makes love to this beautiful woman and he writes that his white horses come to GRE here as with everything Celtic the Irish and Scottish spiritual Cosmos is also surrounded by historical inty factual meress and ongoing scholarly debates the majority of the stories for example about the Irish and Scottish Heroes and gods are to be found in fragmented pieces in lebor gabala the book of the of of the taking of Ireland or book of invasions and compilation of pros and poetry scribed by clerics in the 11th century the book has been regarded by some Scholars as an intentional effort by the monks to bridge the CM between Christian World chronology and the prehistory of Ireland in order to give the local people and my Mythic history similar to those of gree or Rome the fact that all manuscripts on Irish mythology are dated from the late 11th and early 12th centuries up to the late 14th century raises all also questions regarding the context Authority and circumstances under which they were written ACC Dan Daniel Melia asks says what we do know uh is that they were written by clerics and that Ireland had a long tradition of professional oral transmission of literature and law lastly the fact that all stories were written down not only centuries later but also by local christian monkss might also indicate that this literary account could have been products of a struggle where the desire to record the native stories was in conflict with the religious resentment of other than Christian beliefs Tina Fields ads burkholm once again points out that even though these texts are treated by Academia with sensitivity towards their historical and linguistic background as well as their contextual settings contemporary Celtic spiritualities tend to regard them as actual historical evidence for for their belief systems she notes however that this tendency can also be found in Academia and especially in recent archaeological findings that have presumably connected the text to a historical past that was preserved and transmitted orally into the early mid Middle Ages at the same time she blames Academia for having failed to understand two crucial things regarding the Contemporary spiritual movements that a text ambigu ambiguous in its Origins can be recreated in every interpretation and that the early Irish Legends have been one of the most significant sources for the soul self identification of these groups I asked Ste about the issue of Celtic mythology Ste does acknowledge the historical ambigu ambiguity of the Irish sagas he told me we do have stories that the monks scribed and I know that they may have put in some of their own interpretations I accept all of that at the same time he also believes that the core of the stories must have pre-existed before being eventually written down by the Christian mons in order to in order to be to be passed on to us allying to some extent with fieldes belief that these stories might have been products of an inner struggle for the preservation of the past ways and beliefs what he does find however more important regarding the stories is the way of their transmission both before and after being written down referring therefore to the long tradition of professional oral transmission of literature and law in Ireland and Scotland he told me you had saki the Irish and Scottish GIC H historians and storytellers who were also the bearers of old lore you had BS you had storytellers whatever they were known as there were the people who went around and there were the keep ERS and sharers of the story Ste elaborated his argument regarding the importance of oral transmission as part of the dynamic and ever evolving nature of folklore and the fact that in the in this process those stories are being altered each each time they are told as follows so of course Shamanism the magical art whatever you want to call what we do of course it’s going to evolve because stories are always going to evolve the story was written down because the moment uh was never written down because the moment you write it down you fix it and has nowhere to go the storytellers were always in the flow of the story H all this brings us therefore to one key question does te consider that the teaching and practices he offers to be Celtic actually he’s quite skeptical H he’s totally aware that the term probably suggests a unified ethnic past in a similar vein the term Native American has been applied uh to diff to diverse and different Northern American cultures which has never been the case he told me the other piece that I suppose concerns me is that Celtic becomes a bit of a buzz word I mean I use the word Celtic just like people use I will say Native American there’s no such thing so of course it’s an umbrella so we can use a we can use Celtic because it’s an umbrella it gives us a reference point and an understanding and now we can work into that piece but if you had to put a term on yourself uh would you have said that you are doing Celtic things and he responded to me well I do use the word I mean if you see in my literature you see the word Celtic because it’s a framework but always I always quantify that uh when I meet people I think it’s important in the same discussion Ste also elaborates on his idea on Celtic cultures adding that in his view pre-christian communities on the British ises were probably locally structured and had different place names local idioms and traditions for example while he was explaining to me how he places elements in his medicine will according to the cardinal directions he pointed out that he believed that in the past people would have probably placed them all differently depending on where they lived and who who their localized gods and goddesses were the use of the term Celtic however is used by by him regardless of his acknowledgment of its vagueness and overgeneralization this happens because in contemporary popular views Britains and also britan’s pre-christian past has been Associated to the presence of the Kels therefore whether reclaiming Reviving rting or reconstr reconstructing alleged past Traditions healing practitioners like Ste feel the need to particularize their approaches according to popular understandings describing their teachings and practices as Celtic provides them with a framework a much needed frame of reference so that people who approach them have an overall idea of what they offer and what about Celtic Shamanism if we do accept the C the term Celtic as a required frame of reference for the British and bronic pre Christian tradition did a Celtic Shamanism phenomenon exist in fact historical ethnographic and archaeological data are even more obscure regarding the existence of shamanistic like figures in Christian medieval or early modern Britain I would even argue that if Celtic as a term is a glass half full as the people regarding as Kel did at least reside in the British Island ises Celtic Shamanism as a historical phenomenon is definitely a a glass half empty let’s see the data for this we saw earlier in our discussion that many scholars among them sistic experts Pierce vitsky and Michael winkelman consider pre-christian Celtic Britain a possible shamanistic region it would have been so much easier for my research to take this point of view as granted and answer their third research question are contemporary Healers Scotland and Ireland part of historically recorded Celtic Shamanism that evolved throughout time positively however the data do not back this idea up the the main issue as with many other European Shaman Shamanism is the lack of recorded historical accounts and archaeological discoveries supporting the idea there are many reasons why someone like vski or winkelman would argue that pre-christian Celtic Britain was Associated to Shamanism uh sh manistic features can be definitely traced in the alleged practices of The Druids Caesar depicted them depicted them as the high order as philosophers as judges and tutors and also as divers prophets and conosur of the natural words world who had their assemblies near Groves of trees or in shrines of the BS of the GTA the wild Matman in the Irish story of bul another shamanistic figure wandering as Hermits in the woods and living in the trees or the Philly the poet seers who possessed Supernatural powers or in the stories of mythical Heroes such as Finn Mak makul and talesin who were shape shifters just as the shamans or in the lives of Celtic Saints for example St Kelvin of glendal and atic figure able to Enter Trans State and communicate with birds even after the British is converted to Christianity one could trace shamanistic traits in practices beliefs and individuals for example who had common belief in the fairy worlds uh we also had the belief of the existence a later execution of witches who were able to enter fairy ws and upon their return seemed to possess supernatural abilities and also some sparse examples of separate cases for instance uh for instance th Thomas ER dun known in local Legends as Thomas the the ryer a 12th century local leer with divination and other supernatural abilities Michael Scott the wizard of the north a well traveled and highly respected 13th century scientist who according to Scottish folkore had the ability to communicate with magical entities and split Hills and vitrify witches with his magical powers and particularly uh Reverend Robert KK from aberfoil near Sterling a Seventh Son of a Seventh Son whose book The Secret Commonwealth and 18 century collection of Supernatural stories of second site and detailed descriptions of the fairy kingdom is considered uh to have been based on his own personal experiences alongside fies while his death according to local Legends is believed to have been the outcome of an abduction by the fairies a belief still widespread in the local community of abber foil as late as the 1980s according to folklorist Margot Bennett nonetheless these examples can only be considered hypothesis and a potential indicators of British shamanistic Traditions when it comes to the pre-christian texts and the biographies of the Celtic Saints not only were they products literary products of medieval Christian culture but also portray portrayed sistic abilities and not Shamanism therefore they were not which is very important appropriately and social culturally uh contextualized in space and time as with the more recent cases that these were non systematic for example Druids or GTA or the Philly did not exist anymore in order to pass on their knowledge they were situated in in a very different religious and social context the belief in fies was considered in this context as credulous H they were secretive as the alleged witches practice in private and not for a community as shamans do while people like Scott or k or KK belonged to other socially accepted by European standards professional classes as Anthropologist thas Dua correctly points out these hypothesis are mostly outcomes of of our current ability to access ethnographic research on historically and ethnographically recorded Shamanism leading to the concepts application to other context and also to an increasing increasing interest in uncovering and documenting as many unique past religions as possible even ones buried in the remote past and refle reflected by cryptic or misleading ancient texts as with the case of the Celtic spiritual past returning therefore to Ste what does he think about Celtic Shamanism in fact he approaches the term Shaman with the same skepticism as with Celtic Traditions he told me in our discussion in December 2015 I know some shamans in the world and I have never ever heard them call themselves a shaman they never stood up and said I’m a shaman they get on with their work and so it’s labels I don’t really Buy on labels yeah I did he’s the drew it Andrew did oh yeah he’s a shaman a lot of people would say Andrew did oh yeah he’s a wizard and actually if you ask me which term I’m actually comfortable with because and it’s talking thing um I would say I’m a wizard and I laugh at that psychist because I remember when I was 18 standing in my hometown and this young woman said to me what do you want to be when you grow up and I said a wizard and I suppose in many ways that’s what I’ve grown into or once little child in class of per said look Mommy there’s a man witch and in the old days I would probably be called a witch or a wizard actually it makes sense that Ste feels more comfortable with the terms uh he mentions in the conversation the names have been the ones historically Associated to the European traditions of people involved in magical arts and F healing Shamanism which is something that Ste also believes whether these people have been called carlings witches Wizards Witch Doctors Elders or magicians the same happened with the other two Healers of the research mace eventually started describing himself as a psycho magician while danan a mon not only do these people feel more familiar culturally with his terms but also acknowledge the Shamanism as a local phenomenon belonged and still belongs in other than Western cultures historically and ethnographically recorded sistic practices and beliefs however do they respond to the name Shaman they all do and once again this has to do with their connections with others Ste for example told me if the community call you Shaman that is up to the community so there were people there will be people on the planet who would call me a shaman that’s their prerogative you will never hear me calling myself a shaman I will tell you I’m a shamanic practitioner and I work with Shamanism on a daily basis therefore as with the term Celtic Ste once again believes that the use of any term related to Shamanism whether it’s a Shan whether it’s Shan sh practitioner or anything else similar provides the people he connects with a framework to understand his work therefore to wrap up in my opinion the article uh the paper wanted to Showcase that in reality we might we might be dealing with two entirely different Concepts on the one hand that of Celtic Shamanism as a possible historical phenomenon in Ireland and Scotland and on the other hand that of the Contemporary Celtic suon the former seems to be an over romanticized merky concept as a term Celtic of overgeneralizes and po probably simplifies distinct local practices across Britain while Shamanism among the Kels is a concept that has been based on rather weak and uncontextualized historical and archaeological data the latter however is a contemporary inclusive concept which is based on already established popular perceptions that help people by providing them with a much needed fra frame of understanding of the syn syncretic things practitioners like Ste offer they ass shance therefore the healing practices in question revolve around imported from elsewhere sistic values and techniques and they are Celtic because they connect or in the case of British people reconnect others with what are considered to be popular mind the Celtic CLS and traditions this contemporary concept can eventually also become a basis for the practitioners and the people they connect with upon which to build a new as well as a new and illustrious context that serves and a source of Pride and identity and who knows maybe in 20 2324 in a similar lecture setting there will be someone discussing about the first wave on of 21st century shamans who were the Trailblazers for the emergence of the historically recorded Scottish and or Irish Shamanism that has survived for almost 350 Years thank you thank you so much for that that was so interesting we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to go through all that that was brilliant um you’ll see everyone that uh Robin’s posted a message in the chat there um just so you can see where your just so you can see where you’re supposed to post your questions so if you’ve got anything you’d like to ask we’ve still got 15 minutes so if you’ve got anything you want to ask or anything that you’re more interested in then please just post your questions there Robin’s actually posted one to kick off there um oh someone’s put in a clapping hands so obviously has very much enjoyed that presentation um so Robin says how do you feel about it’s all good um so how do you feel about the idea that modern attempts to document and Define the term Celtic sha Shamanism could impact the nature of the practice or practices since its previously nuanced and evolving nature comes from an oral tradition to be honest I don’t think it it matters at all um it’s as I told you it’s it’s a it’s a matter of of self identification of self identity and how they all approach uh the these are all important terms uh but in this globalized uh modern um contemporary um po industrialized context traditions in folklore would say travel so Shamanism travels Celtic yeah the issue with Celtic uh as as I wanted to point out is that yeah maybe they were KS or they are they they belong to the umbrella term of Celtic cultures but probably they were not so unified so I I think that when uh we uh both Academia and also the practitioners and the communities the Pagan communities or spiritual communities use the term Celtic they mostly refer to the Past traditions of the British Islands uh I don’t think it matters that much which are these Traditions what matters most and I have it in my presentation but I didn’t have time in order to um uh to say it is that they reclaim these past Traditions there is this need for people to actually connect to their ancestral Roots the P Christian ancestral Roots there are many reasons why somebody for example from Britain wants to reconnect uh with to pre-christian Britain it’s for example an isolation or alation to modern medicine that is very uh unpersonalised so all those things in your quest in order to find your own spirituality might lead you back to uh past traditions of course we talk about past Traditions that were orally transmitted and were WR down way after by Christian monks so were they altered probably they were but they still belong in a geographical region and that this this is what they matter what matters because people actually reclaim it whether it’s it’s not false whether it’s has been altered has been altered but this is how Traditions work they evolve and they ever change perfect thank you so much we’re getting more and more uh clapping emojis in the CH there so obviously people have really enjoyed it um okay so the next question um says in my opinion the modern way of documenting and offering online modules instead of traditional training of Eastern spirituality has resulted in a loss of the sacredness of the practice so that’s more of a comment I was talking about Eastern spirituality it says Eastern spirituality yeah just Eastern spirituality well uh it’s an issue I don’t know if we’re talking about cultural now uh if we are talking about no says no no okay um just just so just reflecting a similarity so it’s it’s a statement yeah probably to be honest as a folklorist I focused more on the on the brid side of things because as fist we we see the the the region and the places that we uh we reside so uh I’m not quite familiar with this spiritualities obviously I read about it but I didn’t travel abroad in order to compare it uh but I suppose yeah uh all kinds of spiritualities have gone through the a process of uh uh of changing of s sacredness changing or whatever it’s an evolution yeah and um this person also said yes and everyone is selling something in the west it affects the SA goodness okay so another question the we’ve got another question just come in so it says thank you so much for this very interesting presentation uh so could we say that practitioners are aware of the problematics that arise from them using the term Celtic Shamanism but they keep using it because it relates them to a specific group or community of contemporary spiritual healers they keep using it because it’s it they two terms that are known to the people they connect with so it gives the their communities their pents the clients and understanding what they’re doing uh they could be called falers but fillers is in a I’m using the word fillers H but it’s an umbrella term uh I think these people need they use the not the use they accept the use the use of of the term Shon for their practices because they use some specific techniques that are imported from elsewhere because they were trained in these techniques and they imported to the British context so because they uh reach exstasy and they are healers and they talk to the spiritual world and they do this by ritual they have shamanistic knowledge so they if somebody calls them a sermon they accept it as a term but then they cont quantify it they particularize it yes I accept the term Shaman I’m doing shamanistic things but I want to explain what exactly I am doing when it comes to Celtic as I told you earlier Celtic refers as it’s not all practitioners that I work with that are doing Celtic uh practices but the ones that want to reconnect people back to the pre-christian Traditions they do use the term Celtic as a framework as a framew of reference yes I don’t know if that’s great no that’s super thank you so much for that um we don’t have any more questions at the moment um I don’t want to cut off too soon just in case people are still typing um while we’re waiting I was just going to ask um you know Andrew sounds like such an interesting person to you know sit and have a conversation with um yeah absolutely yeah yeah do you is there um any sort of fun Stand Out memories you have from some of your conversations with him well actually we had uh one conversation I was more than two hours uh Mo most of my memories come from rituals uh from the rituals I participated so uh my my my research was mainly um uh we use the term in ethnography based on the participant participative OBS observation so I was both participating and I was observing but but by the end of my involvement in my research to be honest I became more of participant and less than Observer uh uh not because I I’ve made I had already made my conclusions regarding my research but because I became more involved into these um practices one thing that I didn’t mention and it’s the first thing I’m WR I write on I have I wrote on my thesis is that I’m not shanic practitioner myself and I’m not a pagan practitioner myself I have a total different social and spiritual background uh and that was one thing that I told them they respected it and I respected them and they wanted me to understand their practices their teachings and their works by participating so I gave it back as part of the uh research research reciprocity the mutuality that have research and and the subject of the research that I give my participation I give my honesty and my sincerity of who I am and they give me the um in inner knowledge of what they’re doing and everything uh so yeah um yeah very interesting uh conversations but mostly very interesting um rituals definitely sound sounds amazing um we’ve got one last questions just come in there it says what about Terry mace and Norman Duncan what was your experience of him well Terry mace um calls himself a psycho magician so he was trained um in local healing traditions of the Aboriginal while he was working there as a as a Dairy Farmer and also he was trained by Mai healers in New Zealand as he was also working there as a farmer for four years and then he combined it so we’re talking about syncretic practices so so he combined it with his own uh professional and educational background in philosophy and transactional Analysis and also Alejandro Jovi who a while a well-known uh uh spiritualist and also uh director from Chile ER approach of Psych psychos Shamanism and she was doing this as a community healer actually in Kalen he also ran his own shop up in Kalen but uh because he was I’m going to I’m going to say it a bit naive regarding uh uh capitalistic societies he was asking for uh donations and not Fe so he became bankrupt and then this led to multiple uh um health issues and now he’s uh living as a Hermit somewhere near B uh Norman on the other hand uh a very long uh spiritual journey as a monk uh he was trained in Nido he was trained in RIS and Buddhism he then he he was educated in in Psychotherapy and then he was trained in by kurand deros by Peruvian and chilian kurand deros in aaska and then he made his own approach called No and Shamanism and now he’s actually located in in aberin um he he came back to aberin after 40 Years of wandering in around in Europe in order to take care of his ill parents that now are have passed away because of uh Spirits call Spirits calls from the spirits uh he called his approach no way so it’s a an integration of all these practices uh together so there are syntic practices Terry M calls himself or used to call himself psycho magician now he’s a Hermit and I haven’t talked to him for for a while I have spoken to Norman nowadays and he’s quite active actually uh trying to relocate himself in order to be closer to his communities in in England and he offers syncretic shamanistic for healing uh uh practices that combine Psychotherapy that Wern people understand and also some manistic techniques and ideas about nature and the cycle of life and all kinds of things that’s amazing thank you so much for that um I think that’s it for questions with anything else come in so um it just leaves now for me to say thank you so much again for no voice at all it was my pleasure say that my it was my pleasure you I aberin I’m going to visit you in August after four years that I’ve been away uh you’re going to visit brilliant yeah I’m going to visit yeah uh yeah I’m going to visit you’ll have to have to come to the alumni office and see it yeah I’m definitely gonna visit you yeah absolutely definitely thank you thank you so much for and let me say to everyone um who’s joined us thank you so much for giving your time this afternoon and I hope that you’re able to enjoy some more Sunshine wherever you are I think we were all lucky enough to have some sunshine today so hope you get to go and enjoy more of that and we’ll hopefully see you another time thank you so much