Celtic Shamanism by Jane Burns

What You’ll Discover in These 7 Modules
In this 7-part transformational intensive, Jane will guide you through the fundamental spiritual skills and competencies you’ll need to unveil and reclaim the life you’re meant to live — through the wisdom of the Celtic Medicine Wheel.

This course will feature teachings, training sessions, and experiential practices with Jane. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to connect with Celtic Gods and Goddesses and the ancestors, Bards, Druids, and Faeries to awaken your soul and the sacred within you.

Module 1: Explore the Celtic Medicine Wheel — A Quest for an Honorable & Meaningful Life (August 28)

We’ll begin by creating and entering a sacred gathering place or circle, which the ancient Celts called a nemeton — a clearing in the forest or a Neolithic site. The nemeton was viewed as a place of invocation, ceremony, and creation — a place where heaven and earth united.

We’ll also explore the Celtic Medicine wheel, a nemeton in its own right, and make a brief stop at each of the five points or airts of the wheel, witnessing how this ancient tool outlines some of the core challenges of living an honorable and meaningful life.

Lastly, we’lll hear and contemplate a very old Celtic tale called “The Settling of the Manor of Tara,” which answers the question for the characters in the tale — as well as for us: What is the proper order of things?

In this module, you’ll:

Begin to ask the important questions about who you are, how you live your life, where you feel strength, and where you experience loss and depletion
Ascertain a deep truth about yourself that has been forgotten
Investigate what roles you would welcome playing in this life
Evaluate the ways you are divided against yourself and how to close that breach
Identify the “false gods” to whom you have given away your allegiance, and the core purpose of your life that requires that allegiance
Understand how you have given away your sovereignty and what it takes to reclaim it
Module 2: Marrying the Land — Creating a Prosperous Life (in All Ways) in the Celtic Tradition (September 4)

In the Celtic tradition, prosperity of all kinds comes from the Land, or more specifically, from the Goddess Sovereignty. To maintain prosperity in their lives, the Gaels served the Goddess with their devotion and reverence, and they emulated her unconditional generosity by raising hospitality to a virtue, which they conscientiously honed.

This “giving to increase” principle extended not just to feeding a beggar or helping your neighbor harvest his crop. It includes pursuit and service to the deeper yearning of your soul and the role it longs to play. Your greatest contribution in life is bringing to excellence and mastery whatever skill or craft you are called to pursue.

In this module, we will probe the story of Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny, and recognize the ways in which Lia Fail lives within you.

In this module, you’ll:

Bring your gifts and talents out of the closet
Go back and unearth forgotten dreams and yearnings
Vow allegiance to the inner yearnings of your soul
Marry the land of your destiny

Module 3: Experience Music Like the Ancient Celts — Change Your ‘Tune’ & Cultivate Peace & Harmony (September 11)

In the ancient Celtic lands, music was believed to be a gift from the gods, a creation of the Otherworld known as the Oran Mor, or the Great Song. Song kept the world in a state of harmony and that harmony was carefully tended by the Fae, inhabitants of the Otherworld.

It was observed that life was chaotic, arduous, and harsh, and that humans required a way to lift themselves out of the mire, to bring themselves closer to the gods, if they were ever to attain their sovereignty — their own divinity. Music, and the inspiration and comfort it provided, was the force that enabled that ascen -dance.

In this module, you’ll:

Experience the healing power of the three strains of music: joy, sorrow, and peace
Discover powerful ways to cultivate inner peace and harmony
Learn to change the tune of discord with gratitude and surrender
Discover how to see and hear with the eyes and ears of a faery
Module 4: Open to the Wisdom of Who You Truly Are — And Surrender to the Unknown (September 25)

Moving beyond the boundaries of what is known demands a bold willingness to forge into uncharted waters, to surrender to the unknown. In core shamanic practice, this is called becoming the hollow bone — letting go of the familiar, of what you think you know, and allowing numinous experience, divine wisdom, and expansive vision to fill you.

In the Celtic tradition, this kind of journey is called an immrama, and might even entail going to sea in a corracle, an oarless boat, and allowing the sea to take you to where she sees fit.

When we sail into boundless and unpredictable waters, we enter a realm that is teeming with possibility. Navigating these waters demands our focus. No one can predict what mysteries these waters contain, but our journey into them is imperative if we are to explore this important question in every person’s life: Who am I?

In this module, you’ll:

Deeply investigate the question “Who am I?”
Undertake the living of your life as a heroic journey
Question the boundaries of your own limitations
Devote your life to the greatest wisdom of all — the wisdom of who you are
Explore the expansive sea within yourself for gifts of insight and liberation

Module 5: Lean Into the ‘Rough Places’ — The Path to Wholeness, Sovereignty & Grace (October 2)

The greatest battle in life — the only true battle — is the battle within. We are deeply divided beings, severed by our loyalties to an outer temporal world and an inner timeless world.

The depth of that division correlates directly with the measure of struggle we experience in life — be it emotional and physical distress, relationship discord, work dissatisfaction, family trauma, or lack of abundance. The greater the division, the greater the struggle.

We’ll visit the Celtic mythic figure of The Washer at the Ford, who will emphasize how the earth is a place of change — of rough places — and we are called upon by our soul to lean into those reshaping forces and allow ourselves to be broken, reconfigured, rebirthed, and perfected.

In this module, you’ll:

Discover practices to release the false beliefs and selves that hold you hostage
Learn to nurture what grows in their place
Discover how to accept not just your destiny, but the effort it requires to live it
Learn ways to eulogize what no longer serves you, and let it go
Module 6: Cultivate Your Sovereignty — And Reclaim Strength, Imagination & Your Soul’s Purpose (October 9)

Celtic wisdom defines sovereignty as being in right standing with the earth beneath us, the heavens above, and the soul inside us. It means knowing your place in the world and standing firmly in it.

We begin life with little or no sovereignty. Children cannot carry the responsibilities that sovereignty implies. In childhood, we develop adaptive skills that help us negotiate challenges and ensure our survival. Maturation requires the reclaiming of our place and standing.

In the Celtic spirit world, there is no greater sin than stealing or manipulating away the sovereignty of another, and the story of Macha will illustrate this for us. We’ll reclaim and become devoted to our own sovereignty, and realize the accomplishments and capabilities of others pose no threat to us. Far from diminishing us, the strengths and talents of others inspire and light our own pathway to sovereignty.

In this module, you’ll:

Focus your attention on cultivating your own sovereignty
Witness — with compassion — the ways in which you give away your sovereignty
Develop self-sustaining responses and behaviors
Call back lost strength, imagination, and purpose
Identify your role models and challenge yourself to emulate the virtues they demonstrate

Module 7: Discover the Greatest Contributor to Our Sovereignty — Forgiveness of Ourselves & Others (October 16)

When we are sovereign, we’re at peace with the world around us and the world within us. Inherent in the state of being sovereign is a spirit of allowance — letting things be. In Gaelic, this is what is known as being an sith, which refers to the imagined peace of the Faerylands and the Faery folk, namely the Sidhe, who lived in a realm of no struggle, illness, or deprivation.

What disturbs our equilibrium and peace — our sovereignty — is oftentimes what we cannot let go of, what we cannot “allow.” In blessed moments of clarity, we recall that the only true battle is the battle within us.

The Celts were a warlike and fierce people, but they were also very moral, and their stories are filled with the misfortunes that befall us when we choose arrogance, blind ambition, pride, and jealousy over forgiveness, grace, and humility.

As we end this course, we’ll uncover the greatest contributor to our sovereignty through the story of Finn macCumhail and Diarmuid — forgiveness of ourselves and others.

In this module, you’ll:

Practice avoiding the struggles that steal your tranquility
Identify what and who needs to be forgiven
Learn how you can forgive everyone
Establish a daily practice of choosing peace over being right
Become a vigilant witness to the ways in which you lose sovereignty
Reallocate lost strength to more fruitful goals …