I'm delighted and honored to share with you the gifts and teachings from the Plant, Animal and Spirit Nations in my medicine bundle for Throwing the Bones Ceremony. Bone Throwing is an ancient Peruvian healing art, a Calling of the Spirits Ceremony, which offers extraordinary guidance from the vast perspectives and doctoring shared by the Spirits in the bone bundle. My apprenticeship as a Bone Thrower in the ways of Ka Ta See began in 2006. For several years, I have been engaged in extensive studies and intentional cultivation of personal relationships with the Spirit Nations who have come to be part of the bone bundle. In 2012, I received permission to give Throwing of the Bones Ceremony with individuals and groups. My teacher, Kay Cordell Whitaker, apprenticed with Chea Hetaka, a Peruvian elder in the Ka Ta See lineage. The art of Bone Throwing is a traditional medicine way passed on among the women in Chea's tribal culture in the Eastern Andes. www.pathwaysforhealing.net
BEAVER MEDICINE
KERSPLASH! That's how we first met, the beavers and me. Before this encounter, during the winter months, I'd only seen signs of the beavers' presence. They left precisely scissored stumps of willow trees along the river bank. They built an immense beaver lodge, an intricate crisscrossing stockpile of branches partly on land and gently sloping into the rippling waters. Only when spring began awakening along the Rio Grande did the animals themselves appear.
Initially, I only saw their tails. Rising up out of the water and splashing down hard. KERSPLASH! A resounding vibration. Un-ignorable. What were they saying with the splash of their tails? Were the beavers talking to me? Were they talking to each other about the woman and dog walking along the river path?
Throughout the springtime, I cherished our close encounters with the beavers. I loved seeing their furry faces just above the water's surface as they swam gracefully upriver against the currents or joyfully glided downstream. While living with ease in the waters and on the land, beavers naturally share their ways of attentive discernment. They have something to teach us about making purposeful choices.
Instinctually, beavers select specific trees and nibble with such precision to quickly cut them down. The beavers transport the fallen branches and logs by land or water to a location they have chosen. They pile up the branches just so, making a lodge with intricate living spaces inside for all their family members. They weave branches together to form tunnels to move safely into and out of the lodge, discrete passages which they take directly into the river. Beavers have a distinctive means of communication, splashing their tails to awaken attention to a particular circumstance.
Every action has a purpose. Everything is a choice.
Though I no longer live riverside among the beavers, I still hear their un-ignorable watery splashes – an energetic communication calling to my spirit and resonating in my heart and mind.
Kersplash! "What are you choosing, right here and now, in this particular moment? And why?"
Kersplash! "How are you building your life, your family, your home? Are you selecting each and every element with discernment and care?"
Kersplash! "Be aware of what you construct with the choices you make, with the thoughts you think, the actions you take. Are you heading in the direction you really want to go?"
Kersplash! "Remember!" say the Beavers with the splash of their tails and the rippling waves in the waters. "You always have a choice."
JoAnne Dodgson is a healer, author and teacher of Ka Ta See, a unique Peruvian tradition from the Eastern Andes.
JoAnne has adoctorate in counseling psychology and has pursued an extensive twelve-year shamanic apprenticeship to live and learn the Ka Ta See tradition and share the ancient teachings and ceremonial ways.
For more information, please visit:
www.pathwaysforhealing.net
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