It is an annual spiritual event that draws hundreds of people to Squamish each May, but most local residents have likely never heard of it.
“We are a little weird, we are not your average spiritual group,” said John-Luke Edwards, an ordained shaman of The Wolven Path and one of the organizers of the Sacred Circle of Great Mystery Shamanic Society’s Residential Animist/Shamanic Conference and Gathering to be held at Squamish’ Easter Seals camp this May.
Shamans come from all over the world, Edwards said, including from South Africa, England and Finland.
Shamanism is the ancient practice of living your life in direct relationship with the spirits, said Edwards.
“When we say ‘the spirits,’ those spirits are usually different from everyone else’s,” he said.
Edwards said shamanic practitioners believe in elemental spirits such as spirits of the trees, rather than in churches and gods.
“It is about relationships with the spirits of things,” he said.
“We’re very activist, we are always out there protesting against pipelines and throwing stuff into the sea. We have a deep relationship with the earth, with the trees – that kind of spirituality.”
The annual Squamish conference brings shamans and others interested in the spiritual practice of the society for a week of sharing and learning – “where people can come together and talk… and actually do ceremony and do ritual and sing and dance under the auspices of shamanic practices,” said Edwards.
For next year’s conference, 100 participants are expected, including 10 shamanic students from the Ubuntu tribe in South Africa, he said.
“The gathering is not for one particular kind of spiritual tradition,” Edwards stressed.
“The common thing is we want to come together and be of service to our communities, and we learn from each other a greater depth of spiritual action, experience, activism, whatever we are going to call it, and then we go back to our communities and share that.”
For the first time, the conference is officially welcoming children. Previously, organizers feared youngsters would be frightened by the ancient shamanic practices that include masks and walking on hot coals, but Edwards said the few children who have come in past years with their parents weren’t afraid at all.
“They love it,” he said.
Anyone can join the Sacred Circle of Great Mystery Shamanic Society, which is an umbrella organization for those who have shamanic, animist and spiritual beliefs.
The society was founded on the Sagh’ic tradition, said Edwards, who trains Sagh’ic practitioners as his career since leaving his profession as a psychologist several years ago.
“This is an old, north European, north Asian, shamanic animist tradition that has its own belief practices and spiritual repertoire and cosmology,” he said.
Registration recently opened for this year’s The Sacred Circle of Great Mystery Shamanic Society’s Residential Animist/Shamanic Conference and Gathering.
To learn more about the conference that runs Monday, May 2 to Monday, May 9, go to circleofgreatmystery.org/2016-death-birth.
