Ceremonies & Initiations
Ceremony plays an important role in shamanism. It creates a sacred space, in which processes become more transparent and clear and can show themselves in their true form. In ceremony you can travel beyond time and form and experience the resistancelessness and infinity of your spirit. Within a ceremony, a heightened state of perception is used, so that you can perceive existence without resistance. A ceremonial space is created by opening up the space and everything that exists can be invited into that space. You follow what is necessary and what is correct. You can go into ceremony for anything, for healing, love, connection, initiations, knowledge, consciousness and eternal beauty. An initiation is a ceremony in which someone makes a transition, for example from boy to man, in which you let go of the old and enter a new state of being. It can also be an initiation into a certain form of knowledge or state of consciousness. Most ceremonies are set up this way and there is always a higher purpose or some form of knowledge behind it.
Sweatlodges
the Sweatlodge is an ancient ceremony that seems to occur in various forms all over the world. In North America you will find the Inipi, in Mexico the Temescal, in Siberia the Chadir. Even the mother of the Finnish Sauna, the Savu Sauna has many similarities with the Sweatlodge. The Sweatlodge ceremony comes from a time when people were still hunters and lived in harmony with all the cycles and movements of the earth and the universe. They used the ceremony for visions, prayer, healing, understanding and knowledge about life on earth, the universe and beyond all forms. This knowledge has not been lost and anyone who has the desire to attune to deeper layers of their being and wants to explore authenticity can find here a source of unending possibilities. The Sweatlodge helps you fall back to an original layer, a timeless state, in which you can look existence in the eye, be supported and experience the connection with everything that exists. From here comes the realization that you are deeply connected to the earth, the animals, the trees, the stars and all the people around you and that from this connection you can make contact and allow living knowledge to come to you. The Sweatlodge is an meeting with existence and everything in the ceremony and around the ceremony contributes to this. For example, we make tabaccoties, give our prayers to the winddirections, honour the stonepeople, and ask them to wake up in the fire and to hold the centre of the ceremony for us and wake us up. In the Lodge we envellop ourselves in ceremonial darkness. With only the glow of the stones we face existence, from the inside out, and look at the directionfinders and omens around us. For healing, connection, beauty, freedom, wakefulness, untouchable and pure. Everyone has their own reasons, their own prayers and their own appointment with the Sweatlodge.
