Incantation:

Initiator and Guide

 They live within the psyche and elemental presence of this place
These ancient ancestral figures
Our deep time forebears

They seep into the visceral world of this image-story-maker
Into the deep psyche
they are made manifest in primordial image-stories

i meet my ancient forbears on the banks of this beautiful Black River
We renew our connective bonds
we perform the ritual ceremonial dance of life
The cyclic dance of transformation

We honour our ancient ancestral connection
Bridging deep time
Renewing our mutual sacred bonds within nature

We look to the connective authority of the more-than-human in nature
Honouring other nature’s initiatory attributes
Honouring primal consciousness
Honouring connective consciousness

We look to the Black River Cormorant to be our guide
Our spirit other
She is our Black River Raven
Our Sheshamen
She embodies the authority to initiate

This Great Black River Raven emerges from the depths of the river
Her vast underworld
She pierces this translucent portal to be manifest
She unfurls her iridescent cloak
And her shape-shifting psyche
She assumes her role as initiator

She presides over our acts of ritual dance
Our maturation process
Our threshold journeys
Our rites of passage

She guides our energy and focus
Brings us into a state of heightened ecological receptivity
A deep attuned connective consciousness

She conducts our ritual ceremonial dance
Our acts of transmutation
We enact the identity of our totemic other
Acquiring the attributes of our primal selves

We acquire deep visceral attunement
Deep visceral identification within the connective web of nature
We acquire balance and reciprocity
The reconditioning of our souls

Balancing and traversing the feminine and masculine spectrum
Balancing the psyche and the soma
Balancing self and other

We accomplish primal connective unity
The foundational psychic balance of our Earthminds

This establishes the conditions for our ecological balance
Our earth consciousness
Our earth responsibility
And the processing of our totemic identity
In this way we are joined in the greater psyche of nature

We are joined to our totemic other

We cross the primordial threshold
Enabling our attuned recognition of allied inter-connectivity across all of nature
We are able to comprehend the finely tuned flow of relationships
Across the whole Earthland

We understand that this demands a state of deep respect
The condition of reverence
The outflow of equity and mutuality
Across all parts of the nature system

Our ecological consciousness is attuned
We operate as ecological beings

Through cyclic time we fulfil our ritual journey
Our responsibility to the Earthland

We emerge in our transformed state of consciousness
Part of ecological time
Agents of nature
We have renewed and fulfilled our earth responsibility

The Great Cormorant has completed her task as initiator
Fulfilled her own earth responsibilities
Given her gift as guide to the connective web of the Earthland

She furls her great wings
And dives to the depths of the Black River
She cleanses herself of the roles of guide and initiator
She reclaims her primal identity
Her primal consciousness flows as the river

We offer her thanks for this maturational journey
For the renewal of our psychic balance
For the ritual ceremonial dance within nature
We honour our cross species guide
Our Black River Raven

We offer this template of maturational development to Modern Humans
This threshold journey into the bonds of nature.