Wild Genius
Bridging & Weaving
Wild Genius into Community Through Story and Myth
A Teaching & Healing Space
Map, Compass, and Practice in the Realm of the Wonderous
The Modern Trouble:
A poisonous storm—feelings of exile, confused purpose, overwhelming grief and disintegrated lineages—forcing an endless, ineffective, crisis of reaction.
An Indigenous Remedy:
A personal and cultural revival—of discerning intimacy, initiated purpose, emotional affirmation, ancestral support and response-ability to our time.
Medicine Without an Expiry Date:
Myth: Our ancient Maps
The Elements: An unlikely Compass
Ritual: A storm-worthy Practice
As if we might really be "All Relations."
WELCOME
In this section:
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Who is this work for?
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Teaching and events we offer
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What people say
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Lineage of this work
There is a lot on this site, but you can always find your way through the main menu or the sub menu on the bottom of any particular page (on a computer) or through the site map at the very end of this page.
Who is this work for?
You are looking like minded souls that remember the old kind of community care. A way of healing and learning guided by Eldership and the timeless wisdom of story. You sense that there is a good way to connect with your own lineage and the indigenous knowledge common to our ancestors. People from all sorts of background. You might be a younger or an older, from any backgrounds love this work. You might searching, just finding your feet with your purpose, or an experienced leader. The old idea was that everyone needed to touch base with the mythic world regularly. Especially in these troubled times, educators, healers, emergency responders and social justice advocates are at risk of isolation.
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You appreciate and respect research and evidence based approaches to change.
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You already understand that complexity can't be contained within simplistic thinking.
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You are willing to be seen in the humanness of both your foibles and your genius.
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You want the kind of teaching that empowers you to apply it in your own way.
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You bring a sincere curiosity and respect to the table.
"Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now."
Maya Angelou
Teaching and Events we Offer
bring people together to reawaken belonging, purpose, appreciation, energy and the sense of playfulness by working experientially with myth.
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2.5 hr evening workshops (7:00pm to 9:30pm)
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$75 AUD [Full Tuition] or
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$60 AUD [Concession]
Gatekeepers Day of Ritual and Community
is a full (12 hour) day of practice and learning skills of ritual, myth telling and community building from a ritual perspective. Each day is a unique event, so attendance over time at several events makes for an ongoing supported study.
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12 hr (9am to 9pm) BYO lunch, snacks provided, bring a contribution to community potluck supper.
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[Full Tuition $235 AUD [Full Tuition] or
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$185 AUD [Concession]
Ambassadors World Zoom Stories
is a [Pay What You Can] zoom storytelling, once a month, in two time slots:
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Perth Sunday 3:00pm—Berlin Sunday 8:00am—London 7:00am–Melbourne Sunday 6:00pm
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Perth Sunday 11:00am—Vancouver Saturday 7:00pm—New York Saturday 10:00pm—Melbourne Sunday 2:00pm
[Free] work at your own pace online course. It is on this site, and introduces working with the elements in a ritual fashion.
Medicine Without an Expiry Date: Indigenous Remedy for Modern Trouble
is my book. There are 5 chapters[Free] in Pdf format here on this site. Purchase through Lulu Press.
What People Say . . .
One of the most brilliant healers I know trustworthy he can articulate the heartbeat of the Holy haven't laughed that long or hard in a long time the most interesting divination session I have ever attended a guide through the wild spaces reminded me of my wild expressive ability a unique and astounding ability to conceptualize and organize free-flowing ideas the Listener and the Translator stands onside with the natural authority of elemental forces wisdom humor experience and compassion shares his own expression my authentic power and natural intelligence are coming online an expert at guiding others through their confusing experiences of grief anger ecstasy and the whole array of human emotion.
Lineage: A Gift from the Dagara Elders
I've had my own practice as an independent educator for 25 years, and learned from storytellers such as Michael Meade, Daniel Deardorff, Francis Weller, Robert Bly, Martin Shaw, and Martín Prechtel, and studied Clown with David MacMurray Smith and drumming with Russell Shumsky (and others).
My studies with ritual healers from the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso, west Africa, Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé have been extensive, sometimes harrowing, and always filled with love and soul. They were directed by tribal Elders to share the Dagara knowledge of ritual with the west to show the value of their cultural traditions and wisdom. They both wrote books, and worked with people extensively during their lifetime, hoping to leave a legacy of ongoing work. In fact, Malidoma generously wrote the introduction to my book, Medicine Without an Expiry Date: Indigenous Remedy for Modern Trouble.
The table below shows the Dagara "medicine wheel" and how it relates to our timeless human dilemmas.
Dr. Malidoma Somé
EARTH
Boundaries
&
Welcoming
Intimacy
MINERAL
Separation
&
Life Purpose
Initiation
WATER
Grief Listening
&
Praise Talk
Affirmation
FIRE
Ancestor Healing
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Intuitive Guidance
Alliance
NATURE
Reaction
&
Response
Creating
BLESSINGS
In this section:
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You are the carrier of a unique wild genius
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The twisting journey that brought you here
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A generous helping
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You have remained awake
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Your work is needed
You are the carrier of a unique wild genius
Each generation, medicine-carriers quest and retrieve all of the age old medicines of culture—and dispense them during wild embodied ritual—a practice that bring humans into conversation with cosmology and mythology for a moment. Indigenous cultures create their deep sense of community by seeing every person as a carrier of some kind of healing abilities which can help community thrive. There is an actual sense of individuality opposed to modernity's "individualisticism" as Malidoma used to call it. Revealing and training the innate and unique wild genius is the realm of initiation work.
"It was the birth of agriculture—the moment we succumbed to the cult of the seed—tht the poetry of the shaman was replaced with the prose of the priest hood.
Because of course the shaman's role, was, by definition, to seek the catalytic release of the individual's wild genius, whereas the priest's role was to actually inculcate the collective into a religious ideology tha courl serve the organized, sedentary community.
So this modern world that we've moved through in the last 10,000 years . . is just one thread in the human tradition.
Dr. Wade Davis, Ethnobotanist National Geographic
Explorer -in-Residence
The twisting journey that brought you here
If you got this far, it seems likely that you are one of the ones who couldn't stand going along with the status quo. Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac called us, "The Mad Ones."
Perhaps you have the sensitive heart of an artist. Maybe you were (or are!) the "black sheep." You might have searched toward the edges . . . but edges can be forced onto people in various ways too. That changes a person.
It adds up to a heartbreak knowing that the complexity of the world and nature is being eaten away. It wouldn't be surprising to hear that you have worked on your own healing. Honest grief. There are layers. You know that.
A generous helping
Don't we all begin the healing road hoping to help ourselves? Yet it is only natural that our motivation evolves into a desire to help the world.
The help is sorely needed in the times we live in.
For the "medicine-carriers" the assignment that is presented is the path of the healer, a re-wilder of culture, the work of initiation and ritual, of myth and poetry, of "ghost-busting," of "dancing furiously in wild times," thriving, not merely surviving.
Contribution in a time of trouble is a generous helping.
You have remained awake.
Wherever you have arrived from, whatever you have been through, it is a good bet that the road has been hard. Wherever you are going, however you are travelling, it looks like there will be challenges ahead. That is the nature of the times we live in.
The American poet William Stafford admonished:
"It is important that awake people be awake . . .
the darkness around us is deep."
So . . . Thank You for "doing whatever it took" for you to make it this far. You remained awake to face the trouble.
Your work is needed
Healing has many facets. We know that it is related to our emotions, community, spirit, embodiment, ancestors, nature. Ritual is a language that bridges between all of these domains. Ritual is the old human language to communicate with the "Other-than-Human." Ritual is the language that has been called a "technology of community." It is our human birthright.
The mission is to help life " jump up alive," as Martín Prechtel called it.
Keep Going. Your work is needed in the world.
