When I started out on my journey in healing, I was motivated largely by self interest. I was a musician, and began having trouble with my hands, a terribly confronting issue for a musician, threatening one’s sense of self, identity, and threatening the need to reassess one’s chosen path in life. Having gone down the path of modern medicine with out resolving the issues, I began my exploration of all things alternative in medicine. I studied Tai Chi, Yoga, Shiatsu, Chinese Medicine, Herbal Medicine, Spiritual Healing, Shamanic Healing, crystal healing, affirmations and goodness knows what else besides. I learnt how to live with my physical limitations, and still play music. But more importantly, I began to see that Healing has a much greater dimension to it, than simply meeting one’s individual needs or desires for health. Likewise, I began to see that the causes of ill health go very deep into the bedrock of our modern western society, and that to approach health and healing on a purely individual level is to fight at best a valiant rear guard action that can stave off the worst ravages of ill health for a time, but in the long run must succumb to the overwhelming assault on our planetary life support system presented by the modern industrial consumer lifestyle.
In order for all of us to enjoy abundant health, we need to stop poisoning our life support system – our natural environment, and to maintain the natural cycles that furnish us with good air to breathe, good water to drink, good food to eat, and natural non-poisonous products that we can use to create shelter. Upon this foundation, good health can be built for all of us, including the non-human life forms that we share the planet with.
Health is however not simply a physical consideration. Good health has an emotional dimension, a mental dimension, a social dimension and a spiritual dimension. It is only when all of these dimensions are in balance that we can truly say that we are in good health. But none of these dimensions exists in isolation. We have connections to other people, to the natural environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. We are affected by the electromagnetic vibrations created by technological devices and by other people, and by the energies that collect and flow through the earth. We are affected by the beliefs and expectations of our society, and our ability to contact, channel and have experience with spiritual energies and spiritual entities such as Deities, Spirit guides, Angels, Saints and so on. In today’s world there are great disturbances in all these areas which affect our collective health.
The healer’s journey in today’s world is a difficult one, as it seems on every side that good health is being undermined by titanic forces that seem beyond the power or influence of one person to do anything about. That is why we must club together, and work together, so that collectively we can take charge of our health, and our destiny. It seems over whelming, but we can take health and heart and support from one another. One can’t do everything, but one can do something. If we all do our Somethings, then we will be moving forward towards good health for all.
This working together to achieve good health collectively is not about creating an organisation, with articles of association, a board of directors, fund raising activities and so on, although such organisations to achieve specific purposes might be a part of it. How we may best work together is based on an esoteric understanding of life and spirituality. This understanding is that we are all part of one life, and one consciousness – the life and consciousness of planet Earth, and indeed the entire universe. This is no mere intellectual understanding, no mere concept upon which we can base our reasoning or logic. This is a lived reality, or I should say, it can become a lived reality, once our organs of connection and communication are re-animated and allowed to function as they ought.
Modern consumer industrial society and it’s scientistic education system and mechanistic world view usually result in these organs of connection and communication being shut down by the time people reach adult hood. These organs are intuition, inspiration and instinct, which all of us have to some degree, and all of which can be developed using basic self development exercises. These natural organs can be further supplemented by the development of the third eye centre, which may be thought of as a communication exchange with the non material worlds – allowing for the development of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience, and indeed other methods of conscious contact with and exchange with the worlds of spirit.
However I do not ask you to believe any of the above, as that is a pointless exercise. All I ask is that you entertain the possibility that at least some of what I have said may be true, and take up some of the practices I suggest for developing your organs of connection and subtle communication. The old saying is that the proof is in the pudding. When you do the practices, and have the experiences that they bring for you, you will find that it is not a question of believing this or that, but simply a question of experiences that can be most simply explained in the way I have suggested.
We are concerned fundamentally with experience, and how to lay the ground work for them, rather than signing up to a set of beliefs.
The view that I subscribe to is explained at length in my book The Great Work. In essence, we are part of one life and consciousness, though we have forgotten it. Each of us is an organ of that life and consciousness, and we experience our greatest fulfilment when we perform the role within that greater life that is our own. However few of us reach this happy state because of our conditioning, and hyper individualism, and loss of connection to the greater life and consciousness of which we are a part. Most of us are like cancerous cells, trying to maximise our personal benefit oblivious to the effect on the greater life of which we are a part. Our society is out of control. When cells function as nature intended, they form a harmonious body, each doing it’s appointed task for the benefit of the whole. We are like cells in the body of the greater life that forms our planetary home, and if we each perform our appointed function, then health and harmony will prevail.
However it is not easy, in this society, to come to an appreciation of one’s true work. Most of us are living lives of distraction, and hence of dissatisfaction. The healer’s journey is first to come to an appreciation of his or her own true work, and then to do it, as much as they possibly can. In the case of the healer, it often involves helping others to find their own true work, and to encourage them to do it!
The Fellowship of the Stag and Flame has been established first and foremost with an emphasis on Healing because this is the fundamental issue of today’s society. It has been established in the spirit of the ancient Deities and pagan traditions of the Anglo/Celtic countries, because these are the ancestral Deities and repositories of wisdom for the people of the Anglo-Celtic diaspora. By working with the Deities and Spiritual traditions of one’s ancestors, one activates a spiritual continuity and participates in a wisdom stream that is transpersonal, and essential. By essential, I mean that there is a part of each person that resonates with and awakens to their ancestral wisdom. The Fellowship of the Stag and Flame has been established through inner plane contacts, and serves to introduce those in the fellowship to the contacts (Deities, spirit beings, ancestral spirits) of the Fellowship, which include Anglo/Celtic Deities and mytho-poetic figures. The Fellowship works primarily within an anglo/celtic framework, drawing on historical documents and folk lore. The Fellowship however does not claim any lineage to ancient Celtic teachings (other than through the Fellowship’s inner plane contacts), nor does it claim to offer initiations into any Bardic, Druidic or Wiccan traditions. While it is expected that people interested in joining the fellowship will make room in their lives for the practices and contacts of the Fellowship, there is no need to repudiate or resign from other teachings, practices or paths. The Fellowship recognises that all people have their own unique journey, and come to the fellowship with their own inner plane contacts, and space is always made for what each person brings to the fellowship, in the expectation that each person will likewise make space in their lives for what the Fellowship offers.
Robyn Wood