Soul Retrieval and Don Juan

Photographer: Sam Pidgen

After thinking long and hard I have decided to go for a soul retrieval treatment. What on earth is that, asked my highly sceptical son earlier today, when I told him.  According to wikipedia it is a New Age shamanic practice often coupled with past life regression, whose purpose is to reintegrate the soul as this may have become trapped, disconnected, fragmented or partially lost through traumas and similar experiences. Carlos Castaneda calls it  recapitulation. Last week was an important one in my life. Just as  I was reflecting on my current malaise, the sense of doom I feel, the anguish, the sense that someone is draining me of all my energy through invading my psychic space, JonMWells on deviantArt sent me a link to Castaneda's books, downloadable in pdf.from Torrent. 

 Photographer: CM

That message instantly brought back memories of the time when in my late teens  I read and reread Carlos Castaneda's  experiences with Don Juan and Mescalito. I immediately got hold of the first book of the series, The Teachings of Don Juan,  and started the journey down memory lane. Then I remembered Tensegrity, the technique created by Carlos to activate the Magic Passes, I went online to refresh my memory  and coincidentally I found a class near my home. I went there last Tuesday and it was very, very interesting, I will certainly go back. 
And then I felt the urge to find out more about soul retrieval and past life regression. I searched on the web and found a consultant that does it. You have to follow your instincts in such matters. She had all the suitable affiliations and testimonials but it was her face I felt drawn to. So I called her and went immediately for a free consultation, which was to establish what I needed. 

Photographer: Gina King

I explained how I felt. I gave her some personal history, people that have recently died, people I have had conflicts with etc etc "Let your unconscious mind speak" she said. "Answer this question. In percentage, how much of your soul do you feel is with you now" "Twenty per cent" I said, without thinking too much about it, it just came. "No wonder you feel so depleted". We went through other similar questions about how many lives I felt I had shared with this person or that person.  She asked me about my son. "Fourteen" I said, again without thinking. We both laughed. Yep, he has been with me through all those lives, no wonder I have always felt he had come along to protect me - I often refer to him as "my sanity", as he truly is, he is the one that brings me back to reality. 

Photographer: Erwan 

I was hooked on this. I have made an appointment for the first session, I really look forward to it.  I have decided that I will work on myself throughout the summer, I need to feel really well and empowered once again. No anonymous comments on my blog will ever cause havoc for me again!
Some of you will probably think I have gone insane. No, not quite, let me explain. I was actually discussing something similar with my therapist who is a Lacanian psychoanalyst. Work with her is slow but very, very deep, we are working on details. Sometimes we discuss concepts,  whatever comes to mind.  One day I remembered something I had read about psychotherapists being the shamans of contemporary western society and I asked her how she felt about it. "Never mind about me" she said. "How do YOU feel about it?" "I like it as a definition" I said "it makes sense" and I also remembered a book I read a few years ago by Piers Vitebsky. It was a compelling ethnographic account, with very moving stories, of the dialogues with the dead, through a shaman, that the Sora tribals of Eastern India  perform.  

Photographer: Nick@dunharrow.co.uk

The book put side by side the Freudian interpretation of mourning and  melancholy, fundamental to western attitudes to grief and bereavement, with the Sora cosmological system,  respectful of  their inner logic. Through the shamanic performance the Sora engage in a dialogue with their memories, the dead conjured up by the shaman are none other than public memories.  The Sora  negotiate their sense of loss and their grief through this shamanic performance, a way of "banishing" painful memories, the "spirits".  You have to take this system in its wholeness and understand it works only if you embrace its inner logic, explaining it from the inside as it were, in the same way as Castaneda, a trained anthropologist,  embraced and explained the world of Don Juan. 
You do the same when you embrace a Freudian worldview in psychoanalysis and indeed when you embrace "soul retrieval".  Whether it is my soul's fragments or my memories does not really matter - it is the healing that matters. 

Photographer: Eoghan Brennan

Were it possible I'd apprentice myself to Don Juan, as Carlos did, but the likelihood of doing it in London today is very remote - Don Juan is not here and I dont know how to conjure him up. And there is that small matter of having access to Mescalito...
So for now it is soul (which for some reason my spell checker keeps on changing into "sold") retrieval and Tensegrity. I feel I have been held back for so long, I need to feel whole again and the way to do that is through going deeper and deeper down Alice's rabbit hole.


(All photos modelled by Alex B)