The Recast Path
Site Under Construction
How I got here
How does anyone end up on their path? Chance and intent and discernment all play a part. A great deal of what I am offering through this web site is informed by sustained work and study with two first nations teachers, the late Malidoma Some and the very alive Martin Prechtel.
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Others who have shaped my understanding include, Robert Bly (the Vietnam protest poet who wrote Iron John), credited with kick starting the ‘mytho-poetic men’s movement' (pictured), mythologist Michael Meade, Jungian James Hillman and author Robert Moore (the much quoted Warrior King Magician Lover). And Sobonfu Some, (also sadly passed) added her laughter, insight and mischief along the way.
Alongside this path, I have had regular ‘suited and booted’ jobs, trying to weave ‘my best life’ and spiritual understandings into harder places of towns and cities, work and business, a necessary practice and rarely easy, but always important! And I am often in the wild on a much loved northern hill and by, or on, the sea (sometimes very wild!)
AS TEACHER AND RITUALIST
It is my hope to share the understandings and experiences each of my teachers has brought, now adapted and crafted for these days and these lands. Underpinning all is the importance of community, kindness to one another, reverence for place and love for our beautiful wild flowering Earth, and the hope that all we might do together feeds the unseen world that, in turn, feeds us and keeps life living.
I am now of an age when I find myself installed in the role of ‘elder’ from time to time, (though I am not at all attached to the title). But without community such roles are empty.
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Accordingly, I hunger to be involved in communal rituals, one’s I help grow, or might be invited to attend. The whole, always an echo, or a memory in another time or place, which we seek to bring to life with fine words, beauty, song or dancing and ritual.
Such traditions as we once had in this land, and the stories that accompanied them are largely lost. It is with seeds from other lands, planted in this one, that I attempt to coax what is native here, yet so hard to find, more fully into life.
AS PRAYER MAKER
The art of speaking well and beautifully, and from the heart, with authority, knowing you are being heard so your language is itself a sweet delight on the ear of the listener, runs through my work. I highlight it here as it is a capacity I seem to have acquired that stands out from time to time, to open and close doors in rituals, in response to an event, to elucidate/annunciate longing and articulate desire or moods felt by an individual or a community. It can also to give direction and understanding to a situation or a particular moment.
Prayers don’t have to be long. Done well they can move the hearts of the listener and also shift the perception in the moment. This is a skill I have witnessed practised mainly by Martin Prechtel (pictured), in person and in his books. It is also a part of a bardic tradition native to this land that invokes nature and the spirits of land and place, who upon hearing their names called out well can lend their own magic and presence to an occasion.
Master prayer maker, ritualist and teacher Martin Prechtel, the biggest influence on the offerings I have to share.
AS STORYTELLER
I am an experienced storyteller and use stories predominantly in ritual settings, to reflect what is going on in the ritual, the story holding themes or characters that others can relate to. Often told in one sitting, stories can be paused, to prompt actions and reflections and evoke emotion. These prompts can contribute to a healing process. Stories can hold initiatory mysteries and so can be told as parts of a Rites of Passage.
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Stories have their own life, and traditions, many have lived centuries before they reach us. I do my best to feed the stories and acknowledge these traditions in my telling.
If you ever have the good fortune to hear him address the seen and the unseen, lucky you.
Facilitator, Sussex