Now, I must record what my first impressions of what I have come to call "The Great Power", the central mystery which I experienced upon my entry into the world of shamanic cognition.
From the first time I engaged this altered state of awareness, and all the way to my most recent occasion, I have always sensed the massive presence of what call the "Great Power". The easiest way to describe this "Great Power" is in terms of a great force or power that is operating "below the surface" of perception, and acting as the internal or unseen energetic reality for all things that we experience with our senses, as well as acting as a common source and unifying factor for the same. It is the source of all things, and nothing can be apart from it; all forms that we encounter are arisen from it like waves from the ocean.
While my drumbeat was going, I could "see" the Great Power "underneath" the sounds, and see that it was fully a part of the reality of those sounds. Without it, those sounds couldn't exist to be heard by my ears. While I was "looking" with my other eyes, I could see that trees, houses, blades of grass, clouds, and my whole being were all arisen from this great hidden Power, which was like their inner reality, the thing that made them all appear as they did. It also united them all, in a deeper way. Even the "power" that is the vehicle of the awareness I call "my own" has this Great Power underlying it.
This Great Power could not be seen ordinarily, though when I was able to "see" it with my other senses, it acted as a twin or counterpart to all things that I had originally thought were separate. It made the entire world seem like one great event, as opposed to many separate and unrelated events. This power was and is dynamic, infinite, and inexhaustible. It was and is a great mystery to me. Carlos Castaneda called this very same reality "the dark sea of awareness" and he rightly calls it the source of all energies or powers.
The Great Power was not and is not oppressive to the senses; it is exhilarating, in a way, to realize that even the most subtle substances, like air or the light breath of the wind, are, in reality, expressions of this Great Power. But the experience of it can be disconcerting, for it can seem dangerous or even predatory, which I will discuss later.
Wind is an expression of the Great Power, and so are animals, plants, human beings, and even inorganic beings like spirits. All things are. I can say with confidence that this great and mysterious power-reality underlies all times, places, things, and events, and it is the timeless and perpetual source and sustainer of all living and non-living things. It is the ultimate energetic reality of the universe, but darkly hidden beneath the veils of perception. It donates power to all forms, sending forth a nonstop donation of power like a waterfall. It never stands still, and is always involved in all things. The bounty of nature, the constant seeping forth of life and arising of life through nature is an expression of this ceaseless donation, along with the bounty of nature.
The Great Power has a creative quality. All forms that appear to your senses are arisen from it, and all forms become resolved back to it, eventually. It is universe or nature as creative force, connecting force, and sustaining force. If the human subconscious mind can be compared to the Great Power in the sense that both are mysterious "underlying realities" for surface-level phenomenon, then Jung was correct to posit that the unconscious or subconscious had a creative power. In some ways, the Great Power can be compared with Jung's notion of collective unconscious, in its most transpersonal sense.
But there is one more element of the Great Power that must be discussed, and though this element is difficult to talk about, it cannot be ignored: This Great Power is itself possessed of intent. It is universe or nature as intentional unfolding of force and combinations of force. I will expand on the implications of this at the end of this work.
Some wonder whether or not The Great Power has some central "mind" or "sense of self" like a human has, just on some massive scale, making it very similar to a theistic notion, but I must say that I do not personally believe it does. To attribute such a thing to it would be to force it to conform to some anthropomorphic model born in ordinary cognition, and its mystery is infinitely greater and higher than such a thing can express or handle.
However, I do believe that the Great Power can be said to be "aware" in every single iota of animate energy that exists, including the awareness of each human being, so in a way, as you read these words right now, or become aware of these words, it is becoming aware of them, as well. In all that we experience and come to awareness of, I can say with certainty that the universe itself is sharing in that experience, and coming to awareness of itself in us. I must also repeat that this entire massive power seems to have intent, such that all events coming to pass in what we call "the unfolding of space and time" are not merely random.
By this point, most of my readers will probably be wondering how they can fit this notion of the "Great Power" into the world's great belief systems; they are wondering if it can be said to be the same as Brahman, Wakan Tanka, Sila, Manitou, the Great Spirit, the Tao, God, Allah, The All, and many other things. I must say, I do not favor such wholesale comparisons. I make no attempts to draw such connections; I merely deal with the Great Power on its own terms as it presents itself to my inner senses.
I am willing to concede that the various cultures on earth who gave us names like "Brahman" and "Wakan Tanka" and "Great Spirit" or even "God" may indeed have experienced the reality I am calling "The Great Power", and their beliefs are based on the experience. But determining whether or not this actually happened, and whether or not the reality I call "The Great Power" is the true source for the beliefs of others is not something I feel the need to pursue. For the purposes of shamanic and mystical endeavor as I am discussing it here, such exercises in speculation are useless. It is enough that The Great Power exists, and can be experienced.
What I am willing to do is focus on a few traditional ideas that come down to us from the common fund of eastern and western thinking, which are not normally associated with mainstream religions, and attempt to understand them from the perspective of the Great Power.
The idea of Fate so common to ancient Indo-European religious complexes and philosophies, and all its manifestations, whether the Wyrd of the Germanic peoples or the notion of "Providence" (which originally referred to a Roman Goddess of Fate but came to mean the "will" of the God of Judeo-Christianity operating in the unfolding of history) are all inseparable from and rooted in The Great Power.
The closest ancient correlations you will get from the European Pagan world to The Great Power are the notions of Fate or Wyrd. Despite what some may say, it is clear that Fate, depicted sometimes as a single ancient woman or a trinity of women who carried the implements of weavers and wove the lives and destinies of all beings, was originally a Goddess in her own right. In later mythologies, she or they appear as an impersonal force, or as beings distinct in essence from the other Gods and Goddesses, but I contend that Fate herself was one of the most ancient Goddesses that human beings first connected themselves with on a spiritual level.
I believe that this is the case because The Great Power is somehow involved in the web of awareness that is the size of the universe, and it has intent. It is the source of all things, so if a person desired, they could easily see it as a "parent" to all things; some would naturally incline, due to socialization, to call it "Father"; it could just as easily be seen as a "mother", and was, by many ancient cultures.
To deify the Great Power would be a natural and normal conclusion on the part of any group of humans, and I think this happened with the concept of Wyrd or Fate. To be clear, I think that the ancient notion of Fate was an expression of my European ancestors' experience of The Great Power, and their awareness of its all-pervasive role in their lives and in the unfolding of reality, and most especially the influence it had over every aspect of life, including the inner lives of human beings.
But before my ancestors in Europe had their beliefs change over time to the point where Fate was seen as a mysterious, impersonal force, and finally to a mere abstraction that no one really understood, I think that "Wyrd" or Fate was seen as itself/herself a Goddess among the Germanic peoples, originally, and among the Proto-Germanic peoples. I think this was a deification of The Great Power on their part.
When discussing "deification" of the Great Power, it is important to realize that while The Great Power can be approached in terms of divinity (just a very vast and mysterious divinity) it must not be considered a divinity in the way the Gods and Goddesses of ancient cultures were considered divinities. Gods and Goddesses are individual spirits- they are inorganic beings, possessed of animate power or energy and intent, and they have their own mysterious modes of cognition (in common with all spirits), and their own hidden ecology by which they are able to exist as coherent, continuous "fields of energy" or aggregates of living energy. Some have immense and deep modes of cognition that make them seem nearly omniscient.
All spirits, including those who have been worshipped as Gods and Goddesses by human beings, are similar to human beings in one important manner- both spirits and humans are arisen from The Great Power, and united in it. It is the common parent-source to both organic and inorganic beings. In the system of reality, all beings can be seen as united by the origin in a singular source. Polytheism is thus seen to be based on rightful perceptions of energetic reality on the parts of ancient people, and myths are the means by which ancient sages, shamans, and mystics were able to communicate (in a metaphorical manner) something about how the spirits they knew and worshipped interacted with one another, and sometimes with human beings.
It is very apparent to me and to others that the "creation" of the God of Judeo-Christianity began with a conflation of two different realities: the reality of a tribal God, or a sky and storm God of some kind, and the reality of The Great Power. Where Pagan peoples were always careful to draw a distinction between the Gods and the great power of Fate, the ancient Hebrews, followed by Christians and Muslims, seem to worship an amalgam of the two concepts, in which a God is melded with The Great Power, and afterwards seen as the "God greater than all other Gods". The resulting being is believed to be all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful, three attributes that any being certainly could seem to have if it were seen as synonymous with (or confused with) the underlying energetic and causal force of all reality. The "God" idea so produced by this conflation would resemble in every way the notion of the Supreme Being in monotheistic faiths, and every event in what we call "history" would be seen as its providential will causing the unfolding of things.
This theological and philosophical "error of judgment" is both more and less of an error than people may imagine; while it led to devastating religious conclusions that led to mass-conversion and religious imperialism, it also places human beings in a position to relate to The Great Power in a most personal manner. Whether or not you think of this as wisdom will depend on your own personal tendencies.
What is important to understand is that all of the stories and myths of the polytheistic world regarding Gods, Goddesses, and spirits do not refer to mere superstitions or empty fictions on the parts of human beings- they refer to actual living powers, living spirits that still exist and can still be experienced through shamanic cognition. I will speak more below of the Gods and of their importance to modern recensions and revivals of cultural animistic and polytheistic religions in the modern day.
In many myths, the great source of all things is deified as a great Father or a great Mother figure, and placed in a "generation" long before the Gods. Such a thing makes perfect sense in light of what we have been discussing. Of course, humans could just as quickly decide that The Great Power was too abstract and distant for deification, and leave it on some abstract level, or view it as impersonal, its workings mysterious.
One can see such a thing in the mysteries of Taoism, for I do not doubt that the Tao is a Chinese Folk understanding of The Great Power. The Tao is the mysterious meta-law that stands behind all expressions of reality; the presence and activity of the Great Power could easily be described as a hidden Meta-law for all things, and as the mother of all things, which the Tao is called. For all that, no one worships the Tao; instead, personal balance and peace is sought by meditating on the Tao and learning to be aware of it in all things.
It is clear to me that human beings can successfully approach The Great Power and experience its power in their lives from any perspective, whether a strongly theistic one, a strongly abstract non-personal one, or some mixture of the two. Which "way of knowing" The Great Power a person will be most comfortable with will be based on the character of their experience of it, and also on the tendencies planted in them by socialization and their own personality.
I believe that The Great Power is the reality that stands behind my own religion's belief in Wyrd and in related ideas of Fate, but I have no need to dwell on this fact in my own spiritual practices, whether they be the Wyrd-working of my own Asatru faith or the Seid that I perform within the context of the same, or my more general shamanic practices. As I said before, what is more important than understanding theories about The Great Power and its relationship to historical religious concepts is experiencing it and working with it now on its own terms and in the context of our lives right this moment.
