Lineage
Our lineage lies not only in our DNA, but in our hearts.
It is said that if we seek healing from the land and its medicines, we just have to step into our back garden. The great English acupuncturist J. R. Worsley said “Local herbs are not ten times stronger, not one hundred times stronger. Local herbs are one thousand times stronger than exotic ones!” So what does this mean, when we find ourselves drawn toward a native medicine from a country that is not our own? When we feel a deep resonance with the traditions of another lineage?
One of my shamanic teachers has said on this topic, “We are all drinking from the same well. Lineage is available to those who seek it.”
The lineage that courses through our veins may at times feel very different to the one that beats in our heart. When we approach these traditions with knowledge, reverence and respect (and appropriate, traditional training where applicable), we can create a beautiful synergy that will serve us on our healing journey.
When I work with a traditional medicine, I welcome the medicine and the lineage that travels with it. I also honour the lineage that came from the land upon which I work with this medicine.
My training in Celtic Shamanism and work as a kambo practitioner at first taste may seem like a bit of a mismatch, but I have allowed these two practices to dance together. A dance between the energies of the Celtic land I sit upon and the energies that travel from the Amazon alongside kambo. It is a dance that converges in my heart.
Serving kambo in Ireland, atop the bones of my ancestors, I ground into the Irish soil and connect to my lineage. I connect to the birth place of Celtic healing, which is said to come from the sea.
The Phyllomedusa Bicolor is the frog in the Amazonian jungle that announces the rain.
Like the origin of Celtic medicine, kambo is a spirit of water.
As I serve kambo, I see every rain drop that falls during ceremony as a blessing. I like to see it as the spirits of this land welcoming the frog home. This rainy isle may not be its traditional home, but it is a home where it will be welcomed with reverence, and a home I dare say the frog might feel quite comfortable splashing around in.
Viva Kambo. Viva the lineage of the heart. Sin é.