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by your own notions of the worlds you want to enter.
Pathworking provides us with a way of entering larger-than-
life situations where, in participating in a mythic cycle, meet-
ing with goddesses, spirits, beings from all aspects of reality,
you may gain new insights about ourselves and the world, or
can initiate new cycles of change and activity. You can explore
symbols & myths which arise from the Social world - from the
past and from fantasy, and you can also explore images which
arise from the Personal world. Through them, you can explore
dream imagery consciously; re-enter your personal past and
discover the forgotten or hidden oaths or promises which we
make to ourselves. You can explore other senses, using music,
incense or tastes, and see what associations and images well
up from the Deep Mind. You can take on the shapes of ani-
mals, real or imaginary, and discover qualities which might lie
beyond other people s writings and correspondences. You can
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die periodically, and be reborn, altered subtly by the experi-
ence. You can form relationships with spirits of all aspects,
which can then be further worked into other magickal activi-
ties. Perhaps most importantly, they can help in developing
both the intuition and the sense of discrimination. Not every-
thing you ll encounter in your mindscapes will be benevolent,
nor will it necessarily be telling the truth. We have an amazing
capacity for lying to ourselves, making out we know things we
don t, trying to impress others, and these qualities, just as any
others, can be found in the innerworlds. All magickal systems
have stories about this, about spirits who lie or distract the
unwary. Ghosts are notoriously capricious, and you need to
develop a sense to recognise the validity of an experience. This
is difficult, especially in a society like ours when most infor-
mation comes out of books or a screen. This, like many other
times, is where it is beneficial to have someone else around to
talk to.
You can begin experimenting with pathworkings by perform-
ing simple journeys based around the images of what you know
about yourself. You must be willing to explore and map the
areas of self - likes, dislikes, habits, fears, past experiences
and dreams, translating them into images from which you can
base a journey on; otherwise, the mindscapes you consciously
decide to explore may serve only to further distort the story of
how you would like to see yourself as, and how you actually
are.
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AXIS MUNDI
The Axis Mundi, or central axis, is the centre of the shamanic
universe. It is the point from which the shamanka can begin all
journeys, and is found, in different guises, in all shamanic and
magickal systems. The Axis Mundi is the place where all the
spheres meet , from which the shaman can move into any of
the innerworlds, and perform magickal feats and tasks. It ap-
pears, in different cultures, in many forms. For example, for
the Warao Indians of Venezuala, the hub of the universe is the
the sacred rattle. In Haitian Voudou, the crossroads is the cen-
tral point where all roads meet . A contemporary practitio-
ner of Voudou has described New York City in terms of every
crossroads being a place sacred to the Gods, and references to
crossroads as places with magickal virtue can be found in Brit-
ish folklore. Elsewhere, the axis mundi appears as a sky lad-
der, world-tree, post, pillar, or sacred mountain. The image of
the world-tree is a very enduring one, which appears in
shamanic cultures all over the world, and it is likely that the
Biblical tree of knowledge, and its esoteric counterpart, the
Otz Chaim of Qabalah have been developed from shamanis-
tic sources. Remember, shamanism is the root of magick, as
well as art, dance, theatre, and philosophy. All magickal sys-
tems have elements of the shamanic in them. The world-tree
image also appears in alchemical texts, is depicted in cave-
paintings that date back to the Palaeolithic era, and in tantrik
iconography as the tree on which the sacred letters of the Hindu
alphabet hang.
It is important to recognise that, for practitioners of magick
(whatever approach you adopt), that the Axis Mundi is not
only a physical object or place, but also an internal condition -
the axis, as it were, of your inner life and experience. It is a
matter of poise or equilibrium - developing inner balance. At
first, this statement seems to be paradoxical, after all, much of
shamanic activity often comes across as incomprehensible to
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