A few weeks ago, Tik Tok learned that you don’t need to take pebbles to connect to sacred things…
I try to avoid doom scrolling on Tik Tok (preferring to doom scroll on Reddit, if I’m being honest), but now and again, controversies from one platform spill over to another and capture my attention. Pebblegate is one of those.
If you’re unfamiliar, an American witch travelled to the Clava Cairn in Scotland, and, asking the ground for permission, took a pebble from the site home with her to, presumably, include in her collection of sacred objects (but I’m guessing here and didn’t watch the video).
The uproar was fierce, even amongst Scots and Brits who are not remotely spiritual. National monuments of this nature are sacred in many ways. The overall feeling was that, taking things in this manner is simply not on.
I cringed to see this situation unfold, selfishly – mind you, because people where I live in west Scotland don’t really understand shamanic work (I’m often referred to as a ‘spooky wumman’, which cracks me up, but also, I’m like, ‘c’mon guys…’ which, naturally, encourages them take the piss even more. Ha!) and I regret that this kind of thing should be their introduction.So, let’s unpack this situation…
Thou shall not throw the first…errrr… cairn pebble?
One of the massive challenges of doing spiritual work in a culture that’s had its spiritual traditions interrupted is that we end up treating our unverified personal gnosis as gospel.
I get why this happens. My culture and our knowledge about our pre-Christian spiritual ways are fragmented at best. We do know some stuff. We have the lore, history and archaeology to guide us, but the gaps are real.
For example, we know all sorts of things that the insular celts did, but no idea as to why they did things in the detail that would allow us to continue a particular practice or ritual, if even there was one. It’s like, we get all these tantalising clues, but in the end, it comes down to one academic’s best guess over another’s.
So how do we know what’s right when it comes to formulating our own spiritual practise?
Those of us who are spiritual and from North America are of course going to be influenced by North America’s own Indigenous traditions. I was adopted in and did ceremony with the Community in Toronto for seven years, and the elders of that community taught me that, to fill in those gaps, we must make contact with the Spirits and Ancestors and ask them, so go straight to the source as it were.
I don’t know if other kinds of spirituality have that same teaching, I can only speak to the teachings I have being Ojibwe & Cree from the communities in and around Ontario, and then non-native core shamanism. But I do see people who practice witchcraft working in a way that would suggest a similar teaching.
I think I can see what may be a core issue…
It’s really hard to know when we’re talking to our Spirits or to our egos
We lack teachers to help us discern or a set of ‘directions’There’s a ton of good intentions mixed with arrogance in our society, so much that we miss recognising the latter most of the time. What’s a spiritual person to do?Let’s imagine we’re visiting a sacred historic and spiritual site in, for example, Scotland. How about, for the sake of conversation, the Clava Cairns? (cough)
Our Spirits guides have told us, ‘visit this site, there is something for you there’, so off we go. When we get there, we feel the Spirits around us, and a sense of history and belonging that’s palpable. We feel that our practise is aligned with this place in some way. We lift up a stone and feel the power of the place in that stone.
If you’re never felt this kind of connection before, it’s a weird and wonderful experience to have, and it’s only natural to want to keep that feeling alive. To be able to carry that feeling with you in some way.
There is a choice to made, but also, more options than you thinkTake a beat. Exhale. Sit down and find that quiet spot of connection within our bodies. Of course it’s super tempting to put that pebble in our pocket, I mean it’s one pebble, right? And we really really want to be able to bring that sense of connection home with us.
We feel most connected to the ground in this moment, and ask the ground for permission to take this small part of the structure. A feeling of positive affirmation swells up around us. Fantastic, good to go.
But again, wait. We need to unpack what’s happening here. We need to apply some critical thought. I’m gonna suggest three steps:
We must ask ourselves…
Can we bring our newfound connection with this place into our practice without having a physical part of it in our home?
Yes. This is why the Creator gave us journeying.
With a bit of training, most people can visit most places spirituality using their minds. We can call on the spirits of that place or spirits of that land to work with us in whatever way makes sense for us according to our teachings.
Taking a piece of a cairn home with us or breaking a twig off a 3000-year-old tree (yet another shocking practice that happens by visitors to Scotland) simply isn’t necessary. Keep the shells on the beach, the rocks in the riverway and the arrowheads in the ground – they can still be included in our practise without our holding them in our hands when we’re home.
We must think critically about the info we’re getting…
When you’re starting out with journeying, you’ll know the first challenge is ‘how do we know when it’s the spirits talking?’, but once we’ve developed enough trust to overcome that hurdle, a new challenge arises ‘how do we know when it’s our ego talking?’.
The first question is so much easier to ascertain. For me, journeys have a different weight to them when they’re spirit-led, and they’re much weirder and spontaneous. The info I get, for example, if I hear a spirit voice, hits my body with a different weight. It just feels different. With a lot of practise, most people will know which clues mean what and learn to discern.
The second question is so much harder. Our ego doesn’t like to be wrong! And it also doesn’t like to be denied something we want. It’s just so easy to look past the warning signs when our journey is reinforcing what we want. The only way I know to get around this is a) identifying our limits when it comes to information gathering in the spirit world and b) calling in objective reinforcements to ask the spirits on your behalf. (This is why shamanic practitioners needs to be way less competitive here in Scotland and support each more, but I digress…)
Don’t forget ordinary world reasoning…
The Spirits are there to help us, we are co-creators, and we each have free will. So just cause a spirit says it’s okay, doesn’t mean we abdicate responsibility of our decisions.
Also, the Spirits don’t live in this world, they live in the spirit world. Another reason why we have to be accountable to the decisions we make under spiritual influence is that Spirits don’t always remember how it is to pay rent or a mortgage. It’s all well and good if the Spirits say you must take three weeks to do a certain ceremony abroad, but if you’re a single parent and you’re having trouble making ends meet, you can go back to that spirits and say, ‘sorry, but I have to feed my family – can you please provide a different way that allows me to be home for them?’
Spirits can also heal us in the long-term by putting us through a hard time in the short term, and learning a lesson through hurting another person, injuring the land or going through hell in any way is a crappy way to learn.
Just cause a spirit says you can do something doesn’t mean you should. I try as best I can to honour my spirits, but never at the expense of honouring people (including myself) in my ordinary reality, breaking the law or injuring the land.
If we’re meant to have something, usually it will find us, not the other way around
Did you know, when harvesting Usnea (a lichen that grows on trees and is super useful for its medicinal qualities), we are never supposed to pick it off the tree. To protect it and continue a healthy community of usnea, the accepted practise is to collect only that which has fallen onto the forest floor.
I think this is a good rule of thumb for most things.
I’m reminded of the Fortingall yew, also here in Scotland, that at between 3000 and 9000 years old, is the oldest living tree in the UK and one of the oldest living things in Europe.
In the debate that kicked off on Reddit, a few commenters mentioned witnessing spiritual groups surrounding the tree (aww, lovely) and then each person breaking off a branch.
(Whaaaat?!!!)
Please, my spiritual comrades: Stop and think it though…In this situation, I’d think a better plan would be to see if there’s any dead branches that have fall on the ground, and if so, ask permission – from a human being who works there – before taking it.
But the point is, it’s already there for you; you’re not stealing the life-force of the tree. (This is also the preferred method of harvesting palo santo, so there’s certainly precedent.)
The same with feathers. In the community where I was, it was common for a healer to say something like “there’s a feather coming to you” or perhaps an eagle whistle, bear claw or something along those lines.This was not our cue to go out and shoot a hawk or an eagle (even if it were legal, which it’s not), it means that either a person is going to gift it to us, or we should keep our eyes peeled because that animal has left that gift somewhere we’re bound to find it
Rocks are no different. Even when they’re removed from the land to be used in ceremony, like in a sweat lodge, they are still returned to nature afterwards. But also, when they are taken from the land, there is a deep reverence for the fact that they are sacrificing their lives to take part in a healing ceremony for the community. It’s the same when saplings have to be cut down or cedar harvested. These actions happen as part of a long-standing partnership and understanding with the land spirits, so even that is not the same as simply pocketing something for our own use.
But of course, these are natural objects, and that’s different again from a stone in an ancient passage cairn…
Spirit stuff is not your stuff; don’t touch itDid you know that when you make a food offering to the spirits, you’re not supposed to then eat it, because it becomes spirit food, and spirit food doesn’t belong to you.
What would happen if we did eat spirit food? Who could say… personally I’m not inclined to test the theory because I love my spirit guides and to feed them AND steal their food feels a tad incongruent. To be fair, I do have teachings around this, and to sum them up, stealing spirit stuff is an unsafe move.When that spirit stuff is part of an official UK monument, no matter what the ground has to say on the matter, it’s illegal.
The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Acts 1979 lists damaging a monument as a criminal offense. And if you’re arrested, “the ground told me to do it” probably won’t get you far.
But what if the ground really really did tell you to do it?
Please defer to number three in the choices section of this article where I wrote that spirituality doesn’t justify a lack of common sense or law-breaking behaviour. Ever. And it’s not like the law I just cited is an immoral law. I mean, don’t destroy monuments in any country! Be good guests.
I’ve made those mistakes too and learned the hard wayMy first shamanic retreat, when I first started learning under my teacher, Daniel, I made a really big faux pas.
At the time, I was also deep into learning about celtic spirituality and was obsessed with the idea of the sacred inbetween and liminal spaces. A beach (water and land), visible tree roots (above and below), doorways, boats, and so on.
So when I saw a disk of rock stuck in the muddy root-filled underside of a massive tree that had fallen over and also happened to be laying partially submerged in a river eddy, I saw the ultimate symbol of liminal power.
I quickly asked permission and laid tobacco, and just as quickly I assumed it was granted only because I’d asked. Then I balanced myself over water and tree trunk, reached up, and pulled the disk/rock out and brought it home.
I was quite pleased with myself too. I feasted it and put it in my collection of sacred objects, where I looked at it a lot.
But it didn’t work out well. I had expected it would make me feel more connected. But from the moment I got it home, I knew it was a selfish mistake.
This item did not want to be in my home or help me in a any way. It wasn’t negative or anything, it just didn’t want to be there. It wanted to go home. As a result, I never called on it in any way when working with clients, and I felt no sense of connection with it. The only thought I had when I looked at it was a sense of wrongness and guilt.
The following year, when I travelled back to the same place for another learning week, I brought it with me and returned it to where I had found it with a heartfelt apology. Honestly, it was dick move that illuminated my naivety and arrogance.
But that rock was a teacher.
It taught me that to remove it from the land was to remove its source of connection and power – the very things that attracted me to it. I learned to leave stuff where it is. I don’t own nature, not a single part of it. Nothing is mine to take. Any suggestion to the contrary is my ego speaking.And again, I know that I can travel to it if I wish. Now, to be fair, I don’t travel to that stone, I doubt it would want to see me, but I work closely with trees and there’s a number of trees I’ve connected to over the years. A massive locust tree outside my apartment in Toronto, a stunning, red-flowered poinciana tree outside my dad’s home in Chiapas, and a venerable eastern cedar grandfather tree in Eastern Ontario. I visit all three regularly from the comfort of my healing room -via shamanic journey- right here in Ayrshire. Let’s proceed with kindness
Don’t be hard on our American witch. We are all trying, and we are all learning as we go. We have few teachers and few directions on what’s right or wrong with regard to spirituality.
And let’s not forget that, in picking up a pebble, even though she broke the law, she was not directly hurting anyone except perhaps herself, and it’s not like she was stripping branches from a 3000 year old tree, which, in my mind, is harming a living thing and much worse.
I’m not minimising her desecrating a monument, only pointing out that she’s not the first, she won’t be the last, and the important thing is that when we know better, we do better.
This is why the best way I can think of to help this situation, and the young woman at the heart of it whom I truly feel badly for – this is a terrible way to have to learn – is to share what we DO know about how to honour each other, the earth and our ancestors.For those of you who do this work, don’t forget to take a few apprentices who help and work alongside you rather than just those who can afford to pay you. Please publish and share what you’ve learnt, the mistakes you’ve made and the path ahead, so we can all benefit.
