I come again, like a deer (or a big cat) to the water, to some lovely lines in Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Martin Prechtel‘s remarkable account of his apprenticeship and practice as a shaman of a Mayan tradition. He is describing the intimate relationship between true shamans and true dreams:

“The prayers were all in the dreams…Simply learning a shamanic prayer without the spirit’s endorsement in a dream was dangerous and futile…Praying well as a shaman meant one had to learn to speak in a measured rhythm, beautifully, dramatically, with not pauses, and to breathe in such a way that one never lost the prayer or image being shot like bright-colored birds out of the heart.”

Would-be shamans, take note. True shamans are poets of consciousness, master storytellers, magicians of goodly speech. First and last, they are dreamers who know that “the gods drink at the heart like a deer in a river.”