Poets,
it’s said, are shamans of words. True shamans are poets of consciousness.
Journeying into a deeper reality with the aid of sung and spoken poetry, they
bring back energy and healing through poetic acts, shapeshifting physical
systems. When we dream, we tap directly into the same creative source from
which poets and shamans derive their gifts. When we create from our dreams, and
enter dreamlike flow, we become poets and artists. When we act to bring
the energy and imagery of dreams into physical reality, we become poets of
consciousness and infuse our world with magic.

In Birth
of a Poet, William Everson raised a clamorous appeal for poets to reawaken
to their shamanic calling: 

Poets! Shamans of the word! When will you
recover the trance-like rhythms, the subliminal imagery, the haunting sense of
possession, the powerful inflection and enunciation to effect the vision?
Shamanize! Shamanize!

Across the centuries, many of our greatest poets
have recognized their kinship with the shaman’s way of shifting awareness and
shapeshifting reality. As his name in a spiritual order, Goethe chose the name
of a legendary shaman of antiquity, Abaris, who came flying out of the Northern
mists on an arrow from Apollo’s bow.

Our earliest
poets were shamans. Today as in the earliest times, true shamans are poets of
consciousness who know the power of song and story to teach and to heal. They
understand that through the play of words, sung or spoken, the magic of the
Real World comes dancing into the surface world. The right words open pathways
between the worlds. The poetry of consciousness delights the spirits. It draws
the gods and goddesses who wish to live through us closer.

Moon Guitar by Nicola Daniels