Löwenpfad-Lionpath

One of the most penetrating shamanic cosmologies is that of the Selkup or forest people in Siberia somewhat north of Tomsk, and one of its primal concepts is that of the Great Tree of All Life shown on the cover of this book. The side governed by the half-circle depicting the lunar crescent is the Lunar Root and Branch. It is on the left as one views the Tree, and to the right if one stands in it. The Solar Branch and Root (on the heart- or left-side of the Tree if one stands in it) is ruled by the full circle symbolic of the solar disk. The differentiated life-forces of the two sides join in the central trunk, and specifically at the growing point of the topmost spire. That central union expresses the nature of the dynamically complete self.

But the Tree is also the entire life scheme that runs throughout and joins all living things, and there is nothing that on some level is not alive. The shaman/ess can thus ride the life currents of the Tree to reach the life centre of any creature. The life currents of the Great Tree are likened to a magical steed on which the shaman/ess is borne throughout the seen and unseen cosmos.

Let us step back a moment to compare these ideas with the old Nordic shamanic teaching of the cosmic ash tree Yggdrasil, so deeply connected to Odin, the Norse shamanic deity par excellence. It has three great roots. The first reaches down to the realm of departed souls in Nifheim, "the beclouded place" (see also Bardo in Glossary). This is the Lunar Root, on your left hand as you view the Selkup drawing, but on your right if you become one with and enter the Tree.

The second or central Root stretches down to what in the Norse tradition is the three sister-Weirds: Urd (necessity, past); Verdandi (the German werdend = becoming, i.e, the present) and Skuld (fate, future).

The third, the Solar Root, is on the right as you behold it but on the left when you enter the Tree. It reaches deep into the Well of Mimir that dispenses all-encompassing memory and wisdom. To drink of this unforgettable water Odin hung on the tree nine nights: "An offering to Odin, of myself to my Self", he sang. Here Odin (still meaning the first, the number 1, in Russian) is the primal shaman. Thus recalling what you were (and really are), you can act differently in the present and so change and re-shape the still malleable future. This is what Odin taught.

The link between the Tree of All Life and the human psyche is made clear in one of the ancient pre-Buddhist shamanic teachings that are preserved, often uniquely, in Buddhist texts. For instance, in the Uighur (an old Turco-Mongolian tongue) manuscript version of the Bardo T'hos-grol, which concerns the technique and vicissitudes of dying. Folios 20 verso to 21 recto of the Uighur text testify to a clearly shamanic tradition: "Some pundits express the view that the tamir-network taken all together looks like the sacred larch tree …" Tamir is the Uighur cognate of the Sanskrit nadi (Tibetan rTsa) that denotes one of the channels or helically formed tubules of the supraphysical wave-guiding energy that underlies all the biochemical/molecular energetics, transformations and operations of an organism, and which is amply developed in the human body, keeping in pace with a complex neuronal network.

The Lam-rim of Tsong-khapa, drawing on rNying-ma teachings, also echoes the ancient shamanic image of the inner network of branching channels as a microcosmic counterpart of the macrocosmic sacred larch tree. He reiterates the connection between the Great Tree's three main roots (left or solar, and right or lunar) with the three great chakras or radiative centres of supra-physiology: the heart, throat and crown centres. These chakras correspond to the threefold forms of the higher or diamond body (vajrakaya): the dharmakaya or body of fundamental reality, the nirmanakaya or shape-shifting body that can conform to any appropriate appearance, and the sambhogakaya or body of lasting joy.

The three roots of the Tree also respectively correspond with the principal nadis that were mentioned before. But the closely shamanically linked Tibetan tradition preserved the right assignments better than the erroneous (reversed) associations of the red pingala or lalana with the right side and the white ida or rasana with the left. The Tibetan tradition, going back to earlier Sanskrit yoga texts, correctly assigns rKyang-ma the red (solar) channel to the left side of the body, and ro-ma the white (lunar) channel to the right side. There is no ambiguity with the central channel: dBuma in Tibetan, and sushumna or avadhuti in Sanskrit.

Thus the Tree is vast in meaning. As that expert and too little known calligrapher, poetess, and exquisite translator of Chinese poetry, Helen Burwell Chapin, so perceptively wrote in her Round of the Year :