The Indie Writers Blog

Molly Mole couldn’t believe her luck. She had just graduated as a criminologist after three long years of diligent studies and within a couple of months after the completion of her degree she’d managed to land herself a job at Hicksville Community College as a part-time lecturer. Peter Badger, the principle, had promised her a full time position in the Sociology Department if she could put the college on equal footing with the rest of the colleges in the county.
Thus far despite having been in operation for almost a hundred years Hicksville Community College had not produced a criminologist of any note. Molly however was ready to change all of that and hoped to push the college up the ranking. It was currently sitting at the bottom of the ladder and Molly had made up her mind to push it up at least a notch or two. She felt that it was the only way she could thank Principle Badger for his faith in her.
Today was her first class and she got on her bicycle, just before 8 in the morning, to…

The legacy of the Cholas, its monumental temples, were discovered by accident when in 1838 an English explorer while hacking his way through the dense jungles of Southern India, Tamil Nadu to be precise, came across what would later be dubbed the erotic temples of India because of the lurid and lucid sculptures, carvings and engravings that adorn the walls of these temples.
The temples were discovered in the same manner that Henri Mouhot discovered the lost temples of Angkor. Henri Mouhot after working in Siam was travelling through Cambodia collecting zoological and botanical samples when while cutting his way through the dense forests of Cambodia he stumbled across the temples of Angkor.
The first question that comes to mind with regards to both these sets of temples is; are these temples in any way connected? I don’t believe that they are and I am certain that we are dealing with two distinct and separate blends of Hinduism. For starters the Cholas are Shaivites and the Angkor temple…

The bond between a shaman and his or her spirit tree has been a long-established principle of shamanism and many cultures of antiquity adhere to the principle that the abilities of the shaman are very much dependent on the shaman’s spirit tree, to the extent that the metaphoric tree has taken on a life of its own and has become a central feature or facet of shamanism.
The shaman tree can be divided into two types. The first type or category of shaman trees are trees where spirits or spiritual entities reside. These trees have their origins in the realm of folklore and are often divided into different tiers. The strength of the spirit is dependent on the tier that the spirit occupies. Spirits that reside on higher tiers are stronger than those that occupy lower tiers. It is therefore possible, in this manner, to distinguish between inferior spirits and spirits of a higher capacity.
The second type of shamanic trees are trees that have a spirit i.e. these trees have a soul and it is the s…

Copyright © 2019 by Dyarne Ward and Kathiresan Ramachanderam

Black Elk was a famous medicine man from the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) and second cousin to the famed Native American warrior Crazy Horse who rebelled against the Federal Government for intruding on Native American territories.
Born on December 1st 1863 in Little Powder River Wyoming he was a medicine man of substance and his experiences, during which he becomes aware of the Seven Sacred Rights of the Lakota, reaffirms the outer body experience as propagated by Jung, which occurs as a result of either natural sleep or induced sleep i.e. hypnosis. It confirms what parapsychologists like Jung have asserted for years in that the mind is a vast untapped resource and has never been fully explored.
When Black Elk was nine years old he was struck by a sudden illness that left him unconscious and unresponsive. During this time, he experienced visitations from cosmic entities who he described as thunder beings (Wakinyan) and who he perceived to be the forefathers or the ancestors of the Oglala Sioux…

The fifth sacred rite of the Lakota is Hunkapi or the right to foster or forge new relationships and it solidifies existing bonds and paves the way for new alliances. It is reflective of the personal relationship that one shares with the center of the universe or the tree that symbolizes the center of the universe.
It can also be interpreted as the rite of procreation or a rite that facilitates the expansion of familial bonds which of course is essential to perpetuate the continuity of the people and to preserve the longevity of the nation.
The nation is strong for only as long as its people continue to foster and forge new relationships and persist with repairing any damage that may have resulted with the passage of time or from past indiscretions. It is also a means to address grievances and to set aside any past disputes and in certain cases to start anew.
The rite may also be a means of enhancing the bond one has with the totem pole (the totem pole may at times represent the sacred t…

The fourth sacred rite of the Lakota is the sun dance and once again it is reminiscent of the Tungus Shaman. The dance is conducted around a tree or a pole that symbolizes the tree. In Lakota cosmology, the tree represents the center of the universe.
It is possible to draw parallels between the tree in the Lakota sun dance and the shaman tree of the Tungus shamans. It is difficult to speculate if Black Elk ascended a shaman tree during his life-threatening illness or otherwise but it is an accepted principle among Tungus shamans that a shaman acquires his or her abilities to see and communicate with spirits after he or she ascends the shaman tree. The top of the tree or its highest tier according to Siberian folklore is occupied by Gods of the highest level.
Among Yakutian (Siberian) shamans, each shaman is allotted his or her own tree and the well-being of the shaman is dependent on the tree. Chopping down the tree spells death for the shaman. In some instances, dead shamans are entomb…

Vision quest or the seeking of visions is undertaken to seek random visions. In most instances the seeker is searching for an event that will unravel or manifest itself in the future and the event at the time it appears to the seeker may or may not make sense to him and the seeker may require the help of an elder or a medicine man or a shaman to help him interpret his vision(s). He may or may not be part of the vision(s).
Let’s compare these visions to visions of clairvoyance or precognition and let us try and identify the common factors and determine the factors that differentiate vision quest visions from visions of clairvoyance or precognition.
Clairvoyance and precognition are abilities to see into the future and from that aspect they are sometimes comparable to visions that appear during meditation but the subject does not have the ability to control the visions that appear. The visions often appear in sudden flashes or bursts of images and disappear as quickly as they’d come leavi…