Interview
Linda Wormhoudt - By Elani Temperance
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In Little Witch magazine we put remarkable people in the spotlight. This issue it’s Linda Wormhoudt. She’s been working with Shamanism for over 28 years and was a student of Maria Moonlion and Daan van Kampenhout. Linda has tra-velled a lot and focuses on Northwest-European Shamanism. She writes books and gives workshops. LWM’s Elani was at one of these workshops. You can find her experiences on page 18. Why specifically European Shamanism? Like many who start out with Shamanism, I started out reading about Native American Shamanism. But Shamanism is tied strongly to the land. You have a natural connection with the ground you walk on, where your ancestors lived and the entities who belong to it. I tried to work with energy fields from North America and realized it wasn’t working. Then I found a plea on the internet from the guardian of the original peace pipe, Orvil Looking Horse. The plea was co-signed by a large number of tribal heads. It came down to a simple question; westerners, would you please leave our rituals alone? They belong with us and are part
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of our spiritual heritage. The tribal heads had condoned westerners coming into their reserves for decades. Westerners came, stayed for two weeks and learned some of their rituals. Back home these people would go on to teach traditional Native American Shamanism. The energy of these practices influenced the rituals of the Native Americans and they felt like they were being robbed; it felt like spiritual colonialism. When I read this I was truly ashamed. I wondered if any of the practices of my ancestors had survived. For those who look for it, there is a treasure trove of information to find. The traditions I have found, I have tried to bring into practice but I have adapted them into the now.
Did it bother you to have to leave behind Native American traditions? No, it was the right thing to do. It’s good to start fresh. There is a lot in Shamanism that transcends specific branches, the wheel of life, for example. There are four seasons here in Europe while, in North America, there are sometimes only two. You literally have to reinvent the wheel and that’s a lot of fun! It’s a treasure hunt. A lot of information was written by conquerors of people who celebrated these traditions. The Romans have documented Germanic rituals, for example. This image is distorted but there is a lot of knowledge to gain from it. Why is it important to you to publicize your findings?