In a recent post on shamans, I illustrated how Ann and I were reading on this subject. It is both fascinating and complex. At its simplest level, my house is a cosmos. The underworld is in my storeroom, both dark and small, the death level. The ground floor is the living level, where I dwell in the seeming reality of life. Upstairs, the bedrooms are the place of dreams, the spirit world. It is where I dream negative dreams ever since my diagnosis of leukaemia. It is the world in which I cannot control what happens, where spirits trouble me. However, making the house into a cosmos gives me some perspective on the world. I also have the advantage of understanding our planet, the moon and sun, and the universe. I don’t have to ask what is a cosmos?

People over the ages

I sometimes leave the house on a run to Siney Sitch, a place I mentioned in a previous post. In this run I transfer to another world, I go liminal you might say. This is my transition to another cosmos. At Siney Sitch, I immediately ascend, or is it fall, into a Neolithic cosmos. The tribe stood here, in the dark, and looked up to the heavens, where they thought birds could fly. They knew the moon and the sun would appear but did not understand planets. They looked into the water of Siney Sitch’s black pool and visualised the underworld. It gave them a perspective on the world, on their place in this strange land, sometimes dark, sometimes light, which nurtured them.

What is a cosmos?

Consequently, I now understand that people created their own cosmos all over the world. It could be entirely inside a communal hut in South America, similar to my house. In the Middle east it could be a house below ground, entered through a hole in the roof. In those rooms, animal skulls protruded through the walls, as if they lived in the room next door. The animals and people shared the same world, were united. Ultimately, what we have in common is a desire for a complex and orderly system, which means a cosmos. We could create order without any scientific understanding of cosmic space and the universe. However, I now have to decide whether I am a modern form of shaman. Bring out the magic mushrooms!