Judaic Shamanism

I'm reading a fantastic book by Gerson Winkler: Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism.

I read an absolutely electrifying essay of his in the book Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans that shocked me with it resonances to my own ideas about religion and the Earth.

Rabbi Winkler's teachings are all about returning to the Earth, listening to the spirit of rocks, birds, trees, water, sky, and about how much religion has strayed from these basic ideas, and indeed how very rooted in these basic ideas our religions are, at their core.

Since I was a very small child, I've always considered the message of the Church to be skewed and off-target. When I found about the Essenes and about the Gospel of Thomas, I knew I was closer to the truth that felt like truth to me.

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