Blessings of the Reindeer Spirit be yours

Dear Seekers,

One week until Winter Solstice Blessing!

I just completed two months of “Reindeer Spirit Training” with 12 women who will help carry the Blessing of the Reindeer to you during the Solstice event. They have worked hard to be open and trusting of the sprit and of me as a teacher, and I’m awed at what transpired in our trainings. They have been worked magnificently by the Reindeer Spirit, all in order to carry the Blessing to you. They are working on your behalf, months before the event.

What is the Reindeer Spirit, and who the hell do I think I am working with it?

I’m not an Arctic reindeer herder. I’m an urban white boy, a guy who spends his days on a laptop, who salivates at the idea of coffee with foam on it, who buys his food wrapped in cardboard. But somehow I’m a guy who was adopted by the reindeer 20 years ago during a strange little ceremony with a Sami Shaman. As they say: WTF?

For me the Reindeer has revealed itself slowly over time as the “Mother of the life force.” The image She gives me each year as it becomes my time to work with Her again is this: in the coldest, darkest most barren time, she carries the new life in her – she is pregnant all through the dark, frozen winter. She keeps her antlers all winter as the visible sign that she protects, defends and carries the life force forward.

This the blessing and the demand she places on us: How will you carry the life force forward through dark times? How will you defend it against the hunger of wolves? She places this question on us, and she comes to deliver the Blessing of strength, of endurance, of fight and of forgiveness (this is what ties her Mother of Christ in my mind). These blessings are given to us so that we can carry the life force, and protect it, and ensure that it is born into the world in some way. It doesn’t matter how we birth the life force—that’s a question between you and Spirit, and question the reindeer can answer. By the way, just to be clear, she never told me to do a three-night run of a drumming event with hundreds of people attending in ecstatic Wahoo as my way of carrying the life force. All she has ever asked of me is to dance Her once a year. To give her a body to dance in for a few minutes as a way of bringing her pleasure and honoring her. I could do that in my back yard, but somehow to my amazement, this whole Wahoo-infused event has swirled up from that simple reindeer dance which, I admit, humbles and terrifies me every year.

Well, that’s why I am called to do this ceremony each year. And I’m hoping that you will come, and open yourself to the degree that you are comfortable, to this image of the Sacred, to this healing and awakening and forgiving Presence. Of course you don’t have to come to my “show” to do this work with the Reindeer Spirit, and that’s why I’m writing this email – to help you do the work even without coming. But it’s helpful to do this work surrounded by your tribe, with lots of fun, and stories and laughing and shared experience.

And chocolate. There will be chocolate there. Just to be clear, the Reindeer Spirit did not command that I make chocolate available to you – this is purely human desire on my part. But I sense with my shamanic senses that she’s totally okay with the chocolate.

Blessing of the gleaming antlers be yours,

Blessings of crunching snow.

Blessings of the silver stars be yours,

Blessings of the Reindeer Spirit.

Blessings of the Reindeer Spirit.