The fae, fairies, trolls, elves, brownies, the Kontomble, Menehune, orang pendek - cultures all over the world have different terms for "little people." In the world of shamanism, we would consider these supernatural beings "nature spirits."

This episode explores the reality of nature spirits. Where do they live? Why do people encounter them?

Further, how can we honor and work with them?

Announcer 0:30

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:49

Hello, everybody.

My apologies, I have been a little bit remiss in putting out these podcasts, it's been a little while, I sort of did too close together back to back with guests. And you know, I, I'm not the kind of person to wear busy as a badge of honor. But I got incredibly busy. And so here is my triumphant return. I guess after a short period of time, I used to, I usually like to talk a little bit about what it's like where I am, I am talking to you from the state of Maine in the United States, it's early in the morning here, it's, gosh, it's 6:18am. As I read this, and I'm looking out in the sun is coming up and the birds are out and the small animals are playing. And one of the things I love to do, I feed the birds. And I feed the small animals around here, and I leave, I have a back deck that I look out over when I record these and I love to what I put peanuts out for the shell peanuts out for the Chipmunks and squirrels. And I've a little chipmunk that loves to climb up on my deck and stuff his cheeks full of peanuts, and it's pretty cute. And so why am I telling you this other than to give you a slice of a view into what I'm experiencing at this moment, which I think is important, right? I mean, I think you know, I don't get a good sense of who you are, where you are, other than your Look, your location, I can look at statistics and see that people are tuning in from all over the world. And I love that I love that. So I like to share a little bit of what it's like where I am, as I'm recording this. The ancients used to, you know, at least you know, in many, many cultures used to, you know, record astronomical observations. And I don't have to do that, because we have scientists and computer programs and all kinds of stuff for for doing that. Which, which is pretty incredible. The modern world is is interesting, and technology's incredible helps me talk to people all over the world. So today, I'm going to talk to you about a topic that's near and dear to my heart. And I'm going to talk in also leads a little bit from my introduction, I'm going to talk about nature spirits. And what do I mean by nature spirits? What are nature spirits? Where do they come from? What are their, you know? What are the cultural influences and all of those sorts of things. And I'm using the word, the phrase nature spirits, very, very broadly, as sort of this giant category of thing. It's as if I'm saying animals to refer to all the animals on the planet, right? From insects, to whales, to hummingbirds to human beings, you know, those are all animals. So there's a huge variety. And so it's a kind of a catch all phrase. And it's the same way with nature spirits, there's a huge variety of what we will call nature spirits, and I'm going to talk about that and obviously, you know, if you've listened to this podcast, you know that I come from a shamanic background. My my training and my spirituality is rooted in shamanism. And so I look at things from I tend to look at things from a shamanic perspective. This is not to say that my viewpoint is correct. If there is such a thing, it is my viewpoint and it's it's colored by my life. experiences, my beliefs, my practices, all of those things. And that's true for everyone. So I'm going to talk a little bit about different cultures today. And I'm not an expert, I'm not an anthropologist, I am just somebody who is encouraged, you know, through my spirituality, incredibly curious about different cultures, interpretations of similar phenomena. And so, if I speak incorrectly, you know, or I say something that's, that's a little out there, from your own belief system. That's fine. You know, that's okay.

take it for what it is, take it, take it, that I'm interpreting things through my own set of lenses, and you're interpreting what I'm saying through your own set of lenses. We all do that all the time with everything. And you know, if there's a correction to be made, you can contact me through my website or something, and I would be happy to, I'm happy to learn. I think that's a healthy stand point, right? to assume that you might not know everything, and that, you know, being open to learn, right come to things with a beginner's mind, you know, sort of a Zen idea. Right? In beginner's mind, there are many possibilities in the experts mind, there are few or none. So getting locked in, getting locked into our beliefs getting locked into our little reality tunnel, or reality box, we all live in a little box, which is bounded by our beliefs. So sometimes we can experiment we can try on different beliefs. You know, what if what if this were true? What if that were true? And see how that works for us. And that can help us grow as humans. So anyway, I digress a little bit. I'm going to refocus now. And I'm going to talk about nature spirits. And what do I mean by nature spirits. So from a shamanic perspective, right, shamanism is an extension, I guess, from animism, which is the idea that all living beings have spirits. Even, you know, some animists I happen to be one of them, believe that even nonliving things have spirits. So, things that we would consider nonliving rocks and streams. You know, even there is a, you know, a spirit of the internet, there's a spirit of everything. And it's again, like that's a viewpoint, right, that's a that's a point of view that I take that I address everything as a spirit, my car is a spirit. And that, you know, that might be a little shift to I don't think of things as having spirits, I think of them as spirits. So in my viewpoint, I'm everything there is is a spirit. Some things that exists have a physical presence have a physical projection, okay? So what that means is that, you know, if I'm looking at the tree outside of my window, that tree is a spirit that also projects a physical presence of a tree. But not everything that is a spirit has a physical presence. And so, this is where we get into the idea of nature spirits. So what am I talking about with nature spirits. So, nature, spirits are spirits of place, spirits that live sort of between worlds between what we consider the middle world in shamanism, which is the spiritual overlay of physical reality. And they, and they belong and they sort of belong here, right? They're not their native, they're native to this space. So there are as many I can't even think of all of the terms for the different types of nature spirits, but if you think about mythological beings, for a moment, excuse me. Almost every culture you can think of has some concept of what they would call little people, right? Little People as fairies, elves brownies, greenies trolls. In Hawaii they have the minute hooni the African shaman mala dama samay talks about the contemporay from his culture. in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, they have the orang pendek, which are the little, little people, which I'm not sure may have a physical presence or not. Again, I'm talking about cultures that I'm not native to. So I'm only going to speak as an outsider from from that perspective, but gosh, you know, all of these cultures that may or may not have had contact at some point in history, have this idea

of little spiritual beings. You know, and tons of them tons and tons and tons of them. If you think about if you think about these, if you think about the fairies, right, you know, fairy faith is still strong in some places in you know, what we would consider the United Kingdom and Ireland. Right, so the British Isles area. Um, you know, I know places, Iceland, for example, trolls are very real beings, they're trolls and elves, and that sort of thing. very real, very part of the culture. So what's know what's going on here? Are these just figments of people's imagination? Are they archetypal? Meaning that all of these cultures just spontaneously came up with these, you know, ideas of these little people that can flit in and out of view and can do magic and, you know, sometimes communicate with people sometimes, you know, make offerings or, you know, all of these, all of these ideas. What's going on here? So, in my perspective, in my view, these beings are very real, and they live in a place that is very, very close to physical reality. They live in what we, in the shamanic perspective, call the middle world, which is, again, it's this spiritual overlay of 3d physical reality that we experience with our eyes and ears and sense of touch. And that sort of thing. This wasn't always the case for me. I mean, you know, in English anyway, the word fairy tale has taken on the meaning of something that is untrue. Right, so fairy stories, fairy tales, they generally refer to, you know, mythological tales that we tell to children to teach moral stories or that sort of thing. But also, you know, if somebody is, you know, telling you a story that you think is untrue, you might say, that's a fairy tale. That's a fantasy, you have made that up in your imagination. Pardon me, and that used to be my perspective, that, you know, this was all made up, and I saw the, you know, watch the Tinkerbell movies about fairies, and, you know, the Disney perspective. And, you know, these things have really woven themselves into our culture. And they've always, you know, they've always been there. As far as we have written history. There are, you know, lots and lots and lots of history of interactions, you know, things written down, interactions with nature spirits with with the faith with the fairies. And I'm sure that's true in many other cultures that I'm that I'm not even, you know, not even aware of. Right. Certainly the, you know, there are legends in Hawaii, about the men who in a building things overnight building, you know, giant walls overnight, or temples or, you know, that sort of thing. And I don't, you know, I don't know the truth of those things. But these are very real beings in many, many cultures. And it's only sort of recently that we have said, No, there is nothing beyond the physical reality. You know, these, you know, when you're telling stories of these supernatural creatures, and I wouldn't call them I personally wouldn't call them supernatural. I think they're very natural. I think they they exist. So I'll tell you. You know, I'll tell you about a couple of my personal experiences that sort of drove home that these Are these are not necessarily made up beings. And, you know, I promise I am not having a psychotic break, I'm sitting here I am sitting here drinking my coffee, which is which is delightful

to have a little coffee when I do these, particularly because I usually record them in the morning. Um, so, you know, one story that I have this, you know, this happened to me personally, I used to, I used to live in Boston, Massachusetts in the US and I used to I trained in martial arts my whole life. And I used to train in this dojo, which is a dojo, if you don't know is a place where, you know, you go train Japanese martial arts. So is training in Japanese jujitsu, in this dojo, which was in the basement of this building. And I was training with my friend Jimmy one day, and we were the only two in this particular room in the stojo working together, and my teacher had stepped into the other room to, to do something. And you know, Jimmy and I were training and this little, I want to say little, you know, Little Green Man, that's gonna sound like I'm talking about an alien. And it may be that aliens are our, our, you know, our thing. And our nature spirits. Who knows, I don't know the truth of that. But this little man who was had sort of a greenish tint, was wearing sort of normal human clothes, but was about two feet tall. I saw him come running through the room, and run right through the back wall of the dojo, where we were training. And at first I thought, you know, I'm just seeing things that's not real. And my friend turned to me that I was training with he goes, did you see that? And I was like, Yeah, what did you see? And he described it to me as like, that little man just ran through here and ran through the wall. He looks solid to me. Like, it didn't look like a figment of my imagination, or a ghost or anything like that. And I was like, wow, I saw the same thing. How could that be, you know, it was really weird. And then my teacher, my teacher walked into the room and said, What happened? A little guy that just came running through here. So three people had seen the same thing. You know, one of them had not been listening to the conversation we were having. So you know, something, something clearly was going on there. And then, you know, later in life, I'm, you know, started studying shamanism. And I would journey and I would journey into the middle world, and I would realize that, oh, gosh, there are these nature spirits, everywhere, everywhere, it's crowded. The earth is a crowded place. And My take is that the ones that we sometimes see are, you know, are either able to sort of manifest in the middle world. And then you know, these are the ones that sort of normal, when I say normal, I mean, people not like me, normal folk, folk who are not practicing trance work or, you know, traveling to non ordinary reality like, like shamans do. There are experiencing beings that are very, very close to having physical bodies, or that have the ability to shift in and out of physical form in the middle world. Right. So for me, it's just a matter of like frequency about being able to tune to a certain frequency like when I when I do a shamanic journey, when I enter trance, I can you know, what, what's happening is my brainwaves are getting tuned to a certain frequency that allows me to perceive things that I normally wouldn't perceive, right, in 3d ordinary reality. And when I've done that, I have met all kinds of spirit beings in the middle world. nature spirits in particular, I remember meeting a being one time that was, you know, said something to me, you know, appeared, appeared female, and said, I sing the trees to sleep at night. And I was like, well, that's kind of poetic and interesting, but you know, trees are not

trees around animals, they don't sleep. And then within a week or two, there was an article that appeared in some nature journal about the fact that trees in fact do sleep. They do have sleep cycles, which I totally did not know, before, beforehand, you know, they, they have a, you know, it's obviously not sleeping in the same way that we think of animals or humans sleeping, but they do have these daytime nighttime cycles. So, um, you know, my brain was making making some sense out of some information, you know, I sing the trees to sleep at night my brain was making some sense out of some interaction with with a nature spirit, and, you know, which turned out to have some scientific background to it. So over the years, I've encountered, you know, lots of different nature spirits. And so, over this past weekend, in fact, I, I put, I put a small altar in a wooded area of my property I live on to the nature spirits, because I think it's good to particularly honor the spirits of place. You know, certainly they're in, in the fairy faiths, you know, in the places where they still make offerings to fairies, and that sort of thing. They can be seen as guardians, and they can, they can help protect your land, your home, you know, that sort of thing from calamity, right, protect you from fires and natural disasters and that sort of thing, and keep an eye out on things. And if they're unhappy, you know, certainly, they can let you know that as well. A lot of lot of weird things can happen, things can go missing, things can break, electronics can go wonky, it's, you know, it's an interesting thing. I've certainly experienced sort of both sides of that, and I would never, at this point in my life, having the experiences that I've had, I would never move to a place or have, you know, you know, live in a place where I have not made some contact with the spirits of place. And so in, in Norse belief in ancient Norse belief, you had the land veter, right, which landvetter are the spirits of the land? Okay, and then, um, you know, even in Taoism, you know, when you look at Fung Shui, which is, you know, a lot of people think Fung Shui is about situating furniture in your house. And that, you know, was certainly part of it, from my understanding, but it is also about geomancy it's also about looking at the flow of energy, in a place in situating things in such a way that they're in harmony. And I find that a really beautiful way of of looking at things because when you can get to the when you get to the point where you can perceive spirit and you can perceive energy and, and that sort of thing. You realize that there are flows and stoppages and different frequencies and that sort of thing. So I want to talk a little bit about the middle world as well. Because it's an important consideration. From you know, I do when I teach shamanism and I teach shamanic journeying in particular, we always caution people about the middle world a little bit, because it is a little bit like the frontier of the western United States back in the day, when before it was really settled, it was a wild place full of dangers. And you know, some people were friendly, some people were not, and, you know, that sort of thing. So, as I said, the middle world is full of spirits. You know, it can sometimes appear crowded, actually, interestingly enough, if you're, you're never alone. That's one. You know, that's one thing. So think about that, you know, before you litter or pollute something or whatever there are. There are people watching and as I say this, there's a chipmunk just came up on my porch and he stuffing peanuts into his cheeks and a crow just flew into my yard. So, these are, these are great omens, these are, you know,

you know, lovely, lovely spirits of nature with physical bodies that are that are showing up to say hi to me this morning. So the middle world is a very crowded place and you know, I I was taught about it, it's sort of like moving around in a foreign city that you're visiting for the first time, right? And you don't necessarily know where the good neighborhoods are the bad neighborhoods, or, you know, if there are pickpockets in one location or kidnappers or, you know, or where they're friendly folk, or, you know, that sort of thing. So I do caution people to be a little careful in the middle world. You know, and when we teach journeying in the middle world, we teach some safety protocols for that. The other the other aspect of the middle world are that there are spirits that I wouldn't necessarily consider nature spirits there. So when you hear stories about ghosts, or, you know, just Carnot humans who are, you know, quote, unquote, trapped here, you know, that, that part of them that is trapped here is is trapped. You know, stuck is a better word, it's not trapped. There's nobody trapping them here. People sometimes get stuck. Because they're, you know, they're killed in it's a surprise or they're not ready to pass on or there's some, you know, there's there's a myriad of reasons why human spirits get stuck in the middle world. So there are, you know, there are suffering spirits in the middle world. When, you know, when shamanic practitioners encounter these suffering spirits, even though they can sometimes appear scary or angry or be doing something that we would consider harmful. We tend to treat them like clients because they're their suffering beings. Right, and they deserve compassion. And so, we do work frequently. That's called psycho pump work. And psycho pump is a word word that is, you know, it comes from the Greek, which is sort of the, it means sort of the conveyor of spirits. Psycho, you know, even though we, we get the word psychology from it, and tends to mean mind in, in English anyway, psycho is actually a word that means spirit in Greek. And so psychology actually would be the study of the Spirit. But, you know, we know it as a study of the mind. And so psycho pomp is, you know, an individual could be non human individual, but an individual that helps shuttle spirits to where they're supposed to go. So if you think about Greek mythology, you can think about Karen who has the boat across the river, you know, Rose the boat across the river sticks, you have to pay the ferry man to shuttle your spirit to the afterlife. Okay, so they're, you know, if you think about Norse mythology, you have the Valkyrie, who worked for Odin, who took his, you know, the people that were going with him after battle up to Valhalla. So there's, you know, there's psycho again, there's this cross cultural many, you know, lots and lots of different cultures have this idea of a psychopomp. Well, in, in most, you know, most shamanic training, if you're trained as a Shimano shamanic practitioner, you do learn to do psychopomp work, because we, you know, we have this sort of equal vision of all spirits. So, again, we would treat discarnate human humans as as if they were clients and help them you know, we don't, we don't banish, we don't bottle spirits up, we don't enslave spirits. Any of those, any of those things, I know, there are cultures where that is. That is the thing where they, you know, they do that, you know, and I don't want to, I don't want to cast judgment, so I won't hold back. I would just say that that's not something that I personally would do, and or, you know, anybody in my tradition would would do that. So, I

will leave that to, I will leave that to you to the difference between sort of enslaving and capturing, and enshrining, there are cultures where spirits are enshrined. And they're sort of free to come and go and sort of, you know, that kind of thing. But, you know, shamanism takes a very level playing field view. It's not Um, you know, I am the king. I'm the king of the castle, I work in tandem with helping spirits. Some of those are middle world spirits sometimes. Um So anyway, back to nature spirits, I realized I go off on a lot of tangents. But I hope that's interesting. I hope that when I expand on the topic and go off in a little direction, that it's not too confusing and that you find it interesting. Because that's just how I am. That's just how I choose to talk about things. So, you know, I'm very, very curious about nature spirits and how they show up. And one of the interesting one of the interesting phenomenon to me, is that, again, there's this description of little people in many, many different cultures, right? The men are hooning in Hawaii, the fairies trolls, elves. I guess trolls aren't necessarily little people, but elves sometimes are perceived as little people. Sometimes trolls are. You know, leprechauns, certainly, all kinds of beings are perceived as little people. brownies, Greensleeves is another one, or not Greensleeves? I'm sorry, that's the song. Green coats is another word for them. Which is interesting because the first nature spirit I ever encountered, I can remember encountering was was wearing a green coat. Before I knew that, that was a thing. So you know, what's going on with this little you know, this little people? Why are they perceived as small? Are they actually small? Are they smaller than we are? So, the answer to that is a little bit complicated. One answer I will give you is that they're, you know, in journeying and doing shamanic journeying. nature spirits are all different sizes, from teeny tiny little beings, you know, the size of your you know, half of your thumb to giants, you know, giants are another thing right giants are lots and lots of different cultures have have this idea of giants. And whether there were physical giants or you know, just you know, the idea of you know, spirit beings that that are just really huge You know, that's been my experience I've experienced some very large spirit beings so if you journey in the middle world, you'll encounter nature spirits that are all different sizes that are small and tall and human size and you know, animal size and all kinds of stuff. Many of them take on many of them appear humanoid, I won't necessarily say human, because they can be very different morphologically, they can be very differently and have you know, for example, be sort of short and stout. Like I don't know a little little chubby elves. If you think about the I don't know if they have this in other countries but in the US we have the keebler elves that make cookies and live in a tree you know, is it's a brand of it's a brand of snacks and cookies that are you know, they created you know, commercials with these little little chubby outs so there's that there's a very long limbs there are creatures that appear to be part plant and part animal and you see the Green Man in Celtic culture right Who is this you know, usually pictured as like a face with leaves growing out of it kind of thing. I've experienced similar similar in nature spirits and I don't know for sure that the Green Man is a nature spirit, I'm just saying the appearance appearance wise. This This seems to be

the seems to be something I have encountered countered beings that are close to that. And, and so, you know, some of them fly and some of them swim or live in the water, and some of them walk on land. So again, there's this huge variety, right? There's this huge variety of these nature spirits. Most that I have encountered have been humanoid, but not all of them, certainly. And there are these. There's the idea of mythological creatures as well. So, you know, from dragons to, you know, sort of non human, non human mythological creatures? And do these exist in the middle world that I'm not sure about? I don't know, I haven't I haven't encountered a dragon in person. I suppose that would be really interesting thing for me to explore. But dragons seem to be part of every culture as well. So there's probably something there. Right? You have, you have certainly dragons appearing in European cultures, you certainly have dragons appearing in East Asian cultures. So, um, and, you know, how does that how does that happen? I know, I don't know. I mean, unless there's some sort of cultural, you know, cultural exchange of the idea of Dragon or it's an archetype or, you know, I don't even know. So, is it possible that, you know, dragons are spiritual beings that exist in the middle world, I suppose. Right? I do know, people who have encountered dragons in journeys, usually not in middle world realms. So there are, there are places where you can travel in journey where there are, you're more likely to encounter mythological beings. But there's sort of more ethereal than then kind of middle world and then there's, you know, in you know, I'm thinking of the, you know, St. George, the dragon slayer in, in, you know, the patron saint of, I think it's the patron saint of if it's England or London specifically, I think it's England, the patron saint supposedly slayed slew, right. slue is the past tense of slay, I don't know, slew a dragon. So that's kind of an interesting thing to explore, as well, like what you know, and in certain, certainly in European stories of, of dragons, and when we see like, Tolkien themes, you know, the, the Hobbit and all of those stories, you know, dragons are not necessarily nice beings. They hoard gold and all that sort of thing. And so I think they're, you know, there's some, there's definitely some cultural overlay there as well. We're in, you know, some East Asian cultures, dragons are seen as protectors, you know, and, you know, as protective spirits. So, I don't know, there's certainly some cultural overlay. So my experience with the nature spirits is that they, you know, the temperament really differs, right? It's just like human beings. You know, just like if you're wandering around, and, you know, a city, you don't know, if you're journeying in the middle world, and you encounter nature, you know, nature spirits. Some of them will be indifferent to you, they don't care that you're there. Some of them would be curious, like, Hey, what are you doing here, you can see me some of them will be overjoyed to meet you. Some of them will be angry that you've interrupted them, or, you know, entered their space without permission or without an offering or that sort of thing. So it's best to be careful about these things. And there are lots and lots of cautionary tales. Among the cultures that follow, sort of fairy faith or believe in little beings, or that sort of thing, and there are lots of you know, there are lots and lots of recommendations about leaving offerings or don't step into a circle of mushrooms or don't trot along certain trails or, you know, that sort of thing. My advice is, you know, just like if you are traveling to a foreign country,

it is important to do your best to respect the culture and respect the rules of where you're traveling. Okay, even though we live in the middle world, when we Trump along like we're the only beings here you know, you can you know, you can cause damage right if I just you know, walk around throwing my garbage everywhere you know, I'm I'm causing, you know, I'm causing damage and that's not right. So, in a fight, traveled to a foreign country, I tried to learn a little bit of you know, if, you know, they speak a language I don't understand, I'll try to learn at least a little bit. So I can get around, I will read about customs. So I will try not to do something that's deemed offensive. Um, you know, I will respect the locals, I will respect the law, I will, you know, embrace with curiosity and love and kindness. You know, people who offer up bits of their bits of their culture, right, people like to take pride in their culture have people come? If people come visit me, in Maine, for example, I, you know, we have a you know, I'm surrounded by beautiful nature and an amazing coastline with beaches, and rocky shores, and islands, all of those things. And they take pride in that, and I'd like to show people around. And so it's, it's kind of the, it's kind of the same thing. You know, with nature spirits, some of them are, you know, they're all you know, they all live here, this is their home. Right? The reason why they're nature spirits is that they live in nature they live in, you know, the world that we, that we look out at and consider nature. And, you know, so this is their home. And so it's important for us to respect that. And, you know, my work in shamanism shows me that we're, you know, there's this sort of infinite web of all living things. You know, of all spirits, and we're all connected. So if I disrespect if I, if I pollute, or I don't recycle, or I do all of these things, that's harming the earth. Like, I'm part of that web. I'm part of that net, I'm not disconnected, I'm not separate. And so respecting those things, at you know, even from a selfish superficial level is respecting myself, right, I'm affecting the world that I live in. So yeah, when you, when you walk in nature, when you go in nature, go in reverence. Right, show show, show, respect, whatever that means. Leave nothing. But footprints was sort of the, the camping motto, when I was when I was a boy, and I was in the Boy Scouts, right, we always left a place. At least as pristine as when we got there. Sometimes, you know, if we got to a camping spot or something, and some people had trashed it, we would clean it up. Right, we would leave it better than better than the way we found it. So the lesson there is how do we how do we as humans leave places better than when we found them. And it's hard because we make an impact just by living on the planet by eating food. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, it doesn't matter if you're vegan, you know, and, you know, power to you, if you are and you only eat, you know, you try to make as little impact as you can, you're still making an impact your food still has to be grown somewhere. fields have to be plowed. You know, territory has to be taken up to grow the food that you eat. Um, so we do make we do make an impact. So how do we, how do we look at that? How do we lessen that? How do we live in better harmony in you know, it's really about the small choices that we make? Do we choose to recycle? Do we choose to compost? Do we choose to, you know, participate in beach cleanups in our area? Or do we just treat the earth as if it's disposable? And, you know, and make the make the nature spirits angry at us, we don't want to do that.

When we live in harmony with them, they will take care of us. You know, most of them will take care of us they will they appreciate it. When you make offerings and offerings, you don't have to change your belief system, you know, or believe you know, or or do nature worship or become a shaman or practice animism, any of those things by making offerings. Um, you know, it could be simple, you could feed the birds, right, I have a bird feeder, and I feed the small mammals in the area, you know, put up put up That I'm very conscious of that are healthy for them. And it's especially important where I live over the winter, where a lot of birds have trouble. You know, have can have trouble finding food. So I do put, you know, I do put food out for them, especially in the winter. And it increases, you know, there's, there's research to show that increases the survivability rates. So, you know, I'm taking care of the animals and taking care of the environment, I'm very keen on recycling and, you know, taking a stance on things, you know, trying to be as ecological as I can be. But also keeping in mind that no matter what I do, just the fact that I exist on this planet, and I use electricity, and I use have to use fossil fuels for the time being, I don't have any other way to, to get around, I would love to own an electric vehicle. But that is, you know, a little outside of my price range at the moment, but someday in the near future, I'll be able to reduce my impact on the world. So it's about making conscious choices, it's about choosing, you know, choosing things that, you know, if given two choices, I, you know, I try to make try to make one that is less impactful. if you so desire, you can, you know, actually, you know, leave real offerings for nature spirits, you know, really, I find to, you know, you want to honor the spirits of place, and so we're, we're, I live this, you know, I live on land that was traditionally occupied by the wabanaki people, you know, at least you know, that my understanding is a big Confederacy of people, wabanaki people and, you know, one traditional offering for this area might be cornmeal. Right. And so I do, you know, I will offer cornmeal in this in this area, simply because that's a historic offering, right? That's something that has gone on here forever. Sometimes, I will also offer Mead, which is honey wine, you know, I'll put out a little cup of mead as an offering, in honor of my ancestors who were, who were Scandinavian, and you know, that sort of thing. And, you know, some other, you know, some other offerings as well. You know, like I said, I put out food for the birds So, if you so desire, you can put out offerings for nature spirits, and that seems to be a big part of animistic culture all over the world. And you know, it's, it's a way of living in greater harmony with the nature spirits that are around you, that are around you. So I hope this has been you know, I hope this has been interesting and certainly somewhat enlightening, enlightening about nature, spirits and what they are, and they have always been here, they will always be here, you know, time doesn't have as much meaning in time and space don't really have as much meaning in the spirit world. And that's sort of why sometimes these nature spirits appear to us as being small. But they do come in all different sizes and shapes and forms and that sort of thing. There's, there's quite a variety. Anyway, you know, I will leave you with that. I will get back to recording these on a more regular basis. I wish you all well, and we will talk to you next time.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john go to MaineShaman.com that's maineshaman.com