TRANSCRIPT – Healing Our Planet & Ourselves with Visionary Mushrooms | Shonagh Home

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[00:00] Lorna: Hello Visionary Nation. This is Lorna Liana and I’m here today with a medicine sister. Her name is Shonagh Home and she is an author, shamanic practitioner, teacher and public speaker who has become a feminine voice for the Reverent Shamanic use of psilocybin mushrooms. Her book ‘Love and Spirit Medicine’, chronicles from mystical journey to the end of her marriage into a focused exploration of entheogenic mushrooms. Shonagh travels around the country teaching the shamanic arts and sharing wisdom gleaned from the mushroom intelligences. In addition, she’s a beekeeper, a bee venom therapist and she’s got a book about that subject coming up in 2015. Now, Shonagh and I have never met in person but I already feel that we are soul sisters in some way, and I’m so grateful to have you on the show, Shonagh. Thank you so much for joining us.
[01:00] Shonagh: Thank you, Lorna, so much. I’m so honored to be here. This is going to be good conversation today.
[01:05] Lorna: I know. And I can’t wait to read your books. So I’m kind of curious, because I did read the description of your book and I’m so intrigued by it and I know that in your book, Love and Spirit Medicine, you share very intimately your shamanic journeys with the mushroom and its effects on your personal life especially your journey through your romantic breakup. So, I’m kind of curious to know what called you to share such a personal journey because I’m somewhat of a public figure also and I do want to share about my personal experiences as well and I find that there’s a delicate balance between sharing about personal life sharing wisdom that you want to make available to the world through your true calling, which is the shamanic arts. And of course, how do you speak about other people in a way that also respects their privacy? So, what called you to share your personal journey?
[02:05] Shonagh: When I started working with the mushroom, it was because it was really calling to me and before that, I didn’t do any recreational anything. i don’t drink. But I have been a voracious student of shamanism for a number of years. And I tried Ayahuasca briefly and that was incredible but it came to me: “This is not your medicine.” The mushroom was calling me and so I had a dear friend who lived in a beautiful part of Washington just surrounded by rainforest and moss and he works with these plants and so I asked him if he would induct me with the mushroom and so he did and that’s how I got into it and we did it through ceremony. And we even said our first night when we were out in the woods in this beautiful area and we were like: “Whoa. We don’t have our own Shaman to guide us here. So we’re going to have to bring all our own integrity and our humility into this.”  And that is precisely what we did; we did a ceremony and I didn’t know what to expect, Lorna. And then I took 5 dried grams, which is a lot, and experienced through that very profound healing and a direct connection and discussion with the Earth, with Mother Earth, and I call her ‘Mama.’ And after that occurred, it was all I think about because I realized: “My God! This is a portal. This is an ancient teacher.” And I think the plants and the fungi, those are the ancient teachers, the gods and goddesses, truly, and so we tapped into that and I wanted to experience it again, which I did the following month, again with this friend of mine. And in any case I at that point started reading every book I could find on the subject and they were all written by men and they were also rather academic. And so I was seeking something written by a woman and I wanted a woman’s telling of what happens to you when you do this medicine and I am a writer and so I was just journaling and I ended up writing that book. And it chronicles over a year of taking that medicine every month, 5 dried grams, out in the nature, in the dark, lying down, and there aren’t many middle-aged suburban women doing that. But it was a soul calling and I realized now looking back, I was in a type of training that has deepened my shamanic work profoundly and changed me in every way and so I’m very glad to share that book and yes, it is very personal. It’s very vulnerable. The names are changed to all the people within that telling and it’s told very respectfully and I explore shadow a lot, my own personal shadow. So I really put it out there and that is also in an effort to bring some humanity into the discussion, into this very commercial society that we live in, that’s all about the labels and we’re identifying with so much that is superficial. And so this book goes into the humanity and it goes into relationship because life is relationship, our relationship with each other, and with our selves, and with the Earth. So, yes, that’s your answer there.
[05:39} Lorna: I think that’s one of the perspectives that I find really missing in many of the books and the accounts of shamanic medicines and psychedelic science that I’ve been seeing many of the male thought leaders have produced in the world. There seems to be a lot more focus around the chemistry of these substances and the ethnobotanical uses and history or the history of psychedelics in the 60s, but I don’t really see much regarding healing on a deeply personal level and especially a journey that takes you into an intimate relationship with the Earth. And I think that that for me seems like a very feminine perspective.
[06:31] Shonagh: You’re exactly right. And plant medicines have long been a domain of women and if you look back through what little history we have on these women, they were women who worked with these visionary medicines and went into oracle. They would allow spirits to come through and then bring healing to their communities and this goes down in the Mayan communities by the priestesses of Ixil, this was done by the Vulva in the Norse traditions, and of course, the Oracles of Delphi and Dodona and other temples there. So women, I think, have a very different experience of this medicine, because you know what, men and women are wired very differently. I know we all want to be the same in this ridiculous society we are in. We are not. We’re wired differently.
[07:19] Lorna: Our brains are structured differently. You know, just on a biological level, we’re different.
[07:24] Shonagh: We are, we are, and that’s a beautiful thing.
[07:27] Lorna: Celebrate it!
[07:29] Shonagh: Exactly. And so, women are naturally wired for relationship and communication. We are and so I see that we would take plant medicine and go in very different way and it would be, yes, very much about relationship. And I also have a critical thinking. I bring that in as well and after these journeys, I would work with them as if I was working with a dream because they are deeply symbolic and at the same time, you’ve invited into your body a plant intelligence and so the guys, a material science wants to reduce everything to the sum of its parts. It removes it from its contacts, from its environment and it studies it, it picks it apart, and it studies just essentially the microcosm. And yes, okay, it’s acylicin or whatever factors are in that mushroom that creates this experience. But they are missing the larger piece; this is intelligence. And you can reduce it all you want. But you know what, the mushroom has said to me, in terms of bringing it in to society, it says: “I am that which will not be civilized. I am that which will not be legitimized. I am a mystery. And I always will be.” And so that’s the thing too. I don’t know that medicine inside and out. I don’t have that kind of hubris to say: “Well, yes, it’s this. Yes. I’ve figured it all out.” It’s a mystery.
[09:12] Lorna: It is a great mystery.
[09:14] Shonagh: Yes. And I think women, many of us, can really get that and still bring that humility into the table. That is not something to dominate, quite opposite, it’s got our number, big time, and it will teach you if you’ve got the humility, you know? If you show up with that and the desire to learn, it will whisper secrets into your ears and it certainly has done so for me and I’m sure for you as well.
[09:42] Lorna: You know, what was really fascinating with my experience with mushrooms, I will say that ayahuasca is my medicine. It’s that sense of like: “Okay. I can respect the other plant medicines like peyote for example, san pedro mushrooms but I feel like my relationship with ayahuasca is something that’s going to be lifelong.” But one thing that I found really fascinating is I have been so intrigued by the visionary landscapes that I’ve seen with ayahuasca that for a long time, I associated it with that particular plant teacher. And then I had this experience where I sat up in ceremony with a woman I refer to as “Madrinha Julieta”. She is a Mazatec mushroom shaman from Mexico and we did a ceremonial work and she served us the Niño Santos, which were these little tiny psilocybin mushrooms, I don’t know how many species there are per se in the world. Would you know how many species of psilocybin mushrooms exist?
[10:54] Shonagh: There’s a lot.
[10:54] Lorna: It’s a lot. I think something like 50 but who knows, maybe something like Paul Stamets, the mycologist will know. And so one thing that I found was interesting was that the difference in personality that Ayahuasca and the Niño Santos have. So the mushrooms were so much more child-like, bubbly, humorous whereas ayahuasca can be kind of epic, primordial, and okay, you can use for the lessons that you have to learn. You know, but you’re doing okay but these are the lessons and one thing that I found was that some of the visionary landscapes that I saw in ayahuasca, I saw in the mushrooms. So that indicated to me that these worlds are not necessarily linked per se to the specific plant medicine. They are the worlds that exist inside of you or us, specifically. And so that was a wonderful experience that I had with the mushrooms. It kind of made me appreciate so much more my inner world.
[11:57] Shonagh: Yes because the universe is within us. We are the microcosm of macrocosm. First of all, we are nature or the reflection of nature. And we’re the reflection of the cosmos as well. Even the way the planets revolve around each other, people see that within the atoms and molecules of the cells in our body. And so, it’s all about going inward and you can tap into all of that, all of that. The whole metaphor… Everything is metaphor that you see, everything. And then, within our body, it is metaphor. And so, yeah, you go in the mind and the mind is like: “All right. We’ve got this brain in our heads and so I guess that’s the mind.” but that’s really a mystery as well. So yeah, you’re absolutely bang on about going again.
[12:48] Lorna: So why do you think there are so many people these days seeking out plant medicines? I mean, I feel like the whole Ayahuasca world has exploded with people coming forward and serving the medicine, all these groups that are kind of taking place, somewhat clandestinely in the United States and in other countries where the legality is kind of still a bit of a gray area. Are you seeing explosion in plant medicine shamanism yourself?
[13:21] Shonagh: Yes, I am. And I get sometimes bombarded by people who want me to shaman for them because I do do that, I will say once in a while, very carefully and I consider it a form of midwifery actually, one-on-one. And you know what, I say that to you and I don’t worry about the legality per se of saying this because you know what, it’s just hearsay. Prove it. You know what I mean? I can say whatever I want, it’s just hearsay.
 
In any case, in terms of people being drawn to this medicine, there is nothing of any depth and meaning in this modern culture. I am sorry, there is not. I find it repugnant, I really do. It blows my mind. I don’t watch television. I really stay away from the whole sort of media machine as much as I can. It’s just I can see right through it, I can see into the manipulation and it’s very, very superficial. Well, we are human beings and we have been seduced into this modern culture and taken away from our natural state and people do seek meaning. And so they can seek the superficial for a certain amount of time but it just leaves them cold and they know there’s more. They know there is more. And I see that that is why there is so much depression and the apathy and violence because people have not been able to touch the sacred and we naturally, very naturally, want to do that. And so, these plant medicines come around, and people start hearing about this and they have an experience where they have a direct experience with something very mysterious and very profound. And that touches them very deeply. You’re not going to get that with anything, even a book. And books are amazing things. I read many of them behind me but a plant medicine will take you into what I call the ‘Territory of the Sacred’ and guess what that is? It’s you. It’s me. This is the Territory of the Sacred. The plant takes you deeply, deeply in there and you see things that have never even occurred to you before. I mean, it opens you to so much and this is what we are in desperate need of. And especially you can see what a mess the society is because look at how we are destroying the Earth as you and I speak. They are continuing to cut off mountaintops in Appalachia. The military, which is embedded in the US Service, wants to conduct electromagnetic warfare games in the pristine Olympic rainforest. Stop. You can’t even led to someone who thinks rationally, with reason, it’s unfathomable. So this is how far we have strayed and so the plant medicines, also, I think, this is Mother Earth calling her children back, calling her children away from the false paradigm and back to what is real and people feel that because we are real. We are nature. This body is nature. We are Earth beings and so that sparks something. It is familiar to us in some strange way. And so, yes, of course, people are flocking to this. Now the problem of course is, we need more of the shamans.
[16:45] Lorna: Oh my God! Yes. Tell me about it. I mean, I stopped drinking ayahuasca in the West because of people, too many encounters with people who weren’t really holding the space in the integrity-based way especially since you see a lot of these ayahuasca circles and they can make a lot of money and they’re charging people, $200-300 per person and if they’re paying rent, their rent with this money, it has like a personal, then they’re personally enmeshed in the economics and the business of serving medicine and I’ve had far too many experiences where people in one particular scenario, there was a big upset over money at a particular work that I was participating in and the person leading the work started screaming about it. And that was like, since I hosted my experience in Brazil where there’s more of a holistic culture of Ayahuasca, that is not just heard of. You don’t do that. And so, yeah, having more good shamans. I’d love to hear more from you about what that means and what you’ve been observing in the space.
[17:55] Shonagh: Well, I will say with the mushroom, as I’ve said before, we took a shaman to guide us and really the truth is, they murdered most of those people, the Catholic church did a very good job over the years. The fact that you found your way to, I think… is that ‘Dona Julieta’, one of the 13 grandmas who you sat with?
[18:12] Lorna: Yes. Oh! She’s lovely! I love her. She’s so great.
[18:18] Shonagh: I love the grandmas. And so, this is what we need and I feel: “Yes, yes. There are some good men out there who hold beautiful space and the women have been really, well, they have to be very, very careful, the women, because, of course, they can take your children away, they can do all sorts of things.” And we see what has been done to women over the centuries, women who worked the magical arts, women who knew the medicines were tortured and murdered. So we have to be very, very careful, not that that’s going to happen today. But other things will. But women hold that space certain of us with great humility, and reverence. And so in terms of, I am a shamanic practitioner and I worked with clients and I get paid to do that because I have two daughters to feed and a house, and you know, so I sat in ceremony with a woman once, Patricia Anne Davis, who is a fourth generation Navajo medicine woman and we, it was not a medicine ceremony but we received a different kind of medicine from her in any case. But she said: “Look. We paid to be there.” I can’t pay my bills with a feather and a stone. This is, we’re in a commercial culture right now. We’ve been removed from that traditional culture so this is how it looks like. However, when it comes to the medicine, I don’t know, and I don’t want to judge, but I’m just a little bit like my eyebrows are raised like: “Wow. This is… They’ve turned this ancient medicine into quite a money-making adventure.” And if I do that with someone, which is rare, it’s one-on-one. And yes, I charge but it’s very different. I’m not going to make… I’m not going to get rich off of that, you know what I mean? It’s just… You’re going to spend, I’m going to sit all night with you and be your midwife, yes, I’m going to ask for a little dough but you know, I don’t do groups. I don’t do groups. And I understand the ayahuasca, that is a part of it but anyway, I don’t feel so great about that. It concerns me because also, I see, while we are taking something that is ancient, very, very ancient, these plant teachers and we are trying to bring them into, we’re trying to commercialize them, we’re commercializing them. And so, this is a very large discussion that we can’t cover possibly here in just a few minutes. But there’s so much to this, ethically and legally, and everything else. But for myself, that’s not how I make my money in terms of having large groups and charging like: “Come do the mushrooms with me.” nor would I risk myself anyway because I do have two daughters and you can’t control necessarily who comes to those groups either. It’s quite a risky operation, I must say. Until this stuff becomes legalized, and anyway, that’s a whole another discussion.
[21:28] Lorna: Yeah, I understand. We can bookmark that discussion perhaps for another episode down the road. But I want to continue this conversation about how women shamans because one of the things that I noticed when I spent a lot of time in the tribes in Brazil is that the gender roles are split rather clearly where women pretty much are responsible for the household domain and the men, they either do the hunting and they do certain types of work and so pretty much it’s almost always the men who receive shamanic training; because rarely do we ever have a scenario where if a woman is demonstrating a skill and gift with the plants, it’s very rare that her husband will say: “Oh honey, you are so talented with this medicine. Why don’t you go with the shaman and I will take care of the kids, clean the house, and get the water.” That almost never happens. We don’t see that many women shamans at all in the Amazon from what I see. And so, I’m kind of curious to know what your take is on women shamans in the modern world and you know, I know that in the colonial times you killed off many of the medicine men and women but you know, what do you think could be done to really kind of support more women in walking the path of medicine women and serving in this way?
[22:58] Shonagh: Wow. That’s a really, really good question. First of all, I do want to say there is a book written by Barbara Tedlock, PhD called ‘The Woman in the Shaman’s Body’ and I would recommend that to all the listeners. It’s a very, very good book and it goes into how the majority of the shamans, it seems over the years, were actually women, were women.
[23:20] Lorna: What happened?
[23:22] Shonagh: Yeah. Well, as colonialization took place, I think, and as, you know, actually I think what happened was the Industrial Age happened for all of us, because it took all of us out of our more natural state of being self-sustaining and living off the land and having these smaller communities and it’s so funny, Neil Kramer who you should interview, he calls it ‘machine culture’ and I call it ‘factory culture’ so we are on the same page. And so, that whole sort of magical side because women, I say this, we are naturally more intuitive and we’re naturally more irrational, we are. I don’t mean irrational in the way that people are thinking but that ability to leave the rational and enter the irrational. So we have a natural proclivity for that. But it’s also just, modern culture, we’ve been so sucked into this, we got to pay the bills and then hopefully, if we have children, we’ve got to raise our children somehow. I mean, there are so many responsibilities that get in the way and again, no one, when I was a little girl, I had claircognizance and clairsentience where I would have knowings, I called them ‘confirmations’ but there was no one to take my hand and walk me down to the lady who lives on the outskirts of the village, a nice lady there who works with all those medicines, you know what I mean? And maybe have a sit down and have her do a little scan and then work with leaders. We don’t have that in our culture. So first of all, we just first of all have to even just bring that awareness in that this stuff has some merit, that this work has merit. And I teach teleclasses, I call them ‘Tuesday Teleclass’ and I’m teaching a teleclass this month called ’21st century Shamanism’ and going into how do we bring this into modern society? And does it have relevance? Well, I think you and I know and the listeners, it has tremendous relevance in terms of the shamanic arts, incredible, the soul retrieval, the entity removal, depossession work, a curse unraveling all of that has tremendous relevance because none of our the way we relate humanly, that has not changed and we still have problems and issues and traumas and wounds and all of that that must be dealt with. And you know, I think conventional Psychiatry is, I think, is doing a really piss-poor job the way they are passing out antidepressants like Pez candies to children and teenagers. And you know, good people like you and I, I would never touch those stuff. That stuff alters your brain chemistry. And then of course, the shamanic women, and particularly the women, it’s a mocked, it’s kind of sneered at. There is a bias still in the culture. My girl’s friends, I think some of them, they think I’m a hippie, which is so funny. And they just don’t get it. They don’t get it. So, we’ve got to raise more awareness around what this is and that it’s not new age either. That stuff is crap. That has nothing to do with it. This stuff is ancient. It’s old, old, old. I call it a technology; only the technology is working with a technology of nature and those nature spirits and our ancestors. We are multi-dimensional beings. We can access all of that. We’ve just been kept in this teeny, tiny bubble of awareness. It’s just a perception.
[26:59] Lorna: You know, one thing I like to remind people of especially when I have conversations and they kind of get really into the whole scientific verification of phenomena, I’m like: “You know, the Newtonian, Cartesian World View is really only 200 years old whereas the spiritual shamanic world view is like tens of thousands of years old.”
[27:23] Shonagh: Of course, of course. And you hear often, they will make these discoveries that’s like: “Oh yeah. Whatever. The guru guys over India have known that for thousands of years or the Chinese, they knew that forever, the nadis, the bodies, the meridians, and all of that, the energy meridians. Yeah, it’s funny and you know, I think Science, it’s a great thing. It’s great. And I read a lot of Rudolf Steiner and Rudolf Steiner was born in Austria in 1860 or in 1861, died in 1925, I think and he was a multi-faceted genius and as a child, he was clairvoyant. He could see and the plants were talking and the trees were talking to him. And then he grew up to be very, very incredibly educated, I mean, Botany, Engineering, Mathematics, Homeopathy, I mean extraordinary genius. And he created what he called ‘Spiritual Science’ where he wove the wisdom of the Ancients in with Science, saying: “Look. You cannot just pull something out of its environment and reduce it down to the sum of its parts. You must take into consideration the invisible forces behind that, that cause it to be. And those forces come from the Cosmos, from the magnetics of the planets and constellations, and forces from the Earth. You can’t see them but they are there and you must consider all of that or else you are going to miss quite a bit and you only get a very limited view of the subject you are studying, what he called the ‘Material Science Paradigm.’ So yeah, what I think is, Science needs it to grow up.
[29:05] Lorna: Absolutely!
[29:07] Shonagh: Yeah.
[29:08] Lorna: So I’m curious to know, what impact do you think mushroom can have on modern culture?
[29:15] Shonagh: Well, profound, they’ve had a profound on me, if used responsibly, with reverence. We know that they are doing these studies, that of course, the mushrooms assist with people who have PTSD. PTSD, by the way is just an Orwellian term of making it sound nicey nice. It’s ‘cell shock’. PTSD is cell shock. So these people, these soldiers come back absolutely just trashed and they’re a mess and so the mushrooms help those guys and women tremendously with that in ways that drugs are of course, just band aids. It will just take you down. Also for people who are nearing the end of their life, they have found that it gives them this very deep and profound experience where they no longer fear death because of course, they’ve been taken into this very sacred territory. They will assist with depression. What they are, are they are teachers, the mushrooms. They’ll open you to your behaviors. Just like the ayahuasca will do, open you to your addictions, it will make you much more aware of how you have been operating. I see them as a tremendous assist to going into our own shadow and looking at what has been running us from those shadows, which becomes your Achilles’ heel if you’re not aware of it, if you’re not conscious of it. So the mushrooms will help you become conscious of that. And you know what, they’ll make you a better person. If your heart is in the right place and you really, really want to do the work on yourself, they’ll help you do that and we need that because we have the walking wounded in this culture now and a lot of lost souls, a lot, a lot of lost souls. Now, mushrooms are right for everybody? Of course, no. They will work for some people, not everyone is going to be called to that. But they will also assist you as a teacher or someone who is a practitioner in some way to better assist the people who come work with you as they have done for me. They have affected the Shamanic work that I do profoundly in these past 3 years, profoundly, so that I have much more insight into the person I am working with. I can go very deep into what is making them tick and bring that into their awareness compassionately and help them to make a ‘course correction’, I call it or healed at peace, that is due to the mushroom and what it has given me of over a year of working very, very reverently with it. And I don’t work with the mushrooms to that degree anymore, I don’t need to. That’s the other piece and the medicine will tell you, it said to me: “Our work here is complete. You are welcome to come and visit, and sit and have a chat.” And I call it ‘going through the portal’ to sit on God’s lap and talk to these spirits. So, yes, once in a while, I will go in and do that and have a conversation, but I got what I needed to get. My bottom line is, as a result of that, I am very comfortable in my own skin, very comfortable. I have nothing to defend and I don’t have to avert my eyes from anyone and that is from the medicine. So that is huge now. If more women and men could get to that point, we would have a very different world. Things would be more thoughtfully, and more carefully orchestrated before you have to act. And so, I see that coming that is a possibility if more people will bring themselves to this. But you know, we all need to watch the ego stuff too because people have a lot of ego inflation. I’m sure, as you have seen in the ayahuasca community. Oh my goodness!
[33:23] Lorna: Yes. Yes. Yes.
[33:26] Shonagh: Spiritual oneship and whatnot. So, I just have to keep a good sense of humor with all of that and hopefully they will move through that. That’s just a staging. Hopefully they get past that because that’s sort of nonsense.
[33:44] Lorna: Yeah. Thank you for sharing you very profound thoughts about how these plant medicines can really bring us to be at ease and to a place of self-love and self-respect from where we can tap into the unshakable confidence that comes with knowing who you are.
[34:10] Shonagh: Yeah. You’re very welcome.
[34:12] Lorna: Another thing too, I think that mushrooms can really do, which I see in Brazil with the thriving contemporary ayahuasca culture, it’s wonderful because it’s legal in Brazil, right?
[34:23] Shonagh: Yeah.
[34:23] Lorna: I mean, what the ayahuasca is doing in Brazil, it’s sparking an ecovillage movement where all the people are moving like and they’re trying to live off-grid and they’re living in communities and the communities are organized around drinking medicine together, and you know, instead of watching television, you’re going to a concerts. I love concerts and all that but you’re still watching television, you’re listening to the radio, they’re getting together around the fire and singing medicine songs around each other.
[34:52] Shonagh: Yes. I was saying to someone that singing is something we’ve lost in this culture. Mothers used to sing to their children. Dads used to sing. I mean, we used to sing together. That is beautiful. I love that that is returning. That’s very powerful.
[35:07] Lorna: And one thing that I saw when I was traveling around the indigenous territories of Acre, Brazil, is I visited a village of a friend of mine who’s a political leader from the Kuntanawa tribe, his name is Haru Kuntanawa. And so, he’s a shaman in a certain way. His dad is just really very knowledgeable with the plants and all that, and Haru’s really much more of a political leader. But he does serve medicine. He has hundreds and hundreds of songs and what he likes to do is he’ll invite people and invite the tribes over, he’ll invite the seringueiro’s over the rubber tappers over, or you know, and have these political meetings in a 3 or 4 day political get togethers in the village, where the night before, they will sit up all night and drink ayahuasca, and sing, and go through their profound healing, dump all the baggage, get really clear, and then the next day, they will be in political meetings all day. What a great way to have diplomatic meetings to resolve difficult issues around land rights and illegal cattle ranching and a recognition of the Federal government and all the things that they talk about. It’s just, can you imagine if the UN did that? We would be in a much better place in our international community.
[33:33] Shonagh: Yeah. But that really, the UN, I’m sorry to say, is a criminal syndicate and there’s no way that good people like us would ever run countries or make decisions in a way that the world leaders are and those who have held the reins of power, they don’t operate like that. Otherwise, we would have a very, very different world. So yeah, no, that is the power of the planet of this Earth, of nature, that she will provide us with something like a plant of that nature that would assist us to get along and to make those kinds of decisions and that those decisions actually should be considered from a very profound perspective, not just necessarily from the left brain, right? But bring in and see that way of what they’re doing, they’re bringing in the whole picture, the macrocosm.
[37:31] Lorna: Yeah. Not just the: “What can I get out of it?” and “What can we negotiate together?” It’s like: “Where is this going?”, ultimately. “How is it going to affect our families, our children down the road, the Earth, upon which we depend for our very survival?” Right?
[37:47] Shonagh: Right. And governments are corporate entities so corporations, that’s a whole different thing. They have got a whole different setup of interests, shall we say, that we are dealing with when they do their dealings together. And it’s not about their people, it’s about assets and commerce, and all of that. It’s very, very different and it makes a mess as we are seeing. So, yes, these guys have got it going on. There is a tremendous amount that we can learn from the native people. And you know, your people, my people, we are all native people. We are all indigenous. I always say the Romans got to us faster. That is all. They’ve got to our cultures, I mean, I’ve got Celt and Scottish and Norse in me and French and you know, my people got annihilated. Their culture was lost 2000 years ago in any case. We’ve lost that. But I know, if you trace those cultures back, they we’re doing, I’m sure, something similar, something similar in the way that they would meet and if they didn’t use plants, I guarantee they went into ceremony and they called in their gods so that when they had these very, very important discussions about you know, land and territory, and this and that, it was done, and it was in consciousness. That said, of course, there were many who just went in very war-like and took, but I know that there has been great consciousness because those people show us that. They show us that. They’ve been doing that for probably eons, those people. So to me, that is a more human way of behaving, of operating.
[39:28] Lorna: Wow. So I could keep talking with you for a long time but I just want to do a little time check and say that we’re, not at the end of the segment, I’d love to leave you with a last question. This is my favorite question. So, how have your visionary experiences with the mushroom brought you closer to your life purpose?
[39:52] Shonagh: Wow. I feel that one. They helped me, first of all, to shed everything that was false in my life and all my false perceptions about myself and the people around me so they did quite an internal cleansing of what was not working for me. They called me. I mean, they called me and they called me to my purpose and they told me, they gave me my spiritual name, if you will, or my spirit name. And they guided me. They guided me. And also, of course, it wasn’t just a one-time or a couple times deal. I was directed to that medicine every month for every year, big doses. It was no small thing and so it deepened me into my work as a shamanic practitioner. I was apprenticed to that medicine. That is how I look at it. That plant was my teacher or my shaman and that’s what I apprenticed with and so, yes, it has made me into a good shamanic woman.  I am a good medicine woman. I do good work and I help people. And my medicine is owl, which sees in the dark, and also, my medicine is the bees, so that’s another show but I do bee venom therapy and I help people with that as well. I keep bees and they come to me in my dreams. So yes, thank you to the mushrooms. I mean, it has brought me and deepened me into my life’s purpose, absolutely.
[41:39] Lorna: Thank you so much for sharing that. How can be best stay in touch with you, Shonagh?
[41:343] Shonagh:   I have a website, shonaghhome.com and my name is spelled SHONAGH HOME. So my website in this, my classes that I offer, my books are on my website that I’ve written, my phone number, my email, all of that, and I make myself very accessible.
[42:04] Lorna: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today and I wish you a beautiful day.
[42:10] Shonagh: Thank you, Lorna, you too.
[42:13] Lorna: Bye.