Martin Shaw talks to David Wendl-Berry about Rites Of Passage, Vision Quests and Encountering the Earth
Having just read “Rites of Passage for Men” by Steve Banks in Self & Society No 5., I thought your readers might be interested in a different perspective on “Rites of Passage”.
I first met David Wendl-Berry when I signed up to do a Vision Quest in North Wales. Having found the experience profoundly powerful, I was fascinated to know more about the process, its roots, and what motivated him to start running these groups.
David Wendl-Berry was originally trained to guide people through the Vision Quest by Steven Foster and Meredith Little at “The School of Lost Borders” in Eastern California. He also apprenticed to Sun Bear, a Chippewa Medicine Man, as well as travelling the States working with a variety of Native American teachers.
He has been guiding people through the Vision Quest Rite of Passage for almost twenty years.
In 1999 he set up Earth Encounters a Centre For Wilderness Rites Of Passage, a new facility, designed to promote and celebrate wilderness and personal renewal through nature, which is based on ways to use the natural world for therapeutic purposes.
When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal, or personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the mono-myth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labour of bringing the runes of wisdom, the golden fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may rebound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.
Joseph Campbell, “Hero With a Thousand Faces”
Martin Shaw: Could you start off by telling us what a “Rite of Passage” is?
David Wendl-Berry: A “Rite of Passage” is a ceremony specifically designed to facilitate change. In other words, it’s a ceremony created to help people move from one stage of their lives to the next. If we take a look at the movement from childhood to adulthood, we can see that a part of the persons life is coming to an end i.e., childhood, and a part of the persons life is about to start i.e. adulthood. In between there is a death and a birth. A death to the past and a birth to the future. We have a process that starts with an ending (end of childhood) has a middle (death/birth) and ends with a beginning (adulthood).
Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep first defined the dynamics of a wilderness fast, or of any rite of passage, in 1909. The model we describe followed his classic three-phase formula: severance (“separation”), threshold (“marge”), and incorporation (“agregation”) (van Gennep, 1960). First, the child was severed from parents and childhood home and prepared for the trial that confirmed his adult, not his adolescent, abilities and sensibilities. Then he went alone and without food to a wilderness place and remained there for a period of time. The solitary experience of this time of seclusion was called the threshold. Alone and hungry in the threshold world, the candidate was “in the passage,” moving from a former to an antecedent life stage. When the trial was over, the candidate returned to his community and to his life as an adult. The third and final phase of the passage rite involved the incorporation of the candidate. He “in-corporated” by taking on the body of the adult world.
M.S. How does this apply to the man in the street, to Mr. Normal out there?
D.W.B. Okay, say for instance, you are a man in his mid forties, you’re married with three children, have your own house, car and computer soft-ware company. Your wife’s having an affair; your kids spend your money, wear your clothes, drive your car, never listen to you, never talk to you and generally use your house as a hotel. You are beginning to ask your self “is this what I’ve worked all my life for, what the hell am I doing. There must be more to life than this for God’s sake.” You know something has to change, but what, and how? You feel a deep, deep dissatisfaction with your life. Then you stumble upon a flyer telling you about “Rites Of Passage” somewhere in the mountains of North Wales.
You read: –
“So, leaving it all behind, you head for the Sacred Mountain taking your problem, your dilemma, your need for understanding and fulfilment to the breast of Mother Earth, there you will remain alone, fasting, seeking, crying for vision, for a period of up to four days and night.”
All of a sudden something in your gut turns, you are not sure what or why, but for some inexplicable reason, you know you have to do this. You’ve never heard of “Vision Quests”, no real idea of what it is. But deep in your being you know, you recognise, you are responding to something that has been the way for your ancestors for thousands of years.
You know, every earth-based culture has had a tradition of enacting formal rites of passage of one kind or another such as the Celts, Siberians, Africans, Tibetans and Native Americans.
We really need to understand, the way these traditional cultures have understood, that the most effective way of moving from one life stage to another, is by “marking” that transition with ritual and ceremony. One of the most effective and simple ways of doing this is to allow our selves to really feel, deeply feel our connection to the land, and allow the land to move us.
In certain traditional cultures, the teenagers would be taken away from their mothers and sent out into the wilderness to be alone and to fast. To nourish themselves on the breast of they’re Greater Mother, Nature, the Land, and the Earth. During this liminal time, the boy or girl would encounter the edge or the limit of their previous lives as children and formally jump or step beyond, into their new lives as adults.
I have noticed that, when asked what passage they are in, most middle-aged men who come to us looking for new direction in their lives inevitably focus on the transition from boyhood to manhood. Because they have never formally made that transition, they seem to have the feeling that they have always been boys trying to be a men.
Transition or the movement from one stage of your life to another, is really the core of the course that we run, which is actually a very simple rite of passage that has been taken from the Native American Vision Quest and adapted to make it applicable to people living in our culture.
Although the basic structure follows the Native American model of three days of preparation (severance), four days and night of fasting isolation and exposure (threshold), and three days of telling your stories and listening to feedback (reintegration), the actual ceremonies and activities that each person performs or enacts are purely their own.
When I first started doing this work, after my training in America, it was very much oriented towards Native American ways. Not surprising, considering that most of my training had been with Native American teachers, but over the years of doing this work in the mountains of North Wales almost all of the Native American influences have dropped away. We now take all our guidance from the land itself.
M.S. Could you try to tell us what it’s actually like to do a Vision Quest?
D.W.B. My experience of Vision Questing is that it can be hard work, especially in North Wales. Anyone who goes to do a Vision Quest thinking that they are going to spend a few days in a spiritual wonderland without having to work too much, are in for a shock.
Very often you find yourself sitting on the side of a mountain in the pouring rain, or in woods or open moorland with a cold wind gusting around you. Your sleeping bag is probably damp and clammy, your belly is empty and grumbling, you’ve probably got a headache and you feel as miserable as sin.
Even if the weather is beautiful and sunny, and you spend most of your time bathing in its glory, you will probably find that you can’t avoid your own darkness sneaking up on you. It’s quite remarkable how the weather will start to reflect your inner state. I was told that on a Vision Quest you always get the weather you need, I found that to be quite true.
Four days and night can seem like an eternity, fear will probably raise its ugly head, and so will boredom. You might well find that an awful lot of suppressed pain, anger, hatred, grief, guilt or whatever will start to surface, and it’s you that has to work it through.
You might well feel that its all too much for you to handle, that you’re all alone with it. But you’re not; the whole of nature is around you ready and willing to be of help. You might even get the sense that behind you are all those who have gone before, all those who have gone this way, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohamed, Black Elk, Crazy Horse, Odin and millions of others. You are now walking in their footsteps.
Over the period of four days your inhibitions will drop, your resistance will give way, and you find that you can give yourself permission to cry, to do ceremonies, to hug trees, to scream at the sky, to do whatever it is you need to do. After all there’s no one there to stop you or judge you. You are the Ceremonial Leader, the Medicine Person, and you find that nature does respond.
I have found that nature seems to have a way of drawing all this stuff out of you, of purging you if you like. But you really need to be ready to give it away, to give it to the Earth as good fertiliser. Healing, insight, understanding, power, direction, love and bliss can come to you at any time, and they may not. It really depends on what you need at the time.
People who take a question or a problem to the land will always get what they need. This is not necessarily what they expect, or what they want, but it always seems to be what they need.
No, doing a Vision Quest is certainly not easy, it can push you to your limits. But it is immensely powerful, rewarding and life transforming. I have not met one person who has left the wilderness without a heightened awareness of their place in nature. After all, we are of nature, we are Human Nature.
M.S. Could you tell us why any one would want to go through a Rite Of Passage, I mean, what’s the point of it?
D.W.B. In my mind, most of the problems we face in the late twentieth century stems from the deep-seated feeling of being separate. In fact it has been seen as a virtue to see ourselves as individuals striving to better ourselves in a materialistic world often at the expense of others. We justify this by saying that everyone has the right to do this.
But at what expense?
This separation, separation from nature, has the most appalling consequences. We are badly abusing the plant and animal kingdoms, and we are polluting our planet and our atmosphere beyond recognition. I believe that abuse, violence, and the destruction of our environment and our planet, the life negation that is happening right now has a lot to do with the lack of formally sanctioned Rites Of Passage in our society.
Rites Of Passage have always been used to help people move from one stage of their lives to another, and so it can today, moving from childhood to adulthood, getting married or divorced, changing career, going through mid-life crisis, looking for new direction, moving into retirement (becoming an elder), or even just going out on the land to reconnect with the power and beauty of creation. I was once told by an old medicine man “the greatest shamen, saints, medicine men, mystics etc. only ever had one real teacher, and that was the Earth Mother. They would go out there and sit on her bones and she would teach them all they needed to know.” We can still do that, and we should. Actually it is my feeling that the Earth really needs us to do just that.
M.S. What motivated you to start running Vision Quests in this country?
D.W.B. I used to be a Film Editor working for a large TV station and earning a very good wage. But I always felt that there was something missing in my life. I tried to fill that gap with work, with material objects, new stereo, car, books, records, things. Or I would try to fill that gap with sex, drugs, rock & roll, living the high life. Telling myself I was “successful”. But in the quiet of my own silence I would be aware of something missing, a gap, an emptiness that nothing could fill, and a sense of being alone. A darkness would creep over me and I would doubt, and questions would arise, why am I doing this? I didn’t choose to be a film editor, I just fell into it. What am I doing here? What am I supposed to be doing with my life? What is my true purpose, my path? Why do I feel so lonely and where does all this despair come from.
I worked in a group, studying the teachings of Gurdjieff for years. Flirted with Subud, Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Meditation, Taoism, Martial Arts especially Aikido and Tai Chi. But still there was some thing missing. Even after therapy, I still could not put my finger on it.
Then one day in July 1981 I bumped into an old friend of mine who was a Buddhist, he told me that a Native American Medicine Man called Sun Bear would be giving a talk and did I want to go along with him. I had no idea why I was going to see this man, I had no real interest in Native Americans, but something stirred in me so I went.
Listening to Sun Bear I knew without a doubt that my life was about to change forever. I understood what it was that was missing for me in all the paths that I came across. A connection to the land. My Sacred Land. Mother Earth.
It wasn’t long before I found myself on a plane to Washington State to do an Apprentice Screening Program and my first Vision Quest, (four days and nights of fasting, isolation and exposure); my whole life was about to be turned upside down and inside out. I found myself being an emotional yo-yo, being confronted and challenged on every possible level.
My first Vision Quest there, up on Vision Mountain really pushed me to my limit. One of Sun Bear’s helpers took my to a place on the mountain and said “This is your place, you stay here, see you in four days, may the Spirit be with you, protect you and give you the Vision you seek.” then she left.
I was suddenly on my own, and the only word that stuck in my mind was PROTECT. Protect me from what? What did she mean? Am I in danger? Oh shit, what the hell am I doing here? A 34-year-old English film editor with a drug habit and a potbelly, stuck on the edge of some mountain thousands of miles from home without food, or shelter, and nobody to talk to. Do they have Cougars here? Bears? Rattle Snakes? Coyotes?
It then occurred to me that I was somewhat out of my depth. But it was such a beautiful sunny day and I had the most stunning view across the Cascade Mountains. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do there, Sun Bear didn’t give me any ceremonies to do and there was very little in the way of preparation. I found myself thinking of my life, all the good things that had happened to me and all the bad. Old memories from childhood started to surface, and gradually I became aware that it was getting dark. My thoughts were getting dark too.
I started to hear Coyotes howling in the distance and found myself thinking, “this is a big mistake, I shouldn’t be here at all, something might well come and eat me, or I’m going to go mad, maybe even die”. Fear began to raise it’s ugly head, so I did what all good Englishmen of no bottle do in such situations, buried myself head first into the bottom of my sleeping bag.
I think it was sometime on the second day that I saw it. Right in the middle of my circle, sitting on a twig. The weirdest looking creature. A Praying Mantis. I’d never seen one before apart from on TV. It was just sitting there, shedding its skin, and sitting in the sunlight, perfectly still. I watched it for hours as the sun passed overhead. I picked up the twig taking it out of the shadows, and placed it in the sunlight again. Suddenly the mirror opened up, and I could see that what it was doing, I was doing, and what it was showing me, I needed to do.
Sun Bear had told me that nature is continuously informing us, but we fail to see and hear because our minds are so crazy. Sitting there on the side of that mountain a Praying Mantis was reflecting back my own process. I was praying, I was shedding my skin; I was putting myself in the light. It was showing me its medicine, the Power of Stillness showing me that I needed to still my mind and go within. That is where I would find my power, my story and my healing.
As the days passed I gradually became aware of my connection to creation. I felt intimately connected to Raven, Bear, Snake, Dragonfly, Cloud, Tree, Stone, Lightening, to the Earth. I was not a separate entity; I was very much a part of it all.
To really make the Vision Quest work in one’s life one needs to give it away. You don’t ever vision quest for yourself alone; you do it for your people. It came to me that I should be doing this work on my land with my people, to be the “Gift Bearer” if you like.
M.S. As someone who has completed many Vision Quests What do you think the process has added to your life?
D.W.B. Simply by placing myself in a wilderness setting for a prolonged period of time, where all the images coming to me (sight sound and smell etc.) were of nature, I find that I could naturally drop my sense of being separate, and experience a deep connection to all of creation.
If we can hold onto the power and beauty of our quest, hold on to that connection, we might be able to start making changes in our lives. We can empower ourselves even more by going back to our place on the mountain every year to reconnect, then we find that we are in an on-going process of growth. One quest leads on from the last. The story continues, one step at a time, slowly bringing us back into harmony with our true nature. Slowly untangling the knots of our separation. But please don’t make the mistake that the more you do it the easier it gets, I’ve found that this isn’t necessarily the case. Questing can bring up an awful lot of material that needs to be dealt with. As is often said “the story of the quest is the story of your life”, and Great Mother Nature is the best therapist I’ve found. All you need do is go to her. Questing in this way has added a whole new dimension to my life. A sense of being alive, having a purpose, seeing and knowing my place within the whole, and an understanding of the responsibilities that goes with that.
M.S. Do you think every one should do a Vision Quest?
D.W.B. I do feel that everyone should go through some form of rites of passage, in nature, at the right time. So that they can live their lives connected to the beauty of creation and take on the responsibilities and behave according to the stage of life that they are in.
But to Vision Quest the way I do, no. I don’t think it’s suited to everyone. Each person should find his or her own way with it. That’s what we do at Earth Encounters, we help people find their own way, courses can be designed to help you learn how to use the Earth as therapist, teacher and healer. You can structure your progress from very gentle ways of working with the land too much more demanding Rites Of Passage.
M.S. How would you like to see the Vision Quest work progressing, and exactly what is Earth Encounters?
D.W.B. I feel that Vision Quests should be made available to everyone, but most importantly to our youth. I would really like to see schools implementing formally sanctioned “Rites Of Passage” for their teenagers. I think that it’s essential that adolescents be offered rites of passage so as to properly initiate themselves into the mysteries, responsibilities and privileges of adulthood. I also feel that teachers should be trained in Wilderness Rites Of Passage, so that they can guide their own teenagers through such passage rites safely, but of course this implies that they should go through it themselves, only then could they guide others through it.
So after a lot of thought I have decided to bring “Earth Encounters” into existence, a Centre For Wilderness Rites Of Passage, a new facility, designed to promote and celebrate wilderness and personal renewal through nature. The centre will be offering various courses, the heart of which is the Vision Quest. These courses will be structured to suit the personal needs of all applicants, introductory workshops, shorter quests like two day and nights, or even twenty four hours and weekends that will lead up to a vision quest.
M.S. And lastly, when you’re running all these groups in the mountains, what do you get out of it. It’s not something that’s going to make you rich is it?
D.W.B. Really there is nothing more beautiful, and more moving, and more touching, than the look in a questers eyes when they return. It’s that look, it really is. That is worth all the trouble, all the effort and all the sacrifice, and I would rather be doing this than any thing else in the world.
It’s a privilege to be the “Gift Bearer”.
MARTIN SHAW is a musician, artist and sometime writer who lives near Totness in Devon. He can be reached on Tel: 01364631217 or Mobile No. 07789537106.