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Sweating it all out
My experience of a sweat lodge
Yesterday I went to a full day of a sweat lodge, my first experience of such a thing. Saunas are chicken feed compared to the intensity of this experience. It was challenging, to the extent that I asked to be let out part way through the first stage, but went back in for the second and third stages, an allowance being made for us all as first-timers. Normally if you leave, you are out and cannot go back. I am glad this was allowed for me however. I would not have missed the rest for the world.
Let me go back a few steps.
This was a Celtic sweat lodge, not a North American native tradition. The Celts once lived right across Europe, covering many countries and last week I was in Romania experiencing some remaining Celtic ways of life at a place called Viscri, which immediately gave me a deeper sense of connection with this tradition.
The framework of the lodge is made of many young hazel saplings bent over each other, anchored into the ground in a circle, and tied and woven together into a dome. This is covered in many blankets, though traditionally they are made of stone and mosses and grass used to make them solid. But this was a temporary structure and the blankets kept out the light just as well as anything. It was then covered with a tarpaulin, anchored by logs and smaller stones.
The lodge is the centre point of a three point ceremony. To the west is a fire pit and to the east is a mound of earth, west is where the sun sets and represents death, east is where the sun rises and represents being reborn.
During the ceremony we are told the story of how Taliesin purified himself and we are going to take the same path, to die to our current selves and to be reborn as a free human — free from all the agendas and labels we adopt and are given, which come with burdens and agendas that hold us back from our deeper selves. We are expertly led through this by Tim Jago, a Celtic shaman who has led many hundreds of such ceremonies. We are told Taliesin’s story and how he was led by self discovery but also by Ceridwen, the goddess of transformation and inspiration. We were invited to take these same steps.
The more shamanic side of my spiritual path has always taken rather a back seat, but now I…
