The Lion People: Shapeshifting and Surrendering to the Wild
Be less sure about your nature, the source of danger,
and who is the stranger.
A therianthrope is a mythical being that is part animal and part human, the result of the metamorphosis one undergoes through some process of shapeshifting. Brad has met numerous shamans and spiritual elders throughout the world who have experienced this kind of transformation, as has he. In the Kalahari, Brad learned how to become a lion.* In a recent visionary dream, he met this kind of therianthrope in a different manner:
Hillary and I were walking along a trail in the bush of southern Africa. There was a fence that had been erected to protect human beings from any dangerous wildlife. Soon a lion came up to the fence near us. I went over to get a closer look. Suddenly I felt the hair stand up on my neck and I immediately stopped in my tracks. I could see that there was too wide a gap at the bottom of the fence that would allow the animal to reach out and grab hold of my limb if I got too near.
In that moment I noticed that the lion was half human. This realization sent a powerful bolt of emotional electricity through both my body and Hillary’s, and brought a surprising new teaching. We realized it was the human side rather than the lion side of the creature that was dangerous. As soon as we realized this, the animal became ferocious and clearly wanted to cause us harm.
We walked away from that beast and starting to discuss my past experiences with shapeshifting and the various shapeshifters I personally knew. Then two more lions approached the fence. We checked to see if they were like the former therianthrope and fortunately, they were not. Without fear we went close to them and felt the vibrational beauty of how life and death are held in a delicate wobble in the wild.
I looked into the eyes of the oldest lion and could see my own reflection. To my shock, I was now the other therianthrope we had formerly faced—half lion, half man. I realized that the lion was feeling the same concern I had before. It was apprehensive about my human side.
This time we were sent an even stronger lightning bolt of emotion that conveyed a second teaching. We were flooded with the double truth of our nature, how we are a mix of wild animal and a supposedly tame and civilized human being. But again, we realized that it is our human side that is cause for alarm.
The dark truth of how humanity has acted toward other humans and nature broke our hearts and we had an existential meltdown, realizing that humans have far less wisdom than lions, birds, rats, and worms. We carry the kind of mind that dissociates itself from the mind of nature and this wreaks monstrous havoc. The lions did not create the violent dictators, polluters, and selfish hoarders of the world or any of their cold-hearted followers. In the dream we immediately dropped our human nature in favor of being completely wild.
We felt we had met our most natural friends and family among the lions on the other side of the fence. Continuing our walk, we passed former colleagues who stared at us like we were an embarrassing sight, something they could not bear to look at because we seemed too odd, unfamiliar, foreign, or incomprehensible. We, for the first time, felt what it is really like to live on the furthest outskirts beyond the outskirts. As wild creatures of First Creation, we were perceived as strangers to our own kind.
This experience did not fill us with a feeling of magical power, pride, or any sense that we had conquered our dark side and were now better than others. We simply continued walking as we watched the fence melt away, laughing and weeping at how impossible it would be for anyone to understand what had taken place. We are not speaking of any wild spiritual fantasy about shapeshifting. We are not speaking at all, only walking.
Take a walk on the original wild side,
And see your true reflection in the lion’s eye.
It reveals the lie
That your human side is tamer, wiser, gentler.
The lion kills, but its reasons are pure.
Be less sure about your nature, the source of danger,
And who is the stranger.
The truth will deliver a shock of electricity,
A fire of emotion that melts all fences.
Drop your human pretenses and defenses,
Surrender to the wildness of God’s creation
From which you came before you were a name.
Nature does not nurture human hatred
Based on color, shape, or size.
Fight the monopoly on natural resources,
Fight the monotony of tone and rhythm.
Erase the hegemony of humanity over other earthly forms.
Be an anti-citizen and pro-wild family member of everything.
Reject the human idea that some people deserve the lion’s share
While others go hungry.
Remember what keeps mankind alive, as William Burroughs said,
“First make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving.”
Be careful about saying you are a peacemaker,
That is too often an excuse for looking the other way,
While someone else commits acts of war with your dollars,
And you stand aside pretending not to take a side.
We’re not alive for very long,
So be more unsure of what you know and where you belong.
Get on your knees each time you face your fears,
Look in the eye of God and see the danger is you.
The humanity of you masks an unseen profanity,
The mask of you is made of whatever trickster wants to say on any given day.
Be more confused regarding which side you are on.
Don’t idealize, exaggerate, or over-simplify nature,
The theatres and libraries are also wild,
Besides, the lions would rather you stay in the city
And learn to be more ferocious about art,
More ravenous for music,
More protective of all children.
Too much rational contemplation without ecstatic elation
Makes you forget that you cannot exit First Creation,
Where all your relations are met in the eye of the other.
Remove the splinter log of your “I,”
Trust the eye looking back at you.
Meet the other’s fear—it’s you.
What can you do with humanity?
How do you end the reign of King Consciousness?
Should you become more unconscious?
Which is one more monstrous?
What about the mind of nature?
Where’s the heart, body, and soul in this?
Be lost when it comes to an answer,
Do not trust the response your psyche mind computes,
Keep on walking,
Keep on hunting n/om,
It will help you become wilder and irrationally kinder,
Making you a stranger to those who are tame.
Feel the big love that makes you lose your composure,
Follow the scent of sincerity and authenticity,
And the therianthropes who track mystery.
Join us, sister and brother lions,
Recognize that you are prone to lie down, look the other way, and lie to yourself.
Explore the trails with us, fellow critters seeking the ecstatic jitters.
Add more therianthropy to your philanthropy,
Be a better, wilder neighbor.
Sacred Ecstatics is found in lion country,
Where fences aren’t what they seem,
We wobble in the middle between humanity and divinity,
Holding empty bowls to catch the 222 trinity,**
It’s raining threes and fives,
Our universe is the singing and dancing wild.
Be a child,
Communing and cooking with nature,
Climbing the rope to the sky village,
Following Mother Pompey to Mount Zion,***
Returning as a lion,
With our relations reset by higher elation,
Keeping the electricity in constant circulation,
Each of us a piece of the whole piezoelectric pie.
Take down the fence and dissolve into the biggest other,
Shift your shape to fit a boundless landscape.
Sing when you roar,
Less is more when it comes to your place in the scheme of things.
Be the least among the beasts,
The size of a pebble with a big Kalahari tremble.
-The Keeneys, October 25, 2020
*The Ju/’hoan Bushman word for this kind of changing is thuru. Shapeshifting isn’t anything like people describe it in contemporary so-called “shamanism” practices, which are based on guided imagery and visualization. Thuru is a more spontaneous experience fueled by heightened emotion.
As we wrote in Way of the Bushman, “In thuru, there is an imagined crossing of a familiar boundary regarding what constitutes one’s shape and form. As one goes through thuru, the skin feels like it is being altered, either through slipping out of one form into another or being stretched and reconfigured with newfound plasticity. This is true for the face as well as the rest of the body. The production of sounds by the vocal cords is also influenced and altered. In general, it literally feels like a transformation similar to those depicted in Hollywood fantasy movies concerning human to animal transformation.”
**222 and piezoelectric are references to visionary teachings that recently came down to our Guild.
***This is in reference to Mother Pompey of St. Vincent and her vision of being taken to Mount Zion where she received a song: “I stand on Zion Hill, and I hear and angel’s voice. I stand on Zion Hill, and I hear an angel – Mother Pompey blow, come blow, Mother Pompey blow, come blow.” This story was told in the book, Shakers of St. Vincent and came down to us through dream last summer, and so became part of our 2020 Summer Camp adventures.