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Was recently going back and reading an old book that got me into Shamanism and was a very powerful text for me. Personally I have been having a lot of inner conflict with the underworld and ancestral work...and have been looking for more clarity on this topic and trying to rewrite all of the internalized bad programs I picked up that have become part of our culture. I found this excerpt quite useful for me and perhaps may be illuminating for others whom face the same internal blockages. Was going to originally put it in my Ancestral Work thread but I thought it deserved its own separate focus. Enjoy. ------------------------------------------------------------ "The Underworld is the powerhouse of the three worlds. Here we draw upon our draw upon our deeper resources, our traditional inheritance, our memory. Look at the diagram on pg.49, which shows the three worlds connected by the great centre tree (picture attached). This Illustrates the way that the Underworld can be envisaged as the rich loam into which the trees roots go down. In addition, all trees have a tap root which searches out the nearest source of water, whose nurture it then channels to the rest of the tree. When we enter the Underworld, we put down our tap root and draw upon nourishment. The Underworld has a bad press in the West, since in both Classical and Christian cosmology it has been dualist ally understood as Hell. In shamanism the tree worlds are primal worlds of possibility without such dualist in connotations. The Underworld is a place of foundations and beginnings, of joy and creativity, not a place of fear and terror. For many religions, the Underworld has become a kind of toxic-waste dumping ground where the spiritual evils of the world are thought to lie ready to recrudesce. Scenarios of unending hell-fire and fantastic terror have been set up in our imagination to guard the gates of the underworld from unauthorized intrusion. Our communion with the underworld has been lost or severed by fearful religious dogmas which would prefer us to imagine a region of demons and searing flame, rather than a place of restoration and reconnective joy. The Underworld is a place of mirror images, reversal and complementarities where we perceive the physical reality of our daily lives thrown into startling subtle relief. Imagine the separation of realities as a gauze veil hanging from floor to ceiling: if you push your hand into the gauze, you cause it to push inwards away from your side: anyone standing on the other side of the gauze veil will see your hand push the gauze outwards towards them. If we bear this in mind, we will begin to understand why the Underworld journey has been discouraged by non-shamanic cultures: for here the threshold guardians assume tiny or gigantic size, here we meet the spirits that compliment realities we have neglected or ignored. Without strong and willing allies, such encounters can confuse and terrify - many genuine mystics have gone thither without preparation or ally, returning to report strange sights. Without the correct cosmological information and without a non dual framework to trace from, religions have barred the doors that lead between the worlds. The wise traditions of the primal earth drew continually upon the Underworld and are fed by it and many people now deeply regret that we have lost communion with these rich indigenous traditions. Although we may feel that such treasures can never be ours, our hearts are still gripped by the many myths and stories of the Underworld journeys of those whose seek the treasures and wisdom: the descent of Inanna to take the initiation of mortality and gain wisdom, the descent of Aeneas to meet and consult his dead father, Orpheus's descent to retrieve Eurydice, the initiatory descent of Christian Rosenkreutz into the vault, the descent of Persephone which triggers the coming agricultural wisdoms of the earth, the descent of King Arthur to bring home the Cauldron, the prototype of the Grail. All these myths speak of initiation into wisdom and the winning of empowering treasures, gained through endurance, perseverance and courage. Such heroic descents can be ours through the shamanic Underworld journey. Reconnection with the Underworld restores communication with the voices of our wise ancestors, with traditions which hallow earth, with the deep empowering teachings and treasures which remain eternally available. The beings encountered in the Underworld include ancestral teachers, clan totems, deities who initiate and empower, dwarfs, dragons and other subterranean or watery guardians of power. You may encounter ancestral councils or assemblies here. The genius of the Underworld often appears as a Lord or King of the Underworld and is sometimes horned or antlered, like the Celtic Cernunnos or the Hindu Pasupati, surrounded by many beasts. Many primal Underworld deities have the horns of power: such beings have been demonized by Christians, but they simply preserve their original non dual functions as gatekeepers and initiators. Each land has its own native Underworld guardians. Awakening and communicating with these native powers is important work. During the early 1980s with other walkers between the world, I visited many parts of Britain, specifically to effect such awakenings. As a result of our work, certain powers have become more widely available and contactable. The work of awakening the sleep is important, not to evoke atavistic and inappropriate energies, but to 'clear the ways' between our own world and the deep power of the Underworld after so many centuries of neglect and misunderstanding, so that primal wisdom of the ancestral traditions may once more flow as a corrective to our over-urban and increasingly fragmented lives." Singing the Soul Back Home, by Caitlin Mathews A Note: i have edited out some portions of the section do to length. The book itself is pretty awesome and well worth purchasing. http://www.amazon.com/Singing-Soul-Back-Home-Shamanic/dp/1859061036/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382754073&sr=1-1&keywords=singing+the+soul+back+home

Here is the BBC program "Secrets of the Maya Underworld"- Deep Beneath the Yucatan Peninsula is a vast network of Cenotes connected through underground passages, underground caves and underground flowing rivers. It is no wonder the Mayans believed the Cenotes to be the Gates to the Underworld. Some of the Cenotes are indeed truly beautiful and breathtaking. Deep in the Underworld modern researchers have even found the bones of Mammoths that went extinct 10,000 years ago. Modern science has not even begun to discover or comprehend the full implications of the secrets which lie beneath the Maya Underworld. Articles- http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/travel/escapes/23Cave.html http://yucatantoday.com/en/topics/caves-yucatan