The Well of Memory and The Fire of the Heart
Beginning with a teaching story about making medicine for change, this presentation explores the intricacies of the old Northern European or Germanic image of the well of memory, the three women reaching into the well, the tree of life, the guardian, and the three men that are part of the process of becoming. In this understanding moving into the future means first stepping through the past to enable next steps. Healing means not just restoring, for example, a damaged body to wholeness and health, but the very universe itself. Shamans need to understand and be capable of manipulating nothing less than the full structure of the cosmos. The movement of the well of memory provides for a process of healing desperately needed as the earth is burning up in the crisis of global heating.
Jürgen Kremer has been involved in interdisciplinary work with Indigenous peoples as part of his practice of socially engaged spirituality. His theoretical work is an attempt to transgress the established boundaries of nature, culture, and gender, and to walk in the spaces between and across disciplinary territories exploring the transformative dimensions of current and traditional though and practice. As teacher and shamanic practitioner, he has been particularly immersed in the traditions of the Old European North, Sapmi, and the Southwestern United States. Jűrgen is tenured at the Santa Rosa Junior College; he also teaches classes at GTU in Berkeley and in the Indigenous Science and Peace Studies program at the UN University for Peace. His books include Ethnoautobiography—Unlearning whiteness, Decolonization, Uncovering Ethnicities; Psychology in Diversity—Diversity in Psychology; Abnormal Psychology. He most recently co-edited a ReVision issue on Places of Hope (revisionpublishing.org).