I met James last year, and he’s become a great ally. Do check out the giveaway he’s offering to those who comment!

How would you describe your work/path/art to a beginner?
Often when I am asked this by a layperson, the best analogy I can use is the medicine-man they might be familiar with from popular media. But to someone who might be seeking, who might be sensitive, the answer is more nuanced. Have you ever been in an old house or building, and it almost felt like the building was alive? Looking in old windows were like looking into eyes? Or maybe you are standing next to a very old tree, and it felt like the tree was wise, and it wanted you to climb it and share the view? Or to sit under it and take a nap?

From my perspective these thing and ALL things do have a life and a spirit. It is my job to help these spirits interact with people, and people with these spirits, for the purposes of healing and growth. My path is to help facilitate these interactions, and to help change the interactions when they are unhealthy and causing things like illness or depression.

How did this work call you? At what life stage?
It is hard to say in some ways, I feel like I have the “wiring” if that makes sense. The point I often turn to is when I was young. My grandfather had passed away not long before, so I was about 6, and there was a very large and powerful storm that rolled in. It had tornado strength wind and actually blew in a wall at my grandmother’s house, a brick wall I may add. I was home alone just across the farmland but I could do nothing but ask the storm not to hurt me. It “skipped” my smaller and much less durable house. After I felt connected to storms. I began to collect items that had been broken by lightning or storm winds. Years later I was standing in my yard, watching as a large storm passed overhead. I asked the storm to “show me you can hear me. Show me the magic” and lightning arched from cloud to cloud in a perfect triangle far over my head. There have always been other instances but this is the one I point to in my mind.

Describe your experience of spirituality as a teen/young adult. Discuss your blessings and challenges of that era.
My experiences varied. In those days I had very limited information, being out in the farmlands. There was no Internet. I read what I could find, and actually found a place where I could mail in a money order and have occult books sent to me. I experimented with the Kabbalah. I attended a Catholic church classes. I think actually I count the Catholic classes as a large blessing. Those classes, though they intended to foster a relationship in Jeses, taught me how to have a relationship with ANY spirit. How to pray, how to talk, how to look for signs within and without. I was also blessed with a vivid imagination.

I think the thing what most young people have now that I lacked, that I wished I had, was a mentor. I was in my early twenty’s before I found mine. Your first mentor might not be your mentor for life, and you will have to be careful to choose one who is actually doing their own work, and is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But they are out there. I as an adult talk about “spiritual accounting”. Verify everything with multiple methods, and that would include someone who would be your mentor.

How does that experience speak through your work, today?
As I said I had a vivid imagination. I loved fiction and comic books. Yes this is a related thing! Dreams and imagination are how Spirit speaks to me, or at least it did at first. Now after years of work I can separate what is in my mind as imagination, and what really is something speaking to me, but don’t be quick to dismiss your imagination. That is important for a young person to learn, that the place where as a little kid you might have gone to imagine a grand adventure with the lizard people might now be the place where you go to commune with the spirit of a lizard, and learn the lessons and wisdom it might have. The very special stone that you imagined made you a charming princess is more powerful than any great and expensive crystal you can find in an occult store.

Learn more about James Stovall, AKA Shaman Jim, or TwoSnakes:

@JamesAtTheOwl
His store, where teaches and advises: The Wandering Owl
Email: Jim@thewanderingowl.com
His Internet show about shamanism, The Jaguar and the Owl, where he discusses poignant topics and answers questions about shamanism. Archives can be found on the show’s site, and at  iTunes.

Comment here for a chance to win your choice of:

1. A Rune Reading or
2. A spiritual bath mix that I have made. Winners choice.

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Available worldwide, Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism.

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