Becoming the Medicine
A Sacred Guide to Shamanic Wisdom and Practice
by
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A Letter to You, Seeker and Rememberer Dear friend, If you are holding this book, Spirit already found you. Not in the soft, “isn’t this lovely” way of an inspirational quote on Instagram, but in the inconvenient, unshakable way Spirit tends to work: a whisper in your dreams, a sudden ache for something you can’t name, a hawk that circles above you until you finally mutter, “Alright, alright… I hear you.” You didn’t stumble here. You were summoned. And it’s not lost on me that you are being called in the middle of an empire that thrives on you forgetting who you are. We are born into systems designed to sever our belonging, to train us to trust authority over our own knowing, to consume instead of create, to turn our gaze toward screens instead of rivers, stars, and elders. That severance is not an accident — it is the scaffolding of a culture that depends on our disempowerment to keep its engines running. Animism and shamanism — the living awareness that everything is alive, that Spirit breathes through stone and star — is dangerous to such a system. It dismantles the myth that you are small and replaceable. It makes you ungovernable in the old sense of the word: no longer ruled by what does not serve life. This is why real shamanic work is not just “spirituality” — it is counter-culture. It is political. It threatens the very foundations of extraction, hierarchy, and control. And so, you will not be surprised to know that this path has a cost. My wife and I have lived decades with the subtle — and sometimes not so subtle — consequences of walking it. Persecution, ridicule, suspicion, even exile from certain circles. We have been told, in words and in silence, to “tone it down,” to stop speaking to the unseen, to quit calling humans back into right relationship with the Earth. We have been accused of madness, of danger, of too much love for what cannot be owned. And yet… here we still are. Tender, yes. But committed with a fierceness that is bone-deep. Because this isn’t a hobby. It’s not a brand. It’s a vow. And I want you to know this: This book is not the medicine. You are. These pages are not here to give you answers. They are here to build a frame strong enough to hold your own revelations. What you place inside that frame — the visions, the heartbreak, the moments of beauty that gut you open — that is yours alone. I cannot give it to you, and I would never rob you of the alchemy of finding it yourself. What I can give you is a spiral. Four arcs that loop inward and outward: • Foundations of Connection — rooting into the elemental and energetic ground. • Relational Realms — repairing kinship with ancestors, animals, and plants. • Altered States & Spirit Travel — stepping across thresholds into the non-ordinary. • Integration & Creation — bringing the medicine back and giving it form. Each chapter is a doorway. Inside, you will find a quote — a small key. An introduction — a map of the terrain. A story from my own path — messy, humbling, sometimes joyful, sometimes brutal. A ritual. A meditation. Inquiries to walk with. But you will not find a clean itinerary. Spirit is not a travel agent. This work will ask something of you. It will ask you to take your place in the lineage of rememberers. It will ask you to confront the ways empire lives in your bones and to choose — again and again — not to feed it. It will ask you to risk being changed in ways you can’t control. It will also give. It will give you moments of clarity so sharp they sting. Beauty so raw it undoes you. The relief of knowing you were never truly alone, even in your darkest night. I did not write this from a spotless cabin, perched above the noise of the world. I wrote it from the mud of the forest floor. From the hunger of a vision quest where the night was longer than my courage. From the grief of walking with ancestors who said, “You wanted this? Then walk.” I wrote it with my newborn daughter beside me, often too tired to remember my own name, much less the sentence I was trying to write. And still, the book kept calling me. Spirit does not care about your perfect conditions. Spirit cares about your willingness to show up. So here is my prayer as you step in: That you remember what the empire wants you to forget. That you love in ways the system cannot monetize. That you listen long enough to hear the land call you by your true name. This is not the easy path. But it is the real one. And it will not make you fit for the world as it is. It will make you dangerous to it. Walk anyway. With gratitude, fire, and the stubborn humor required to survive this path, Angell Deer
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About the Book
Becoming the Medicine: A Sacred Guide to Shamanic Wisdom and Practice is not simply a book to read. It is a living ceremony disguised in pages—a companion for those ready to remember their place in the web of life. In a time of ecological collapse, social unraveling, and spiritual amnesia, this guide offers a counterpath: the ancient, animist way of seeing the world as alive, relational, and sacred. Far from being a trend or lifestyle, shamanism is revealed here as both deeply personal and inherently political—a remembering that dismantles empire’s disconnection and calls us back into right relationship with Earth, Spirit, and one another. Across fifteen chapters woven in a spiral arc, you’ll be invited into practices of energy healing, elemental connection, ancestral reverence, animal and plant kinship, dreamwork, trance, sacred dance, drumming, vision quest, and shamanic art. Each chapter follows a rhythm: an opening quote, a personal story from Angell’s own initiatory path, a ritual, a meditation, and reflective inquiries. This book will not hand you answers. Instead, it offers a frame for your own revelations, a rhythm to walk with, a set of invitations to help you listen more deeply. The medicine is not in these pages—it is already within you, waiting for permission to rise. Written through years of ceremony, grief, vision quests, and fatherhood—across lands in the Catskills and now in Burgundy, France—this book is both tender and fierce. It is a prayer for the seekers, the rememberers, and the ones willing to walk the crooked path of becoming. Because the world does not need more content. It needs more medicine. And the medicine is you.
About the Author
Angell Deer is a mystic, medicine man, teacher, land steward, and lover of all things wild, strange, and sacred. For over two decades, he has walked the spiral path of remembrance—studying, embodying, and teaching ancient wisdom from the lineages of Andean cosmology, Norse shamanism, animist ritual, and Earth-based healing. He lives at the intersection of ceremony and soil—where compost meets cosmos. His work weaves together grief and joy, ancestral reverence and modern reckoning, sacred business and soul sovereignty. He is known for his devotion to deep practice, his poetic way with words, and his unshakable belief that transformation begins not in the sky, but in the roots. After many years of tending The Sanctuary—a sacred land and healing center nestled in the Catskill Mountains of New York—Angell has recently returned to the land of his ancestors in France. There, he and his family are growing La Ferme du Cerf Bleu, a rewilded farm, guesthouse, and initiatory home for ritual, permaculture, spiritual retreat, and the slow, courageous work of becoming human again. Trained as a Veterinarian, Herbalist, Breathwork Facilitator, Reiki Master, and Ordained Minister, Angell’s initiations have come as much from grief as from guidance. He has been shaped by elders across traditions, years of ceremony, and by the earth herself. His credentials include speaking at Harvard, the French Davos Forum, and the UNFPA. He once advised global agencies. Now, he mostly listens to bees. He is the founder of the New York Bee Sanctuary, a national nonprofit advocating for pollinators and their sacred role in ecological balance. His work—whether through writing, teaching, or healing—is devoted to the restoration of relationship: with land, with lineage, and with the invisible threads that bind us all. He currently lives in Burgundy, France, with his wife, daughter, and a growing constellation of trees, animals, spirits, and stories. When he is not holding ceremony or writing something inconveniently long, you can find him in the garden, barefoot, probably talking to a plant or a bee.