ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the three key themes of place, ancestors, and tradition, and examines these themes in two ways. It also focuses on the work and world-views of two Western shamans: Patrick ‘Jasper’ Lee, who, along with his partner Lizzie May-Gotts, has developed Romany gypsy shamanism workshops for non-gypsies, and Gordon MacLellan, a Pagan environmental educator who works with a variety of traditions of the land in schools, workshops for practitioners of nature religion, and conservation organizations. The chapter examines varying interpretations of the past raised through the re-emergence of a 4,000–year-old late Neolithic timber circle in the early summer of 1998, which became popularly known as ‘Seahenge’, at Holme-next-the-Sea, north-west Norfolk. Tradition forms a central part of a particular spiritual practice; perhaps most importantly tradition grounds the present in the past, giving it legitimacy.
