Books about Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism

by Nicholas Breeze Wood

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I have practiced shamanism for over 40 years, combining it with the 'earthier' end of Tibetan Buddhism and with 'medicine' teachings from Native North American peoples.

I was born in rural Worcestershire, England, and as a child played in the fields, being both awed and afraid of the power I felt out alone. When I was a teenager I moved to South Australia and found the varied wild landscape even more awe inspiring and terrifying; although I didn't recognise it, I sensed the land spirits all around me.

Upon return to England, as a young adult I worked briefly in Architecture as a draftsman, and then for a longer period as an archaeological artist, drawing small-finds and pottery shards on Iron Age and Roman digs.

After this I trained as a clinical psychotherapist and worked as a social worker, before the spirits came and grabbed me and dragged me off kicking and screaming into the bushes.

Since then I have worked with many gifted medicine people and shamans, and now I am deeply apprenticed to my own spirit helpers, whose teachings never fail to awe and surprise me.

My shamanism is a fusion of traditional Himalayan and Mongolian forms, combined with teachings from my own spirits. I work especially deeply with ritual objects - such as bronze shaman's mirrors, phurba daggers and many other Mongolian and Tibetan shamanic and Buddhist ritual objects - for which I hold traditional teachings and, where required, traditional initiations.

I am also an ordained ngakpa. A ngakpa is a type of non-monastic Tibetan Buddhist lama who specialises in Tibetan forms of ritual magic. Ngakpas work with mantras and traditional rituals, and in rural Himalayan cultures they have a role very much like a shaman.

I have been the editor of Sacred Hoop Magazine - a leading international magazine about shamanism - since it was first published in 1993.

And besides all the shamanism, I am a musician, with a collection of around 100 different stringed instruments from all over the world, and also from the last 800 years of European history.

I live in Pembrokeshire in West Wales. Three of my grandparents were Welsh and despite the fact I was born in England, as I have lived in Wales for over 25 years, I  think of myself as Welsh.

The landscape here is ancient, with  thousands of Neolithic sacred sites scattered around the area, and a wonderful rocky landscape and coastline.The ancestors and wild spirits of nature are all around. I live in a valley which is described in the medieval Welsh tales of the Mabinogian as a portal into the spirit world. Here, according to legend, is the place where Prince Pwyll met Arawn, King of the Other World.

You can keep up to date with my writing -  articles and extracts from books etc - on my Substack: HERE