Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

This is an exciting topic for me. If you know about my particular fascination with the magical peoples of the world,

the medicine people, the people who learn the ways of

healing and compassion and the mystery and all the other things that make up a medicine person

in a traditional culture. I call them wayfinders because I believe it's their job to find

their way through the world and to help other people find

their way as well. And many, many, many of you, if not all of you, I would classify as wayfinders.

Now, there's a particular archetype that I believe is genetic and it comes with the role of the

medicine person or the wayfinder. And people with that archetype

tend to be, sorry if I'm repeating, very empathic, very committed to understanding people,

understanding the natural world, they love animals, plants, poetry, the stars, plants, plant healing, any kind of, any kind of

healing modality.

And in our culture, we split them all apart and call them a million different things.

Like the doctor is not the one who goes out and studies botany.

But in a traditional culture, that's exactly who one who goes out and studies botany but in a traditional culture that's

exactly who needs to go out and study botany because that's where the medicines come from so there are all

these things clumped together also there was a Cherokee medicine man I talked to who said of course I use

hypnosis if you were out here in the middle of nowhere with no anesthesia,

wouldn't you use hypnosis? Wouldn't you use the placebo effect? Of course I know the mind.

Of course I'm using it as a healer. So they have all these interesting skills and talents and

interests. And their high sensitivity is coupled with a really keen intuition and also the tendency to experience other people's fear and pain.

So we've talked about this before.

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