Without the honeybee, our Earth would bear a very different appearance. There would be nuts and grass perhaps, but practically all our fruit and flowers would be absent. To survive, the bee has accomplished miracles and has tackled and overcome problem after problem. At times, she has accomplished the seemingly impossible.
Now, with bee populations falling worldwide, it is time to reveal a tradition, nameless in the outer world, but known to its members as the Path of Pollen. This path centres on the honeybee and the hive – not merely as a metaphor, but also as a source for an astonishingly rich shamanic knowledge.
My initiatory teacher believed strongly in a principle he called 'spiritual osmosis,' in which proximity to the sacred will itself provide answers. There are no fixed rules, or, rather, the rules and the truths you find will be personal to you. Truth must always be individual, and you will find it from your own experiences and your interpretation of these. By reading The Shamanic Way of the Bee, you will be drawn into the mystery that is the Path of Pollen and from that will come understanding. I am delighted only that I have been able to bring this powerful, hidden knowledge into the public domain. Reading it is enough, the spiritual osmosis will have its effect to the appropriate degree. Above all The Shamanic Way of the Bee is about the knowledge, ideas and experiences that have made up a gateway into a world of my personal spiritual truth. I hope you may also be inspired to cross this threshold and embark on the rich adventure that is the hero's journey, and to discover a truth to sustain you in these times of spiritual uncertainty, but certain opportunity.
One night my teacher sat down in the chair opposite me. As he did so, it was as if the night changed and a deep solemnity choked the air out of the place. The claustrophobia of the moment caught me, and I was stilled by it, becoming as a butterfly pinned. Bridge began to speak.
‘The Bee Master knows that upon this path, the Path of Pollen, there is information and methodology that has been held in trust for millennia, used publicly yet discreetly, when needed for healing, and used by our companions and forebears within this lineage to deepen their communion with the hidden universe.
‘On this evening I wish to share with you one of the great secrets of the tradition. It concerns the bee sting. We know it as the Sacramental Venom, or the Secret Fire, a powerful and mystical substance with the ability to transmute illness into well being alchemically. We have unlocked its application and it has become both an art and a science that has been developed and refined over generations.
‘Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was an initiate of the usage of Sacramental Venom, which he called arcanum, ‘sacred secret.’ One of the earliest of the Egyptian papyrus scrolls – the Smith Papyrus, dating back over three-thousand years – suggests that its usage was already a refined healing and initiatory methodology by then, and with each generation the refining of the work has continued. We who hold the deeper communion with the hive are the original acupuncturists, holders of an autochthonous system of healing, using the bee sting the way the acupuncturists needle is used today.
‘To this day in China, you will find that a few – a very few – of the older acupuncturists dip their needles in the solar drops of bee venom before inserting these needles into the patient’s body. These ancient ones are connected, perhaps by one remove or more, to our lineage. The ley lines, power lines, channels, meridians of the body have been known to the Keepers of Bee Wisdom for thousands of years as passages that connect certain energetic points, allowing energy to circulate throughout the body. The blood and life essences travel through this system of pathways, which connect a multitude of points of major energy concentration, which can be adjusted, encouraged, or even rerouted. This not only creates balance and healing, but also, when stimulated by the Sacramental Venom, allows the initiate to enter into the worlds that exist outside of time and space, the place where our ancestors teach us. This teaching is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work, of this tradition.’
From The Shamanic Way of the Bee, © 2004 by Simon Buxton, published by Destiny Books.
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