About Us
"Breath is song; everything sings,
Song is the intimate relationship of spirit,
To live an animist spirit life, in which we are all equal collaborators in this journey of life, is to be in relationship and to be in relationship with the moment."
The Sagh’ic Communities are formed under the guidance and directives of the sacred sagas of the Wolven Path Tradition. These were received and communicated through deep journey work and egregorial communion with ancestors and spirits over many years by our Elder John-Luke Edwards, who founded these communities around the world, to share this sacred wisdom with all who seek. The work is in keeping and in community with all Animist Traditions that hold the earth and call her home, who all live in equal relationship with each other.
We aim to reflect animist and spirit practice and belief, the unifying harmony between Spirit and Mundane, and the inevitable living destiny of our journey therein.
The service is to maintain the ripples of spiritual process through various practices and beliefs, yet at the same time to send them outward into the world community. And in a small way to be one of the pebbles that creates those ripples.
Our Name
Sagh'ic Tire Dhream (sarjeek teeray thrarm)
Though we speak of ‘wolf’ the direct translation is more akin to ‘wild dog/hound beast’, which leads to an assumption that our ancestors knew of some older canine beast we may have forgotten. Our cosmological stories speak of the dog spirit as one who comes of free will to be our loyal companion, whilst the two-legged (humans) remember how to find their way home and to themselves. The word ‘wild’ has an earlier connotation of ‘innocent’ and ‘primal wisdom’, so perhaps the beast they speak of was/is an Ancient One from the stars, whose form they could only guess at.
The world is a living, animated ceremony. It is enlivened by the One Song, sung by the primal maternal spirit, Grandmother Ocean. And the song is imbued within every breath, drop of blood, and bone of all who are upon this earth, regardless of species or physical form, animate or inanimate (for the Sagh’ic, the term ‘inanimate’ is a misnomer, as everything is alive). We hold close the lessons of The Great Forest and how we live in harmony with all that surrounds it. We do not see humans as above any other thing either manifest or otherworldly.
We are an oral tradition of story and song. A retelling of the journey of the lost two-legged ones as they try to find their way back to The Primal Forest.
Through these pages you will also find the words of other great teachers and people who embodied a most intimate relationship with Spirit quoted along the way. The images you will find are all taken by our community members, many at our regular gatherings. The art you see are sacred drawings expressing John-Luke's deep connection to the Ancestors, shared with us all.
Here in India, we are based out of Bangalore. We host regular workshops and training, and offer our work and services as spirit practitioners to all who may ask. We are working towards raising a corpus towards building a home, a residential retreat & community centre outside the city where all who care to engage will be more than welcome.
The Animist Way
The essence of this Animist Way is an observance and aligning of the day to day life of the community with the turning of the seasons, the path of the moon and the cycle of nomadic journeying that maintains the community in direct relationship with the environment it is set in. The environment and the people of the community are never seen as distinct or separate, rather they are all part of one living organism or spirit journey; all dependent on each other to reach the journey's end.
The tradition is based on a cyclical process in which everything returns to the night and recommences at daybreak; as the world retreats to winter and re-grows in spring; as life sleeps in death to awake in birth. The Wheel of Seasons is in essence the underpinning and driving force of the tradition even with all its stories. This turning is the dreaming of a world in creation, and as such, is not real. It is the dreamtime that is real, the time out of time, that we dream this life from. In essence the tradition reflects the lost and disenfranchised soul of the world in a Gnostic journey.
The Sagh’ic are a re-enlivening of an ancient form of nomadic animistic and ancestral spirit practice. This Ancestral Nomadic Tradition follows the qualities and character of the wild dog beast or wolf and incorporates those into a Spirit and Earth driven way of life and relationship. Our songs and stories are also related to the paths that our nomadic ancestors took in understanding the world, and the storytellers they met along that journey, and in hearing those stories they wove the words into their own; it is a tradition of dreams not history.
We are an Animistic tradition (from the Latin anima “soul” or “life”, and refers to a set of beliefs that revolve around the existence of non-human “spiritual beings” or similar kinds of embodied principles) observing and learning from the world of nature around, the creatures and elements of the forest and how best the community can survive and reach a state of harmony with The Eternal Forest. The Sagh’ic differs from the more typical animistic focus on individual spirits seemingly working autonomously, and rather on a commonality of ultimate purpose of Spirit. This spirit is manifest in the qualities, energies and guidance of all ancestral spirits. Thus the Sagh’ic are a Totemic Animist tradition, as there is this inherent awareness of everything in creation being United in Spirit.
All teaching, practice, rites, songs, stories, rituals and ceremonies are done in direct intimate relationship and interaction with the Ancient Ones, The Old Ones and the Ancestors, through the use of song, dance, plant spirits and elemental ritual.
“This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.”
Rumi
The word sakshi, or साक्षी in Sanskrit script, literally means “observer” or “eye-witness.” Sa literally means “with” and aksha “senses” or “eyes.”
Written evidence for sakshi appears in Hindu scripture, the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, as early as the sixth or fifth centuries BCE. The text describes sakshi as the divinity of the heightened state human consciousness achieved through meditation. In Hinduism and related religions, such as Jainism, Sakshi Vinayaka is an epithet of Ganesha, god of knowledge. The ancient spiritual roots of sakshi associate the word with a cosmic intelligence, perception, and enlightenment.
In Sagh’ic Animism, Sakshi plays a pivotal role, in that all are with and witnessing all. When we are with each other, when we see each other through the eyes of our hearts, nothing is impossible.
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
Rumi
Egregore of the Sagh’ic Tire Dhream – Wolven Path Tradition
The seed lies dormant in the soil; it lays waiting, countless years pass. Then one day it stirs. Rain falls upon the earth, seeping through the soil, through the rocks and silt, through the pebbles and clay, layer upon layer of times past, until finally this life-giving force touches the seed. Who knows why, a shift in the land, a change in the surface; the fall of a great tree whatever, the seed hears and feels the touch of the life-giving moisture. It senses the embrace, this life force, whether it could be the deep memory of water herself, the seed calls out and in its calling bursts forth from its protective shell. A root tapping down into the darkness, feeling its way for the life-giving fluid that caused it to stir in that moment in time. It sings back, “I hear you”. Its shoots crave the light as much as the roots crave the darkness. Its tentative shoots begin the journey, one of manifestation, of witness, of being. For these roots and shoots hear the call. The shoots instinctively reach for the light having lain dormant for so long in this place of darkness. The shoots break out into the open, vulnerable at first, into the vast unknown, tentatively reaching upward to the sky, the tender shoots outstretched to absorb the light. Many eons have passed since it was shed from the great forest. Lost in the mists of time one day this shoot will stand tall and strong as a forest of oneness; The Mother, the eternal Grove of the Deep and Dark and Green.
Our tradition, whose soul, eons ago, was known as the ‘kindred of the wild dog beast’, was lost and like the seed lay dormant in the darkness. Until one day, as the waters of life seeped through the layers of time and touched the soul of a ‘lost people’, they heard the calling song. For all long-lost tribes and clans, their clan souls never die, they live on as an Egregore. Every people, tribe, clan community that ever was has a soul, a consciousness that remains even when the people are no more. The soul consciousness of a people, a tradition, a clan never dies, they just slip into the mists of time. A tradition’s Egregore will lie dormant until awakened. And yet it is not passive in its waiting, like Grandmother Ocean’s Great Song, which she sings throughout Her daughter, The Great Forest, waiting to be heard. She sang to our ancestors as they watched the forest and her animals, the sky and the stars, the turning of the seasons and the wolves that surrounded them.
The ancestors saw the community and family of the forest and all its beings and watched and learned. Their song taught them the safety and containment of family; and thus the forest, its inhabitants and their song, are our teachers now too.
The Language
The sacred and traditional names, the language of the tribe, which you may encounter in a few places on this site, usually only meant to be spoken, is a language of sound and song evoking primal intuitive imagery and is ancient in its roots. The language includes sounds and words that appear Eurasian, Celtic and Gaelic, perhaps alluding to the journey of the tribe across the planet through time. The language finds incredible resonance in the still-surviving languages of the Indian subcontinent. The language, though lost, is a song on the wind of breath, that conjures the emotions of actions; it is foremost a language of the heart. For it is the song in our hearts that impassions the work of our hands in service to each other.
The Song of Creation
At the heart of the tradition is the Great Song of Grandmother Ocean that permeates the whole of creation. This Song reached into the darkness of the void and called the Lightning, and at the moment of creation and birth of all things, that Lightning, that First Fire’s song of love became the forge/hearth which is within the hearts of all things. It is the Song of the Lightning and the Ocean that brought the Stars and Earth into being through it’s singing, and through the same song, the stars fell to earth to become our first ancestors of The Great Forest.
In each of us is the Song, it is our breath and soul; it enters the river of our blood and this blood brings us to dance our lives and destiny. Through this singing, all are our ancestors - from the primal ocean to our parents, those of our bloodlines, those of our milk lines (all who have shared wisdom), and all of our shadow lines (all our past existences). In the dance of the Wheel of Seasons, ancestors and descendants chase each other through the cosmic journey. That dance is manifested in our rituals, ceremonies, gatherings, dances and songs.
The Great Forest is all there is in the eye of the Creator. The Great Forest is both the song and the daughter of the Primal Ocean. There is no ‘without it ‘or ‘beyond it.’ We humans have forgotten our place in the forest in harmony with all living things, and our own song. When the two-leggeds fell into the great sleep and dreamed their walk away and out of The Great Forest, they became so addicted to the dream that they forgot the paths that led home.
From the first breath, the Creator/One above, sent a teacher to humankind or the two-leggeds, to call them home from the dark dream of the first man Fear (pronounced f-a-h), in which they had become lost, to help us remember who we are. And this teacher, the first Pathfinder, was the primal wolf/dog beast spirit. It is said the two-leggeds refused to listen to this manifest spirit and it was destroyed and vilified. In response to this the One above sent the next pathfinder, who was the spirit of that dog beast/wolf in human form. And this continues to this day, the human wolf returns again and again to remind the lost to return home, to remind them of their Song, and the One Great Song. And this compassion will remain until The Last Breath.
Our Community
This tradition is a way of being in this world and life, not a religious practice. To live in accordance with this tradition is a choice and an invitation to any and all. It is a forest in which we can walk in unity and harmony with all the children of the earth.
The Sagh’ic works as an inter-reliance ‘nomadic’ tribe, with all members as valuable and integral necessary part of the survival and destiny of that tribe. Within the make-up of the community are also Elemental Guardians who undertake specific duties dictated by the five elements (Fire, Water, Earth, Wind and Dark) to support the community and all engaged in its journey. These would have responsibilities for gathering, purifying, care of the dead & dying, food, storytelling etc.
We welcome as friends and family those who wish to follow our ways either informally or formally. Many come as guests and friends to sit in the light and warmth of the Sagh’ic tribal hearth, as humans have done since time immemorial; we are all a warming of hearts in ourselves! And you are welcome to be with us, for here is the family gathered - members of the community, elders, teachers, students and children. The family around the hearth, who are indeed the hearth itself. They are the flames that extend beyond the boundaries of the ‘fireplace’. They are of the tradition’s blood and sit in sacred acceptance and defence of all who gather by the tribal fire.
The Sagh’ic is a tradition that takes its journey (calendar) from The Thirteen Moons lunar cycle. We call to the Moon, birthed to guide and gather us, as she leads the nomadic journey of life - the Wheel of Seasons.
The Ancient Ones tell of the time when all lived as one song, one bone, one blood, one breath, in the Deep, Dark, Green Forest, and how it was that the first human fell into the shadowed dream and forgot that oneness. So many times, the Ancient Ones, the Ancestral Spirits, and the Old Ones of the land tried, and try, relentlessly to bring the two-leggeds back to that oneness. It is for this reason and this hope, that the Sagh’ic put and take great value and emphasis on community, tribe, clan and family.
And so it is that this community of communities, close and far, gather in dreams, in reality, and remotely, aspiring for that almost forgotten time; gathering in celebration, ceremony, learning, sharing and prayer.
Sagh’ic-Tire Dhream; The Wolven Path is an Ancestral Tradition. It is an animist traditional way of living, rife with ceremony, ritual and the sacred stories. It does not seek publicity, neither does it seek to recruit or proselytise or evangelise, rather it is a calling to a return to living in “the forest” where we can walk in unity, harmony and kinship with all the children of the earth. And we hold our hands out in continuous welcome and sharing.