by Sandy Dollar
Sandy Dollar was a regular contributor to alt.religion.shamanism in the mid-2000s, posting a series of personal journey accounts drawn from her years of practice. She identified as one-eighth Cherokee, knowledge she had received only shortly before her mother's death, and which sent her into a study of her Indigenous heritage. She had lived for five years in Camp Verde, Arizona, near an Apache and Yavapai reservation. These experiences shaped her practice: self-taught, eclectic, grounded in direct encounter rather than inherited tradition.
"The Water Journey" stands apart from her other accounts because of what went wrong. She entered the lower world as water — a deliberate transformation — and found a slow-moving creek in which she floated peacefully until she forgot to hold herself together. Her water-self spread through the creek. Pulling herself back to coherence was a terrifying struggle. The lesson she drew contradicts one of neo-shamanism's central reassurances: Michael Harner's claim, in The Way of the Shaman*, that nothing can happen to you while journeying. Sandy Dollar reports, from experience, that this is not necessarily true.*
Hello to all my old friends and especially Flora. Now to you new ones that have joined the news group.
I am 1/8 Cherokee Indian, but did not find this out until just before my mother passed away. Because of this knowledge I wanted to find out about my relatives and their culture, so started reading books about the American Indian. I also lived in Camp Verde, AZ for 5 years, so learned quite a bit there, as the Apache and Yavapai Indians have a small reservation right in town.
With that said, here is my Water Journey, made after moving from Washington state to Medford, Oregon, after my husband passed away.
I found a very large crack in my back yard (from dry weather) next to a fence post, so decided to Journey to the lower world from there. I changed myself into water, holding myself together so that I did not soak into the soil. I went through the crack, dirt, around rock, until I came to a very small spring. I floated along this spring until I came to a very, very slow moving creek and still holding myself together plopped into the creek. Man, I am thinking to myself, this is really a slow creek, as I was hardly moving. I could see the creek sides which were about 4 to 6 feet high and 12 to 14 feet wide, with tall grasses growing all the way to the water's edge. There was soft blue sky, trees overhead and a slight breeze blowing the leaves. Since the water was so slow I relaxed and started to enjoy the trip. This went on for some time, until I decided to get out of the creek onto dry land for a look at what might be there.
To my great surprise, I had relaxed so much that my essence (lack of a better word) as water had spread all over in the creek. I had to really struggle and struggle — becoming fearful — that I was not going to be able to pull myself back together as water. I finally did get myself back together, jumping up as a clump of water back into the spring and on back to my yard.
This really taught me a huge lesson: that when you journey to any world, be aware of what you are doing at all times, because I think from my experience that a person can be trapped in that world. This was a scary experience for me. The next time I was more careful and stayed aware.
I will post my next Journey to the Lower World — to meet Mother Earth, who is very much alive.
P.S. In Michael Harner's book The Way of the Shaman, he states that nothing can happen to you while journeying. Because of almost being trapped in the water of the creek, and with the great struggle trying to pull myself back together as "water" — it may have been just that he never got into a situation that I was in, and nothing bad happened to him. For me, it was bad.
Colophon
Written by Sandy Dollar, a practitioner of part Cherokee descent living in Medford, Oregon, and posted to alt.religion.shamanism on 21 January 2006. Message-ID: hkuAf.10886$[email protected]. Sandy Dollar contributed a series of journey accounts to the group in this period; this is the account she called her "Water Journey," one of a series of lower-world voyages she documented for the group. The observation about Harner's teaching is her own and unsolicited.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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