"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life
and you will call it fate."

How To Name
A Baby Shamanically

Journeying to the baby still inside the womb
It’s one of the jobs of the tribal shaman, to ask the baby’s spirit name and purpose. Though, I'd suggest a separate journey for its purpose.

What you need:
You don’t need drums to journey. Lie next to your partner when you go to bed and set your intent to meet the incarnation spirit of the child. Ask for a prophetic dream, perhaps, and then sleep on it. You'll be lying next to your wife and unborn baby at the time you dream.

The dream I had when naming my baby:
I dreamt about a group of us crossing a stream in search of a magical lake. We arrived at a large palace, like a very grand hotel on top of a hill and entered and walked downstairs to the basement where I was met by a porter for the basement who said that this floor was for the South American flower course, and the North American and European flower courses were upstairs and added that he preferred to work downstairs as it was cooler than the upper levels. With this information I decided to stay and entered through the swinging doors.

After entering it was a very large and beautiful place with a court yard with flowers and grass etc. A guide took me to a lake and I got stuck in the mud up to my knees and couldn't move. The guide got stuck as well but managed to free himself and splash into the muddy lake and said to me "What were you thinking when you got in?" which I replied, "I don't know". And the guide said "You have to have good thoughts when you get in". So I thought of something good and the mud crystallised and formed a step/shelf for me to stand on which I could dive from into the lake. At the bottom of the lake, all the mud crystallised as well which made the water crystal clear to swim in. The guide then said, "This is why the lake is called The Magical Lake"!

I had finally found the lake I had been looking for and now knew why it was named so and how the lake reflected our thoughts.

How could this dream relate to a baby's name?
The water I dived into could have been the womb. Journeying beneath waters is a route into the spirit world for most cultures, actually (including the Kelts) so it would seem that I was in the right place. Since water and flowers featured prominently, I thought about water and flowers as the source of the name. As our bodies are 70% water I wanted to honour water. Water + Earth + Flower = Water Lily (Lilies grow in Water but have roots in Earth).

So the baby was named Tallulah Lily Jei Hei Brooks. Tallulah - has Native American origins meaning 'Laughing Water' or 'Leaping Water' for water fall as in Tallulah Falls. And if she finds being called Tally uninspiring by her school friends, she can be known as Lily instead. Jei Hei, pronounced 'Gee-She', is my wife’s South Korean name and is a very pretty name. I was guessing it was a girl, as two medical scans proved inconclusive. If the baby had been born a boy, we would have been stuck for names as we had not chosen any boy names. I didn’t feel it was necessary as we both intuitively felt it was a girl.

Trust in your guiding spirits as they are your best allies in this and all shamanic work.

Have pleasant dreams, but be careful what you fantasise about as your dreams can become reality!

Til we meet again.

Johnathan 'Spirit Bear' - The Urban Shaman

Tallulah Lily Jei Hei Brooks

Water Lily

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