The Elder Well Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Our guest this time on The Elder Well is Manda Scott. Based in the UK, Manda has been, variously, a veterinary surgeon, columnist, acupuncturist, regenerative smallholder, homoeopath, coach, renegade economist - and author of 16 novels, several screenplays and one non-fiction book. She holds a Master’s degree in Regenerative Economics from Schumacher College, is a contemporary shamanic teacher, and co-hosts the Accidental Gods podcast with her wife, Faith Tilleray.

In this episode of The Elder Well, we sit down with Manda for a courageous and compassionate conversation which explores elderhood, personal and collective trauma, wonderment, chaos, the web of life, the future of the planet, and more…

Know someone who’d love this conversation with Manda Scott? Please share below.

Manda speculates that culturally we may be at peak trauma now and cannot as a collective go much further without either crashing and burning, or emerging into a new system which does not have trauma as a baseline.

She describes the differences between “trauma cultures” and “initiation cultures”, and suggests the marked absence of meaningful initiation rites and rituals keeps much of society stuck in a kind of arrested early adolescence.

Manda offers fascinating insights about initiation cultures being more serotonin-based in contrast to the prevailing culture in the west which is largely based on dopamine requiring continual and ever-larger amounts of stimulation to sustain itself;

Throughout our conversation, Manda points to paths which would lead us away from the brink of cultural and planetary collapse.

“If we don’t bring a critical mass of people to the edge of what’s possible and leave behind all the old structures of predatory capitalism and trauma culture then I don’t think we make it through.”

Manda speaks movingly of an inspiring vision she had in mid-winter 2018 in which she was shown the earth floating in space, criss-crossed by millions of fibres of light, creating a web, and how at every crossing point was a node of consciousness, of which some were human….and most were not.

Manda shares how, for her, a true elder is someone who has the capacity to not become hijacked by their own trauma, who has learned how to connect with the web of life, and has offered themselves fully in service of youngers and the planet.

Manda invites each of us to cultivate joyful curiosity, and to fall in love with the magic of being alive in spite of the obvious chaos around us.

Towards the end of our time together, she shares an inspiring vision she is holding of a possible future where each person wakes up feeling safe, confident and excited, awed and alive with the possibility of the day, connected with themselves, other people and the rest of the web of life, knowing what’s theirs to do, confident in their capacity to do it, and doing this in the company of other people who they trust in good faith are doing the same.

Offering a few links to explore this conversation further:

* The Accidental Gods Podcast

* The website of Manda Scott

* Releasing Our Burdens: A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral, and Collective Trauma by Richard Schwartz PhD and Thomas Hübl PhD

* The website of teacher and author Thomas Hübl

* Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Patrice Somé

We were enlivened and inspired by our time with Manda; we very much hope you are too. Please enjoy.

“I think in general terms, the point of an elder in any healed and whole culture is to be helping to hold the space for the younger people coming through. I think one of the points of being human is to create the compost the land, create the soil of which to grow other humans who will be wiser than us.”

We are so happy to share that The Elder Well podcast opens and closes with the song River Run Free composed and performed by MaMuse with Walter Strauss on guitar. This song is shared here with the generous permission of the artists. To find out more about MaMuse, their music and their mission please visit: http://www.mamuse.org/

Welcome dear listener.

Our guest this time on The Elder Well is Mac Macartney. Mac is a visionary, international speaker, author, and change-maker. He is the founder of Embercombe, a social enterprise and 50-acre rewilding estate on Dartmoor (UK) dedicated to the profound regeneration of land and society. He bridges ancient indigenous wisdom with 21st-century leadership. Over a 20-year period, Mac was mentored by indigenous elders, profoundly shaping his worldview and driving his advocacy for earth-centred leadership

In this episode, Mac shares insights and wisdom from a life dedicated to beauty, nature, spirit, courage and love.…

* Mac shares how, for him, one of the great invitations of the second half of life is to uncover - or recover - our authentic voice, and to speak from this in service of what is real, true and has value;

* Now aged 73, he describes how in his 20’s, encountering the deep spirituality of First Nations people, recorded in the book Touch The Earth, profoundly moved and inspired him, and shaped the course of the rest of his life;

* He offers a vision of what might be expected of conscious, engaged elders, which includes looking to the future, acting to benefit the overall cohesion of society, and being invested in young people having safe, sustainable, fulfilling and dignified lives;

* Our conversation ends with Mac offering ‘A call to the brave’, an inspiring invitation to all who can to step up in these times of crisis, and co-create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

Please enjoy…

Links:

https://macmacartney.com/

https://www.embercombe.org/the-journey

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/509333.Touch_the_Earth

“…in the end it’s not much more than the things that we’ve already spoken of. You know, to know that you are loved. You do not need to prove anything. The “spiritual things” in our view are by and large, everything that we call ordinary in this life, a sunrise… I mean, I understand we have different religions, and they serve many people very well, but I think we were born into a ceremony, and the very nature of life is spiritual.”

We are so happy to share that The Elder Well podcast opens and closes with the song River Run Free composed and performed by MaMuse with Walter Strauss on guitar. This song is shared here with the generous permission of the artists. To find out more about MaMuse, their music and their mission please visit: http://www.mamuse.org/

We are pleased to introduce our first guest on The Elder Well — Ned Abenroth.

Ned has spent his adult life tending to transformational spaces. He was ordained in his early 20’s in a Christian community of artists, theologians, poets, musicians, and other glorious misfits, and served as a pastor in unorthodox settings ever since.

In this episode, Ned takes us on a journey of heart and soul, exploring how eldering is a profound invitation to change our relationship with the second half of life. He shares how he sees eldering not as a fixed identity but more as a process of becoming - an on-going deepening, ripening and flowering.

“I often think of ‘elder’ more as verb than noun and that the verb to elder, if I was to give a definition, would be to give away one’s final season for the good of the world”

He offers insights from his elder rites of passage work including the necessity of grief work, the liberation of waking up from the dominant culture’s fear and denial of death, and the immense gifts and Grace that can flow when we face our own mortality.

Ned is a beautiful soul. Take your time to find out more about Ned using the links below:

* Ned’s website: nedabenroth.com

* About the Elders Rites of Passage (EROP): eldersritesofpassage.com

* Illuman, the interfaith community of men: illuman.org

* Ned’s beautiful Poem ‘Yes’: nedabenroth.com/yes

Please enjoy…

“Only the ego has a problem with death but we have to remember that death is not the opposite of life. You know, it’s the opposite of birth. They’re both doorways into and out of this world. But death itself is not antithetical to life, if anything, it feeds life. Spend any time in an old growth forest and on the forest floor and you’re standing on generations of death and decay. There would be no forest without all of the death that has happened before it, you know, so, there is this impossibility of there being anything close to what we think of as life, if death were not part of this beautiful, beautiful cycle of it.” —Ned Abenroth

* We are so happy to share that The Elder Well podcast opens and closes with the song River Run Free composed and performed by MaMuse with Walter Strauss on guitar. This song is shared here with the generous permission of the artists. To find out more about MaMuse, their music and their mission please visit: mamuse.org

Why The Elder Well? Why us? And why now?

These are some of the questions that came up in this pre-launch chat with Ian MacKenzie of the Mythic Masculine podcast. We are big fans of Ian and the Mythic Masculine so it was a huge honour to have him support us in this way.

We chat about the origins of The Elder Well, including how the name itself arrived with Sarah on a hillside at dawn in Devon, during a ceremony at Embercombe. We also share an insight emerging across our first conversations: that an elder isn't self-appointed - it's something bestowed by others, in relationship.

We hope you enjoy this intimate chat with Ian MacKenzie and we look forward to seeing you for our Substack Live event on Friday 6 June at 7pm BST / 2pm EDT / 11am PDT.

We hope you enjoy this trailer of The Elder Well. It’s a short overview of what you can expect from our episodes and some of the questions that are guiding our enquiry.

Feel free to listen on the Substack platform or wherever you normally listen to your podcasts.

The Elder Well podcast is a gathering place for those seeking inspiration, ideas, and encouragement as we discover what it means to move into conscious, engaged and generative elderhood.

Join us for our live online launch event on Friday 5th June at 7pm BST. (Convert to your timezone here). Please make sure you’re subscribed to receive a reminder - we’d love to see you there.

Know someone who might like this podcast? Please share this with them.

So what do you think? What questions are tugging at you about conscious, engaged and generative elderhood.? Please share your comments below.

The music you hear in The Elder Well is by MaMuse, whose soulful music feels like a perfect companion for the show. Find out more at mamuse.org