Planetary Empaths & Reindeer People

Susan Seddon Boulet

     Although I was born intuitive and empathetic, nothing prepared me for how those qualities would progress through life. It was in early 1990’s that I began to notice that my intuitive flashes were expanding to include world events. The curious thing about this was that it was translated into body symptoms. Occasionally, a dream or a  dream or vision (like watching  a movie) would accompany the symptoms, but this was not the norm. I would feel a strong grief & heartache days prior to a world event. This would be almost crippling. I kept wondering: “What is wrong with me?” Then I began to notice a pattern. The grief episodes would precede and event, and disappear when the event happened: Princess Diana’s death, the beginning of the Gulf war, the Columbine school shootings, the Virginia Tech school shootings and the housing market debacle.

    In 2004 there was an abrupt change in these abilities (To read about this event click here.) I started hearing a range of tones in my left ear, accompanied by a range of symptoms: dizziness, vertigo, headaches, bleeding in the ears, heart palpitations, strong feelings of foreboding, pressure in the head. I did go to my Dr. and had everything checked out. There was no explanation. A pattern emerged: approximately 1-4 days prior to an earthquake or volcanic eruption, the left ear would ring. Then came the other symptoms. The symptoms would disappear after the event- unless there was more to come. My other symptoms remained:  I was bedridden the day prior, and the day of  the Easter Quake (2010 Baja California) which also caused the ground beneath my home to move. I lived three months after that with the feeling of living on water, like standing on a dock with constant rocking. This event was also preceded by bleeding in my ears. (I went straight to the doctors with this. After a full exam they could offer no explanation. “Yes, we see the blood, but there doesn’t seem to be a source. You don’t have brain tumor.”) I received warning about the cataclysm in Japan , without knowing where it would happen. This scenario has not finished playing out. Though I didn’t have inner ear symptoms, I did have a lucid dream and body symptoms preceding the Gulf Oil Spill. This is another event that hasn’t completed it’s cycle.

    It was through Trish and Rob MacGregor’s blog Synchronicity (now called Synchroscrets) that I found others like me. Trish and Rob  coined the term “Planetary Empaths” on March 11, 2010 to describe the group of us that were having similar symptoms prior to cataclysmic events. From then on I have been looking at theories to explain what an planetary empath is. What are the empaths connected to? Why is it happening? Is it evolutionary? A few of the empaths have asked  this question repeatedly “ Why are we given enough details to know something horrific is to occur, but not enough information to doing anything about it?” I have often noticed that I didn’t know what the meaning of the dream or vision was until the actual event was unfolding. Why? What is the use of this?

   Though I have always been somewhat psychic, I equate my empathic abilities (in so far as they are connected to the earth) with the arrival of an image I called Reindeer Woman. (I have blogged about my search to uncover who or what this image is, to read the fist in the sequence, click here.) This is how I came to be  recently re-reading  a book by author Peter Vitebsky, The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia. It  has been full of synchronistic insights for me, both in regards to Reindeer Woman, and the work of a planetary empath.

    Vitebsky documents his conversations with the Eveny, “The Reindeer People“. They show him how important the nightly dreams of the tribe or group are to their survival. The dreams warn them about changes in the environment, or about death and illness. The dreams tell them when they are out of balance with the “spirit of the place”, or with their reindeer herds. Yet, notes Vitebsky, the dreams themselves “put up impenetrable barriers to any understanding before it’s fulfillment.” (Vitebsky/2005,pg 298)  And “the meaning of the dream revealed itself with shocking clarity when it was fulfilled. It was as if the dream was taunting the dreamer with her helplessness.” (IBID) The tribe’s answer this conundrum, through time, has been  to develop systems of divination that clarifies the dream. The tribe also has group dreams, shared between 2 or more members. They explained to Vitebsky  that while there existed group or conventional dream symbols, each dreamer has symbols that mean certain things specifically to that dreamer.  Some members of the tribe  will have bodily symptoms preceding specific events.  When the camp had an encounter with a hungry wolf, Vitebsky reported , “Later I found out Granny had felt a twitch the previous day in her left cheek , on the side that indicated something bad will happen.” (Vitebsky/2005 pg 344) (Italics mine: myself and other empaths have report a particular tone or ringing in the left ear only prior to a quake, or volcanic eruption.) The camp's pets and herds also gave warning prior to important events. Even the arrival of strangers is preceded days in advance by animals of the tribe.

From the cover of The Reindeer People,  by Vitebsky

    In an attempt to "civilize" the nomadic Eveny people during the Russian Revolution of the 1920‘s, the shamans of the tribe were removed. Most were never seen again. Yet, the living field (described as spirits of the land, animals, trees, creatures and ancestors) that the Eveny people communicate with is still talking to them, through dreams, their pets and herds, and through their bodies.  Vitebsky’s wife came to visit him at the Eveny camps  Sally, a psychologist from England “came to feel that the land had sent her dreams even while she was still in England.” (IBID).

    For me, this example- the Eveny people - gives a possible explanation of what the phenomena of  being an earth empath may be and how it may work. It seems that there is no future if humans completely cut themselves off from this "living field”. Traditionally, this living field calls the few it will communicate with. These individuals don’t have a choice: they have to listen. Since we no longer have a place for the traditional role of the shaman in our culture, it will be interesting to witness how this relationship between the unseen living field and the humans it chooses to interact with will continue to develop.  It would also appear that for our postmodern planetary empaths, the field has expanded: we are dreaming the world's events, not just our own locale.

A very ancient path being fused to the post-modern world…..