Welcome to the Skinwalker Files, my blog about strange personal experiences, martial yoga, dreaming and the out of body or OBE journey. Things have settled into place finally, so I can at last put up a menu.
Camp -- You are here, where I post notices about our other pages and projects. There's also a menu at the top of the blog which takes you to the various sections of SkinWalker. B2Evolution platform has become the old and clunky grandfather of Wordpress but I kind of like it. Only problem is, things get lost here. Scroll down for a quick look at the various parts of the beast and stop in at the forum And Then . . . . For a collection of old stories of mine visit American Shaman.
Skin -- Talk about the esoteric things I'm doing -- some of it's planned and some of it just happens. Projects come and go, but mostly go because there's just no point in investing the amount of time and effort required when nobody thinks it's real. So unless it holds my interest and turns out to be pretty cool I scrap it. Yoga, remote viewing, ancient meditations, time travel, ceremonial vigils, vision quest, the heyoka path and lots more.
Smoke -- I recently starting posting some reviews and links of books available online for free which contain methods and information about unusual technology or ancient systems of meditation. Other links of interest -- some of them ours, some of them friends of ours, and stuff that I just think is neat.
Meat -- To have a real controllable psychic experience or shamanic experience you have to do more than light a couple of candles and dress up funny. Well, actually the candles and the costume haven't ever helped me in any of this, but other things have. What works involves actually doing things, a concept that puts a lot of people off. Shamanic training is tough. I still like it. Here's where I write about what works -- martial yoga, chi kung, qi gong, physical training, mental training and lots of other stuff that hurts before it feels good.
Bones -- Ever wonder if that weird mail order time machine that sells for $350 does anything? What about hemi-sync or biofeedback technology? Singing bowls, meditation beads, crystals -- I've tried them, often with interesting successes I didn't expect.
The time machine? I bought it. Haven't quite worked up the moxie to try it out with the gateway, as yet -- long story I haven't finished posting but so far I've done a series of trial runs with results on Meat and technical talk on Bones. Bones is where I talk about the tools and the toys (my interest in virtual reality gaming has now been vindicated by the surge of Native American interest in the Avatar movie), physical devices and how they make sense in a shamanic way. Sometimes they don't, and I mention some of that here as well.
Link: http://www.jamestwohats.com/jthbackpacking/index.html
New articles up at my backpacking page about canoe sailing, nude backpacking, compasses old and new, gps handhelds and a review of a Survival School series that's free to view on HULU--links to that in the review articles at The Marked Tree. I've done a bit about solar panel backpacks and battery chargers, rambled on yet again about practical wilderness defense, and grudgingly must admit that after considerable study the modern bear repellant pepper spray is the best multi-purpose defensive weapon we have today. Have a look at Wilderness Defense for reasons to carry one.
Link: http://jamestwohats.com/And_Then/index.php
Are You Ready to Rumble?
If you've ever wanted a place where you could talk about strange things--even express an unusual opinion now and then--you've probably been very disappointed by the internet. As soon as the Global Village took form petty despots celebrated by forming little forum kingdoms and establishing all the rules they never had to abide by in real life. Possibly that's just the way people are, but if you're one of the few who still believes in free speech and would like a place to express it, you're welcome at the And Then Forum. At present it's pretty much an empty room and I feel awkward about it, like I ought to offer visitors a glass of strange liquor and a sardine. Rules are few, I'm hoping people will mostly be polite. Spammers are not invited.
Link: http://jamestwohats.com/quartremoon/
By the time I was 50 I'm sure my family thought I'd never get along with anybody, because I hadn't managed to do that yet. A few friendships and relationships that were fiery and ill-fated but nothing that lasted. But Alice and I have been together for seven years now, and it looks like it could work out. So far we haven't wandered through the gateway into outer space, but we do think about it now and then. Alice's blog Free Range Human is a bright look at this little part of the world, written by someone doggedly working at the things I gave up years ago, saving the sentient beings of the world one tadpole at a time if necessary. Plus, she's a Dreamer in the old sense, trying to put the old life into the new world, somewhere between the corn and the beans.
Link: http://jamestwohats.com/BackPackBlog/

Writing about shamanic things, I'm always confronting the commercial problems of finding ads that have anything to do with what I'm talking about. Meditation and shamanism really don't require much in the way of equipment. But strangely enough, the places where these old practices lead do generate a need for gear and mundane training. I've tried to separate these two halves of my interests because telling all this to a normal customer tends to make them go away. So I talk about survival gear, primitive weapons and other tangible things in a different place. That would be The Marked Tree, the flip side of The SkinWalker Files.
Link: http://hubpages.com/profile/aliceone
Alice and I are both frequent contributors to Hub Pages, where we write about things of all sorts that don't fit in our blogs.

