Review – Winds of Spirit by Renee Baribeau

July 24, 2026Leave a comment

Winds of Spirit is an inspired and inspirational book by Renee Baribeau. It provides a framework for working shamanically with the winds in order to navigate better through our lives and be of service to the spirits and others.

As far as I know, this book is unique, as it is the first to focus solely on working with the winds and to provide a modern wind-based divinatory system. This is based on a combination of historical and cultural research and phenomenological evidence based on personal and group experiences.

Baribeau speaks candidly about her spiritual awakening from drug and alcohol addiction and how this led to her training in shamanism in the Native American, Chilean, Mexican and Peruvian traditions. Whilst working as a shamanic healer, she received the name ‘the practical shaman’ on the basis of her talent for helping people to find the tools to improve their everyday lives.

It’s no surprise, then, that this book is very practical and accessible. The idea at its centre is ‘using the body as a compass for navigating through life.’ This is simple, intuitive, but something we too often neglect in our digital world. Thus, embodied presence in the here-and-now, provides the ground.

Baribeau echoes the wisdom of worldwide religious traditions, emphasising the importance of establishing a prayer and meditation practice and also practicing surrender, acceptance, devotion and mindfulness. Only when we have this grounding can we begin to work with the ungrounding forces of the winds.

Baribeau’s system is based around the cardinal winds of the four directions, which she associates with the cycles of life (‘birth, expansion, death and decay’) and to which she assigns the following resonances: East – mind, south – emotions, west – body, north – spirituality and community.

She goes on to describe both inner and outer winds and their different types. I particularly related to the section where she speaks of how tailwinds can drive you forward, headwinds can blow against you or be used for uplift, and crosswinds can blow you off course or bring detours that result in gifts. I found myself nodding along as I recognised these types of wind in my life.

Baribeau shares a variety of practices for working with the winds, such as wind baths, wind knots and the weather vane process. She also talks about taking a wind walk as a way of finding clarity and insight. Finally, she lists 29 winds from world-wide cultures and their meaning when they arrive in the four quadrants and the blessings they can bring when called in.

I live in Lancashire, in an area usually dominated by a strong, damp, west wind that blows in from the sea and up the Ribble estuary and is one I often find myself fighting against when I’m cycling in a westward direction. Less often, we experience a drier and airier wind from the east, a warmer wind from the south, or a bitterly cold wind from the north or from the north-west.

This book has inspired me to listen to them better, to think of my body as a compass, to tune in to what they’re saying and how they relate to my inner winds.

Overall, it is well-researched and contains an excellent blend of ancient and modern wisdom. It is profoundly accessible in its grounding in our shared experience, in the breath we share, in our inner winds, in the outer winds that blow across our lands and appear with different names in different cultures. I would recommend it to those on a shamanic or nature-based path and to all who seek understanding and communion with the winds in their lives and localities.

On Money and Fear

June 17, 2023June 21, 20233 Comments

“Stop thinking about money!”
~ the voice of my God

I.
I am the blindfolded woman
and two arrows have pierced my heart
in spite of my charms and incantations against love.

I have been wrapped up in my own heartbreak leaving me blind.

I have been trying to weigh inspiration against money,
a feather against gold – one heavy one light.

I have been a slave to what is bled
from rocks over millenia at such toil and cost,
ignoring what is easily shed, fletched, lifted by a breath.

You are the archer and as always Your arrows strike true.

II.
What is it I fear? Hunger? Having no home?

I do not think I could sit and beg but would rather walk,
homeless, foodless, until I could walk no longer,
lie down and die, be back with You.

III.
When I think of my worst fear it is fear of madness –

I am looking into a round tunnel without a train
but just a whistling train track
rushing through it,

the dance of limbs
on the platforms belonging
to no-one, not to people, to robots, or to spirits.

That the whole journey of life is nothing but meaninglessness.

IV.
I think of my longstanding fear of falling apart.

I recall my vision of a knight riding forth,
the plates of his armour rusting,
his flesh starting to decay,
falling from his limbs,

the skeletal man
falling from his skeletal horse

but his horse going on to where the bones
of all horses crumble and the dust of dead horses
is borne on the winds to where You ride Lord of Annwn.

You taste the wind, lick Your forefinger, another failed quest.

Your hounds prowl and sniff at the dust and Your pale horse rolls in it.

IV.
Yet I have chosen to collect feathers not gold
for the birds are giving and we are nothing but birds
who are learning how to fly and to empty out our pockets.

I want to be light, my lord, to depart from lands where scales exist.

To where we no longer need to weigh, measure, measure up.
To where You tear my blindfold off and show me
the truths that lie in my unbroken heart.

Gwyn Portrait, April’s End

April 29, 2014July 8, 2014Leave a comment

The huntsman has ridden all night, following the brilliance of the spirit roads- the shining tracks that criss-cross the island of Britain. Instead of returning home he remains here for dawn, listening to the idiosyncrasies of each bird’s song, watching dew form on blades of grass, on petals of hawthorn blossoms and may flowers.

He is and is not the mist, riding through damp meadows over hills, mountains and moors on a pale horse accompanied by a hound of the same complexion. He is and is not each sun-lit cloud he travels with, the touch and whisper of the wind.

He cannot stay here long, for this world we see as the land of the living is not his. He must return home to Annwn, the Otherworld, to prepare for a battle that cannot be won. To fight for a maiden he shouldn’t have loved, shouldn’t still love… in bluebells and forget-me-nots, emerging greens and white and yellow flowers he sees her colours.

For a moment he is possessed by memories of their passion, and the crimes it drove him to. A glimpse of his blacked face in a reed strewn pool shows no amount of war paint can mask his guilt, which he must live with for as long as there are people to sing his songs.

He searches for a sign. What is Judgement Day? When is it? Although he knows the language of the trees and plants, the tracks of every wild creature and the flight of birds, these questions are beyond his power to divine. When the worlds end, will Creiddylad and I be together again?