Chapter 40 Quest Protector - from my book Changes

Chapter 40

Quest Protector

The quest protector class was next on my list.  Quest Protector class was offered shortly after my vision quest.  I attended this class in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, in the Primitive Camp where Trackerschool was usually held.  Malcolm Ringwalt was the instructor, teaching us how to protect vision questers in the tradition of Grandfather Stalking Wolf, the Apache elder, who taught my main teacher Tom Brown Jr.

Malcolm had been teaching quest protectors for years, and at the time I took the class, there were around a hundred quest protectors who had been trained in this way.

When a quest protector pledges his or her life to protect the person questing, they intend to protect both physically and spiritually.

Physically, there may be a human or animal that wanders into the area where people are questing who need to be asked to leave. Or, in a worst case scenario, prevented from hurting the questers.  When a quest protector walks the path around the questers, morning and night, they usually carry a large knife and what we call a talking stick.

The quest protector’s talking stick is a large heavy stick that could be used as a weapon, but is mainly used to make marks on. The marks tell the story of the quest protectors experiences during the quest.  This is a record, day to day, of protecting the quest.

The walk and the weapons are part of the physical protection.  Checking on the area; keeping an eye on things; quietly .. without being seen by the questers.

The spiritual protection is another aspect of protection given to the questers.

As I recall, most of what we learned as protectors was how to protect spiritually, or how to become more aware spiritually so we could protect that way.

Malcolm gave us many exercises that opened me up at my core.  By repeatedly working on and in my core, I began to be able to feel my core, which seems to run up and down the center of my body.

A very fundamental part of protecting spiritually is to be able to place our core in the center of the larger quest area, where the pipe is joined and the fire is going, and expand the core like a gigantic bubble that covers and surrounds the questers.  The bubble must be much larger than the immediate area so those inside will not feel compressed.  The bubble must be both above and below the area.  And the bubble must push out all negative entities that would interfere with the quester’s experience with the Creator.  The bubble is held all throughout the quest except for the final night, as both a protection to the questers and as an alarm for those protecting the questers.  The bubble, which is the core of the protector, will alert the protector of any threats, either physical or spiritual, that may be entering or trying to enter the quest area.  When that happens, the protector must go out and deal with the threat.

The final night of the quest, the protectors withdraw the spiritual protection.  The final night is called, “The night the spirits walk,” and is part of the experience.  Now the quester may become aware of negative influences, and recognize the negative versus the positive.

When Malcolm told us what we would learn to do, creating a spiritual bubble that would alert us protectors of danger, I had a difficult time believing I could do it.  I was surprised that by the end of the class I could not only understand how to do it, but I could participate in doing it.

To show us the power of that protection, Malcolm had everyone in the class place our core near the fire in the main camp and expand our protective bubbles out to a certain border on the landscape.  Then he took us to that border and had us protectors in training walk back and forth across the road where the protective bubble wall was, so we could feel what the protection felt like.

I was amazed.  Walking through that protective wall felt like walking through air that was thicker than normal; almost difficult to pass through.  It reminded me of how I might feel walking through Jello. And, though I didn’t see this, some people saw, within that protective wall, the faces of the people who had projected the bubble.