Breaking the Spell of Separation: A Celtic Shaman's Guide to Romancing Uncertainty
Celtic shaman and author Jane Burns on why helping spirits seek partnership not worship, and why the betwixt-and-between is where magic lives
As we step into 2026, there’s something different in the air. Not just new year, new me—but a collective sense that we’re between stories, standing in a threshold that’s bigger than any individual transformation. When I sat down with Celtic shaman Jane Burns, she gave language to what I’ve been sensing: we’re being called to romance the unknown rather than wrestle it into submission.
Our conversation revealed something I’ve been tracking in my own work as a threshold guide—we’re not just crossing personal thresholds anymore. We’re in a collective betwixt-and-between that demands we remember how to court uncertainty rather than white-knuckle through it.
What lit me up most was Jane’s confirmation of something I’ve long suspected: the Otherworld needs us as much as we need them. This isn’t the cosmic vending machine spirituality we’ve grown accustomed to—insert prayer, receive blessing. Jane spoke of “a marriage of equals” where the Fae and helping spirits seek collaboration, not supplication. They have vested interest in our maturation because what happens here ripples there. Like monster romance (stay with me)—transformation happens through negotiation between sovereign beings who create something new together. Eros as organizing principle, not extraction.
Jane also shared how ancestors depend on embodied descendants to heal what they couldn’t resolve in life—a profound reversal of our usual “what can ancestors do for me?” spirituality. Having recently navigated my parents’ crossings, this landed deeply. Death doesn’t end the story; it transforms the collaboration.
Perhaps most revolutionary was Jane’s observation that we exist in constant threshold, perpetually suspended between our potential and our fears. This is the heart of threshold work—not waiting for dramatic life transitions but recognizing we’re always betwixt-and-between, always choosing between expansion and contraction.
As I write this, I’m thinking of you standing at your own threshold. Maybe it’s a career change, a relationship ending, a creative project demanding birth. Or maybe it’s subtler—that persistent sense that there’s more to life than what meets the eye, that the invisible world is “right at hand” as the Celts knew.
What if we approached these thresholds like lovers rather than warriors? What if we courted the unknown with curiosity instead of conquering it with control? What if we remembered that transformation is a collaborative dance between worlds, not a solo journey?
The invitation is here. Every new year cracks open possibility, and this one feels especially potent—like we’re collectively ready to meet the unknown as partner rather than enemy. The only question is: will you step through?
Guest Bio
Jane Burns has been a shamanic practitioner and teacher for over 20 years. She is best known for her courses in Celtic Shamanism, which have been offered both in person and through a wide audience at the Shift Network. Her novel and shamanic handbook, Up A Tree, was published in 2014. She lives and practices in Connecticut.
Her latest book:
Tess Lynch has always preferred to walk an unconventional path and does not mind being set apart from the pack. But, when she loses her husband and 10-year old son, Declan, in a tragic accident, she suddenly finds herself without the support a tragedy of this magnitude requires. While her gift in helping others, through shamanic healing, strangely increases in the aftermath of these deaths, midwifing herself through her own grief and anger becomes almost impossible. Despair drives her from her home to a seaside Rhode Island town, in the hopes of finding a new life. There, she meets Owen, the single father of an autistic son and Olivia, a young woman who is caring for a father with dementia.
This story examines the confounding nature of the human struggle and our capacity to thrive and move forward through many forms of grief and loss. The door between the worlds remains ajar throughout the novel, as figures from Celtic myth and the realm of spirit help to facilitate each character’s evolution, illuminating the fragile and tender relationship between those who have transcended into one realm and those who still struggle in the other.
