“Somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me in saying it, to understand it.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Professional Profile

As a descendant of Scottish aristocracy, born in Zimbabwe in 1963 and trained by some of the most renowned African healers of Southern-Africa, Colin Campbell has become known for being a knowledge-bridge between rare pre-industrial African culture and contemporary Western culture.

As a child, Colin travelled through Africa with his father, Alec Campbell, who was a celebrated cultural historian and archaeologist. Thus, from the age of 11, he was introduced to some of the most powerful African healers and magicians in Botswana, who instantly recognised the boy’s calling as a healer and accepted him as a student. Colin experienced and integrated ancient aspects of traditional African knowledge through the rigorous rituals and training from his teachers. This resulted in a deeply assimilated understanding of animistic cosmology and its magically inextricable connection to the natural world.

In 1987, Colin obtained a degree in Fine Arts (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town. During this time, he also pursued tertiary studies in psychology, African musicology and worked undercover with the outreach medical students as an African Medicine doctor in the townships during the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Through his in-depth knowledge of African culture, Jungian psychology and contemporary artistic practice Colin has cultivated a uniquely-authentic contemporised personal philosophy which he has developed into unparalleled wilderness-based psycho-spiritual practices. These practices incorporate his diverse interests as diviner, teacher, musician, writer and artist. His practices aim to take people of all nations into a restored and reconnected relationship with the wider natural world. In essence his work aims to help repair damaged or lost parts in contemporary human culture; parts that hold crucial knowledge with regard to our ‘place’ in relation to the rest of the universe which if remembered and embodied, could lead to a more ensouled, alive and ecologically balanced world.

Colin has been a consultant and associate of Gaia Foundation for many years. http://www.gaiafoundation.org/
He has been a key co-creator of the African Biodiversity Network since its beginnings in 2001, and remains a centrally active consultant, facilitator and ambassador for the network. http://www.africanbiodiversity.org/
He is a visiting teacher at Schumacher College. http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/
Colin has facilitated courses for The Blue Deer Centre, an international centre based in the USA committed to hosting teachers of ancestral approaches to healing, ritual, retreat and balanced relationship with the natural world. http://www.bluedeer.org/providers.html

 

---