From Expected Path To Sacred Autonomy with Barry Goddard

At fourteen, Barry Goddard felt his life had been stolen from him—pointed toward his father’s chain of vet surgeries, the eldest son expected to inherit the measurable success of a materialistic path. He started vet school, lasted five months, and walked away with a relief he could barely name: what he wanted, he later realised, was to become a psychonaut—to live close to the sacred. Malcolm Stern sits down with his friend Barry to follow that trail from public-school expectation through hallucinogenic initiation into the shadow, a deep experience of faith in a Buddhist community, and the midlife collapse that pulled the plug on spiritual “brownie points” until astrology and shamanism gave him his life back.

We talk about herd animals and unspoken group rules, Jung’s “doing gladly that which you have to do,” and why a so-called spiritual path can delude us as easily as a worldly one. Barry describes learning shamanic journeying in the late nineties, leaving Buddhism to reclaim his own metaphysical autonomy, and discovering that his way of working is embodiment—shape-shifting—rather than only drum-journey structure. Writing arrives late: an astrology blog from 2006 becomes a fifteen-year apprenticeship; books on astrology and shamanism follow; and during this conversation his fantasy trilogy about shape-shifting is literally being delivered to the door.

Near the end we ask the dragon question. Barry’s answer is to need a sword in both hands—to be a warrior and soft, “like armadillo”: tough outer surface, soft heart—fighting not only on his father’s terms but from a wider, more open intelligence. If you care about faith beyond dogma, shadow initiation, astrology, shamanism, creative vocation, or finding the courage to do the unthinkable when the herd says stay, this conversation stays close to lived experience. Subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave us a review so more listeners can find Slay Your Dragons With Compassion.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents https://app.onlinevents.co.uk/