Patrick Jasper Lee is an indigenous Chovihano from an ancient line of Romani gypsies. He is the author of We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Shamanic Tradition and Culture (Thorsons 2000) and Beyond a Near Water: Book One of The Long Reflection (Boktalo 2005).
A Chovihano/Chovihani is a tribal Romani gypsy shaman or medicine man/woman. Gypsies are the living practitioners of Britain’s own shamanic tradition, inheritors of an ancient craft due to their largely uninterrupted ancestry. Patrick Jasper Lee was trained in these ancient traditions by his Romani great-grandfather, also a practising Chovihano, and has himself been practising as a Chovihano for over thirty years.
PJL is unusual for making his life, work and sacred traditions public, providing an insight for the ‘gaujo’ (non-gypsy) into the otherwise closed and mysterious world of Romani people in western Europe. He like other Romani gypsies are generally brought up not to speak openly about their culture. He explains;
"There is, however, every reason to speak freely now, for our world is quite plainly in a desperate mess and tribes of all peoples everywhere are threatened with extinction."[1]
Like many indigenous people across the world today, PJL does not support the new age or neoshamanism. He believes that both are modern, manufactured alternatives that disrespect the sacred ways of ancient and tribal people as they bear little resemblance to any traditional spiritual practice in accordance with the ancient natural laws.