Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result might be blank stares. Many people are surprised to understand that shamanism is not a religion though the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on earth. A lot more surprising may be the discovery that it’s the precursor to the majority of major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it continues to be practised on every inhabited continent in the world for around 40,000 many possibly quite definitely longer. Historically, shamanism would have been a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs around the globe with carved and painted images drawn straight from shamanic experience. We no more reside in caves or perhaps tiny communities whose members are all seen to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our mind, that portion of us capable of fearing the dark and seeking help from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost one fourth of a million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people that much easier works today because, although world might have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.
Ask what a shaman is along with the question may evoke a few words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or maybe the word ‘witchdoctor’. The truth is, exactly what a shaman is and does is simply explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and is the term for an individual able to make a ‘journey’ to alternate realities during an altered state of consciousness to get to know and assist spirit helpers. Exactly what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, within this experience of meeting spirits is there isn’t any separation between whatever is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, between a dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality as well as the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists utilizing sub atomic theory, though of course it is a predominantly physical, instead of a spiritual, oneness that such scientists making the effort to describe. However, where many of us can only think about the understanding of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it with the example of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your journey begins because the shaman redirects the primary cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain to the correct, with the corpus collosum – that’s, through the structuring, organising hemisphere, towards the visualising, sensing one. Within the overwhelming most of traditions around the world this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by the use of percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a method to assist alter consciousness, in reality no more than 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, right onto your pathway begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts through the present and enters worlds visible simply to her. These worlds, which vary with every culture and tradition all over the world, are called ‘alternate reality’, ‘the whole world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between the worlds’ because they are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro cactus is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they may be qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and support the basis for the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research within the cognitive sciences points too a person’s mental abilities are hardwired to view the ‘unseen’ and the mystical; perhaps the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds with the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
Not surprisingly, one of many questions most often asked by students being unveiled in shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for a lot of generations we lack a specific, objective understanding of things like spirits. Currently it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their email list is seemingly endless. Personally, I have two understandings of the thought of spirit even though both the coincide, they may not be the identical yet they benefit me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own practice and teaching, describes spirits included in everything exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body as a way to have a very human experience. The spirits I meet in my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and for that reason offer an existential overview unavailable if you ask me, but we have been fundamentally the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments with the Great Spirit. Many of us result from this energy, exist inside it and come back to it. It is in reality living this attitude allowing a shaman to have the possible lack of separation between stuff that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, for example life and death or health insurance disease.
My second comprehension of spirit is a bit more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in his autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his desire of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the insight there are things in the psyche that we tend not to produce, but which produce themselves and also have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself.” This is the beautifully lucid explanation of methods it can feel to activate with spirit throughout a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the whole process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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