We humans are spiritual creatures, and our spiritual practices go back to the shamanic traditions of the Stone Age. With the advent of the great faiths, those traditions receded, but now shamanic practices are resurgent worldwide.
Should we in the the Western world rest easy that we put down our shaman drums, or should we pick one up again and take a second look?
What is a shaman?
Are shamans, as many think, sorcerers who summon evil spirits? Are they charlatans telling ghost stories to the gullible? Or are they something else entirely?
Shamans are indeed something else. The anthropologist Michael Harner defined a shaman as:
“A man or woman who enters an altered state of consciousness at will, to contact and utilize an ordinarily hidden reality, in order to acquire knowledge, power, and to help other persons.”
It’s the “help other persons” part that’s most important. If someone enters a hidden reality to acquire spiritual power that they use to help and heal, they’re a shaman. If they use that power to hinder and hurt, they’re a sorcerer.
As for the people telling ghost stories to the gullible, or, as the scam goes today, selling drug trips to ecotourists, they’re not shamans either. Real shamans are in service to higher powers, not themselves.
Why do shamans exist?
When we modern humans first appeared around 50,000 years ago, we distinguished ourselves with an increase in spiritual activity. Previous humans had strewn flowers on graves, but modern humans took things to a new level. The cave painting at right, for example, is believed to depict a shaman’s spiritual experience of merging with the souls of sacred animals.
The first shamans were people in their tribes who were “tuned into” the spiritual realm to an uncommon degree. They used their spiritual abilities to do things of practical value, such as healing sickness and finding food.
A good example of one is the Lakota medicine man Black Elk, interviewed in the book Black Elk Speaks. In the book, he describes several episodes in which he used his spiritual abilities to help others, including:
- His first case as a healer. In a vision, he saw a certain herb. The next day, a man came to him to heal his young son, who was deathly ill. Black Elk went looking for the herb he’d “seen,” found it, and dug it up. He performed a ritual, gave the boy the herb, and the boy recovered fully.
- The night he translated “coyote.” Caught in a blizzard one night, he heard a coyote howling. In its howls, Black Elk heard: “There are buffalo behind the ridge.” When day broke, he saw an old man and a young boy, starving, hunting for buffalo. He directed them to the ridge, where they killed some that were trapped in deep snow.
How do shamans operate?
How do shamans provide spiritual healing and guidance? Let’s explore Dr. Harner’s definition of a shaman to find out how they operate:
Altering consciousness. This is the essence of shamanry. Shamans delve into the subconscious to gain insights unavailable to most people. They also venture into non-material realms of reality to acquire useful knowledge and healing power.
By entering these non-material realms (which they call the “spirit world”) through dreams, trances, and visions, shamans operate beyond the purview of science. As the Mongolian shaman Sarangarel said, “Shamans touch on certain aspects of reality that modern science has only started to grasp.”
Altering it at will. Shamans alter their consciousness at will by using one or more of the “Five Ds:” Drums, Drugs, Dreams, Dance, and Deprivation (stress). Using these means, they frequently visit non-material realms. Someone may have had a prescient dream or mystical vision, but if they’ve done that only once or a few times, they’re not a shaman.
The techniques they use to enter trance states are deceptively sophisticated. When a shaman beats a traditional drum at around 200 beats per minute, for instance, he produces binaural beats at a frequency that induces the brain to generate theta waves—the same brain waves generated during dreams.
Helping other people. A shaman’s purpose in entering a trance state is to gain the power and knowledge needed to heal and guide other people.
Because they enter non-material realms of reality so often, shamans form ongoing relationships with the benevolent beings they encounter there. These “helping spirits,” as they’re called, confer healing power upon them, and provide them with information crucial to guiding individuals and communities in positive directions.
Are shamanic methods effective?
Shamans are generally very effective at healing the body, the job they’re called upon to do most often. That’s what Wallace Black Elk, a descendant of the Black Elk mentioned above, did for his adoptive granddaughter, the anthropologist Joan Halifax. When she found out that she had tumors in one eye, she had the tumors removed with radiation therapy. Unfortunately, the radiation burned her eyes. What happened next surprised her:
“I’m seeing the top cornea specialist in the world, who said this thing with my eyes was a tragedy. He basically said to me, ‘You have to be in bandages for at least two more months to a year.‘ Grandfather Black Elk shows up, does the ceremony… The next morning, I take my bandages off, and my eyes are healed… I go down to see my doctor… He said, “If I weren’t a doctor, I’d call this a miracle.”
Another example was provided by John Lockley, a South African man trained in the Xhosa sangoma tradition. When he returned to his family’s ancestral home in Ireland, and did a performance of Xhosa trance dance, a woman in attendance asked him to help her son, who’d been paralyzed in a diving accident.
John agreed to help, and collected some stones from the sea. He put the stones on the young man’s body. Then, becoming an igqirha, or “one who holds the lightning rod of the ancestors,” he used his hands to direct healing energy into the stones. After three such treatments, the young man was able to walk again.
Shamanic methods work even when they’re used by non-shamans like Dr. Harner. He was a professor at Columbia and Yale, but also a skilled shamanic practitioner. One evening, when leading a “spirit boat” healing exercise with students, he chose a student with emphysema to ride in the “boat” and receive healing. After the exercise, the student said:
“I immediately knew I had received a healing. My lungs were clear, breathing was no longer labored… After arriving home I consulted with my pulmonologist for a scheduled appointment. He conducted all the regular tests… He was amazed at the results, believing that the equipment had failed! He ran the tests again only to find the same results as before. The chest X-ray showed virtually no signs of empysema…”
The anthropologist Hank Wesselman was also a shamanic practitioner. He described what happened when he led a rainmaking ritual as part of a workshop:
“Each of us would listen to the drum, eyes closed…each of us would then focus on the great rainmaker—Lono—through prayer—and ask this transformational being to bring rain… We held the journey constant for 20 minutes or so, then brought everyone back… Some got a sprinkle where they lived that very evening, and within a day, we all received a deep driving tropical rain, the gutters on our roof edges overflowing…“
Was it just a coincidence that the young man walked after he received the igqirha treatments? Was it just a coincidence that rain fell after the Lono ritual was performed? Probably not. As the Druid mage and author John Michael Greer points out:
“When a shaman works a rain spell, it could be coincidence that a rainstorm rolls in a few hours later. If the same spell works a hundred times in a row, it could still be coincidence. As long as the rain spell gets the results the shaman wants, it hardly matters, and indeed [shamanic] magic could almost be defined as the art of causing coincidences in accordance with intention.”
Where are the shamans today?
The practice of shamanry is resurgent worldwide. Sangomas in South Africa, curanderos in Mexico, and mudang in South Korea are making a comeback, and their services are in increasing demand.
Shamans are also becoming commonplace again in Siberia, where many now practice their traditional craft. Here’s an example from 2013, in which the Buryat shaman Bair Rinchinov uses drums and ritual to channel spiritual powers and help a young man and his family.
Are there any shamans in the West? Yes. They may not wear elaborate robes or chant on frozen plains, but they do exist. In the United States, some of the more prominent shamans are:
- Jon Rasmussen, a former electrical engineer trained by shamans of the Q’ero tribe in the Andes. His video introduction to clients provides a good overview of the tribal philosophy, prophecies, and teachings that inform his practice.
- Hamilton Souther, a former anthropology student who operates a healing center in the Amazon rain forest. Over a decade, two indigenous shamans there taught him how to heal with ayahuasca, an entheogen made from a forest vine.
- Sandra Ingerman, a psychotherapist who, over three decades, has trained thousands of people in shamanic journeying. She has a knack for explaining shamanry in terms that are easily understood.
It’s worth noting that the education of these shamans can take up to ten years. Hamilton Souther did three years of daily training under the tutelage of an experienced payé, then completed a seven-year apprenticeship. John Lockley underwent a full decade of training to become a master sangoma.
Should we study shamanic traditions?
Our spiritual orientation in the Western world is mostly Christian. Why should Christians bother with shamanic traditions? It’s because these traditions help us Connect with the Divine, just as the Church does. They do this in two main ways:
- They make us more spiritual. All the basic elements of Christianity—ritual, prayer, an awareness of the spiritual realm—are present in tribal shamanry. Seeing that these elements are an age-old part of our spiritual heritage can help lead us into a new and much-needed Age of Faith.
- They disprove a false faith. These days, many people in the West are in the thrall of scientific materialism, the belief that only the material is real, and that science is the sole source of truth. A good look at shamanry disproves this belief. Shamans go beyond the material to heal and guide using spiritual methods, and succeed, as a result, where science fails.
These traditions also teach us humility. Many of us in the modern world, impressed with our futuristic technology, think that the past has nothing to offer us. On the contrary, the study of shamanic traditions reveals that they offer not primitive superstition that we’ve moved past, but a store of ancient wisdom that we’ve lost.
How can you learn more?
To gain a solid understanding of shamanic traditions, a good place to start is to watch a presentation on the shamanic archetype given by Sarah Kerr, a shamanic practitioner.
Ms. Kerr looks like the sort of sweet suburban lady who’d cart golden retrievers around in her SUV, but she’s actually someone with a shamanic calling who went through a typically tough shamanic initiation. Now, in her work as a “death doula,” she uses shamanic rituals to help people face their mortality with grace.
Part of her purpose, as she’s come to know, is to help rekindle a sense of the sacred in our modern, secular society. To achieve that, she honors the world’s great faiths and its shamanic traditions alike. Let’s see if we can’t give her some help by doing the same.
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