You have no need to travel anywhere – journey within yourself.Enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light. —Rumi
The terms “shaman” and “shamanism” have come into fairly common usage over the past several decades. Shamans and their mysterious practices have been incorporated into popular culture and awareness through avenues as diverse as the academic diligence of anthropologists such as Michael Harner and Mircea Eliade to rock ‘n’ roll icons such as Jim Morrison. But what exactly is shamanism? What is the nature of its practices? The idea of the shaman invokes a mystical image of an archaic and primitive (albeit powerful) sorcerer who employs an amalgam of magic, medicine, and supernormal capabilities to gain knowledge, manipulate the material world, perform miracles and healings, or exact revenge. But does the practice of shamanism potentially have any use or significance to contemporary Western societies? This small book strives to explore the phenomenon of shamanism and postulate its potential benefits if applied to our contemporary lives. The starting point of this discussion is to examine shamanism and its contemporary non-traditional counterpart Neo-shamanism in order to derive a workable definition and understanding of the terms and practices to be examined and discussed.
What Do We Mean by the Terms “Shaman” and “Shamanism?”
Shamanism is an archaic, cross-cultural spiritual technology and practice that has survived encroaching civilization, colonialism, persecution, and genocide by virtue of its preservation by remote, isolated societies (Eliade, 1964; Harner, 1982; Winkelman, 2010). Interest and awareness of shamanism emerged during the late twentieth century in the contemporary West as an alternative spirituality and healing protocol as part of the New Age movement. Its popularization was enhanced by the work of anthropologist Michael Harner through his book The Way of the Shaman (1982) and subsequent instructional workshops, which introduced shamanism and the shamanic journey technique to eager audiences desiring spiritual alternatives to the dominant Western religious traditions. These contemporary Western practitioners came to be designated as Neo-shamans. For Neo-shamans, the application of shamanic technique and the interpretation of the accompanying phenomena are defined by the personal meaning-making lenses and cultural matrices of individual practitioners who are not members of a culture or society that includes such practices and phenomena in its dominant paradigm. It is this lack of supporting cultural framework for shamanic practice, dissonance of cultural worldview, and absence of culturally accepted interpretative models from which to derive meaning from anomalous phenomena that differentiate contemporary Neo-shamans from shamans of the ancient past or those currently active in traditional societies.
What Is Traditional Shamanism?
Shamanism is a practice and mastery of a set of spiritual technologies which originated from archaic and indigenous cultures as a means of interacting with non-linear, ineffable powers for the purpose of benefitting the community and its members (Rock & Krippner, 2011). Such cultures are characterized by their embrace of a worldview that is animistic, pantheistic, Earth-and-nature-centered, and magic-based. It is a system of belief and Dasein rooted in belief in the immanent nature of divinity and the presence of the sacred in all things (Eliade, 1964; Rock & Krippner, 2011; Winkelman, 2004, 2009, 2010; Winkelman & Baker, 2010; York, 2002, 2005b). Shamanism emerged from the need of ancient peoples to create a means by which the power of divinity, as expressed in nature, might be invoked and used for the benefit of the tribe(s) for healing, divination, location of food, and protection (Campbell, 1959; Eliade, 1964; McClenon, 2011; Sala, 2014; Sarasola, 2015; Sidky, 2010; Winkelman, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011b; Winkelman & Baker, 2010). Shamanism is a global phenomenon that has appeared throughout human history, and always with elements of the anomalous, the mythic, magic, and the transpersonal consistently present albeit with the meaning of the phenomena being subject to culturally specific interpretations (Herbert, 2011; Hunt, 2010; Malan, 2016; St. John, 2011).
The technologies used by shamans enable them to enter altered states of consciousness in order to perceive variant phenomenological patterns at will for the specific purpose of interceding with the spirit world for the benefit of the community (Krippner, 2000; Rock & Krippner, 2011; Winkelman, 2004, 2013a, 2013b). Reaching the required altered state frequently requires the use of drugs, dreams, sleep, food and sensory deprivation, and/or drumming so that the divine phenomena might be perceived (Rock & Krippner, 2007b). Through this means, the power of divinity expressed in the natural world might be invoked, approached, and solicited to effect healing, find food, divine, protect, help the dead to depart, and the newly born to enter this life with purpose and identity (Campbell, 1959; Eliade, 1964; McClenon, 2011; Sala, 2014; Sarasola, 2015; Sidky, 2010). The shaman was the tribe’s liaison to the spirit world, a skilled technician who possessed the ability to traverse the material boundaries of time and space to interact with nature spirits, animal spirits, ancestors, spirit teachers, and the deceased to enlist their aid and advice for the tribe and its members, as well as do battle with malefic entities including enemy shamans and their spirit allies (Rock & Krippner, 2011; Winkelman, 2009, 2010, 2013b). Specifically induced and willed entry into an altered state of consciousness are central characteristics of shamanic practice because it is the altered state of consciousness which enables the shaman to perceive phenomena not ordinarily perceived through the process of physical sensory stimulation and subsequent cognition (Rock & Krippner, 2007b).
Shamanism is characterized by the central figure of the shaman. This is a man or a woman who has the ability to enter an altered state of consciousness at will and for a specific purpose in order to traverse time and space to perceive and confront the mythic, anomalous, magical, and transpersonal world of the divine for the benefit of the tribe or community (Rock & Krippner, 2007b; Winkelman, 2013a, 2013b). Thus, the shaman was at once physician, magician, counselor, and protector of the tribe who battled the forces threatening the community’s safety and survival (Eliade, 1964; Rock & Krippner, 2011). Our current understanding of traditional shamans and shamanic pract...