What Is Shamanism?

Telling someone that you practice shamanism can be an interesting experience.  While many people have some vague idea of what a shaman is – maybe an American Indian medicine person or a New Age hippie or a Siberian spiritual practitioner – most people are hard pressed to actually say what shamanism is.  After nine years of study and practice, my own understanding is still under constant revision as I learn and grow.

One thing that most everyone seems to agree on, though, is that shamanism is a type of spiritual practice.  The essential elements of a spiritual practice are:

• Belief – You have to believe in yourself, transformation, the world, and Spirit.  Spirit is anything you believe it to be, and it is the belief in Spirit that separates spiritual practices from other sorts of practices.  You have to believe that you can become stronger than you are right now.  Having faith means that you can set your eyes on something external to yourself and trust that it will stay steady.  Humans don’t stay steady very well and make poor objects of faith; spiritual practices honor this by placing faith in Spirit.  In my life, this means that I can’t accept fear as an excuse, and I have faith in the Runes of the Elder Futhark and my helping spirits.
• Practice – Perhaps obvious, but no less vital.  Be about it.  If you aren’t practicing, then you’re not going to see results.  Following belief and faith, you are not pursuing ego-driven goals, but rather results driven by the input of Spirit in your life.  You may not get big results every time you practice, but if you don’t practice, you will never manifest results.  For me, this means that I am exercising my body, mind, emotions, and spirit every day. That involves prayers, altar work, shamanic journeys, physical exercise, and reflection.
• Integrity – First, be truthful with yourself, and give yourself the space and time you need to figure out what that means.  Next, be truthful with Spirit and seek guidance in moving forward.  If you need to express this truth to others, consider the situation of your audience and the effect your expression might have.  Integrity also involves following through in action on what you say. If you don’t do the things you say you do or will do, then you are going to confuse people and create difficulty in your life. To me, this means that I am doing my best to be clear with people in my life, and that if I recognize I have an issue, I work on it.

What distinguishes shamanism from other spiritual practices is a focus on the relationship with helping spirits and self-healing.  A shamanic practitioner may have one or many helping spirits who act as guides, healers, and protectors in spiritual practice, and they are usually consulted through shamanic journeys or other divinations.  For many people, these spirits take the form of animals and are sometimes also called “power animals.”  For other people, helping spirits may take the form of a plant, a color, an angel, or pretty much anything imaginable.

Self-healing is well covered by the definition of shamanism I was given by my helping spirits: “the pursuit and integration of the best possible self. At another’s request, it can also involve helping someone else to do the same.”  To me, this means that the first thing a shaman has to do is to pursue their own best life, and if they are successful in that, others will be inspired to do the same and seek the shaman’s help.  Perennial wisdom suggests that the best life is the one in which one’s dreams and integrity are the guides and measures.  I also consider this  license to help those who ask, but not for people to request shamanic action on someone else.

Because shamanism is a fringe topic in popular culture, most people have little practical knowledge of it, associating it with indigenous or tribal religious practices.  The word “shaman” is taken from the Tungus people of Siberia, and is translated any number of ways.  Most people think of shamans as healers and wise people.  Cultures labeled “shamanic” have their own titles for their healers and visionaries and would generally prefer to use them, though “shaman” as a title or job description is not universally rejected.  Shamanism remains a vital part of some cultures, and it is increasingly finding expression in contemporary Western society.

Mircea Eliade and Michael Harner are usually credited with much of the rise of shamanism in the West.  Eliade was a philosopher and religious historian whose “Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy” established an academic basis for the term.  First published in French in 1951, this book argues for a global set of practices and beliefs called “shamanism” by documenting similarities in cosmologies and ceremonial and ritual practices of indigenous people throughout the world.  Harner was another academic who took up Eliade’s term to describe the practices of the Shuar in South America.  Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman,” first published in 1980, describes his experiences and defines the shared practices identified by Eliade as “core shamanism.”  In 1985, he established the Foundation for Shamanic Studies to promote core shamanism through workshops and publications.  People critique both Eliade and Harner for their use of the Tungus word.

Sometimes, people use the word “sorcery” to describe “black magic” or “bad shamanism.”  The strict definition of sorcery given to me by my helping spirits is “any action involving the soul or energy of another without their knowledge or consent.” I take this to mean that anything you do affecting another person without their permission is sorcery.  Because our ability to consider the outcomes of our actions is limited by what we know, good intent won’t necessarily prevent sorcery, but certainly mitigates it.

At a time when many people are questioning the values that lie behind the world around them, shamanism offers an approach to living that emphasizes personal integrity, authenticity, and divinity as the path to finding meaning and purpose in life.  By providing less a set of beliefs and more a set of tools for working with how you experience life and act in the world, shamanic practice offers a holistic path to health and well-being.  Encouraging compassion and love for self and other, shamanism offers a philosophy and ethic geared toward collaboration and acceptance.

Please remember that because I believe in transformation, my understanding and expression of the truth of my experiences is going to change over time. What I presented here is my best expression right now.