Therapeutic Shamanism is a modern, Spirit-led approach to shamanism, developed by the psychotherapist and shamanic practitioner Paul Francis, which builds on Michael Harner’s core shamanism and brings shamanism and psychotherapy together. It is deliberately not based on any one culture, asks for no beliefs, and aims to reconnect people with Spirit, with the more-than-human world and with their own Soul, in a form suited to the times we live in now.
What does ‘Therapeutic Shamanism’ mean? #
There is no agreed definition of shamanism. In its broad modern sense the word covers any practical application of animism, the experience that everything is alive and conscious (see What is shamanism? and What is animism?). Many approaches are practised today, and Therapeutic Shamanism is one of them, set out by Paul Francis in a series of books beginning with The Shamanic Journey.
‘Therapeutic’ names the method, which is to bring shamanism and psychotherapy together, because neither alone can heal the damage done as humans turned away from animist ways of living. That break began with domestication in the Neolithic and accelerated with what Therapeutic Shamanism calls the Fall, the rise of the first city-states from around 4000 BCE (see What is the Fall?). In Paul’s words, “It is by bringing shamanism and psychotherapy together, and forging them into something new, that we can begin to find the antidote to the Fall.”1 It is still shamanism first, a Spirit-led practice in which the Guides lead the work and do the healing, and “categorically not” a watered-down shamanism practised by psychotherapists.
Who created Therapeutic Shamanism? #
Paul Francis, who is both a psychotherapist and a shamanic practitioner. He describes it as born out of his “experiences, study, practice, experimenting, and the teachings from my Spirit guides”, and it was tested with students and clients on his courses before it was written down.2 He offers it as one path amongst many, and is “most definitely not somebody who would say that my approach is the only right one.”
How does Therapeutic Shamanism relate to core shamanism and Michael Harner? #
Core shamanism is the work of the anthropologist and shamanic practitioner Michael Harner. Studying shamanic cultures, Harner found that beneath each tribe’s cultural trappings lies a set of beliefs and practices common to shamanic cultures worldwide, and he taught these as core shamanism, most famously in The Way of the Shaman (1980).3
Therapeutic Shamanism takes core shamanism as its foundation and calls itself “a branch of Core Shamanism”.4 On that foundation it builds what Paul’s own Guides have taught him, an account of what domestication and the Fall have done to the human psyche, and the tools of psychotherapy.
Is Therapeutic Shamanism traditional shamanism? #
No. Modern shamanism is often dismissed as ‘plastic’ because it has no unbroken lineage. Therapeutic Shamanism answers that this confuses traditional with authentic. Tradition only means doing things the way they have always been done, whereas the test of a practice is whether it works, or, in the shamanic saying, “Does it grow corn?” A practice taught directly by Spirit needs no human lineage to be authentic.5
Finding Your Deep Soul also distinguishes three kinds of shamanism. Pre-Fallen shamanism, practised by hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years, was free of hierarchy. Fallen shamanism has been changed by agriculture and hierarchy, bringing in things like animal sacrifice and spirit possession. Post-Fallen shamanism is the ethical, adaptable shamanism now emerging, which helps people recognise Taker thinking and heal from it.6 Virtually all surviving shamanic societies are agricultural or herding peoples, and so Fallen to some degree, which is why ‘traditional’ does not automatically mean healthy. This is no criticism of those peoples, to whom we owe “a truly incalculable debt” for keeping shamanic and animist knowledge alive. Therapeutic Shamanism looks instead to the principles of pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer shamanism and translates them for the present, since nobody can go back to living as hunter-gatherers. Rewilding Yourself calls the result neo-shamanism, a new shamanism built from core shamanism for the times we live in.
Why is Therapeutic Shamanism culturally neutral? #
Because core shamanism belongs to no single culture. All of our distant ancestors were animist hunter-gatherers, so shamanism as a whole is “the birth right of all human beings” and cannot be claimed by any one people.7 Therapeutic Shamanism borrows no particular culture’s ceremonies, regalia or gods; it is not Celtic, Norse, Druidic or Native American, and it is kept as ‘culture-lite’ as possible, with an inevitable Western European flavour. This keeps it clear of cultural appropriation, and lets anyone practise it anywhere with the plants, animals and land of where they live. Lower-World Guides, as Rewilding Yourself puts it, teach “Shamanism, not shamanism that belongs to any one middle-world human culture. As such, this teaching from Human belongs to all humans.”8
Why does Therapeutic Shamanism focus on the more-than-human? #
Because it sees disconnection from the rest of nature as a root of modern suffering. In Paul’s words, “much of the pain that we feel is, in fact, caused by our disconnection from the more-than-human, and from nature.”9 Most psychotherapy is done indoors and attends almost entirely to human relationships, so on its own it cannot reach this wound. In animism the Animal, Plant and Stone People are kin, not resources, and humans are one strand in the web of life. Reconnecting with Spirit and the more-than-human is “the central aim of the work that we do”.10 That work starts in the Lower-World, the realm of Mother Earth and nature, because a practice, like a seed, puts down roots before it reaches up to Spirit or branches out into the middle-world.
How does Therapeutic Shamanism relate to psychotherapy? #
The two share the labour. Shamanism is designed for soul loss and Power-loss. Deep psychotherapy is designed for the under-world, the personal and collective unconscious, which has grown “a thousand-fold or more” since domestication as people repressed parts of themselves to fit in. Hunter-gatherer shamans never faced an under-world of that size, so traditional shamanism never developed the skills to work with it.11 Psychotherapy, in turn, “is good at creating healthy souls, but rarely will it help us find our Soul.”12
Each has something to learn from the other. Psychotherapy tends to reduce everything to the human, treating spirits as sub-personalities and journeys as imagination. Shamanism can no longer assume every ‘spirit’ is real, because since the Fall some are disowned parts of the person. As The Shamanic Journey puts it, “There are demons, and then there are ‘demons’.” From psychotherapy, Therapeutic Shamanism also takes its understanding of power, so healing work always aims to empower the other person and never to disempower them.
What role does direct experience play in Therapeutic Shamanism? #
It is the final authority. Practising shamanism “does not require you to follow any beliefs or take anything on faith”; the teachings are suggestions and exercises to try, so that people find out for themselves whether they work. The Shamanic Journey quotes the psychotherapist Carl Rogers in its Introduction, “Experience is, for me, the highest authority.” Rogers adds that experience is authoritative not because it is infallible, but because it can always be checked again.13 Rewilding Yourself turns the principle on its own author, saying that shamanism requires “no blindly accepting what anyone else tells you, including me.”
What is the purpose of Therapeutic Shamanism? #
Its central aim is to reconnect people with Spirit and the more-than-human world. It is used for healing body, mind, soul and spirit, for personal and spiritual growth, and for finding the deep Lower-World Soul, “the essence and blueprint of what you were meant to be”. The psychological work serves the same aim, since psychological wounds and blocks are what get in the way of connecting to Spirit, and a practitioner works towards the client becoming their own shamanic guide. Beyond the individual, Therapeutic Shamanism sees itself as part of humanity’s recovery from the Fall, alongside activism and real-world action.
What is the difference between a shaman and a shamanic practitioner? #
Following Harner, Therapeutic Shamanism reserves ‘shaman’, as a mark of respect, for people in indigenous cultures who lived and breathed shamanism and were given the title by their community. A Westerner who comes to shamanism later in life, usually part-time, is a ‘shamanic practitioner’; claiming to be a shaman is “a bit like claiming to be an enlightened being or guru”. See What is shamanism?.
What is Core Animism? #
Core Animism stands to animism as Harner’s core shamanism stands to shamanism, as the culturally neutral core with no borrowed regalia. Shamanism is a branch of animism, so core shamanism has to be rooted in the parts of animist teaching that are near-universal, not specific to any one culture. These include the Original Instructions for living in right relationship (a phrase that comes from Indigenous North American peoples), fierce egalitarianism, respectful relationship with the other-than-human people, honouring the masculine and feminine equally, treating all as sacred, and being a Leaver rather than a Taker, in the writer Daniel Quinn’s terms. See What is animism?.
Is Therapeutic Shamanism New Age? #
No. It is grounded and non-religious, and critical of much New-Age spirituality. Rewilding Yourself describes much New-Age shamanism as top-heavy, putting so much weight on the Upper-World at the expense of the Lower-World that it becomes “‘light’ and ‘fluffy’”. The Shamanic Journey criticises spiritual bypassing, using spiritual practice to avoid painful feelings and unhealed wounds. Finding Your Deep Soul places New Age beliefs amongst the products of Fallen societies, carrying Taker thinking that adding shamanism does not remove.
What is the Three Ravens College? #
The Three Ravens College of Therapeutic Shamanism and Core Animism teaches Therapeutic Shamanism. Paul Francis founded it in 2008 with his partner, Cat Anderson, as the College of Therapeutic Shamanism, first in Lancaster and from 2014 in Llandudno, North Wales. Its name came from three ravens that kept appearing in journeys about the college, standing for Knowledge, Wisdom and Compassion. Since 2020 its courses, from First-Steps to practitioner training, have all been online.
