What is shamanism for today?

What has shamanism traditionally been for? #

In shamanic cultures the shaman healed body, mind, soul and spirit, kept the community in right relationship with the other-than-human world, and spoke up for the other Peoples in human affairs. The shaman was the one who could see in the dark, noticing what others could not or would not see, and guiding the tribe back when it strayed (see What is shamanism?). Those roles have not gone out of date. If anything they are needed more now than at any time in human history.

Why do modern people need shamanism now? #

Because, in Therapeutic Shamanism’s view, the root of the modern predicament is disconnection. “In losing shamanism, we lost our way. We need it back. Indeed, our very survival, and those of our fellow species, may well depend on it.”¹ “The sickness in modern society, the madness that has led to the social and environmental crisis we now face, is caused by our being disconnected”. At a personal level the same disconnection shows up as pain, since “much of the pain that we feel is, in fact, caused by our disconnection from the more-than-human, and from nature.”²

The disconnection has a history. It began with domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and farming in the Neolithic, from around 11,000 to 10,000 BCE, and accelerated with the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer, the rise of the first city-states from around 4000 BCE: “The birth of ‘civilisation’ is in reality ‘The Fall’.” That history is also a source of hope. “The violence and destructiveness of the modern, Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer era is cultural, not innate. And that means that it can be changed.”³ See What is the Fall?

What is the purpose of Therapeutic Shamanism? #

To offer a shamanism made for now, not a copy of any past or indigenous one. It is “intended to be a shamanic practice that is suited to the times we find ourselves in now, and of practical use in dealing with the challenges that we now face.”⁴ Its central aim is to reconnect people with Spirit and the more-than-human world. It brings shamanism and psychotherapy together for healing body, mind, soul and spirit and for personal and spiritual growth, and it sees itself as part of humanity’s wider recovery from the Fall (see What is Therapeutic Shamanism?).

What can shamanism heal, and what can it not? #

Shamanism is designed above all for soul-loss and Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer, the twin wounds of disconnection. Soul-lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer is so widespread that “If you read the symptoms of soul-loss … you could almost be reading a description of Western culture.” Power-loss, in the shamanic sense, “occurs when we cut ourselves off from nature and Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this”. “If an illness has a shamanic origin, then whatever else is going on, the roots are always in soul-loss and/or Power-loss”, but not every illness has a shamanic origin.

So shamanism is not a cure-all. It “can almost always safely be used alongside medical treatments”, and shamans have always been pragmatists who understand the need for medicine.⁵ Nor does it replace psychotherapy: “I am in no way saying that shamanism is better than psychotherapy.” Psychotherapy is built for the human under-world of repressed material, which shamanism never evolved to deal with, and both are often needed.

What does shamanism offer a person? #

Three things above all. The first is the Soul, the Lower-World part of the self: “our Soul is our truest self, our true nature. It is a part of us that is wild and free”. Put most simply, “The meaning of life is to be what Mother Earth intended you to be.”⁶ The second is the Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer, a bond of unconditional love: “your Power Animal is Mother Earth trying to tell you that she loves you, in a form that she thinks you will understand.” The third is belonging, which answers the loneliness so many people carry. Loneliness “is about the quality rather than the quantity of relationships we have”, and the Lower-World offers a tribe “where you really belong, and are loved, valued, accepted, and truly treasured.”

What does shamanism offer the wider world? #

A way of meeting the ecological crisis at its roots. The destruction of other species is “not only a sickness, but a spiritual sickness, a sickness of the soul.” The shaman’s role, then as now, is to be in the world “and to hold the sacred balance between the beings that live within it; to actively be the intermediary and advocate.”⁷ That makes activism part of the practice, not an optional extra: “We simply cannot ask an OversoulOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this like Panther or Wolf to teach us and heal us, and then ignore the plight of physical panthers and wolves in the middle-world.”⁸

Outer action matters, but on its own it treats symptoms. Activism, legislation and campaigning are crucial, yet “in the end, these are simply holding mechanisms.” The deeper work is recovering what the original animist peoples knew, the healthy templates the published interview on adulthood calls “the original instructions”, and translating them for the present: “this is not a book about returning to an age long-gone”, but about finding the templates on which new solutions can be based.⁹ Therapeutic Shamanism sees itself as part of what the psychologist Steve Taylor calls the post-Fallen recovery, the slow return of empathy and sanity after the Fall.

Is shamanism a way of escaping the world? #

No, and this is one of Therapeutic Shamanism’s firmest points. Withdrawing from the world to concentrate on being ‘spiritual’ is a modern habit, and “Literally nobody in shamanic cultures did this, however.” “Withdrawing from the world is simply not the way of the shaman.”¹⁰ Turning one’s back on the world is “little more than a kind of spiritual egotism and self-centredness”. Personal healing is not selfish either: “Far from it being self-indulgent, we have a responsibility to the world around us to heal ourselves.”

How does shamanism fit into everyday life? #

As a way of living, not only a set of journeys: “Shamanism is not just about doing shamanic journeys. It is a way of living in the world, and of experiencing the world.” The bond with the Power Animal is carried into ordinary days, the Soul becomes “an anchor that stops you drifting and getting lost in the stories of the human-made middle-world”, and gratitude and practical help for the other Peoples become part of how a person lives.¹¹