In Therapeutic Shamanism, ethics arise from within, from being a healthy person, rather than from rules imposed from outside. Ethics are at the heart of good shamanic practice: they mean never working on anyone without their consent, empowering people rather than holding power over them, and helping in the everyday world the beings we ask for help. They are offered as suggestions, though consent is not optional.
What are shamanic ethics? #
Ways of living and working ethically as a shamanic practitioner and as a person. There is no set code; ethics grow from a healthy way of being. Some principles are clear: consent, empowering others rather than holding power over them, and helping the other Peoples in the everyday world. See What is right relationship and reciprocity?
How are they different from rules or morality? #
They come from within rather than being imposed. A healthy person is naturally ethical: reliably ethical behaviour arises more from within than just from some externally-applied rules.1 People in person-centred counselling “became more ethical and moral, not from an externally-imposed set of rules, but because being ethical and moral was innate to them.”2 Nor is it true that without religion we would have no ethics: hunter-gatherer cultures were, “in many ways, far more moral and ethical than today”.3
Are people told what their ethics should be? #
No, only suggestions. Each person’s ethics are for them to decide, and there is no wish to cast a spell over anyone by telling them what they should believe and how they should behave.4 Telling people what to do would itself be a form of power over them.
Is anything non-negotiable? #
Consent. This applies however well-meant the healing is. Shamanic healing “should never be done on somebody without that person’s express and conscious consent.” Doing so “is a huge invasion of that person’s privacy” and “quite simply is an assault, no matter how well intentioned!”5 See What does consent mean in shamanic work?
Why are ethics important in shamanic practice? #
Because the work deepens or closes down depending on them. Paul Francis found that the more he tweaked and tightened up his ethical practice, the more his spirit guides revealed to him and taught him, and the deeper his bond with his guides became. As a result, “it became very clear that ethics are at the heart of good shamanic practice.”6 True GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this will not help with harm: “Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer beings are ethical to their core.”7
Can we leave ethics to our Guides? #
Not entirely. Lower-World Guides will not help with anything clearly unethical, but “they are hunter-gatherers from the Lower-World and as such they may not be aware of some of the subtler ethical issues of the modern-day human middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer.” So “When it comes to ethics, we cannot just hand all responsibility over to our Guides. We need to step up to be an ethical, responsible adult.”8
What is the role of ethics in Therapeutic Shamanism? #
A central one, learnt partly from psychotherapy. Psychotherapy developed codes of ethics to deal with abuse of power, and “Modern shamanism needs to wake up and do the same.” “Good ethics should be at the heart of any modern shamanic practice.”9 Upper-World practices help too: they “help us align ourselves with good ethics”.10
How is Therapeutic Shamanism ethical in practice? #
By empowering people and serving the other Peoples. “In Therapeutic Shamanism, when doing any kind of healing work for anyone else, the aim is always to seek to help empower the other person, and never to disempower them.”11 Being the ‘expert’ who tells people how to live “is just more Fall! It keeps people in a disempowered place.”12 And it applies to the other Peoples too: “Ethically, if we are to ask for help from the Animal, Plant, and Stone people in the Lower-World, then in turn we need to help them in the middle-world too.”13
For anyone choosing a practitioner, there is a page on the college website called Practitioner Competencies, “setting out what we expect a shamanic practitioner to be able to do”.14
How does shamanic ethics differ from general morality? #
It does not depend on an outside authority, and it includes the more-than-human. The moral codes of organised religion are not what keep us in check: “Pre-Fallen cultures had no notion of us being in a state of sin and having to submit to the will of some external God.”15 Shamanic ethics also reach beyond humans to the Animal, Plant and Stone People, as the duty to help them shows. See How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
