What are helping spirits?

What does ‘helping spirits’ mean? #

It is a broad term, and there is no standard shamanic vocabulary behind it. The shamanic teacher Christina Pratt, in An Encyclopedia of Shamanism, uses it for all the spirits a shaman works with, to tell them apart from the spirits causing the trouble. In her account they include ancestor spirits, animal spirits (each the spirit of a whole species), the deities of a culture, nature spirits, plant spirits, the spirits of the elements and the four directions; they protect the shaman, lend their powers and skills, and teach. The relationship is a working partnership, not ownership, since the spirits do not belong to the shaman and are not controlled by them.¹ Some writers single out a ‘tutelary spirit’, a main animal spirit that coordinates the others.² Across many cultures, the anthropologist Michael Winkelman found that relationships with animals were among the sources of the shaman’s power.³

The glossaries of the Therapeutic Shamanism books use ‘tutelary spirits’ in a wider sense, as a collective term for all of a person’s helpers in the Lower-World, middle-world and Upper-World, and ‘spiritual lineage’ for a person’s group of regular helpers from the Upper-World.⁴ In everyday teaching, though, the word is Guides.

What does Therapeutic Shamanism mean by Guides? #

The wise, loving and transcendent beings of the Upper-World and Lower-World, and the capital letter marks the difference. Some middle-world beings may have some wisdom and be loving, but nothing like the true Upper-World and Lower-World Guides. In the end middle-world beings share the limitations of the rest of the middle-world: their own history, stories, habits, blind spots, opinions and agendas. Some act in ways that are selfish, cunning, manipulative, deluded or deceitful, and all over the world there are stories warning of trickster spirits posing as guides. So although middle-world beings may be worked with when necessary, the constant and true shamanic guides and teachers in Therapeutic Shamanism are beings of the Lower-World and Upper-World.⁵

Hence the two spellings. A practitioner working unethically has ‘guides’ with a small g, which are almost certainly middle-world beings; the Guides, with a capital, are the beings of the two spiritual realms.⁶ Knowing which is which takes practice, because a middle-world being can masquerade as a Lower-World or Upper-World one, and the only way to be sure is to learn to hollow out and really be in those realms. See How do I know whether an Animal I meet is really Power Animal?

Who are the Guides? #

The first and foremost is the Power Animal, the Lower-World Oversoul of a whole wild species, with whom a person forms a deep and committed bond. Over many journeys a person also meets other animals, some only once, some as regular companions for weeks, months or years, and some for life. These are animal helpers, guides and teachers, sometimes called animal totems, and the difference between them and a Power Animal is like the difference between friends and a lifelong partner.⁷ An individual animal known in this life, a much-loved cat or dog for instance, is a familiar rather than a Power Animal.⁷ See What is a Power Animal?

After the Power Animal, the next great teacher is usually a Human Lower-World Guide: the Human 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, met in the form of a hunter-gatherer human so that we can relate to them, and later perhaps specialist Human Guides and a whole Lower-World Tribe. See What are Human Guides?, Who are specialist Human Guides? and What is the Lower-World Tribe?

Beyond these, every Animal, Plant and Stone met in the Lower-World can heal and teach. Much of the shaman’s original work was simply this, to turn to the Animal, Plant and Stone People for healing, teaching and wisdom, and to learn to live in relationship with them. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?

The Upper-World has Guides of its own, perceived through the images a culture gives us: monks and nuns, saints, angelic beings and deities, in settings such as temples and libraries.⁸ Upper-World and Lower-World Guides differ in character, but neither is higher than the other. See How are Upper-World Guides different from Lower-World Guides?

What do Guides do? #

They do the healing, and they teach. A shaman’s true power comes not from within themselves but from the depth of their connection with their Power Animal and other Guides; it is the Guides who heal, and the shaman’s part is to hollow out and become the ‘hollow bone’ through which they can work.⁹ They are also teachers, and the practitioner is their apprentice. Sometimes things appear in journeys not because a person needs them for their own healing, but because the Guides are teaching something new.¹⁰ Shamanism is learned primarily from the Guides, alongside a body of knowledge that in hunter-gatherer times a human teacher would have passed on by word of mouth.¹¹

There are also things Guides do not do. They are real, sentient beings with their own lives and wisdom, not symbols for our personal growth. Lower-World Guides will not do anything clearly unethical, though as hunter-gatherers they may miss some of the subtler ethical issues of modern life. They know nothing of bank accounts, mortgages or careers, and they are not there to make middle-world decisions for us or to find us a parking space.¹² See What do Human Guides teach and help with?

Do our Guides choose us, or do we choose them? #

Both happen, but the choice is ours. It is sometimes said in shamanism that your Guides choose you, and Guides do often present themselves. But nobody has to work with everyone who turns up and offers to help, and since who a person’s Guides are will entirely shape and colour the nature of their shamanic work, it is worth choosing them carefully and deliberately.¹³

People sometimes come to this work with a guide already: a Native American who wears jeans and a check shirt, a Chinese doctor from the tenth century, a kindly aunt who died a few years ago. These are middle-world beings, not Lower-World Guides. A saint or holy person is an Upper-World being, or else a middle-world one masquerading as one. There is nothing necessarily wrong with working with middle-world guides, but they bring all the limitations of the middle-world with them, and whether to keep them or say goodbye is up to each person.¹³

Are the dead helping spirits? #

No, not in shamanism. Shamans speak with the dead only to help them move on, never to take them on as guides and teachers or to keep them around, because the energy of the dead is not good for the living.¹⁴ The AncestorsAncestors. The human Oversoul: the whole of humanity held as one Lower-World being. Distinct from individual dead ancestors (small a), who are not worked with in this approach. Read the full answer with a capital A are something else. They are not individual people who once lived, but whole branches of Human, and in the end the Human Oversoul. See Is mediumship healthy, from a shamanic point of view? and What is the difference between an ancestor and an Ancestor?

Are helping spirits just parts of ourselves? #

Not in shamanic experience. Reducing every being met in a journey to a symbol or a projection humanises everything, and is a deeply anthropocentric way of seeing; the beings of shamanic reality are real, sentient and independent, with their own lives, wisdom and agency. For how this sits with Jung’s archetypes and other psychological readings, see Are Power Animals and Guides just archetypes?