Shamanic journeying is the practice of deliberately entering an altered state of consciousness, usually to a steady drumbeat, and travelling in awareness into the shamanic realms whilst the body stays here as the anchor to return to. In Therapeutic Shamanism a beginner journeys first to the Lower-World, the realm of wild nature, to be healed by the Animal, Plant and Stone People and to build a lasting bond with a Power Animal, who then leads every journey. The realms are real, but every journey is partly shaped by the imagery the journeyer brings, so its content is read as mythos, metaphorical truth, and not as literal fact.
What does ‘shamanic journeying’ mean in general? #
Shamanism, in the broad sense of the word, has been practised all over the world, by every hunter-gatherer people so far as anyone knows. Its central technique is the journey, in which the practitioner enters a trance and travels in awareness into a deeper, spirit reality to communicate with the beings there and bring back healing and knowledge. Dancing, chanting and fasting can bring on the trance, but the drum and the rattle are the commonest ways.
The method most Westerners now learn comes from the anthropologist Michael Harner, who found a core of practices common to shamanic cultures and taught it as Core Shamanism, beginning with The Way of the Shaman;1 Therapeutic Shamanism is a branch of it. Not every trance is a shamanic journey, though; what makes one shamanic is contact with the shamanic realms and the spirits in them, not how deep it is or how it was entered.2
How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand a journey? #
Behind physical reality there is a deeper, shamanic reality in which everything is alive, conscious and connected. Shamanism is often described as walking with one foot in this world and one in the other; to journey is to put both feet into shamanic reality for a time, whilst the body stays here as the place to come back to. The trance lies between light and deep, so the journeyer stays aware of what is happening.3
Journeying is active, not passive, a deliberate move out of left-brain thinking and into right-brain imagining. It is Spirit-led. The practitioner ‘hollows out’, setting aside their middle-world concerns and identity as far as they can, so that their Guides, above all their Power Animal, lead the journey and do the healing. And it asks for clarity about which realm one is in, which means noticing when middle-world things, such as a fence, a farm animal or a metal knife, bleed into a Lower-World journey.
What is the purpose of shamanic journeying? #
Journeying is for healing and for relationship. Each Animal, Plant and Stone has a healing gift and wisdom that it gives freely to any human who asks, and the journeyer goes to receive that healing, learn from the Peoples and build a lasting bond with a Power Animal and other Guides. Being there also heals the loneliness and separation most modern people carry, by reconnecting them with the web of life. Some of the most healing journeys are spent resting with the Guides or being a Tree; in the words of Rewilding Yourself, “There are times to be doing things, and sometimes there are times to just be.”4
A journey is not a way of getting advice about everyday life, such as whether to take a job or leave a partner, and it cannot establish facts. Journeys are mythos, not logos, “full of symbolic meanings, not literal truths”.5
Is shamanic journeying just imagination? #
Imagination is used in journeying, deliberately. When nothing seems to be happening, the journeyer imagines the next thing and the journey moves on. The voice that dismisses this as ‘just made up’ is the left-brain trying to stay in control, and The Shamanic Journey answers that “there is no such thing as ‘just’ making things up.”6
Using imagination is not the same as a journey being imaginary. The shamanic realms are real but far more fluid than physical reality, so the journeyer gives what is there a form they can relate to. Every journey is co-created, between what exists independently of the journeyer and what they bring to it, and a journey done properly is not “just a figment of our imagination, like a guided visualisation”.7 At the start much of a journey may well be made up; with practice people get a feel for the difference between invention and what is real, and their journeys become less and less invented. No belief is asked for; the invitation is to journey and find out.
Are beings in journeys just symbols? #
The language of journeys is imagery and metaphor, and journeys are “like great paintings, music or poems”; the deepest meaning of anything in a journey is what it means to the person whose journey it is.8 The beings met there, though, are not reduced to symbols, since treating every being as a projection or a metaphor for personal growth turns everything back into the human. In Paul Francis’s words, the beings “are not just symbols. They are real. Sentient. Independent.”
Not everything met in a journey is a real being. Some dark, tricky or frightening figures are inner ‘demons’ projected out from the under-world, the personal and collective unconscious created by the Fall, which is part of the middle-world and not the same as the Lower- or Upper-World.9 People tell the two apart by working out which realm an experience belongs to.
Do you have to see things in a journey? #
No. Many people who think they cannot journey are journeying, but dismissing everything that is not a picture. Sight is the sense people most habitually occupy, and it keeps attention rooted in ordinary reality. This is why journeys are usually done in the dark or blindfolded. A journey may come as sound, smell, taste, touch or bodily sensation, or as a sense of simply knowing what is there, the way someone knows an Animal is their Power Animal, “like something clicking into place”.10 When a journey stalls, turning to another sense usually starts it moving again.
What is the drum for? #
The drum takes the journeyer into the trance and helps hold them there. It is played at a steady beat of roughly four beats a second, around 200 to 240 beats a minute. Shamanic drums are tuned to produce many overtones and undertones, which the brain struggles to process; it starts to fill things in, and the senses cross over, so that the drumming is also experienced as colour, image or sensation. Finding the drum distracting is one of the left-brain’s tricks, so once a journey is under way it is best ignored. Most recordings end with a ‘call-back’, a short burst of loud, fast, irregular drumming that signals the time to return to the body.
What is the axis mundi? #
The axis mundi is where a journey begins. The name is Latin for ‘the axis of the world’, often pictured as the World Tree, with roots in the Lower-World, trunk in the middle-world and branches in the Upper-World. It is a place in this world where the veil between the worlds is thin. It has to be a real place in nature that the journeyer knows and likes, such as a favourite tree or a lake, even one in a park; an imagined place will not do, because an axis mundi connects the worlds, this physical one included. From it a natural opening, such as an animal burrow or a hole amongst tree roots, leads down through a tunnel towards the Lower-World. It is also where the journeyer hollows out, setting the middle-world down before going on.
Where do journeys go? #
Journeys go to the three shamanic realms. The Lower-World is the realm of Mother Earth and wild, unspoilt nature, completely safe, and where every beginner starts. The Upper-World is the spacious, clear realm of Father Sky and of Spirit. The middle-world is this physical world with its unseen, energetic layer, a mixed place of beauty and danger, journeyed in only once a practitioner is rooted in the other two, as a plant grows roots before it reaches up or out. See What are the three shamanic realms?
What is a Power Animal journey? #
A Power Animal journey is a Lower-World journey made with the intent of meeting one’s Power Animal, the Oversoul of a wild species, the whole species met as one being, with whom the journeyer enters a deep and usually lifelong bond. It is one of the first journeys a beginner makes. The Power Animal is then brought back to be present in everyday life, and from then on every journey is made with it, and it leads. See What is a Power Animal?
Should beginners interact with humans in journeys? #
The first relationship is with the Power Animal, and Lower-World Human Guides are sought only once that bond is in place. ⚑ [For Paul: The Shamanic Journey Ch4 allows a beginner to meet a Lower-World shaman who helps with a healing; later teaching is more cautious about human figures for beginners. This sentence follows the order given in Rewilding Yourself Ch2.] Nobody from the journeyer’s own life belongs in a Lower-World journey, and doing anything to another person in a journey without their permission is unethical; Lower-World Guides will not do it, so seeing it happen means the middle-world has bled in.11 A Human Guide is first met in the Lower-World, with the Power Animal confirming them, and never accepted on first appearing at the axis mundi, where beings from any realm can turn up.12 The humans of the Lower-World live as pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers, are few, and talk little, since words belong to the middle-world.
Is shamanic journeying safe? #
The Lower-World and Upper-World are places of love and healing where nothing bad can happen, and anything that feels threatening, uneasy or ‘off’ in a journey is a sign of still being in the middle-world. The middle-world, the only realm where harm is possible, is not a place for beginners, which is why training starts in the Lower-World. For most people coming back is easy, since the body is the anchor; for anyone experiencing psychosis, grounding practices come first, and journeying waits until they can be certain of getting back.13 The full answer is at Is shamanic journeying safe?
