Glossary, A to Z

Short definitions of the terms used in Therapeutic Shamanism and across the wiki. Point at an underlined word in any answer to see its definition there too.

A

Actualising tendency

Carl Rogers’s term for the drive in every living thing to grow into the best version of what it is meant to be. In animist terms, this is the drive of the Lower-World Soul. More about this

Adult

See True Adult.

Ancestors

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

Ancestral burdens

Unresolved grief, shame, anger and trauma passed down the family line: never ours to begin with, but shaping us. Healed through recapitulation and disentanglement, becoming a ‘link-breaker’ so the burden stops here. Read the full answer

Animism

The experience (not the belief) that everything is alive, conscious, equal and kin: animals, plants, stones, rivers, mountains, the wind. It requires no faith, dogma or priesthood, and is compatible with agnosticism and atheism; shamanism is its practical application. Read the full answer

Armouring

Wilhelm Reich’s term for the chronic muscular tension that locks unbearable feeling into the body. The body holds the truth of what has happened to us; healing is somatic, letting the held movement complete. Read the full answer

Aware Self

The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this

Axis mundi

A real, physical place in nature where the veils between the worlds are thin; the world-axis (World Tree) from which a shamanic journey is entered. Read the full answer

B

Being-not-doing

Roughly half of a mature journeying practice: not accomplishing anything, but resting in the Lower-World, being held, or shapeshifting so fully that separate selfhood softens. Busyness is part of the Fall; being-not-doing un-learns it. More about this

Burial journey

A transformation practice of the Earth element: being buried in the Lower-World for grounding, and for the death-and-rebirth all the transformation practices share. More about this

C

Call-back

The change in the drumbeat that signals the return at the end of a journey: back through the route you came, into the physical body, grounded. More about this

Co-wétiko

Wétiko’s ungrounded counterpart: escapist, fantastical, “none of it’s real” spirituality that props wétiko up. Its cure is restoring the balance between right-brain vision and left-brain critical thinking. More about this

Conditions of worth

Carl Rogers’s term for the conditions placed on love and acceptance in childhood, internalised as conditions of self-worth: the wonky stories of the middle-world self that override the Soul’s original instructions. More about this

Core Animism

The culture-neutral core of animism: the aspects of animist teaching that are (near-)universal rather than specific to any one culture: the Original Instructions, fierce egalitarianism, respectful right relationship with the other-than-human people, equal respect for the masculine and the feminine, treating all as sacred, living as a Leaver rather than a Taker. The parallel of Michael Harner’s ‘core shamanism’, and its necessary root: shamanism is a branch of animism, so a culture-neutral shamanism has to be grounded in a culture-neutral animism, with no borrowed regalia required. More about this

D

De-possession

The healing for a full entity takeover: persuading or compelling the possessing entity out, then disposing of it, and always addressing the underlying soul-loss and Power-loss that let it in. More about this

Deprogramming

The active work of shaking off Taker-culture conditioning; the companion of rewilding. More about this

Dieting (shamanic)

Ingesting a tiny amount of a plant, mineral or other being and observing its effects on body, mind and dreams over hours to weeks: one of the two routes to grokking a being. Homeopathy’s ‘proving’ is a modern reinvention of it. Read the full answer

Disentanglement

The ceremonial practice that unbinds unhealthy energetic ties to a person, role, object or story: a fourfold exchange in which each party gives back and takes back what they hold of the other. Not ‘cord-cutting’: done well it usually deepens the relationship, because what is unbound is the unhealthy aspect, not the love. More about this

Dismemberment

A transformation practice in which the Power Animal takes you apart (classically: eats, digests and regurgitates you), reformed and healed. A practice of trust, cleansing and death-and-rebirth. More about this

Domestication

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

Drama triangle

The persecutor–rescuer–victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. More about this

E

Elder (True Elder)

The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. More about this

Entanglement

An unhealthy energetic tie hooking us into another person, a role, an object or a family story; released by disentanglement. More about this

Extraction

Drawing a foreign body (an intrusion) out of a person and packing the hole with something healthy. The iron rule: only ever foreign bodies, never a part of the self: extracting a genuine part of self creates soul-loss. More about this

F

The 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

Father Sky

The sacred Masculine pole: pure consciousness, from which the Upper-World arises. Paired with Mother Earth. ‘Father Sun’ is the older name for the same pole, found in the first three books. More about this

Felt sense

Eugene Gendlin’s term for the whole bodily ‘feel’ of an issue: deeper than emotion, deeper than words, reached through Focusing. Read the full answer

Focusing

Eugene Gendlin’s method of turning towards the felt sense, the body’s whole sense of an issue, with curiosity and no agenda, and asking whether anything needs to happen. In this approach it is valued because, like journeying, it means going beyond the wants of the self and listening to something wiser and deeper. Read the full answer

Fort-holder

A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer

Four Realms

Sea, Land, Sky and Fire: living elemental environments met within the Lower-World, corresponding to water, earth, air and fire. Distinct from the three cosmological realms. Not to be confused with the four realms in Rewilding Yourself: the Upper-World, the Lower-World and the physical and non-physical middle-worlds. Read the full answer

G

Great Forgetting

Daniel Quinn’s term for the mass amnesia by which Taker culture erased the knowledge that humanity ever lived any other way, dismissing almost all of our story as ‘pre-history’. Read the full answer

Great Mystery (Great Spirit)

The unknowable from which everything comes. Better rendered ‘the Great Mystery’: animism has no interventionist creator-god, and the truly infinite cannot be prayed to, bargained with or journeyed to. More about this

Great Remembering

The counter-movement to the Great Forgetting: the recovery of the buried animist knowledge, already underway. Therapeutic Shamanism understands itself as part of it. Read the full answer

Grokking

Understanding a being from the inside out (the word is Robert Heinlein’s): deep, embodied, experiential knowing rather than intellectual knowledge. Its two shamanic routes are shapeshifting and dieting. Read the full answer

Grounding

Returning fully into the body and physical reality; the bedrock of safe practice, and how every journey ends. More about this

Guides

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

H

Hollowing-out

The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer

Human Lower-World Guide

A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer

I

Inner critic

A fort-holder whose weapon is shame; deflated by self-compassion, not obeyed. Read the full answer

Inner Tribe

The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer

Introject

A foreign belief, message or story swallowed whole (often in childhood) and lodged inside as if it were our own; a type of intrusion. More about this

Intrusion

Something lodged in us that should not be there, having entered through the holes soul-loss and Power-loss leave. Four broad types: unhelpful thought-forms, introjects, foreign-body energetic intrusions, and entity possessions. More about this

J

Journey (shamanic journey)

The core practice: a willed, active shift out of ordinary reality into shamanic reality, holding one foot in each world. Sensing, not necessarily seeing: a journey is not visualisation, not the imaginal, and not the astral. Read the full answer

L

Land of the Dead

The middle-world human place where the middle-world self belongs after death. Not the Lower-World, and not hell. More about this

Leaver culture

Daniel Quinn’s term for the animist tribal peoples, hunter-gatherers above all, who took only as much as they needed and left the rest, living in reciprocal right-relationship for the vast majority of human history. Read the full answer

Logos

Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this

Lower-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

M

Medicine Bundle

Not a pouch of objects but the accumulated knowledge of the healing gifts, teachings and natures of the Peoples, and the living relationships that carry it. Built by grokking, journey by journey. Read the full answer

Metta

Loving-kindness, practised self-first and extended outward to others, difficult people and all beings; worked shamanically with the Power Animal and Guides. More about this

Middle-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

Middle-world self

The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer

Mother 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

Mother-Wound

The near-universal injury of inadequate mothering in Taker culture, scaling from the personal wound to a collective distortion of the Mother archetype itself. Largely pre-verbal, it is healed not by insight but by receiving healthy mothering: from the Lower-World, the Power Animal’s unconditional love, and Mother Earth. More about this

Mythos

Metaphorical, symbolic, felt truth: the truth of art, poetry and shamanic journeys. Shamanic reality is mythologically true, not literally true, which is why journeys are interpreted, never taken at face value. More about this

O

Original Instructions

The animist roadmap: the stories, principles and templates for living in right, reciprocal, non-hierarchical relationship with self, others and the more-than-human world. A template to be translated to the present, never commandments. Read the full answer

Orphans

The parts of the self sent away altogether when we were wounded: our confidence, vulnerability, playfulness, innocence. Having genuinely left, they cannot merely be talked with: they must be retrieved. Read the full answer

Oversoul

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. Read the full answer

P

Parts of the self

There are four parts of the self, the realm-corresponding members of the Inner Tribe: the Body and the middle-world self (both of the middle-world), the Soul (of the Lower-World) and the Spirit (of the Upper-World). The Aware Self, also called the Witness, is not a fifth part but a capacity: the awareness that can watch all four, with compassion and equanimity. Read the full answer

The Peoples

The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer

Power

In shamanism, life-force, vitality itself: drawn from connection to the web of life. Not the same thing as psychotherapy’s ‘personal power’, and the two need different remedies. More about this

Power 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

Power-from-within

Starhawk’s term for the healthy mode of power, as against power-over. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands held power this way; practising shamanism from power-over is ‘just more Fall’. More about this

Power-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

Psychopomping

Guiding the dead on and away to where they belong: one of the shaman’s oldest tasks, and the exact opposite of mediumship, which draws the dead back. More about this

R

Recapitulation

The practice of gathering ourselves back from earlier events, ‘dying to the past’, so that unresolved history no longer runs us. More about this

Rewilding

Recovering the wild, undomesticated Soul: the practical healing work that follows from the Fall diagnosis. We cannot go back, only forward: ancient wisdom for future solutions. Read the full answer

Rite of passage

The deliberate death-and-rebirth (separation → liminal → incorporation, after van Gennep) by which the childhood-built identity is dismantled and a new one, rooted in the Soul, is grown. The lost route to Adulthood. More about this

S

Shaman

One who is clear about the difference between the realms and can move between them at will, walking with one foot in each world. The shaman’s power comes from their Guides; their social role is advocate for the other-than-human, keeper of the healthy stories. Read the full answer

Shamanic State of Consciousness

The altered state in which journeying happens, classically carried by drumming at roughly 200–240 beats per minute. Read the full answer

Shamanism

The practical application of animism: the how to animism’s what. A path of direct personal experience; nothing has to be believed or taken on faith. Read the full answer

Shapeshifting

Becoming another being within a journey, fully enough to know it from the inside: one of the two routes to grokking, a transformation practice, and a direct experience of interconnection. Read the full answer

Sky-religion

The vertical, hierarchical reordering of the sacred that the Fall installed, governed by the spell ‘up is good, down is bad’: transcend the body, escape matter, purify upward. The conditioning Therapeutic Shamanism works to undo. More about this

Solitude

Chosen aloneness from other humans: a healthy, essential Adult capacity, the opposite of loneliness (which is about the quality of relationship, not the quantity). Relational solitude is time away from the humans in the company of everything else. More about this

Soul

Capital S: the Lower-World Soul, our truest, wildest, undomesticated self: the blueprint of the human being Mother Earth intended, Rogers’s actualising tendency in animist terms. Never lost and never ‘retrieved’: found, befriended and grown into over a lifetime. Read the full answer

Soul retrieval

Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer

Soul-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

Soul-part

A small-s, middle-world part of the self that can be lost (sent away) and can be retrieved. Not the capital-S Soul. Read the full answer

Spirit

Capital S: the Upper-World part of the self, the least individuated part of us, a spark of Father Sky. The principle of clarity, spaciousness and perspective, cultivated in equal measure with Soul. Read the full answer

Standing People

The Trees. More about this

Stone People

All physical matter: mountains, sea, rivers, clouds, sun and stars: the oldest and widest of the Peoples. As some animist cultures put it, ‘we are just the Stone People, dancing for a while’. Read the full answer

T

Taker 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

Therapeutic Shamanism

The approach founded by Paul Francis: shamanism and psychotherapy forged together into something new, because neither alone is enough for the modern, domesticated psyche. Shamanism heals what has left altogether; psychotherapy works with what is still in the room. Read the full answer

Thought-form

A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. More about this

Three realms

The Upper-World, the middle-world and the Lower-World: the cosmological map of shamanic reality. Rooted first in the Lower-World, then the Upper-World, and only then the middle-world. Read the full answer

Transformation practices

The family of journey-practices in which the self is deliberately taken apart, reduced to something formless, and reformed: burials, burnings, dismemberments, sky burials, dissolvings, cocoonings, poisonings, shapeshifting. A mini death-and-rebirth: cleansing, loosening of identity, and preparation for the greatest transformation of all. Read the full answer

True Adult

Not someone with a job and a mortgage, but a person shocked out of childish separateness who has taken up their place, interdependently, in both the human tribe and the more-than-human web. Adults decide; Elders advise. Read the full answer

Tunnel

The descent at the start of a journey. Still middle-world territory, all the way down: the Lower-World begins only where you emerge. More about this

U

Under-world

The realm of our repressed and disowned psychic energies, personal and collective: Jung’s Shadow and the unconscious, mapped shamanically. A part of the middle-world, created by the Fall, not the Lower-World, and psychotherapy’s proper territory rather than shamanism’s. Read the full answer

Unquiet dead

The middle-world self become ghost: the ego that, having no body left to anchor it, lingers among the living instead of moving on to the Land of the Dead. Unhealthy for the living, and moved on by psychopomping. More about this

Upper-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

W

Wétiko

The parasitic, cannibalistic thought-form of Taker culture (the term is from the Algonquian peoples of North America, via Jack Forbes and Paul Levy): it drives its host to consume, dominate and set itself above nature, and it infects all of us to some degree. Read the full answer

Witness

See Aware Self.