Both. In most traditional cultures a shaman was thought to be chosen, by the spirits or by birth into a shamanic family, and in some the role was even bought; but in every case the person then had to be made, through long training and initiation. Therapeutic Shamanism holds that the capacity for shamanic experience is part of being human, so anyone can learn to journey and become a shamanic practitioner, whilst becoming an actual shaman, in the traditional sense, is something few people do.
How did traditional cultures decide who became a shaman? #
In many ways, and often in more than one way at once. Most traditions, the anthropologist Piers Vitebsky writes, stress that it is the spirits themselves who choose who is to become a shaman, often approaching the person in dreams and visions, and commonly through a serious illness.1 Amongst the Inuit, who were hunter-gatherers, the Danish ethnologist Erik Holtved found that a person usually came to feel called through a dream or an extraordinary experience in nature; they might try to resist, but in most cases yielded to what they felt as their destiny.2
In other places inheritance mattered. Amongst the Mongols, who were herders, the shaman had a hereditary right or quality traced back to the celestial origin of his family line. Amongst the Sora of eastern India, who are farmers, a woman shaman’s power passed through her own family, from aunt to niece, by way of a marriage to a spirit husband in the land of the dead beneath the earth.3 Even where heredity counted, it was often not clear which of a shaman’s many relatives should inherit the gift; amongst the Evenk of Siberia, hunters and reindeer herders, the spirits of a dead shaman might wander, seeking new hosts.4 In parts of the upper Amazon, shamanic power could also be bought.5
The anthropologist Michael Winkelman sums up the classic picture: selection was generally open to all, but most often fell on descendants of shamans, who received their powers from the spirit allies of their ancestors, and it was generally accepted that the spirits themselves selected the shamans.6
Did being chosen mean a shaman needed no training? #
No. However a shaman was chosen, they still had to be made. Vitebsky’s example is Henry, a shaman of the Washo, hunter-gatherers of the Lake Tahoe region of North America, who grew up close to two shaman relatives, received a power dream that set him on his path, and also paid an older shaman to teach him the techniques he lacked. Being chosen and being taught went together.7 In tribal cultures the training to become a shaman was long and arduous and generally began in early life; in some it was a hereditary role that a person had to be born into.8 See How were shamans traditionally trained? and What is shamanic initiation, and what part does dismemberment play?
Does a shaman need a particular kind of personality? #
Probably, though people disagree about what kind. Vitebsky notes that observers have called the shaman a neurotic and a psychopath, the sanest person in society, and a showman and charlatan. Given how demanding the calling is, he thinks a distinctive personality is probably required, but that its nature varies: Siberian cultures demanded great emotional and physical strength, whilst amongst the Sora a tearful, spindly child might be marked out for the role.9
Therapeutic Shamanism sees the shaman as someone who sees differently: someone somewhat outside of normal society who, precisely because of this, can see that society more clearly and objectively, and so be of service to it.10 Many traditional shamans were probably not what we would now call neurotypical. See Were traditional shamans neurodivergent? and Were traditional shamans mentally ill?
Are traditional shamans chosen, whilst modern ones choose themselves? #
That is a common claim, and it is disputed. The anthropologist Manvir Singh notes that commentators, including neo-shamans themselves, often draw the line this way: “Neo-shamans elect themselves, while traditional shamans are chosen.” He finds such comparisons often counterproductive, because they present people in industrialised countries as dynamic and inventive and everyone else as inheriting unchanging traditions, when shamanic practices everywhere change and adapt.11 Against that, many traditions do insist on being chosen, and in many cultures the title of shaman is an honour given by one’s community, not one a person can give themselves.12 See What is ‘plastic shamanism’?
Can anyone learn shamanism? #
Anyone can learn to practise it. The practices and beliefs of shamanism are so consistent across very different cultures that they seem to be somehow innate, hard-wired into us,13 and the right hemisphere of the brain is the part that is hardwired to shamanism, to empathy and to a sense of interconnectedness.14 So shamanic experience is not the property of a special few.
Learning the skills is not the same as becoming a shaman, though. Deciding to be a shaman is a bit like deciding to be a concert pianist, a professional footballer, a chef or a poet: most people can learn those things to some extent, but not everybody who learns the piano becomes a concert pianist, and it depends on aptitude. In the same way, most people can learn shamanic skills such as journeying, but becoming an actual shaman is “a whole different ball game”.
It is sometimes said in the shamanic community that shamans are always chosen by spirit. Whether spirits really do choose people is an open and interesting question. In Therapeutic Shamanism the phrase is heard as a question of gift: was this person given the aptitude to be a shaman, in the way that some people are given a gift for music and others a gift for football?
Becoming an actual shaman is another matter. In the way Therapeutic Shamanism uses the word, few people become shamans: a shaman is someone with an immense level of skill and knowledge who has lived shamanically all their life in a culture that supported it. For most people in the West, shamanism comes later in life and is at best a part-time practice. So, following Michael Harner, the term “shamanic practitioner” is used for them instead. It is a bit like Buddhism: few people who practise Buddhism become a Buddha, but everybody can be a Buddhist practitioner. With time and practice, anyone can become a shamanic practitioner.15 See Who was Michael Harner, and what is core shamanism? and What is a calling?
Why would anyone want to be a shaman? #
The role has always come with costs. Shamans lived at the margins of their own culture, and training deliberately shook them out of its norms and stories, which is why indigenous people sometimes ask, “Who on earth would want to be a shaman?” It is not a path most people want to take.16 See What is giftedness, and why can it feel like a burden?
