Therapeutic Shamanism offers practices to try and learn from through direct experience. Factual research has an essential place alongside journeying, and journeys are mythosMythos. 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, not accounts to be taken as objectively true.
Does practising shamanism mean setting aside factual knowledge? #
No. Verbal, factual knowledge has an essential place in learning shamanism. An apprentice in a shamanic culture would learn from physical teachers as well as through journeys. In the absence of those teachers, researching what appears in a journey helps us learn about it.1
Research and journeying complement one another. Factual information and embodied, visceral experience are two ways of learning that can reinforce and deepen each other.
Should research come before or after a journey? #
Looking something up afterwards and finding how pertinent it is can build confidence when someone is new to journeying. With experience, that kind of confirmation becomes less necessary, although it can still be astonishing.2
Prior knowledge can help too. If someone is asked to journey about a streaked tenrec without knowing what one is, they are extremely unlikely to come up with anything accurate. Seeing a picture first makes an accurate and revealing journey much more likely. We usually need something to help us tune in.
Prior research is sometimes objected to as “cheating”. A journey that produces accurate information without prior knowledge may be impressive, but being impressive is not its purpose. “Rather, the point is to be as helpful as possible, and if prior information helps with that, then so be it.”
Are journeys factual reports? #
“Journeys are never objectively true. They are mythos, not logosLogos. Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this.” They are more like paintings, music and poems that convey something mysterious and intangible. What we experience is real, but we give it imagery and form that we can comprehend. Our interpretations are shaped by our frameworks, beliefs, experiences and prior knowledge.3
Mythos means metaphorically true, and logos literally true. Take shapeshifting: becoming an animal in shamanic trance does not mean that the human body physically transforms into one. See Is shamanic journeying imagination, and how are journeys co-created?
What does someone have to believe? #
Nothing has to be taken on faith. The suggestions, exercises and ideas are there so people can find out through their own experience whether they work. There is no need to believe anything anyone says about shamanism.4
Therapeutic Shamanism is offered as an approach suited to the challenges of the present time, without any claim that it is the only right path. Different things work for different people. A saying in shamanism puts it simply: “Does it grow corn?”, meaning, does it work?
How does Therapeutic Shamanism approach subjective and objective experience? #
By setting out two possible explanations for the consistency of journey experiences across cultures. One is that what we experience in shamanic reality is somehow simply a function of the human brain, some product of our neurological wiring. The other is that the realms exist independently of us, and the practitioner somehow leaves their body and travels there.5
From a psychotherapeutic perspective, it is tempting to explain journeys as subjective and imaginary. But shamans are clear that they experience a world as real as this one, and describing it as a figment of imagination denies their actual experience. The more people journey, the more they experience it as going beyond personal imagination.
Paul Francis does not ask anyone to accept his own experience on faith: whatever he says about his experiences, he offers them only as his experiences. He invites people to journey and find out for themselves whether shamanic reality, for them, is subjective or objective, real or imaginary.
What does unpacking a journey involve? #
There are two approaches. One works through feeling, resonance and intuition; the other brings analysis, information and research. Both direct experience and learning have an important place.
When students asked what an image or experience meant, Paul’s first response was to ask what it meant to them. He helps people unpack journeys for themselves, supporting their ability to find meaning in their own experiences. At the same time, no being encountered is to be reduced to a symbol or projection for personal growth: the beings have their own lives, wisdom and agency.
Why do exercises matter as well as ideas? #
Having ideas is different from embodying and experiencing them; without experience, ideas remain a head-trip. That is why Rewilding Yourself is both a book of shamanic knowledge and a workbook, with exercises through which people can learn from their own experience.6
People often say that shamanism cannot be learned from a book. His reply is that it cannot be learned from a human teacher either: “The only way you can learn shamanism is by actually doing it.” The exercises are offered to equip people with tools for exploring their own path and developing a practice authentic to them. Readers are not asked to take his statements at face value or blindly accept what they are told.
What if something appears because there is more to learn? #
Something often appears in a journey because it is needed for personal healing, especially when the journey is for the person doing it. Sometimes, though, 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 show something because they are teaching the person something new as part of their shamanic development.7
It is a kind of apprenticeship. The teaching may not be obvious, because Guides are communicating by showing things rather than through words. Someone accustomed to attending mainly to words can miss those other ways of communicating.
So it pays to learn to notice what the Guides do, and to try to understand its significance and deeper layers of meaning. It is then up to the journeyer to pay attention, realise what they mean, and explore further.
