Traditionally, shamans were trained over a long time, often for years, in two ways at once: by the spirits, through dreams, visions, solitudeSolitude. 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, fasting and journeys, and by older shamans, who passed on a large body of knowledge by word of mouth. Training usually followed a call, often involved an initiation of death and rebirth, and in most cultures included being deliberately shaken out of the ways of thinking of one’s own culture. It differed widely from people to people, and in many cultures it began early in life.
Was there one way of training shamans? #
No. Every culture had its own way, though some patterns recur. Comparing practitioners across a large sample of societies, the anthropologist Michael Winkelman found that the shamans amongst them typically went through an initiatory crisis of death and rebirth, and a training that involved entering altered states of consciousness, particularly through fasting and social isolation.1 In the classic picture he summarises, developing relationships with the spirits was central to a shaman’s training, and animal spirit helpers were the basis of the shaman’s powers.2
Amongst the Inuit, who were hunter-gatherers, the Danish ethnologist Erik Holtved found great uniformity in it. 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. Next they would approach an older shaman, sometimes two or more, giving a present before teaching could begin. The instruction might last from a few days to several years. It was a general feature that the novice spent long periods alone in desolate places, where they expected to meet the beings who would become their helping spirits, often suffering severely from cold and hunger.3
How long did training take? #
Often a long time. Amongst the Ammassalik of East Greenland, the psychologist Holger Kalweit writes, the apprentice went alone into the mountains each summer, fasting and rubbing one stone against another for hour after hour, day after day, until they had gathered enough helping spirits. The training was carried out in secret, and the spirits taught the apprentice a special language. Neither the neighbours nor the apprentice’s own family were supposed to know until, after ten to fifteen years, the apprentice held their first ceremony.4
In tribal cultures generally, the training to become a shaman was long and arduous and usually began in early life, and a shaman then spent their whole life living shamanically, in a culture which wholly supported it.5 In original, hunter-gatherer times, a child with the aptitude would have been spotted very young, because the gift was rare and mattered so much to the tribe, and nurtured from then on. Trainees were often excused much of the work everyone else had to share, such as hunting and gathering, so that anyone who became a shaman had been living and breathing it, day and night, year in and year out, since childhood. Amongst the Sora of eastern India, who are farmers, the anthropologist Piers Vitebsky describes a girl’s apprenticeship beginning in childhood: she watches her teacher intently during trance, and is escorted in her dreams by spirits to the land of the dead beneath the earth, until around puberty she begins to visit it at will.6
Who taught them: the spirits or other shamans? #
Both. Shamanism is learnt primarily from the spirit guides. But an apprentice to a shaman in a tribe was also taught a body of knowledge to sit alongside what the guides were teaching, passed on by word of mouth because hunter-gatherer cultures had no writing.7 In indigenous cultures a shaman would teach their apprentice about the healing properties of each animal, plant and stone and the best way of working with them, and the apprentice’s own guides would teach them directly too. This body of knowledge is sometimes called the shaman’s Medicine BundleMedicine 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.8 The flesh-and-blood shamans of the tribe taught in words, and that verbal, left-brained knowledge had an essential place alongside what was learnt in journeys.9 See What is the medicine bundle?
Vitebsky gives the example of Henry, a shaman of the Washo, who were hunter-gatherers living around Lake Tahoe in North America. Henry was chosen by a power dream, but he also paid an older shaman to teach him the techniques he lacked.10
Why were trainees made to do things the wrong way round? #
To free them from the stories of their own culture. Shamans lived at the margins of the culture they belonged to: part of the tribe, and yet distant enough from it to see its stories for what they are, and still close enough to help when needed. Deprogramming from the stories of one’s own culture was an essential part of training to be a shaman anywhere. So in most cultures, shamanic training included periods of doing things the way they were not normally done, to shake the trainee out of social norms. An apprentice might have to wear their clothes back to front or inside out, walk backwards, stand when everyone else sat, or shout when everyone else was quiet. They would also be given knowledge that only the shamans held, including that the stories the rest of the tribe believed were not literally true, but were there for social cohesion and to keep the tribe in right relationship with the other-than-human.11
This came with costs, which is why indigenous people sometimes ask, “Who on earth would want to be a shaman?”11 It is very hard work, and they can look in amazement at Westerners eager to become shamans, because they know what it involves. See What do tribe and belonging mean, and what is the shaman’s role in a community?
Were journeys part of the training? #
Yes, and in many cultures they were done in darkness. Journeying is learnt by doing it, and much of what a shaman knew came through journeys. Sight keeps us rooted in ordinary reality, so shamanic journeying is usually done in the dark to cut sight off, and in indigenous cultures it was often done at night.12 Initiation, with its experience of being taken apart and reborn, has its own answer: see What is shamanic initiation, and what part does dismemberment play?
Can shamanism be learnt in the same way today? #
Not in the same way, and Therapeutic Shamanism is honest about the difference. Few people become actual shamans: the training is long, begins early, and is lived in a culture that supports it, and the title is generally given by one’s community, not taken for oneself. For most people in the West shamanism comes later in life and is at best a part-time practice, which is why the term “shamanic practitioner” is used instead.13
What can be learnt is the practice itself, and the only way to learn it is by doing it. It is said that you cannot learn shamanism from a book, and that is true; but neither can you learn it from a human teacher, only by your own direct experience.14 Within that, the Power AnimalPower 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 is the principal teacher. By paying close attention to what it is doing when it heals, a student begins the process of becoming its apprentice.15 See How is Therapeutic Shamanism different from traditional and core shamanism? and Are shamans born or made?
