Cleansing is washing away energies and influences that have attached themselves to us, to objects or to places; purification is the older religious word for making something clean or holy. In Therapeutic Shamanism cleansing is ordinary hygiene rather than a rite of purity: part of hollowing-outHollowing-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 before a journey, something the 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 do for us in the Lower-World, and now and then a spray, smoke or salt bath. The method matters much less than the intent behind it.
What do cleansing and purification usually mean? #
Many cultures have ways of making people, places and things clean in more than a physical sense, and ‘purification’ often has a second idea in it as well, of becoming pure enough to approach the sacred. Why cultures draw the line between pure and polluted where they do is what the anthropologist Mary Douglas set out to explain. See Who was Mary Douglas, and what did Purity and Danger show?
In Therapeutic Shamanism cleansing is practical. It means removing what has got on to us or into us and does not belong. The shamanic middle-world includes the energy behind the physical world, such as the energetic atmosphere of buildings and places and the energy people give off.1 We pick things up from it, and so do objects and places. When shamans remove an intrusionIntrusion. 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 physically, working on the client’s body rather than in a journey, they may use smoke and smudging, or the sound of the drum or rattle to drive it away.2 The smoke of a burning plant may be used to cleanse a person, one of the ways a Plant can share its medicine.3
How does cleansing fit into a shamanic journey? #
Mostly at the start, as part of hollowing-out, the practice of stepping away from the middle-world selfMiddle-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 before journeying. A hollowing-out practice needs a metaphor, and cleansing images are among the commonest: taking off middle-world clothes, an obvious symbol of middle-world identity, and standing under a waterfall as a deliberate, conscious washing away of the middle-world energies we carry. Other people bathe, peel off their skin, are smudged or walk through a fire. The images have to be ones that work for the person using them.4
The Guides take part as well. Sometimes they ask for a longer cleansing because we are more caught up in middle-world concerns than usual, smudge us, or give us a bag of herbs to carry; any change to the usual routine is relevant to the journey that follows, so it needs noticing.4 See What is hollowing-out?
Do I need to cleanse myself before and after healing work? #
Less than many people think. For the Lower-World healing practice in The Shamanic Journey, smudging or a cleansing spray beforehand does no harm but is not necessary, and if the basic precautions have been taken and the Guides really listened to, no special cleansing is needed afterwards; asking the Guides to check us over is good practice. That teaching, and what to do if we do feel odd after journeying for someone else, is set out in Do I need spiritual protection? What is energy hygiene?
Deeper work in the middle-world is different. After an extractionExtraction. 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 or a de-possession, the practitioner asks the Guides, towards the end of the journey or after it, whether any cleansing is needed.5 Cleansing is also part of the transformation practicesTransformation 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, in which we are taken apart in the Lower-World and remade, with whatever is unhealthy dismantled; they are done regularly as ongoing energy hygiene. See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?
Can objects, water and places be cleansed? #
Yes. Some crystals pick up and store energies, so it can be wise to cleanse a physical crystal before working with it. There are many ways of doing so, among them smoke from a cleansing herb such as sage or mugwort, or holding the crystal during a journey and asking the Guides to cleanse it in the Lower-World. What matters most is the intent to cleanse it; the method is only a vehicle for that intent and nothing to get hung up on.6
Water is a good example of how easily this tips into fuss. People can insist on purified water, or water that has been through various healing rituals, when filtered water is fine, and even tap water can work if the intent to cleanse it is there.7
Places carry energies too. One of the ways Lower-World Guides help in daily life is by showing us why the energy in a room feels wrong and what to do about it, and how to let the energy of a home and garden flow rather than stagnate.8
Is purification about becoming more spiritual? #
Not in Therapeutic Shamanism. The sky religionsSky-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 that came with the FallThe 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 taught that up is good and down is bad: that spirit is good and matter corrupt, and that this earthly plane is one of corruption, to be renounced. From a shamanic point of view, and from that of any grounded spiritual practice, that notion is nonsense.9 So, cleansing here is not a way of rising above the body or the earth; it removes what does not belong to us. Nature itself does much of the cleansing, and the joyfulness and cleansing of a waterfall is one of the teachings the other-than-human world offers.10 See What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
