Shamanic ecstasy, or soul flight, is the scholars’ name for the shaman’s journey: a trance in which the shaman travels out of ordinary reality into the realms of the spirits and then returns. In Therapeutic Shamanism the essential points are that it is done at will, that the journeyer can always come back at will, and that what makes it shamanic is contact with the spirits, not how deep or dramatic the trance is.
Where do the words “ecstasy” and “soul flight” come from? #
From the study of religion, not from shamans themselves. The English “ecstasy” comes from the Greek ekstasis, being put outside oneself. The historian of religion Mircea Eliade made it the defining mark of the shaman in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (French 1951, English 1964): the shaman, for Eliade, was the specialist in a trance during which the soul was believed to leave the body and travel to the sky or the world below.1 Later writers called this soul flight, or the soul journey, and the anthropologist Michael Harner, who went on to develop core shamanism, called the state the shamanic state of consciousness, or SSC.
Eliade’s picture has been widely criticised, for drawing on books, not fieldwork, for treating a Siberian model as universal, and for ranking the flight upwards above the journey down. Those debates are set out in Who was Mircea Eliade, and what do critics say is wrong with his idea of shamanism?
How is soul flight understood in Therapeutic Shamanism? #
As the shamanic journey. A shaman is someone who can leave this physical, ordinary reality at will, go into a trance, travel for a time in the shamanic realms, and then come back to ordinary reality at will.2 Shamans are people who can go into trance at will, leave their bodies, travel the shamanic realms and communicate with the spirit world in doing so.3
The ability to come back is essential. It is one of the differences between shamanism and psychosis, for to be stuck in the shamanic realms and unable to return would itself be a form of psychosis. So journeying for oneself depends on being firmly rooted and grounded in ordinary, everyday reality first.2 See How is shamanic journeying different from psychosis?
How deep is the trance? #
It varies, and depth is not the point. Trance is not black or white but greyscale. Light trances are part of ordinary life, when daydreaming, driving, painting, listening to music or staring into a fire. In some cultures shamans work in very deep trance: some Mongolian shamans, for example, let themselves be completely taken over by the spirits and remember nothing of what happened. The journeying used in core shamanism and Therapeutic Shamanism usually lies between the two, deeper than a light trance, whilst the journeyer keeps some conscious awareness of what is going on.4
What makes a trance shamanic is contact with the world of the spirits: the experience that beyond everyday surface reality there is a deeper, shamanic reality in which everything is alive and conscious. Neither the depth of the trance nor the means used to enter it defines it.4 See What state of consciousness is used in journeying, and do journeys have to be visual?
Does the soul really leave the body? #
There are two possible answers. One is that what people experience in a journey is a product of the human brain, something hard-wired, subjective and all in the mind. The other is that the shamanic realms are real places, and the shaman really does somehow leave the body and travel there.5
Shamans are clear that what they experience is no figment of the imagination but a world as real as this one, in some ways more real. The rational mind may be more comfortable calling it imagination, but the more people journey, the more they find it goes beyond any personal imagination, and most come to accept that the shamans knew what they were talking about. Shamanism rests on direct experience, though, not on an act of faith, so the question is left to each person’s own journeying.5 For what research on the brain has and has not found, see What happens in the brain during a journey? and Is shamanic journeying imagination, and how are journeys co-created?
Is the journey itself the goal? #
No. Even the journey is a means to an end. To think that shamanism is entirely, or even mostly, about doing shamanic journeys is to miss its point and depth. Shamanism is being in direct contact with the world of spirits, walking with one foot in this world and one in the other, so that ordinary and shamanic reality run together through a life, with the ability to move attention between them at will. A journey puts both feet into shamanic reality for a while; the rest of the time the aim is to live with the two worlds side by side.6
How is soul flight different from possession? #
In soul flight the shaman travels to the spirits; in possession a spirit comes into a person and takes them over. The two have tended to belong to different kinds of society. The anthropologist Michael Winkelman found that hunter-gatherer societies generally do not experience possession, and the anthropologists Erika Bourguignon and Thomas Evascu found possession experiences mostly in agricultural societies and in those marked by social stratification and hierarchy.7
Therapeutic Shamanism reads this historically. Possession describes a relationship based on inequality, power-over and ownership, and became common, and then central to much shamanic work, only after the move to agriculture brought ownership and the soul loss and Power-loss that came with separating ourselves from the natural world.8 See What is possession, and what is de-possession? and Is mediumship healthy, from a shamanic point of view?
Is the flight upwards higher than the journey down? #
No. Eliade treated the ascent to the sky as the oldest and purest form; Therapeutic Shamanism rejects any ranking of up over down. The Upper-WorldUpper-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 is not a better place than the Lower-WorldLower-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, and the idea that “up is good and down is bad” is a spell that runs deep in our culture.9 A balanced practice begins with a strong Lower-World connection, then a strong Upper-World connection, and only then middle-worldMiddle-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 journeying.10 See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism begin with the Lower-World?
