Sorcery is the use of shamanic or magical skills for personal power, to harm, or to impose one’s will on other people. In Therapeutic Shamanism, shamanism used for personal gain or to do harm is sorcery and not shamanism, though the people who practise it often insist they are shamans. Shamanism can be used to harm, and it is not hard to learn, but it means working with corrupt 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 beings, the true 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 withdraw, and most of what shamanism has to offer closes.
What does sorcery mean? #
There is no agreed vocabulary, but the line is drawn in much the same place by many writers. The shamanic teacher and writer Christina Pratt describes sorcerers as working between the physical and spirit worlds as shamans do, but in pursuit of personal power for personal aims, with intentions that may be malevolent or benevolent. A shaman who turns their skills and their relationship with the helping spirits to malevolent ends has, in her account, crossed the line into sorcery. She adds that there were and are shamans who practised sorcery, sometimes because serving their community also meant defending it against its enemies, and sometimes because they were seduced by the illusion of their own power.1
Therapeutic Shamanism names it the same way. Some shamanic traditions lack compassion, to say the least, and use shamanism for personal gain and to harm others; those traditions are sorcery and not shamanism, although the people who practise them are often adamant that they are shamans. Whatever the terminology, compassion is meant to be at the heart of the practice, which is why mettaMetta. Loving-kindness, practised self-first and extended outward to others, difficult people and all beings; worked shamanically with the Power Animal and Guides. More about this, the practice of loving kindness, is central to it.2 See What is metta (loving-kindness), and how is it a shamanic practice?
Have shamans really used their skills to harm? #
Yes. In some cultures shamans do practise sorcery.3 Historically shamanism has been used not only to heal but to harm, for example to cast curses and ill-wishes, or, when someone is paid to, to make one person fall in love with another, the shamanic version of a love potion. Casting spells can be a major part of traditional shamanism, and there are modern practitioners who see nothing wrong with it.4 Cultures with strong beliefs in sorcery also tend to see intrusionsIntrusion. 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 as curses, malevolent spells and enchantments sent by sorcerers.5 See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?
What counts as a spell or a curse? #
Far more than most people think. A spell is any thought-formThought-form. A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. More about this put on someone that interferes with their own processes and imposes on them what someone else has decided they should think, feel or do. Spells do not need pentagrams, incantations or cauldrons. All they need is someone dominant imposing their will on someone susceptible, usually someone weakened by soul loss or Power-loss, with holes the spell can get into. In that sense they are common: people speak of having been under an abusive partner’s spell, whole countries fall under the spell of a charismatic leader, and spells make cults possible and drive celebrity and consumer culture. Spells are usually a power imbalance, one person trying to make something happen to another against their conscious knowledge and free will.6
Healers can do it without meaning to. Telling a client in a healing that they have a karmic bond and duty to a parent puts a thought-form into their head that is not healing but a binding, essentially a curse. Shamanic work that heals removes thought-forms like that; it does not place them on people.7 See What does consent mean in shamanic work?
So are there ‘dark’ shamans? #
The phrase is not one Therapeutic Shamanism uses, but there are certainly people who practise shamanism unethically and even to harm, some out of misguided good intentions and some not. It is possible, and not even very difficult to learn. It does come at a cost.8
A shaman’s power comes from their Guides, not from themselves, so how powerful a shaman is depends on who their Guides are. True 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 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 beings are ethical to their core and will not help anyone do anything unethical. Harmful work therefore means working with corrupt middle-world beings, whatever they disguise themselves as and whatever the practitioner believes them to be; some middle-world beings are notorious for disguise. A practitioner who keeps working unethically is left by the great Guides, who are replaced by lesser middle-world ones, and may not even notice. Such beings have some power and can certainly do harm in the middle-world, but their power and knowledge are severely limited, and huge areas of shamanism stay closed to anyone working with them, however skilled or impressive they seem. In Paul Francis’s own experience, the more he tightened his ethical practice, the more his Guides revealed to him and the deeper his bond with them became.8
Is darkness itself the problem? #
No. ‘Dark’ in the sense of harmful has nothing to do with the Lower-World, or with the earth. 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 taught that the Lower-World is full of demons and pain, to scare people off from ever going there, and that the earthly plane is corrupt; the knowledge of how to reach the Lower-World was rooted out and those who held it persecuted.9 Sorcery is a matter of intent and of relationship, of power-over rather than service, not of which realm a journey goes to. See What is the Lower-World? and What is the under-world, and how is it different from the Lower-World?
