Shamanism is part of animism. Animism is the experience that everything is alive and conscious, and shamanism is its practical application: the shaman shares that animist experience and can also enter trance at will, travel the shamanic realms and communicate with the spirits there on behalf of their people. Where one ends and the other begins is blurry, so Therapeutic Shamanism uses “shamanism” broadly, for any practical application of animism.
What is animism in shamanism? #
It is the ground shamanism stands on. “In reality though, animism is not a belief so much as an experience. Shamanism is essentially the practical application of animist beliefs.”1 Shamanism is generally defined as the ability to go into trance at will, an altered state of consciousness, in order to communicate with the spirit world.2
So animism is the worldview and the experience, a world that is alive, conscious and kin, and shamanism is what someone does within that world: journeying, healing, seeking teaching and bringing it back. Put simply, animism is the what and shamanism is the how, one of the ways of applying it. In Therapeutic Shamanism, shamanism without animism makes no sense at all. See What is animism? and What is shamanism?
Is shamanism a part of animism, or something separate? #
A part. Shamanism is part of a wider spiritual practice known as animism, a branch of it.3 The word animism already encompasses shamanism.
The boundary is not sharp. Some people argue that not every animist practice is shamanic, because not all of them involve going into trance to communicate with spirits. But what counts as a trance is hard to pin down, and so “the dividing line between shamanism and animism is blurry and far from settled and agreed upon.”
What makes someone a shaman rather than an animist? #
The shaman experiences the world as every animist does, alive, conscious and interconnected. “In addition to experiencing the world in this way, shamans are people who have the ability to go into trance-states at will, leave their bodies and travel the shamanic realms, and communicate with the spirit world in doing so.”4
The ability serves a purpose. “For the role of the shaman was, and still is, to be of service.” Shamans did not withdraw from the physical world or from human society. They stood far enough from the tribe to see its stories for what they were, and close enough to help, and “part of the role of the shaman was to shape the stories that make a culture what it is, and in doing so, keep the tribe healthy and on the right path.”5 The shaman was the knowledge and wisdom keeper in society.6
Can someone be an animist without being a shaman? #
Yes. In hunter-gatherer tribes everyone lived the animist way, and the shaman was a specialist within it. Using ‘shamanism’ in its broad sense, “everybody in the tribe would have lived and breathed shamanism. The shaman was simply the person who was better at it than other people (in the same way that in the tribe there would also be somebody who was best at hunting, or best at looking after children, or best at storytelling, and so on).”7
The same holds today. Not everyone needs to take on the shaman’s work of communicating with the more-than-human world on behalf of others: “It does not need everyone to do that. That has never been the way. It is the role of the shaman.”8 What anyone can do is learn to perceive the world as an animist does. Fully recovering our ancestors’ experience may not be possible, but “we can train ourselves to perceive the world in a more animist way and retrain our brains to think more animistic thoughts.”9
Why do the Therapeutic Shamanism books say “shamanism” when they often mean animism? #
For breadth and for clarity. ‘Shamanism’ here means any practical application of animism, so that the scope is broad and inclusive.10 There is another reason too: presented as being about animism, the books would not have been picked up by many readers, since “Most people do not even know what animism is, let alone have much (or any) interest in it.” Following the philosopher Wittgenstein’s point that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language”, the books use ‘shamanism’ in its modern sense, a broad term that includes other animist practices. Readers who prefer the narrower sense are invited to translate the word in their heads.11 There is no single agreed definition of shamanism, even amongst shamanic practitioners, and no body with the authority to decide one. Some hold that only Siberian shamanism is the real thing, and that view is respected. Wittgenstein’s point, applied here, is that much argument and confusion comes from people using the same word without realising they mean different things by it, so the aim is not to settle which definition is right but to be clear how the word is being used, which in Therapeutic Shamanism is inclusively and broadly.
What happens to shamanism when it is cut off from animism? #
It becomes a set of techniques without their meaning. To really understand shamanism, we need to try to experience the world as an animist does: not just believing that everything around us is alive and conscious, but experiencing it that way.12
It loses depth, and core shamanism shows this. Michael Harner kept it focused on journeying, which made it culturally neutral and portable, a good starting point; but “if one is to deepen shamanic practice the journeying has to become integrated into a wider context”, a practice about connecting to the land, the AncestorsAncestors. The human Oversoul: the whole of humanity held as one Lower-World being. Distinct from individual dead ancestors (small a), who are not worked with in this approach. Read the full answer, the other-than-human Peoples and the Spirits of a particular place.13 See How is Therapeutic Shamanism different from traditional and core shamanism?
Does traditional shamanism always carry healthy animism? #
Not necessarily. Being shamanic or animist does not in itself keep a society free of what Therapeutic Shamanism calls Taker thinking. Just because a society practises a form of shamanism or animism, this does not mean it is free of Taker thinking, which is why Therapeutic Shamanism distinguishes pre-Fallen, Fallen and post-Fallen shamanism.14 This is no criticism of present-day animist peoples, to whom a great debt is owed for keeping this knowledge alive. It is why Therapeutic Shamanism looks to the principles of original hunter-gatherer animism (see Where does shamanism come from?).
What is Core Animism, and how does it relate to core shamanism? #
Core AnimismCore Animism. The culture-neutral core of animism: the aspects of animist teaching that are (near-)universal rather than specific to any one culture: the Original Instructions, fierce egalitarianism, respectful right relationship with the other-than-human people, equal respect for the masculine and the feminine, treating all as sacred, living as a Leaver rather than a Taker. The parallel of Michael Harner’s ‘core shamanism’, and its necessary root: shamanism is a branch of animism, so a culture-neutral shamanism has to be grounded in a culture-neutral animism, with no borrowed regalia required. More about this is the animist parallel to Michael Harner’s core shamanism: the culture-neutral core of animist teaching, without the regalia of any one culture. Because shamanism is a branch of animism, core shamanism has to be rooted in Core Animism, the near-universal aspects of animist teaching such as the Original Instructions, fierce egalitarianism, living in respectful, right relationship with the other-than-human Peoples, and being a Leaver rather than a Taker (see What is animism?).
Therapeutic Shamanism brings in a third element. Traditional shamanism on its own is not equipped to deal with the psychological changes 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 has brought, and psychotherapy on its own reduces everything to the human; it is by bringing shamanism and psychotherapy together, and forging them into something new, that we can begin to find the antidote to the Fall.15
Why the college is named for both Therapeutic Shamanism and Core Animism is explained in What is Therapeutic Shamanism?
