What is Shamanism?

We know that shamanism is extremely ancient, because it is found in tribal societies on all the continents. Shamanism is found in cultures throughout Central and South America, in Asia, especially Korea, throughout Siberia, in the Arctic among the Inuit or Eskimos, among many Native American tribes, in parts of Africa and in the last remaining tribal culture in Europe, the Saami or Laplanders. Shamanism has been nurtured in tribal societies for all of these millennia, since the Stone Age, for one reason: shamanism works. The healing methods used by shamans are amazingly, miraculously effective. Shamanic healing methods are also astoundingly similar throughout all of these widely separated regions.

The unique aspect of shamanism, found among all of these diverse people, is the shamanic journey. Shamans experience a journey out of their bodies and into the magical realms of spirit. In these mysterious realms, wise animals, deities and ancestors teach the shaman. Spirit allies explain to the shaman exactly how to heal their clients. Most people enter the worlds of the shaman only through myths or dreams. Yet the shaman is able to enter these mysterious realms of spirit at will, accompanied by the sound of rapid drumming or rattling.

Shamans believe in a layered view of reality, in which our world, our reality, is in the middle, with another world below us, and a world above us. These other realities transcend the limitations of space and time. The lower world is the realm of spirit animals and plants, the oversouls of entire species, compassionate allies and helpers. The world above us is the realm of wise spirit teachers, ancestors and deities. Both worlds, upper and lower, are places shamans go for lessons in healing, wholeness and power. Only in the middle world are the spirits equivocal. Only in our world, the physical realm, is there suffering. In both the upper world and the lower world, the spirits are compassionate and wish to heal those who suffer here in the middle.

People in America often think of Carlos Castaneda when they hear the word "shaman", but the shamanism described in Castaneda's books is hardly typical. Most tribal shamans are healers, more like physicians than sorcerers. Since there is no modern medicine available in tribal societies, people depend on the local shamans to heal their ills. Many shamans also know a great deal about plants and herbal remedies, which they have often learned from the plant spirits themselves.

In the mid 20th century, a scholar of comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, published Shamanism, a classic overview of shamanism around the world. Anthropologists became more interested in shamans and were even initiated into tribal shamanic practices. Chief among these is Michael Harner, author of The Way of the Shaman. Michael Harner began studying shamanism in 1961, during anthropological fieldwork among the Jivaro (Shuar) tribe in the Amazon. When he came back to America, he taught anthropology at Columbia, Yale and the New School for Social Research. In the 1970s, he also began teaching shamanism to a few students. At that point, Michael Harner developed the idea of core shamanism, teaching the techniques of shamanism and shamanic healing, but without the cultural information, the jewel without the setting. In 1985, Michael Harner started the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, (see links for more information) now an international organization with a large faculty. The Foundation for Shamanic Studies is the foremost training program for shamans currently available in the modern world.

I am a graduate of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies' Three Year Program in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing. I have also studied other aspects of shamanism, such as psychopomp work, extraction healing and weather working. My shamanic teachers are Michael Harner, Sandra Ingerman, Larry Peters, Nan Moss and David Corbin. I have been performing shamanic journey since 1989 and have been studying shamanism since 1976, when I was an undergraduate in anthropology at Bryn Mawr College. Like most of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies graduates, I practice core shamanism.

Core shamanism allows shamanism to be born anew, appropriate for cultures in our diverse modern world. Modern life is substantially different from life in a Stone Age tribe. We rarely need shamanism for hunting magic these days, for example. The traditional shamanic technique of remote viewing has been superseded by the telephone and the internet. Also, in modern times, it is unrealistic to think that students could apprentice to a professional shaman for a period of many years. The Foundation for Shamanic Studies' teaching takes place during retreats lasting a week or a weekend, with most of the work done at home, individually, guided by the spirits themselves. The spirits continue to teach the same ways of healing that have held up through the millennia, discovered and rediscovered by shamanic practitioners over the ages, despite Soviet pogroms, the burning of Witches during the Inquisition and the disapproval of monotheistic missionaries.

© Caroline Kenner, 2002