Ask any passer-by on any street to describe shamanism as well as the result will probably be blank stares. Many people are surprised to learn that shamanism isn’t a religion though the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology in the world. More surprising is the discovery that it’s the precursor to most major world religions, such as the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has become practised on every inhabited continent on this planet not less than 40,000 years and possibly a lot longer. Historically, shamanism would be a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs all over the world with carved and painted images drawn straight from shamanic experience. We no longer reside in caves or even in really small communities whose members are proven to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that portion of us competent at fearing the dark and getting the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 25 % of an million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people a whole lot easier works today because, although world could have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.

Ask that of a shaman is as well as the question may evoke several words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or word ‘witchdoctor’. Actually, such a shaman is and does is simply explained. Inside the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one who sees’ and identifies someone capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities during an altered condition of consciousness to get to know and assist spirit helpers. Just what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, with this example of meeting spirits is that there’s no separation between something that is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, from a dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality along with the non-material realities with the spirit worlds. This concept of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists working together with sub atomic theory, regarded course it’s a predominantly physical, instead of a spiritual, oneness that such scientists making the effort to describe. However, where many people is only able to consider the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the experience of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.

Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms the journey begins as the shaman redirects the primary cognitive process from the left cerebral hemisphere in the brain right, with the corpus collosum – that’s, through the structuring, organising hemisphere, on the visualising, sensing one. From the overwhelming tastes traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will be assisted through percussive sound, such as drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a technique to aid alter consciousness, in reality no more than 10% of traditional shamans use plants in this manner. Metaphysically, the journey begins once the shaman’s consciousness shifts in the present and enters worlds visible and then her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition worldwide, are called ‘alternate reality’, ‘the an entire world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker relating to the worlds’ because they are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.

Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro cactus is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and can be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly since this ‘ordinary’ reality. Simultaneously they are qualitative spaces, states for being that reflect and support the cause of the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information in the spirits. Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences shows that a person’s mental abilities are hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ and also the mystical; even Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.

And in addition, one of several questions most frequently asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for most generations we lack a specific, objective understanding of such things as spirits. Nowadays it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; the list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings with the concept of spirit and though both the coincide, they are not the identical yet they help me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own, personal practice and teaching, describes spirits included in all of that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting a physical body as a way to use a human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore have an existential overview unavailable in my experience, but we have been critically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. We all originate from this energy, exist there and come back to it. It is actually living this angle which allows a shaman to have having less separation between stuff that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, like life and death or wellness disease.

My second comprehension of spirit is more psychological and archetypal and it was very simply explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his desire of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought the place to find me the important insight that there are things from the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and also have their own life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself.” This is the beautifully lucid explanation of how it might feel to get with spirit within a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the whole process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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