Shaman – In Truth, Are You or Are You Not, that is the Question

A follow-up to Blending, Death and Rebirth

Over the years, I have resisted referring to myself as a shaman. Basically, I didn’t want to be lumped in or identified with all of the workshop neo-shamans who feel that shamanism is nothing more than journeying. This implies that anyone can be a shaman, which makes it very attractive to the consumer. But why not call yourself a shaman or druid for material gain and status as the average person will accept you at face value just as the majority of people will accept organized religion and their mouthpiece at face value without using their common sense, just as with politicians—no research just acceptance.

In reality, it takes years and years of apprenticeship with an indigenous “person of power” to be considered a shaman. Traditionally, this is only after having been identified as a “chosen one” for training either by the current practicing shaman, the ancestors (through dreams), and/or a medical/soul crisis. With this set of criteria, you couldn’t get many people to qualify for a neo-shamanic workshop.

Even though my wife and I are holders of a Northwest Coast shamanic or medicine way’s lineage, I choose not to label myself as a shaman until recently. I am not seminar or workshop trained; my knowledge of shamanism flows from my firsthand experience of it. And there is the adventure that is a part of the seeking such as being shot at around midnight outside the ruins of Teotihuacan, barely escaping arrest on the streets of Lima, Peru, and feigning sickness to escape the clutches of a Yakuza and his lady.

The truth is that I have not been an observer but an active participant, initiate, and carrier of shamanic lineages, ranging from my shamanic initiation in a sacred lagoon in the Andes after having walked the Inca Trail in 1988 (pleases see the story below: Journey of Initiation: The Wizard of the Four Winds—February 1988), to my wife and I apprenticing with Mom and Vince Stogan, Northwest Coast Salish shamans, who passed on to us their shamanic lineage of bathing, burning, and healing. In line with the criteria above, Mom and Vince asked us if we would like to learn their “ways” only after having observed us doing our spiritual work. Moreover, our deeds of shamanic power have been witnessed and felt by others.

And then there is the subject of the exorcism. This is not an exorcism where a spirit is taken off of a person but where a spirit merges with the person. This is a descending spirit exorcism such as the one experienced by Jesus during bathing in the Jordan River when spirit in the form of a dove descended into Jesus.

My descending spirit exorcism, Ko Rei, occurred in Japan in front of Kobo Daishi’s mausoleum at midnight on the sacred mountain Kōyasan in October of 1987. Kobo Daishi was the founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism. The exorcism was conducted by Sakano-san, an esoteric or shamanic priest from Osaka who had a dream about me. He had come to the mountain to find me even though he had no formal connection with the temple where I was staying. This otherworldly experience, an experience that thrust me through a tear in the fabric of dualistic reality, was the initial quickening of my awakening mind and resulted in a knowing of radical nondualistic interpenetrating reality.

With my decades of experience, it then makes sense that I approach this subject of shamanism not solely from an archeological or scholarly approach but from my direct experience of the subject matter.

Shaman – a word that births a prism of images and connotations. Of course a shaman would be a practitioner of shamanism, which Mircea Eliade defined as a “technique of religious ecstasy.” This is a definition that is problematic just as the terms shaman and shamanism are wrought with a magnitude of problems when applied cross-culturally. Let’s for the time-being refer to a shaman as a “wise person.” This reference cuts across all cultures. All cultures have been known to have and still have wise individuals within communities. As with the term shaman, we are once again faced with settling on a definition for wisdom. Let me explain my pondering thoughts on wisdom.

Wisdom derives from the following formulas: information without experience remains just information: I = I; information combined with experience results in knowledge: IE = K; wisdom flows from the combination of knowledge and its experience: KE = W. Experience is the source. As we may see, we are in the information age but not close to an age of knowledge. Furthermore, we are light years away from an age of wisdom. You can’t achieve individual wisdom if the majority of your time is spent staring into a box (smartphone) of information. A focus on information separates a person from nature—the source of knowledge and experience. But why is experience so necessary to the practice of shamanism?

Neuroscientists provide a glimpse into its importance. They have been exploring the varying anatomies of individual brains and have discovered that “genes, environmental exposures, experience, and disease help wire our neurons differently.”[i] Let’s explore each of these subjects individually:

• Genetic: there is a theory called “gene-culture co-evolution.” Basically, it is research into how culture shapes our genetic makeup. According to Herbert Gintis: “Human characteristics are the product of gene–culture coevolution, which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture over long time periods.”[ii] If this is true then it would make sense that the neurons of a Lapland wise person would be wired differently than a Peruvian wise person.
• Environmental exposures: mythology, folklore, ceremonies, and ritual are highly environmentally driven and influenced. It stands to reason that a wise person living in Iceland would perform rituals and ceremonies based on their cosmology, mythology and folklore different than an Amazonian wise person.
• Experience: This is a key to our intrinsic self and experience is our personal gateway to wisdom. A wise person in the Pacific Northwest would have different environmental experiences than a wise person in the Amazon.
• Disease: In the past centuries certain diseases have been attributed to supernatural causes such as the tuberculosis outbreak in late 19th Century New England was blamed on Vampirism.

As witnessed above, a wise person is molded by their genes, environment, experience and possibly disease as are all of us (one of the traditional means of a “calling” to shamanism is a medical crisis). Within a community we would be subjected to the same environmental influence. Each of us would have a different genetic makeup, and each of us would have similar but different individual experiences. However, what has not been considered is each individual’s soul and its level of evolution. Of course for this to be a consideration as a viable addition, reincarnation would have to be ones belief.

It stands to reason that a wise person for his/her community could be considered one or more of the following: philosopher, mystic, visionary, healer. Any of these abilities witnessed by deeds would identify a person as a wise one. At this point we could identify the wise one as a shaman whereas a shaman, in a general sense, would be at the very least a healer. A wise one or shaman would have a culturally influenced genetic and environmental makeup with unique and intrinsic personal experiences. These aspects cannot be replicated by participating in a workshop/seminar on neo-shamanism.

This leads us to the fact that the term shaman and shamanism cannot be broadly painted in the same tones across different cultures—as the neo-shamans would want you to believe. Shamanism is not and has never been an organized religion with dogma and doctrine. But this is exactly what the neo-shamanism movement has attempted to do by establishing a cross-cultural doctrine of cosmology consisting of an upper, middle and lower world and assessing these worlds through the sole method of drumming. This cosmology and the process to reach this trinity of worlds would seem strange and foreign to Vince Stogan and other elder shamans such as Zinacantec shaman Anselmo Perez. He journeys in his dreams to the meeting place of the Ancestors to learn the powers of the shaman such as the prayers that are needed to be recited when curing his patients. “The Ancestors represent the first people who learned how to plant corn, praise their creator, and live as proper human beings… they are not anyone’s direct ancestors but supernatural beings who guard the entire community.”[iii] Are these supernatural unseen beings in an upper or lower world? No, they reside in the nearby mountains. In other words the unseen otherworld blends with our world; and in their specific case—in the mountains.

I’ve participated in ceremony with Anselmo. There was no drum beating or lying down with a cloth over our eyes—just prayers, incense, candles and sharing many liters of posh (alcohol). To a certain extent, posh represents our struggles of life. It “is considered a powerful healing substance and also a cause of sickness for the hangovers are unbearable. Everyone who drinks offers the spirit of all that is joyous and terrible in life.”[iv] In my case, I was not inebriated and without any hangover the next day; in fact during the ceremony, there was no real effect on my usual state of nondualistic consciousness.

One of the key factors of a shaman’s proficiency is his or her level of sensitivity, to be open and aware of the intertwining forces of the otherworld and the earth, and the ability to access both knowledge and wisdom. At any time, a person with this level of ability may access the otherworld without outside stimulus. The reason why this is possible? Radical nondualism is their reality. Shamans experience life as being simultaneously ordinary (rational) and non-ordinary (non-rational). This is a consciousness of radical nonduality that is the fundamental principle and foundation of perennial philosophy.[v]

Altered State Consciousness Is One of Radical Nonduality

The true and narrow path to becoming a “wise person” – a person of power—whether that person is called shaman, druid, wizard, goði or mystic—is difficult and takes years to achieve. But do not equate the tools with the state of being.

It is also important to know that there are no bad or evil spirits that we need to protect ourselves from their potential harm. Protection is physical and/or mental separation, which only influences and promotes the continuance of a dualistic consciousness. Energy is energy; however, there are unseen energetic forms that may attach themselves to our bodies, which may cause physical symptoms and problems that traditional medicine is not able to diagnose or heal. These vibrational energies are, in most cases, not compatible or in harmony with our vibrational bodies and minds.

As a final note, our shamanic heritages are important and their knowledge and purity needs to be respected and maintained. Each heritage is unique and intrinsic to its own culture and cosmology. There cannot be “a one size fits all” mentality.

[i] Melissa Healy, The Seattle Times, Sunday, June 23, 2013, A7.

[ii] Herbert Gintis, “Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality,” February 14, 2011, (http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1566/878)

[iii] Walter F. Morris, Jr., Living Maya, 153.

[iv] Ibid, 160.

[v] I have traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of the world, seeking wisdom and the myth, magic, and lore of elders and indigenous people. I have sacrificed self to self. My experience of listening, looking, and learning flowed from indigenous elders, healers, and shamans from all over the world. It also comes from my interactions with the young and old of other races and cultures, and emanates deeply from my own soul wisdom. This knowledge is what I refer to as “first knowledge.” It is knowledge that is woven throughout and found in all the first people’s spiritual/religious traditions on this earth. This first knowledge has been referred to as primordial knowledge or the Primordial Tradition (perennial philosophy). As such, it portrays universal themes, principles, and truths. In other words, “the term Primordial Tradition is utilized to describe a system of spiritual thought and metaphysical truths that overarches all the other religions and esoteric traditions of humanity.” (http://www.primordialtraditions.net/.) Furthermore, “the perennial philosophy proposes that reality, in the ultimate sense, is One, Whole, and undivided—the omnipresent source of all knowledge and power. We do not perceive this reality because the field of human cognition is restricted by the senses. But the perennial philosophy claims that these limitations can be transcended.” (G. Philippe Menos and Karen A. Jones Menos, 14^th Annual Conference of the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research: “Revelation and Inspiration: Paranormal Phenomena in Light of the Kundalini Paradigm,” May 21–23, 1989, 3.)