28/08/2023
Three forms of Shamanism...
There are three basic forms of shamanism that people in the West can come in contact with: Traditional Shamanism, Core Shamanism and New Age Shamanism.
Traditional Shamanism is shamanism from a country which has a culture and worldview that is animistic, and also has lineages of shamans who have been practicing there for hundreds, or thousands of years, passing on teachings, traditions and knowledge of the spirits.
These traditions are often passed via 'bone and blood', running in family lines, and the spirits the shamans work with are most often the ancestral spirits of former shamans, who come back and possess the current shamans - this is why all the shamans have the same spirits - and give them guidance.
It is almost impossible for Westerners to become fully initiated shamans in these lineages, because the Westerner was not brought up and ‘programmed’ in that animistic culture, and also because they are not ‘bone and blood’.
Westerners can however learn a great deal from traditional shamans in these cultures and apply these teachings - and sometimes the spirits - in their own practice to begin a new, embryonic shamanic lineage here in the West.
Core Shamanism is a purely Western practice, and in all honestly it can be thought of as ‘shamanism lite’ in many ways.
It is a meta model created by Michael Harner in the middle late C20th. Harner was an anthropologist who studied in Amazonia, and also read about shamanism found in other places, such as Northern Asia. At the time he formulated his ideas it was not possible for him to travel to these other places, as they were closed to Westerners due to the Cold War.
He distilled the essence of what he considered shamanism to be, stripping out all the important cultural aspects of tribal peoples from the lineages who practice Traditional Shamanism, and greatly simplifying it.
He considered it possible for anyone to learn some shamanistic techniques.
Core Shamanic Practitioners mostly have individual spirits, unique to them, and often these take the form of animal-shaped spirits, because that is what Harner put forward as something to be expected.... Traditional spirits rarely have animal-shaped spirits, but it's not unknown.
Core Shamanism is an excellent way for Westerners to approach shamanism. If the spirits want someone they may well use this to grab that person and lead them on to other things.
For most people however, Core Shamanism bears little resemblance to Traditional Shamanism, and very often seems to be a sort of self-help, self-hypnosis technique, which enables people to access creative parts of their subconscious - not spirits - which enables psychological self healing.
There is nothing wrong with this, indeed it can be highly beneficial, but it's a long way away from real shamanism.
Well-taught Core Shamanism is a good thing, whether people only go as deeply in as the psychological self-help level, or whether the spirits use it as a doorway to grab a person with real shamanic potential, and drag them - kicking and screaming - to deeper, more advanced adventures in some form of Traditional Shamanism.
I would also say some Core Shamanic Practitioners do excellent work, and what they do gets pretty close to Traditional shamanism without it being from a Traditional Shamanic lineage ...
I see these lovely people as the seed-bearers of possible future Western lineages of shamanism, which will develop in the future - may it be so.
New Age Shamanism is a fluffy, very light-weight form of practice, with some elements of Core Shamanism mixed with New Age ideas, and all sorts of other things.
Practitioners often have very strange perceptions about the spirits and the spirit world, which are totally at odds with both Traditional and Core Shamanism, and often have very little sense of grounded spirit dynamics and many of the practices they perform will make both Traditional and experienced Core practitioners shudder with horror and concern.
People who practice these methods often have little to no idea about Traditional Shamanism, and often have little idea about what shamanism actually is. This is because they have been not been informed about shamanism, but instead have been exposed to New Age ideas, which they have been erroneously told are 'shamanism'... the money hungry New Age Industry is to blame for this.
It can be hard for people with little experience to know the difference between New Age and Core Shamanism, as - on the surface - they can look similar. Indeed, often there is little hard edge difference between them, rather a sliding scale between good Core and bad New Age practices, with different teachers having different mixes of each.
That is why education about Shamanism from sources other than New Age Industry sources is so important. New Age sources are often not accurate and therefore perpetuate people’s misunderstanding about shamanism, and help foster the New Age Shamanic worldview.
But, if the spirits want someone they will open doors, and so, even someone exposed to the fluffiest form of New Age Shamanism might have doors opened for them, which once gone through - often with the spirits pushing a struggling person hard - will take them far deeper into some real practices.
Traditional Shamans are very often astonished that Westerners actually often ‘want’ to practice shamanism, because they know the reality of a life serving the spirits, and they know that - when ever possible - sensible people run like hell when the spirits come a knocking.
Nicholas Breeze Wood
