|
I
As a teacher for The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, I meet many wonderful people who are longing to learn about shamanism. They want to know how to train to become a practitioner of shamanism and “how do I honor and respond to the feeling that I am being called?”
It’s a fascinating journey into the lands of the shamans. Since time immemorial shamans have been listening to the calling of the spirits, being initiated by them and bringing back healing and life-saving oracular information for others.
In indigenous cultures a man or woman may be called to the path of the shaman by the spirits themselves. This call may come through a dream or while in the wilderness, a vision. Sometimes, a serious illness may foreshadow the path toward shamanism. When the call is answered and the person begins training with an older shaman, the illness is often healed altogether.
In traditional cultures, the role of shaman may be an inherited one, with the power passing directly from one relative to another – mother to son, uncle to niece, and so on. Based on signs of their readiness for this profession, elder shamans may also select an apprentice to study with them.
In modern times, the spirits are finding creative ways to reach us and awaken us to our callings to the path with heart. Books like The Way of the Shaman fall into our hands, poems stir the deep soul memory of something larger that is missing from our lives. Even shamanic films on YouTube may carry us to the river beneath the river of our lives, reminding our souls of their greater purpose. (http://www.youtube.com/shamanicstudies)
Other “wake-up” calls may come to us involuntarily, tearing the fabric of daily life. Accidents, illness, loss, and misfortune can all have a spiritual dimension to them. The loss of a career, a serious illness, a near-death experience or the death of someone close may all serve as turning points for rethinking the purpose and meaning of our lives. Feelings of disconnection, disorientation and suffering often accompany the inner call to a spiritual path.
These emotionally challenging, sometimes life-threatening crises are similar to the calls that indigenous shamans receive. They may be the beginning of the initiatory process.
II
Shamanic initiation is a series of experiences that “calls, trains and prepares a person to become a shaman.”¹ The initial call from the helping spirits often involves a life crisis, such as near-death, accident or serious illness.
Initiation is an opportunity to connect with the inner life of the spirit, laying the groundwork for realizing and using the great gifts and unimaginable potential stored within.
There are three big stages in the initiatory process: suffering, death, and resurrection.² When looked at from the outside, you may think — why would anyone want to participate in this? But from the inside, initiation is often what we have been longing for — ecstatic connections with the power of the universe and the revelation of who we truly are.
Rather than tell you about a shaman’s initiation, I want to show you what this can look like.³
Imagine now a man or woman who has received a strong call from the spirits. She has been in training with local shamans and then the moment arrives when she must give herself over to the spirits. The drumming begins and she slips into an altered state of consciousness as she lies on the earth. She is drawn to the UpperWorld and ascends in a shamanic journey into the realm of the compassionate spirits.
She comes to two grinding millstones which she must somehow pass through. These stones spin round very fast. With the power of her spirit ally, she shrinks herself into a grain of sand and glides through them. She must go higher into the UpperWorld and comes to her next test. She must ascend a ladder of knives. Merging with the power of one of her animal allies, she climbs the ladder, unharmed.
She comes then to a land of golden monks who rush at her with platinum swords and completely dismember her. But her soul continues moving along in the shamanic journey until she comes to a land of sand and oasis. Here she meets seven old women who restore her to a new body.
She climbs the World Tree and reaches the crown where the Lord of the Tree examines her heart, her deepest intentions and readiness for walking this shaman’s path.
Being found worthy, she is then given a birch branch with which to make a drum and seven stones for divining answers. She is also given deer antler and a piece of hollow deer bone with which to shamanize. A tiny old woman shaman steps out of the Tree and places seven bronze mirrors onto the woman’s chest and back, slaps them, and they begin to vibrate and sing. The old woman tells her she must use this song to cure others.
She bows in gratitude to the Lord of the World Tree and the old shaman. Whistling and singing, filled with love for the spirits, she descends the Cosmic Tree, to her people who are waiting.
A new shaman is a great asset to the community, helping to solve problems, look into the future, heal illness, find lost objects and missing persons. She has tasted death and endured the tests of spiritual death. This spiritual transmutation has led the initiate into discovery of the sacredness of the cosmos. The shaman’s spiritual power has grown and she is ready to be of service to her clients and her community.
¹Tom Cowan, Pocket Guide to Shamanism, 1997.
²For further information, please see Mircea Eliade’s Rites and Symbols of Initiation, Spring Publications, 1994.
³For further information, please see Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press, 1964.
Beth Beurkens, M.A. is a shamanic practitioner and has been a teacher of shamanism for 17 years and a vision quest guide for 20 years. She has been a college instructor of religion and spirituality for 30 years and is a writing coach. Beth leads dynamic life-changing seminars on the West Coast and in Europe and has a shamanic healing practice in Mt Shasta and Europe. Beth has studied extensively with Michael Harner, Alicia Luengas Gates and Sandra Ingerman. She is an instructor at the College of the Siskiyous, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies and is a creative writing teacher.
(541) 708-0473
beth@shamanicuniverse.com |
