Ask any passer-by on any street to spell out shamanism along with the result might be blank stares. So many people are surprised to find out that shamanism is very little religion though the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. Even more surprising is the discovery that it is the precursor to most major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which continues to be practised on every inhabited continent in the world for around 40,000 years and possibly quite definitely longer. Historically, shamanism would have been a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs around the world with carved and painted images drawn directly from shamanic experience. We not live in caves or perhaps tiny communities whose members are typical proven to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that section of us able to fearing the dark and getting the aid of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 25 % of an million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people that much easier works today because, even though world could have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.

Ask such a shaman is and the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or maybe the word ‘witchdoctor’. In fact, that of a shaman is and does is simply explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the saying, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and is the term for someone capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered condition of consciousness in order to meet and assist spirit helpers. Just what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, within this experience with meeting spirits is that there is no separation between any situation 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 and also the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This concept of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists utilizing sub atomic theory, though of course it is a predominantly physical, rather than a spiritual, oneness that such scientists are trying to describe. However, where most of us could only look at the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.

Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins since the shaman redirects the key cognitive process from your left cerebral hemisphere in the brain off to the right, through the corpus collosum – which is, through the structuring, organising hemisphere, for the visualising, sensing one. Inside the overwhelming tastes traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will probably be assisted through percussive sound, for example drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the West as a way to help alter consciousness, in fact just about 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, your journey begins if the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the present and enters worlds visible and then her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition worldwide, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the realm of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker relating to the worlds’ since they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.

Although often considered primitive or seen as an ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, Psychedelics is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they may be qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and offer the reason for the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information from the spirits. Contemporary research within the cognitive sciences points too a person’s mental abilities are hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly an important part of human perception.

Not surprisingly, one of several questions most frequently asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided contemplating spirituality for many generations we lack an obvious, objective comprehension of specific things like spirits. Today it is 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 of the concept of spirit even though the 2 coincide, they may not be the identical but they work for me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my very own practice and teaching, describes spirits in everything exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body in order to use a human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and thus offer an existential overview unavailable in my experience, but we’re essentially the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. Most of us originate from this energy, exist there and resume it. It is actually living this angle allowing a shaman to have the absence of separation between issues that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, like life and death or health insurance disease.

My second knowledge of spirit is a bit more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in their autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his personal experience of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the key insight there are things in the psyche i tend not to produce, but which produce themselves and also have their very own life. Philemon represented a force which has been not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of precisely how it could feel to get with spirit during a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the operation of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
For more details about San Pedro cactus go to our new web portal: visit site