The Call is Coming From Inside the House
With a deep reverence for those who have practiced shamanism in its many forms throughout history, post-tribal shamanism, which is my practice, is in service to the needs of a porous, decentralized community. What that means is that these practices, offerings are rising to meet the challenges of the 21st century, its ever rapid social and technological evolution, its communities without borders, in ways our ancestors never dreamed possible. The teachings and healing modalities have an in-built openness to people of all backgrounds, respecting ancestral, spiritual, identity, geographical, historical points that make this melting pot we are so beautifully diverse. When studying for my degree in anthropology I developed a deep appreciation for cultural integrity. I’m here doing my very best to be mindful of the line between what is a human experience and belongs to the people from which it arose. Here I will offer a transtemporal view of what it has meant to be a shaman to how that informs the call today.
Shamanism has it’s deepest traceable roots in northwest Asia, arising after the thawing of the last ice age - 10,000 years ago or so, making it one of the world’s oldest specialized professions. I believe it’s much older than that but archaeological evidence is hard to pair with non material intent. It spread across the world from there, with some variation on every continent. The word shaman, which had its beginnings in the Tungisic language of the Evenki people, has evolved to an all encompassing term for those with similar practices. While there is great diversity between the animistic cultures that have had practicing shamans and amongst shamans themselves, there are core traits that help identify it as such. The Call to be a shaman is just that - a Calling from the Spirits for the person to work on their behalf. In traditional cultures, this is a phenomena that is recognized by the inhabitants, especially the shaman of the group, and will when it is appropriate either enter into an extensive training stage or make appeals for the Spirits to choose someone else.
Today in Western culture, the Call often looks like some sort of illness that cannot be cured by physical intervention. Symptoms could look like injury without a resolution or mental illness - but we really must be careful about this - diagnoses do not make a shaman nor would a severely impaired person be able to execute the function of the shaman in the community. The typical trajectory is the overcoming of illness as part of the becoming. This varies widely through place and history, but contemporarily, this often looks like a person who has endured big or little T trauma(s), who is then put in a situation to reassess their life in big and meaningful ways. The Call to Spirit here lacks context, with formal religions, the structures in the milieu speaking of soul, often mucking up the waters with feelings of discontent in the mild with the worst looking like rigidity, harmful practices, politics and bad science. But I digress.
Well aware that I am writing in generalizations here and that every shaman has a unique and probably a very-interesting-to-say-the-least story; I am aiming for an overarching narrative when I offer this outline. The call though, consciously or not, often leads those to fringe communities, to learn with those that may provide such a container to unpack what the hell the Work and experience even is. I personally found my mentor Kenn Day at Convocation, a Pagan convention in the Detroit area, quite by “coincidence”. I had just made it to the other side of a rather ugly Ordeal and was looking to put my life back together. I had friends at the time who were interested in and going to sign up for his workshop series, and I thought, what the heck. They backed out, then so did I - only to cancel my cancel and show up for I had no idea what. By Jove, did I learn the what. We’ve been working together ever since, and I cannot emphasize strongly enough how deeply impactful this work has been, which is a huge part of my Call to carry this torch forward. I’ll get into the details of the Ordeal at another time, but for the curious, I met my opening with Dionysos.
What makes a shaman different from most of those in the healing arts is the capacity to enter into intentional altered states of consciousness to read and receive information, enter into the spirit realm at will, work with appropriate spirits, all with the client or group seeking to reach an integrated and healthier self. The development of discernment is paramount to the practitioner, these weird waters of soul and spirit can so easily be subject to misinterpretation by their very nature. Discernment starts with two feet in the real world, a roundedness in ethics and a personal lifestyle that models the healthy practices that the shaman wishes to cultivate in others. When one is near their healthiest version of self one has the greatest capacity to meet this human enterprise with the depth, breadth and agility necessary to hold people in their hard places.
In the teachings of post-tribal shamanism, the altered states I mentioned above are honed through regular meditation practices, and not a result of plant or chemical medicine. I take no issue with those that do and explore such things, that’s just not a part of my primary spirit’s course catalogue. I find it important to the set of ethics we operate from to remain grounded and able to come in and out of those states at will. It is a much longer road this way, but rather rewarding when through the difficulty of making the practice the unshakable habit. Here too is cultivated the wind-horse necessary to execute the work of the shaman without depleting ourselves in the process, an important demonstration toward health and self care.
In my time learning the healing arts of the shaman, I can say that most that come forward to do work in this area are not called themselves to be shamans. The majority of teachings I have received were in group workshop weekends put on by Kenn so I’ll speak to that context. People come together from all over, locally and nationally to participate in these weekends. One or two folks might only pop in for one or the other but most stick around to form this community that transcends our geography, ancestral and philosophical backgrounds. With the aid of Grandfather’s teachings we learn, we hold, we grow, we buck, we rebel, we struggle, get it, don’t get it, feel, share, we learn with direction the strange language of soul and spirit and share those experiences with others. We are guided to our most tender parts of self where they can be met with what’s necessary, most often love and compassion, to make movement in their stuckness. In these struggles, in this container, we are able to hold our woundedness with safety and care, toward healing those things that hold our gaze in the rear view mirror rather than noticing the car we’re in let alone the road before us.
Whether you’re called to do the work or become the Work itself, there are people out here that want to do that with you. Whether you ache for a sense of wholeness, struggle with addictive habits, want to get to know your roots with great depth, hold uncertainty around belonging, need someone to witness your hardships, desire skills to have great relationships, struggle with purpose and meaning-making, or whatever comes to mind or heart while reading through this - there is a space for you, I want to guide you there. Community is medicine. Let’s chat.
Join me over on Substack to see more of my writings.
