The Way of Shamanic Mediation

“Shamanism has been my life calling: it draws me into ever deeper relationship with the Gods and my Ancestors as well as the spirits existing everywhere around me in the land, plants, and animals. It is a path of interconnection and service which I find deeply fulfilling, and challenges me to learn and grow every day, which I love.”

– Susannah Ravenswing, Northern Tradition shaman.

Professor Cannon’s basic description of the Way of Shamanic Mediation is as follows:

Entry into altered states of consciousness in which persons become mediators or channels for the intervention of spiritual reality, in the expectation that “supernatural” (trans-mundane) resources of power, imagination, and guidance will be released for solving or otherwise dealing with intractable problems of life. Expressed through phenomena such as possession trance, oracular utterance, ecstatic vision, and/or spirit journeying, it seeks at-onement with “ultimate reality” (Cannon’s nondenomational term for God-or-what-have-you) in what is taken to be its readiness to bring about healing, well-being, and fulfillment for the world.

(Note: All direct quotes from Six Ways of Being Religious are in bold type.)

While I will not say, as some would, that modern European Paganism is (or is even a modern copy of) original European shamanic religion, more and more shamanic aspects have seeped their way into modern Paganism over the last few decades, sometimes from American Pagans who had spent time in Native American traditions or the New Age versions thereof. Shamanic magic differs from thaumaturgic magic (the use of one’s energy, directed by will and intent and sacred tools, to achieve a goal) or theurgic magic (the use of sacred symbols that have a powerful “groove” in the Universe which can be tapped into) in that it is magic that works directly with entities. These can range from spirits of earth, wind, water, fire, plants, animals, etc. to the beloved human dead to entities we refer to as Gods.

The shamanic world view is animistic, and can also be either polytheistic (more common) or pantheistic (less common but still occurring). The first spiritual goal for this world view is to see all things – people, spirits, Gods, all parts of nature, even inanimate objects – as living beings with whom one has a relationship, and to discern what the “right relationship” might be for you and each being in the Universe, one at a time. Being in “right relationship” with everything you interact with is a challenging goal, and one that can take a lifetime to master. Anyone can follow this part of the path and pursue this goal, even if they never actually perceive any spirits aside from those looking out of the eyes of human bodies. However, the second goal – the one which binds a person fully to this path – combines a gift for seeing or hearing the spirit world (sometimes passed down genetically through families, sometimes gained in a near-death experience or great trauma from which one recovers) with a strong calling to be of service, and utilize this gift for the good of all.

In modern Paganism, our most common umbrella term for people who follow this latter aspect of the Way of Shamanic Mediation is “spirit-worker”. This was coined in an effort to neither use any one cultural term (“shaman” is a Tungus/Nenets Siberian word, while “medicine person” reflects Native American terminology) nor to differentiate and thus pass judgment on people with varying levels of commitment and ability. It also emphasizes that the individual works with spirits to achieve an external goal, as a colleague or partner (if only a junior partner in the case of working with Gods) rather than simply praying to them or celebrating them. In some European shamanic traditions that are being reconstructed, the words “shaman” and “shamanic practitioner” are used to differentiate those who are permanently bound to their spirits and their job, and those who have a more part-time spiritual agreement.

(Note: For each of the Six Ways of Being Religious, Dale Cannon lists key ways that they can be performed skillfully or unskillfully. Thus, for each path, we will be exploring competence, incompetence and the shadow side of competence; the balance of finitude and infinitude; and the balance of selflessness and egoism.)

Competence

Mastery of the spirit realm; mastery of one’s self vis-à-vis the spirit realm; discernment of spirits (distinguishing good from evil spirits); highly developed imagination; direct, sustained acquaintance with the spirit realm and not just secondhand knowledge that has been acquired by others; acquired charisma that evokes and keeps other persons’ trust; developed trust in the processes of shamanic mediation.

The modern Pagan way of viewing spirit-work is more the second than the first part of this list. Our general consensus is that you don’t master spirits – especially the ones that are far larger, older, and wiser than you – you master yourself and your relationship to them, which requires a great deal of self-awareness and internal understanding. Having a commitment to this process is crucial; to be a spirit-worker in service to the Universe is to be a tool of the Gods, and the less baggage and self-delusion you have, the sharper and sturdier a tool you will be.

Imagination is useful in finding ways to express your spirit-involvement, and especially spirit-involvement in others’ cases, in ways that they will understand on a deeper level. This is why spirit-workers the world over employ storytelling as a tool. For some, the spiritual journey itself is narrated as it is happening; others tell the stories afterwards. However, this is putting the imagination in the service of truthful communication, rather than using it to stretch the truth for one’s own ends. It’s also why charisma – which can be as simple as sincerity and confidence in one’s presentation – is important. Good spirit-workers can find ways to draw others into the story of the Otherworlds, which may be as close as the audience will ever get.

This is a path that you can’t learn well from books; there’s a reason why, in indigenous societies, it was passed from teacher to student. That’s because part of shamanic mediation includes being formally introduced to Gods and spirits – not that They can’t make Their own introductions, but it’s often easier with another human being to introduce you. It’s also important to have a teacher who can discern – and help you learn to discern – whether the voice you’re talking to is an external entity or your own internal voice, and if so what sort of entity it might be. It is crucial to have repeated experience with multiple Gods and spirits in order to develop a holistic knowledge and skill on a path that may require a certain amount of risk-taking and thinking on one’s feet. It is also difficult to trust your divine help and spirit allies until you’ve had a number of firsthand experiences around how they will and will not help you.Each of these Six Ways utilizes a particular human attribute or activity as its main tool, and that tool with be reshaped and purified by contact with the Divine – the heart for the Way of Devotion, the intellect for the Way of Reasoned Inquiry, the intuition for the Way of Sacred Rite, etc. For this path, it is what most people refer to as the “psychic abilities”, most specifically the ability to hear, see, or sense in some way the spirit world, and the ability to channel larger and heavier amounts of psychic energy through the body. The process of stretching and purifying these abilities – technologically metaphorized by some spirit-workers as “replacing the 110 electrical system with a 220-volt system” – is not only painful, it is historically considered to be life-risking. Examination of many (although not all) indigenous cultural teachings around the phenomenon of spirit-workers shows an acceptance of the idea that there is a definite attrition rate. Anthropologists and ethnographers have amassed a fair amount of evidence that links spirit-work to near-death experiences, intractable illnesses, and/or temporary insanity nearly to the point of suicide. Modern spirit-workers will also tell tales of recurring psychic pain that reverberates through both the physical and the energetic bodies, as the Gods and/or spirits reshape the energetic body and psychic “wiring” yet again. Trans-cultural “shaman sickness” is so well documented, albeit by scholars who may not have understood anything about what they were documenting, that it is foolish to pretend that it does not exist.

Incompetence

Lack of basic sustained experience with the spirit world; lack of spiritual discernment, uncognizance of danger, recklessness, foolhardiness, flirting with danger in relation to the spirit world; overconfidence in one’s mastery of the spirit world and of one’s self; distrust and skepticism toward the spirit world and the processes of shamanic mediation.

While shamanism employs an array of spiritual technologies – altered states, energy-moving practices, visualization, sacred songs and chants, spellcraft, divination, etc. – the core and center of the Way of Shamanic Mediation is not any of these practices. It is the relationship with spirits, entities that are real and external to the practitioner and have their own agendas, which may differ from that of human needs and desires. Spirit-workers from traditional cultures would find the modern Western idea of “if it’s real for you, it’s real enough” when applied to entities experienced in shamanic altered states to be untrue, appalling, and dangerous. In traditional shamanic practices, a great deal of emphasis is placed on learning to discern the difference between real external Gods and spirits and one’s own imaginings and mental sock puppets. It is assumed that the lack of this discernment opens one to the influence of negative external entities, and/or sinks one into delusion from one’s own mind, risking sanity.

Shadow Side of Competence

(Note: This is not the same as incompetence, which is listed above. It is when a person who is otherwise competent in their chosen path becomes blinded to any other options than that path, not only for themselves but for anyone else in the world.)

Ready to treat all problems as solvable through shamanic mediation; spiritual impulsiveness and lack of structure.

As a diviner and spirit-worker of many decades, I can tell you that one of the hardest moments in this path is when you’re faced with someone who has asked for help, and you are being told that it’s not your job to help them. Perhaps it would mean more to them if they figured out the problem themselves than if it came out of your mouth, and your divination is being blocked by the Holy Powers. Perhaps the job is above your pay grade to manage. Perhaps you are just a step on the path to the person (or method) that could actually help their particular situation better than you and your methods. Perhaps the time isn’t right, and they need to stew in the problem a little longer, and something else will come along when the stars line up for it. The important thing is to be humble about it, and not take it personally if you aren’t the person whose array of skills and spirit-alliances can fix things. By definition, spirit-workers with a strong calling to be of service want to fix things, and one of the lessons necessary to internalize is that it isn’t always our job, or all about us and our mission, and we need to accept that gracefully and go on to the next situation with no anger, resentment, or self-denigration.

Balance of Finitude and Infinitude

(Note: These words are Professor Cannon’s chosen terminology for the balance of the practical details with the numinous energy we are opening to experience.)

Awesome sense of the mysteries of the spirit world coupled with deep appreciation for the fragile beauty of the mundane world; openness to and trust in the deep imagination but not indiscriminate trust; composure and confidence with respect to spiritual powers (though not overconfident) coupled with appreciation of the arts and crafts of mundane practice (e.g. mundane healing arts); knowledge of one’s own limitations coupled with a sense of a shaman’s high calling.

The first item on this list is heart-breakingly important. The world of the Spirit is amazing and beautiful and dangerous and seductive. However, the whole point of the Way of Shamanic Mediation is to serve the Gods through serving humanity, and humanity is just as much a part of the fragile beauty of the mundane world as Nature and Her mysteries. Spirit-workers came into being because the Gods and spirits wanted to help humans, so this path exists for this purpose. However, walkers on this path may be more keenly touched than others by the damage to the natural world by humans, and it may be even more difficult to accept the annoyances of humanity after staring at a polluted stream. Still, if one was placed on this path, one needs to be part of the solution.

It’s a careful balance – how do we love Nature, love the Gods and spirits, and love serving humanity equally? How do we teach right relationship with the Earth in a way that modern people will hear and respond to? How do we discern what’s real without mentally sabotaging ourselves with second-guessing? How do we trust what our guides tell us without being too sure that we’ve got the whole message and there’s nothing left to add or reinterpret? How do we balance a love of ancient methods with modern science – “Just because I’m giving you a spirit-charged herbal remedy does not mean you should immediately go off your medication!” – without risking too much or too little? How do we keep learning and honing skills in the face of a keen knowledge of how small and insignificant we and our efforts are in the face of the All that Is?

“The joys and pitfalls of the Path of Shamanic Meditation are two faces of one coin for me, the coin of relationships.  Consciously building alliances with spirits, fostering friendships within my community, and developing new connections, these advantages are why I keep coming back for more.  Exploring these relationships can be intoxicating, the rush of excitement of exploration can override other areas of focus. At times it has been tempting to forgo human interaction in pursuit of the relationships with spirits. At other times I have pursued external relationships, to the detriment of the relationship with myself.  I counter these tendencies by cultivating a strong, balanced relationship with myself, which in turn deepens my practice, and allows me to experience connections beyond my wildest dreams.”

– Hanna, Michigan Northern Tradition shaman.

Imbalance: Loss of Finitude

(Loss of a realistic understanding of the practical details of the path.)

Inordinate preoccupation with the spirit world and shamanic mediation in a way that eclipses mundane concerns and appreciation of mundane practice (e.g. mundane healing arts and technology) and ordinary common sense; indiscriminate trust in supernatural powers and spirit guidance (occultism).

  “Shamanism demands an unflinching willingness to look deep into oneself and to take responsibility for one’s own wellness, baggage, agendas and shortcomings. Because it deals with perceptions and experiences outside those of the Common Reality, Shamanism can be profoundly challenging. It is said that the line between the gifted Shaman and the Madman is a knife’s edge. For this reason, I strongly recommend that anyone pursuing this path do the hard work on their own psyche and be prepared to find professional help and counseling as needed.”

– Susannah Ravenswing, Northern Tradition shaman.

We’ve all seen the stereotype of the person who informs us that their Gods and spirits have instructed them to do some crazy and potentially dangerous or self-destructive things, and they blindly follow them off into the woods. (I had a mentally ill client once who was convinced that the spirits wanted him to burn his face off. Fortunately we managed to convince him otherwise.) It’s generally accepted practice to get outside divinations – possibly second and third and fourth opinions – for high-risk “orders” and “messages”. Trust, but verify – on this path we actually do have the technology to do that, by definition.

“One problem with this path, from an outsider’s perspective, is that sometimes the Gods and/or spirits actually do ask us to do some stuff that looks pretty crazy. They’ve asked me to do things that ten years earlier I’d have thought were nuts. What do you mean, get sex reassignment? What do you mean, ask that person out, that person who isn’t the kind of person that the kind of person I thought I was would ever deign to date? What do you mean, drop everything and move to that city? What do you mean, get training from that hippy-dippy teacher? What do you mean, travel around the world to find my ancestors’ graves? And yet over and over again it turns out to be the right thing. How do we look at our own resumé of socially unacceptable activities and then explain why that person’s “messages” to do crazy stuff are out of their own head, or misinterpreted? It looks awfully hypocritical from an outsider perspective.”

– Conor, Celtic shamanic practitioner.

Imbalance: Loss of Infinitude

(Loss of a real connection to the Divine/Universe/All That Is, however you see that.)

Charlatanism and fakery; spiritual adventurism and “power tripping”; shamanic dilettantism; preoccupation with the outer forms and rituals of shamanism with no genuine involvement or personal transformation; loss (or lack) of the sense of awesome mystery of the spirit realm.

“We’ve all met fakers, or we’ve heard their bad reviews. I’ve also met people who started out with a real connection, and then lost it due to some reason, and instead of taking a break, they kept on going and had to fake it in order to get through. (I’ve also met people who started out fakers, and somewhere in the middle of it all, the spirits reached through and got them anyway! And they completely revised their lives and got serious.) I think part of the problem is that spirit-worker types are the most likely of Pagans to make their living from their spiritual practices, and as this path can make you a little socially weird, there’s a lot of pressure between being spiritually sincere and being able to pay the rent. Some native shamans and medicine people have admitted in interviews that sometimes the Spirit doesn’t come and they don’t want to disappoint the people who are supporting them, so they make something up. Being honest can sometimes mean that you don’t eat that week.”

– Solana Pattrell, Wiccan.

The majority of Modern Pagans like to feel that they are independent people who don’t let their religion tell them what to do. Many of these are converts who felt unnecessarily restrained by their religions of upbringing, and they are also skeptical of anyone who tells them, “It’s time to believe now.” Many of the practices of modern Paganism, such as divination or healing ceremony, have been used by individuals on the edges (or entirely outside) of our demographic to exploit the gullible for money, and most of us are aware that we are often confused with those people. This makes Pagans, as a general group, more skeptical of any “supernatural” phenomena, even while we struggle for belief in something. At the same time, many people have been taken in by those who exploit some form of our practices to gain power over others. Since there’s a general wariness around paying our clergy anyway, when we hear horror stories about clergy who exploited their members, it’s more often around sex and/or power over people’s decision-making.

Selflessness

(Note: This is not suggesting we should always be selfless, but that there will be times on each path when we need to give of ourselves freely and generously.)

Sincerity of commitment to spiritual guidance, healing, and empowerment for the sake of the greater good of the person, the group, and the larger living community (e.g. commitment to using spiritual power for good); radical honesty and sincerity; freedom from duplicitous motivation; open commitment to spiritual growth and transformation; always treating other persons as spiritual ends in themselves, never mere means.

Like every other path discussed here, this path will change and transform the spirit-worker over time. Some of that is just from rubbing up against the presence of Holy Powers; some of it is direct interference by those Holy Powers to make the spirit-worker into a better all-round tool for the job, which may require energetic and psychological restructuring over time. That’s not a pleasant process sometimes; none of us enjoy having our wounds lanced and re-healed. However, being open to the process of transforming into one’s higher potential is part of the job. It’s a saying among some spirit-workers that you start out on this path, and about a year in your whole life falls apart, and it’s because everything that washed away is something you need to let go of, or do psychological excavation around. As we become honed into better tools to help the world, we learn that we can be honest and straightforward in the face of disapproval, and that the people we help are the point of our calling, not a distraction from it.

Egoism

So-called “black magic” or “black sorcery”, where supernatural and occult forces, or the appearance thereof, are employed to promote egoistic motives, material advantage, or the detriment of some person in the group.

We’ve all heard tales of spirit-workers who used their powers for harmful purposes – they star in folktales around the world, and are responsible for a fair deal of the general cultural mistrust of the entire concept of spirit-work. Since spirit-workers are human, like everyone else, and since our path is centered around using our spiritual disciplines as a tool to create change in people’s lives, we are constantly presented with the challenge of facing our own motivations for any given action. It’s very seductive for a spirit-worker to rationalize vengeful, manipulative, or ego-protective actions under a guise of helpfulness, especially if the action would be helpful in some way … if it were done cleanly. However, working with the spirit world usually means that actions done with unpleasant ulterior motives tucked in along with the urge to be of service tend to go wrong somehow, or have later consequences that wreak unintended havoc. The spirit-worker’s challenge is to scrutinize each action for unclean motivations, and refrain until they can be separated out and spiritually neutralized. Fortunately, one of the benefits of spirit allies – be they Gods or just the birch trees and the river in the back yard – is that they can also be a great support in the sincere pursuit of self-cleansing and self-transformation.

“I want to help people and make things better for them in the world, which is probably at least part of why Mannanan chose me to do this work to begin with. (That, and the fact that I’ve had psychic gifts even as a child.) But it was very hard, the first few years, to know when a job wasn’t mine to fix, or perhaps was mine to diagnose and then step away, even in the face of frightened, crying people. I did a lot of jumping in where I couldn’t really help (and sometimes made it worse) or where it was more than I was currently trained to handle. I see that a lot in helping professionals in general, not just shamanic types. It’s also hard to resist ego when people start treating you like a wise old whatever when you’re only three years into this and haven’t got the experience to be any kind of elder.”


– Conor, Celtic shamanic practitioner

Resources for the Way of Shamanic Mediation