WELCOME!

This is an ongoing US and global project to help enthusiasts, scholars, practitioners, and curious parties learn more about shamanic living in a contemporary culture. The space here is devoted to sharing info, experiences and opinions about all forms of shamanic expression covering shamanism's multiple permutations. Among subjects explored are traditions, techniques, insights, definitions, events, artists, authors, and creativity. You are invited to draw from your own experiences and contribute.

What is a SHAMAN?

MAYAN: "a technichian of the Holy, a lover of the Sacred." CELTIC: "Empower the people...by changing the way we think." MEXICAN APACHE: "Someone who has simply learned to give freely of themselves..." AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL: "...a teacher or healer, a wisdom keeper of knowledge... (who) takes people to a door and encourages them to enter." W. AFRICAN DIAGRA: "views every event in life within a spiritual context." HAWAIIAN: "...human bridges to the spiritual world and its laws and the material world and its trials..." QUECHUA INDIAN: "embodies all experience." AMAZON: "...willing to engage the forces of the Universe...in a beneficial end for self, people, and for life in general."


-- from Travelers, Magicians and Shamans (Danny Paradise)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

12,000-Year-Old Shaman Unearthed in Israel

Interesting article!

12,000-Year-Old Shaman Unearthed in Israel

Print By ISHAAN THAROOR Ishaan Tharoor – Tue Nov 11, 5:50 am ETA

A new figure in humanity's history emerged last week when archaeologists announced the discovery of what could be one of the world's oldest known spiritual figures. After years of meticulous excavation just miles from Israel's Mediterranean coast, scientists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem unearthed a 12,000-year-old grave that held the remains of a diminutive "shaman" woman. Buried alongside the woman's small, huddled corpse were selected pieces of animal bone, a cowtail, an eagle wing, the foot of another human, and, most curiously, some fifty tortoise shells deliberately arranged around the woman's body - all tell-tale signs, experts say, of her lofty social status at the time. "This is something very special; it stands apart," says Leore Grosman, the project's lead archaeologist.


How mankind emerged from Paleolithic prehistory into a world of alphabets and cities is still a story riddled with questions. Even the first settled agriculturalist communities from which our records begin seem far removed from the cave-dwelling, fur-clad hunter-gatherers whom we imagine to be mankind's ancestors. The discovery of a shaman this ancient offers a startling glimpse into this little-known past, a portrait of prehistoric ritual belief and of clear lines of social hierarchy taking shape.


The grave is thought to belong to the Natufian culture, a nomadic society which existed along the eastern Mediterranean roughly between 11,500 and 15,000 years ago. Located near other burial sites, the woman's body was distinctly encased in a limestone enclosure, a tomb sealed by a rock slab that Grosman's team managed to lift in 2006. The following two years were spent painstakingly analyzing the remains found within. Pieces of jewelry, ornamental seashells, or the odd tool have been found in other Natufian graves, but the careful arrangement of the woman's body - her back rested against a wall, legs spread and bent inward from the knee - as well as the surrounding ring of tortoise shells piqued the archaeologists' interest. "This kind of assemblage is different from everything you find elsewhere," says Ofer Bar-Yosef, a Harvard anthropologist who has worked on previous Natufian excavations. "It's the sign of a sort of elite emerging among hunter-gatherers."


Shamans are mystics whose common function in traditional cultures was that of a healer. Analysis of the woman's remains date her as being 45-years-old, a significant age at a time when life was nasty, brutish and short. She was under five feet tall and deformities in her spinal and pelvic bones give the impression that she may have walked with a limp, or dragged her feet. The presence of the hollowed-out tortoise shells, combined with intact bone pieces of leopards and other creatures - the complete forearm of a wild boar, for example, was placed under the woman's own arm - suggest that those living around her believed she had some sort of animist power.


The common narrative of mankind's development generally starts with humans planting crops and settling down in one place to reap what they sow, founding villages that would form the building blocks of human civilization. But further study of the Natufian culture and other parallel societies, such as those living by China's Yellow River, is complicating that belief. Agriculture was not established in the Levant when the Natufians lived there, but they still erected rudimentary structures to inhabit. Traces in the soil of the remains of mice and sparrows - animals that exist most commonly in places of human settlement - point to a significant population boom in the Natufian period. They may not have had seasonal harvests, but the people of this time lived in a complex and perhaps even flourishing society. "What we see [with the Natufian burial rites] is the beginning of a tribal system," says Bar-Yosef. The shaman, buried with her mysteries, looms mercurially over this moment.


Grosman speculates that the elaborate ritual behind the shaman's burial probably helped bind people together at a time of great social transformation. The Natufian culture, she says, was "transitional," moving from the era of the nomadic life of hunter-gatherers into a more stable, sedentary mode. Their descendants were likely the inhabitants of West Asia's great kingdoms of antiquity. Somewhere beneath our vision of sceptered monarchs in their pillared palaces, it can be surmised, rests a hobbled woman upon a bed of tortoise shells.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081111/wl_time/12000yearoldshamanunearthedinisrael

Monday, November 10, 2008

Shape Shifting Steps

Being present can be a problem. A mind tends to drift to the future or the past instead of right where it is. It creates distractions to draw attention away from what are perceived as aspects of reality that are too harsh to navigate. So it can resort to generating pain as the ultimate distraction, and before too long the mind becomes a drive-by-shooting operation in its relationship to the body--creating harm for it's own protection's sake. For some, distraction can turn to addiction and then everything is engulfed in ocean and mist. When addiction turns to depression then comes the mind alteration with synthetics. I'm not knocking the need for chemical balancing acts, but there is something underlying it all that needs revisiting and correcting. Shapeshifting is the Shaman's way of communicating with the missing spirit that has long been ignored or drowned out by the distractions. I believe it can help with staying present.

Here is a good series of steps by Evan Aleister Rainer that to me would seem to help effect better shapeshifting.

1. Become aware of what has just happened, namely a shift of consciousness into the edges of a chamber or parallel world just adjacent to the one that we habitually all crawl about in.
2. Drop all pretensions of being a conscious, important, capable, multi-skilled, superbly adapted being and realize that you stand on the edge of an action of being and creative power such as you have no concept of and which certainly has no concept of or concern of you.
3.With your new-found humility, which is the only possible survival-kit for the beginning Shaman, try to focus your attention on what is around you, both within and without. That means, what remains of your physically oriented senses and what you are perceiving with your inner senses at the same time.
4. Try to locate yourself in this space and do not, repeat, do not, try to LEAVE THE SPACE, under any circumstances, especially if someone is asking you to politely respond to some incredibly important question such as `Would you like more honey in that tea, dear'? Get the message? Good, because if you don't you will have crash-landed on your take-off. Not a joke.
5.Keep a sense of humour about all this, even though there is nothing to laugh at.
6.If you keep attention directed on to the inner and outer incidents, without responding to them in any normal or usual way, you will have started to grasp the difference between a Shaman and a mortal. And, even better, you will merge back into your normal consciousness with a gentle sliding sort of motion that you will only notice after you have completed it.
7.Remember that the basis of all genuine spirituality is the experience you are having, and endeavor to defend the experience from the primate; your own and others.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Tuvan Shamans

Here is a link to a short national geographic video about the Tuvan Shamans.

Tuva is a Russian republic that was an independent state until the 1940s, with two official spiritual practices: Buddhism and Shamanism. The report suggests that the government wants to attract people from other countries to preserve the area's shamanic healing traditions. I wonder what kind of incentives they're offering? :)

Below is some info about Tuva and its shamans found at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies website. The full article can be read here:

Shamans and Spirits

A significant part of Tuvan respect for nature is expressed through shamanic traditions. All of nature is considered sacred, the fabric of their world view being woven in the sacred thread of their myths. Here, features of the landscape and the creatures inhabiting it are settings and characters in great stories that describe and explain the world. Principal places and characters of this mythic and natural world are Tuva's nine sacred springs, nine sacred mountains, and nine sacred celestial objects; the Sun, Moon and seven stars of the "Great Bear" (the Big Dipper). There are dragons in the sky, sirens who inhabit the steppe, and a sacred flower that has the power to hold strangers together in marriage. Each place in nature has its special spiritual inhabitants. This spiritual aspect of nature is equally as important to Tuvans as are physical attributes. It requires attention from people who are sensitive to, and trained in, relating to this side of nature. These people are the shamans.

The shamans of pre-Soviet Tuva were healers, diviners, and conductors of ritual necessary for Tuvan life. Both men and women became shamans after they were visited with the "shaman's sickness." Often, a shaman interpreted this as invasion by the spirit of a dead shaman. This invading Being, wanted the living person to become a shaman. The onset of this illness was commonly early in life, but also occurred in people more than 40 years of age. If the person ignored the calling, continued sickness or even death occurred. The illness frequently manifested itself as fainting spells, memory loss, or convulsions. Heeding the call resulted in a complete remission of symptoms.

The shamanic vocation often had an hereditary aspect in Tuva, as in much of the rest of Siberia. Relatives watched children carefully for the appearance of characteristics that signaled a new shaman. Training under an existing shaman was necessary, as was a drum, garment, and feather headdress. Relatives were responsible for making the new shaman's equipment. There was a ceremony of investment for the new shaman during which relatives enlivened the new drum (the shaman's horse) by beating it.

Shamans were central to Tuvan society. Not only did they represent their kin and work for them spiritually, but they were respected repositories of important knowledge. They conducted necessary rituals such as the yearly "fire ceremony" and rituals to bless the land and promote fertility. Tuvan shamanic ceremony was quite colorful, with shamans reciting long verses, dancing, and singing to the accompaniment of their drums. They also employed a jew's harp in their performances. Healing work included extraction, removing harmful spirits from places, purification, and soul work involving the transition at death. Their garments were knee-length shirts, upon which were sewn long streamers that represented their spirit helpers (called "snakes"), bells and rods of metal, and metal effigies. Besides their symbolic value, costume decorations moved with the dancing shaman, producing auditory and visual stimulation.

Secrecy, independence, and competition also characterized Tuvan shamans. They were each unique in the way they worked and typically worked alone. Like tribal shamans in other places, they sometimes engaged in competitive struggles with each other.

Shamans were considered very special people, being revered and feared at the same time. When they died, they were not interred like ordinary people, but were placed in open wooden sarcophaguses elevated above the ground by four posts. Here, their bodies lay exposed to the elements while their spirits continued to serve their people. That servitude was, however, frustrated by the forces of history. The living and dead shamans would have to deal with an ambitious state to the north, called Russia.