The Urban Shaman

Many readers of this site would probably be happy to define themselves as ‘shamans’ or at least engaging in practices which are ‘shamanic’. This term has come to mean a wide variety of things in our modern times, while its roots lay somewhat shrouded in myth and controversy. This article will explore a little into the meaning of the term ‘shaman’ but focus more on how we in our modern society can utilise so-called shamanic ideas in our daily lives.

What is a shaman?

If you choose to use this word in everyday life, chances are you are already somewhat familiar with its origins, so I shall describe them only briefly here.
The word ‘shaman’ is of Tungusic or Samoyedic origin (1). Many people say that the word comes from the Tungus sa ‘to know’, so a shaman is ’one who knows’. Mircea Eliades suggested that the original root of the term could be the Sanskrit srammana meaning a wandering holy figure (2).

The Tungus shaman is a figure of the wild North, often told of as sitting on a magic drum, whose medicines include (some say) the lethal yet picturesque red-and-white toadstools Amanita Muscaria (3), and whose whose animal associates are the reindeer and the wolf. So how did this antlered, toadstool-munching, fur-wearing drum-beater come to symbolise ritualistic animistic practices all over the world? A ‘shaman’ now could be a Voodoo priest of West Africa; a medicine man of the Wiraraxa, or a Balinese magician.

One idea could be that the Tungus shamans were some of the first to be described by an outside group (of European anthropologists) and so their name became the common term for all similar-seeming people who the anthropologists subsequently encountered. It could also be that shaman is such a simple word, which nevertheless can be seen as encompassing so much, that it has retained popularity into modern culture. Joseph Campbell explored the idea that our word ‘shaman’ actually comes from a simple mixing of the words she and man (4); a shaman is someone who can go beyond sexual restrictions and who can channel energies of both masculine and feminine. Whether this is historically accurate or not, this metaphors could still be helpful in your shamanic practices.

Why is shamanism so alluring to modern life?

If ‘shaman’ can refer to so many different practices and people, but all of them of ancient origin, how is it relevant in today’s world?
Serge King in Urban Shaman says
“For the purposes of this book and my teachings, I define a shaman as a healer of relationships; between mind and body, between people, between people and circumstances, between humans and Nature, and between matter and spirit.” (5).
This immediately points to shamanism not only as a wide-ranging description of ancient practices but as a useful tool. Our society today has deviated rather heavily from traditional shamanic cultures, yet we still engage in relationships on a daily basis.

Now is the moment of power

The present moment could be seen as one in which we are in most need of healing of relationships. Perhaps our ancestors heard the voices of the river; many of our contemporaries prefer to choke her. King has not been to only one to note that our collective psyche seems somewhat troubled (see for example 6, 7) and that in order to heal the wounds in our natural world, we must also heal the wounds within our own minds. In King’s very helpful book, he goes into a number of practices which one could engage in in order to aid this healing.

Where are our traditions?

One thing to note about King’s work is that he was personally guided by people following the Way of the Adventurer, or Huna, tradition, and was adopted into the tradition himself. This tradition is the basis of all of his shamanic teaching and means that his work has a rich and ancient foundational basis which can help students. Yet if those students are not Hawaiian Huna themselves it may still seem like an odd tradition, or one which they cannot fully embrace as they are not part of the community. This is not to say that King, or anyone who shares their particular way of shamanism, is exclusive; it is more a question of practice.

Sacred Spaces

If you grew up, like me, in a large city with no particular religion, then you perhaps had the benefit of being educated in a more open-minded way than those brought up religiously (I remember celebrating many different festivals, including Divali, Caribbean Christmas and Eid, at school). Along with this open-mindedness, though, there tends to come a lack of practice. By practice I mean some kind of ritual celebration or action, ideally done with your family or community, that is designed to point towards some kind of higher or deeper relationship with the world than that of ‘ordinary’ life. Such a practice could be as simple as placing a flower on an altar at a certain time every day, sitting in quiet meditation in the same place every week, or lighting a candle to recognise the moon-phases; or it could be as elaborate as any religious ceremony.

To me, it seems that engaging in practices is a way towards creating your own sacred space (for more on this see my article here (8)), whether this is within or without, and to maintain a regular connection with the feeling of sacredness inside your own body. The importance of repeating a practice could be interpreted from the point of view of the spirit world; that if you call upon certain powers and energies to guide you in your life, then these powers also need to be regularly honoured and respected. Here again we come back to relationships; so your practice could be seen as a way of maintaining your relationships with unseen (but very felt) powers and/or spirits.

How to choose your practice?

Most practices of course come from some kind of shared mythology; the actions or pieces of the ritual fitting to symbols or metaphors which we can apply to our own lives. Yet many modern city-dwellers have no such shared mythology, and therefore no practice. For those brought up with institutionalised religion the rituals are very readily available but there may be the feeling that the metaphors present in the rituals no longer apply in modern life. On the other hand, those who have no religion or whose pre-religious animistic heritage has been broken by long centuries of repression of pagan belief-systems, there may be a desire for a little more structure, and more practices to follow.

So what can we do?

Having identified that practice is something which can help bring us closer to healing, by providing some kind of disciplined action which ties us to a spiritual life, and if possible fosters our sense of community, how are we to begin with this?
One method is, as King and others make available, to follow in others’ footsteps; to adopt other traditions even if they are not your own. If this works for you then, as King might say, it must be true for you to do this. Another method is to recognise that we are in a unique global position right now. We have access to information on an unprecedented scale and yet are also destroying ancient knowledge. Perhaps what is needed, then, is what Joseph Campbell described as a ‘Creative Mythology’ (9); a new global culture based on the recognition that wherever we are and whatever language we use, shaman or srmanna or she-man, we are all part of the same human family, and our stories, varied though they may be, all follow the same archetypes of humanity.

A new myth?

To put it simply, then, perhaps we need to be developing our own sacred practices, repeating them, sharing them, and perhaps even creating traditions out of them. We do not know which practices will catch on in the rest of culture; as Campbell put it

“One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight’s dream; for a mythology …is not something projected from the brain, but something experienced from the heart, from recognition of identities behind or within the appearances of nature” (10)

Perhaps if we cultivate our sacred spaces and practices consciously we can be a part of the creation of the myth we would like to see shaping the world.

References

Janhunen, J, 1986. Siberian shamanistic terminology, Suomalais-ugrilaisen Seuran toimituksia/ Memoires de la Société finno-ougrienne,
Eliade, M,1972. Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Bollingen Series LXXVI, Princeton University Press
Main, D, 2012. ‘Magic Mushrooms May Explain Santa and his ‘Flying’ Reindeer’. Live Science, 20/12/12. https://www.livescience.com/25731-magic-mushrooms-santa-claus.html
Campbell, J, 1959. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Griffin: New York City, USA
King, S.K, 1990. Urban Shaman: A Handbook for Personal and Planetary Transformation based on the Hawaiian Way of the Adventurer. Touchstone:LA, USA
Abram, D, 1997. The Spell of the Sensuous: Language and Perception in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage: New York City, USA
Firman, J; Gila, A, 2002. Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit. SUNY, New York, USA.
Ashwanden, C, 2015. ‘Sacred Spaces’. Abundance Garden, 3/3/15. https://abundancedancegarden.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/sacred-spaces/
Campbell, J, 1991. The Masks of God, Vol. 4: Creative Mythology. Penguin: London, UK.
Campbell, J, 2012 (reprint). The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion. New World Books: San Francisco, USA