Personal Practice

Our ‘Personal Practice’ article content focuses on supporting you to create and maintain a daily shamanic practice. You might also be interested in our ‘Personal Practice’ audios.

Owl Crashes In

Owl Crashes In

In the melting snow at the very beginning of spring, my eye caught a bright reflection on the ground: chunks of broken glass along a wall. When I looked up, I saw that the outer window of the classroom above my garage had been shattered. The window was double-paned,...

The Death of Hummingbird

The Death of Hummingbird

This article was originally published by SSP in the Journal for Shamanic Practice in 2014   I heard fluttering and flopping sounds on the sun porch of my friend’s lake cottage. “It’s the hummingbird,” she said as she gently picked it up from the floor and cradled...

The Cauldrons of Soul

The Cauldrons of Soul

Many cultures have identified energy centers that both affect the body and mediate between the physical and spiritual worlds. The Irish were no exception. In old Irish manuscripts, three “Cauldrons of Poesy” are described. Although originally focused on the...

How to Pray the Toltec Way

How to Pray the Toltec Way

(Jose Stevens is the author of How To Pray The Shaman’s Way: Ancient Techniques For Extraordinary Results, Hierophant Publishing, 2021.) Aside from eating, sleeping, and the basic activities of survival there is perhaps no more universal human activity than the act of...

Hank Wesselman 1941-2021

Hank Wesselman 1941-2021

Our colleague Hank Wesselman died peacefully near his home in Hawaii on February 15 of this year after a short illness, with his beloved wife, Jill Kuykendall, at his side. Together they led shamanic training workshops and divided their time between northern...

Tribute to Jamie Sams

Tribute to Jamie Sams

Tribute to Jamie Sams 1951-2020 In the beginning stages of my work in shamanism I was introduced to the Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson. I didn’t really click with the more traditional tarot cards at the time so when these came along I was immediately...

Tying Knots of Wind

Tying Knots of Wind

When the first wind breathed life upon planet earth, no one was there to listen. As the planet evolved, people settled in places where the wind already lived. Wind was here before any of us, and informed all of life with the sublime wisdom of the ages. Wind is the...

Follow Your Name

Follow Your Name

“I received a letter containing an account of a recent suicide: ‘My friend jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge two months ago. She had been terribly depressed for years. There was no help for her. None that she could find that was sufficient. She was trying to get from...

Faerie Presence

Faerie Presence

There is a type of fairy encounter often dismissed as less authentic and less significant than other types, and yet possibly the most common encounter and one with the most positive, uplifting effects on the human spirit.  This is what I call encountering the “faerie...

Becoming Prayers

Becoming Prayers

Prayers are silent, Prayers are sung, Prayers are danced, and Prayers are spun. What does it mean to live in prayer? My own expression of prayer has changed over the years as many of my prayers have become my reality, and many others not. I still like to give thanks,...

On Prayer

On Prayer

‘You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer’. Thich Nhat Hanh When the request...

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

September, 2014: Devon, England After a half-hour climb, I stand in an outcropping of rock at the top of a hill covered in heather and gorse. Below me, shrouded in mist, lie the wild lands of Dartmoor National Park. I have come in search of Grimspound, the remains of...

To Be a Pilgrim Shaman

To Be a Pilgrim Shaman

Each of us is on a journey. This is something we know if we pursue any kind of spiritual practice. This knowing is inescapable when we follow a shamanic path. After all, journeying is what we do. Many journeys await us. We are on a journey from birth to death; we move...

Why Prayer?

Why Prayer?

I have often wondered what place prayer has in my life and in my work of bringing shamanism into contemporary western life. After all, I can do a shamanic “journey” to helping spirits to make requests and to have a direct relationship with the Larger Order of Things,...

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