The Journal of Shamanic Practice
The Journal of Shamanic Practice is a forum about the practice of shamanism: what shamans and shamanic practitioners do and why they do it. It includes diverse perspectives on shamanism and explores both traditional practices of shamanic people around the world as well as all types of contemporary shamanism. The journal pays particular attention to the many ways that shamanism is re-emerging and integrating itself into personal lives as well as contemporary societies.
If you are interested in submitting an article, please visit our submission guidelines.
Personal Practice
The Summer Solstice
The summer solstice is the height of the south on the medicine wheel as I work with it. The long days, the heat and intense light and warmth - everything is reveling in the life force coursing through the world, bringing all creatures into their fullness. Everything...
The Four Daily Sacred Portals:
A Shamanic Alignment with the Times of Power
In the wisdom traditions of the Andes and Amazon, nothing is done by chance—especially not ceremonies or rituals. Shamans and their communities have always known that the Earth, the sun, and the moon move in divine rhythm. They understood long before science caught up...
Honouring the Spiral
“This is for you,” Martha said as she handed me a red, black, white and yellow bracelet. “It was made for those who danced at last year’s Lakota Sundance Festival, you might like to wear it”. We had met at a recent international gathering of shamanic practitioners...
Practicing Shamanic Forgiveness
Nothing can throw our shamanic energies out of balance like harboring resentment. When we hold grudges, we tie ourselves to someone else's destiny and get dragged off our own path. Forgiveness is essential for any shamanic practitioner as it keeps your energy clean...
Shamanic Spirituality in a Place Called Home
Reprinted rom the Spring 2009 Journal of Shamanic Practice Many Western people deeply desire to learn from indigenous shamans; likewise, indigenous shamans desire to teach North Americans and Europeans. Fredy "Puma" Quispe Singona, a Peruvian paqo,1told me that he is...
Meeting 2025 with Power and Joy
Many people in my life don’t have optimism for 2025. Instead, they see a darkness looming and feel dread. I feel like this often too. The social media provocateurs on “both sides” are dedicated not to describing reality or helping you understand the world, but only...
CELEBRATING THE WINTER SOLSTICE
Winter Solstice/Yule (December 18-January 6) This is the season of religious and cultural celebrations worldwide, including Christmas, New Year, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa. It’s the darkest day of the year, around December 21, yet with that darkness comes the promise of...
After Death Comes More Life:
A Teaching From the Forest Wizard
For the last several weeks, my days have carried the soundtrack of chainsaws and trucks. The woods behind my house have been undergoing a constant cutting down. The pause of the grating buzz of the chainsaws has stopped only brieflyto give way to crashing thuds as...
The Old Bone Mother, Chaos
and The Wild Hunt
We live in a world of increasing disorder, proliferating injury to humankind, accelerating loss of Earth's life forms, and spreading destruction of Mother Earth herself. And yet, I find hope and comfort in ancient wisdom and practices. Shamanic people the world over...
Your big question is not going to get answered.
You have a giant question writhing around inside you. For each of us it may be a different question, but we all have one. You’ve been wrestling with it, trying to articulate it your whole life, trying to find an answer. The image comes up for me of the Tarzan TV show...
Finding Your Muse: The Source of Inspiration and Creativity
Several months ago I read about an intriguing idea that I initially dismissed, yet one that continued to dwell in my consciousness. The idea was to write a poem in ten minutes or less without regard to any familiar structures usually associated with poetry. Instead,...
Going Solo in Nature: The Ancient Shamanic Practice For Awakening To Spirit
Originally published in the Journal of Contemporary Shamanism, in the Spring 2014, Volume 7, Issue 1 From time immemorial human beings sought the great outdoors for solitude, observation, listening, and learning the ways of nature to enhance their own survival...
To Appropriate or not to Appropriate — that is a question
The appropriation–-adoption, misuse, fraud, stealing, cheating, annexation–-of Native American cultures and other Indigenous traditions by Westerners in their search for meaningful spirituality has become a topic of increasing controversy and sensitivity in our...
HOW LIGHT COLUMNS CAME ABOUT
Introduction by SSP Board Member Joan Levergood: The Society for Shamanic Practice is pleased to share Jill Raiguel's lovely article about working with Light Columns. We thank her for sharing the history of the Light Columns and her insights with us. Our Shamanism...
Unraveling the Red Thread –
a pattern-based approach to ancestral healing (part 2)
Clients sometimes come to a shamanic healing session with a vague sense that a piece of pain they are experiencing is ancestral. They may have a general awareness that a parent or grandparent struggles with a similar issue. In the diagnostic journey, I ask my helping...
How to Summon Optimism in this World
Follow me on a winding journey: 1. Authenticity: People like to argue over what is authentic and what is not. In shamanism, in all religion, in art, in science. In my world of Western-urban-neo-shamanic practice, it’s always “how the indigenous masters do it or did...
Creativity and Shamanism
The creative process is evident in so many different activities and expressions, yet you can discern a common thread amongst all of these despite their unique characteristics. The examples below of a painter and a shaman provide the contrast and similarities between...
Utiseta: The Northern European Art of Plant Communication
My introduction to the practice of utiseta was purely accidental. I didn’t know I was doing it. As a child in rural Wisconsin, I had the freedom to roam the woodlands and prairies that were my home. Many times I would walk into a place, quietly gathering twigs,...
Embracing the Dark Feminine in a Time of Seeming Chaos
In the northern hemisphere, as we step into winter, the north on the medicine wheel, we have stepped into the embrace of the Dark Feminine. What is this power, and how can we work with it? I hope this article helps you grasp what is happening in our world right now...
Shamanism: What it Ain’t
Introductory note by Jaime Meyer, SSP Board President: I’ve been fascinated with how much vitriol is expelled into the world trying to define what shamanism is. When this discussion gets heated, as it often does, I believe we have stopped talking about shamanism, and...
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 Gathering Place: A Safe Place for Ancestral Healing
When I first began my shamanic practice, I noticed early on that I had an affinity for ancestral healing. The client’s ancestors would appear in the session and share the story of the original wound in the family. Many of these suffering ancestors brought their pain...
Light Of The Shaman
The sustaining tradition of the indigenous heart is being remembered. Our survival as a species may depend upon it. Step forward you, the wild, natural mystic... Buddhism, Reiki, Christianity, Drumming Circles, Islamism, Yoga, Herbalism, Trance Dance, Mindfulness,...
Becoming the Song You Are Here to Sing
This poem by Rainier Maria Rilke is one of my favorites: I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving. If this is arrogant, God, forgive...
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...
Magic Mushrooms, The Wild West, and Ceremony
Everyone is doing ‘shrooms. The term “psychedelic wild west” has entered daily lingo. Various cities and states are legalizing them. Medical science sees promise in them and the pharmaceutical industry sees neon dollar signs. The blogosphere sparkles with promises of...
A Selection of Daily Spiritual Practices
A Note from Jaime Meyer, SSP Board President: Every spiritual path requires some kind of disciplined, regular practice. The practice may be enjoyable and beautiful, and that is why we do it. It may be difficult to summon the discipline to do it, and that is why we do...
Soul Retrieval:
A Method for Trauma-related Soul Loss
I was first trained in Soul Retrieval back in 1993 through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and then later through The Four Winds. These organizations formed the foundation of the style of soul retrieval work I do, however, cross culturally, there are many ways of...
Scent of the Sacred
The mystical aroma of incense is part of my daily life. I find it especially vital in winter when fragrant plants are slumbering deep in the the frozen earth. My morning ritual includes brewing coffee, tending the fire and praying with sacred smoke. It helps me...
Discovering Evil
Personal Encounters of a Non-Believer
This month of December we are republishing an article that Itzhak Beery, who presented at our conference this past fall, wrote for us in 2012 about the discernment of spirits, particularly what many call “evil spirits.” As Itzhak says, evil energies feed on darkness...
A Table of Union
The Peruvian Mesa as a Syncretic Tool
My shamanic training is rooted in Peruvian curanderismo, specifically in the use of the spiritual altar called a mesa. A mesa is the shaman’s gateway into the soul realm. In Spanish, mesa literally means “table,” which is fitting because it is the place where the...
Healing the Spirit of Place
As we watch Russian armies create havoc in Ukraine, our hearts and minds are drawn to the widespread suffering of the Ukrainians and their land, the latest chapter in a long history of repeated invasions and destruction. SSP board member Ana Larramendi's article on...
Singing the Soul of the World
By Stephanie Rutt with a postscript by Tom Cowan. Then one day I knew if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. God is everywhere. —Alice Walker from The Color Purple Some thirty years ago, my husband took me deep into the Maine woods to introduce me to wilderness...
Brigid: The Celtic Spirit of Fire
This year, February 3rd marked the celestial midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and for the Celts, this is "Brigid time." It is called Imbolc (pronounced IM-olk), one of the cross-quarter days on the Celtic Medicine wheel. Brigid is arguably...
In gratitude for
Malidoma Patrice Somé
January 30, 1956 – December 9, 2021
A Life of Service and Power
Malidoma was a West African writer, diviner, and teacher. Born in a Dagara community in Dano, Burkina Faso, as a child he was taken from his home, “literally kidnapped,” he said, by Jesuit priests in a nearby colonial town. He was placed in a Catholic boarding school,...
The Dance of Light and Dark:
Ways to Commemorate
the Winter Solstice/Yule
The strongest component of the winter season is light. Throughout the year, there is the dance of light and dark, and at the winter solstice, this dance is at its most intense and pronounced, with the longest period of darkness and the shortest period of light. Our...
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...
Core Shamanism and the Andean Mesa: Creating Cohesion in an Eclectic Shamanic Practice
As contemporary Shamanic practitioners, we may find ourselves exploring and investigating a variety of contemporary and traditional spiritual and healing practices. After a period of time and practice, we might choose to focus our energy on just one or two that feel...
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
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...
In Service to a Sovereignty Goddess
As shamanic practitioners, our work is ever-evolving. Relationships with spirit allies grow and change as we develop and nurture our personal medicine. Perhaps a few spirit allies from our initial years in shamanism have come and gone, or perhaps the ones who have...
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...
Taking care of ourselves serves humanity
As shamanic energy medicine practitioners, we are called to serve. We are stewards of the earth, bringing beauty and healing to all life. We serve as a bridge between the visible world of form and the invisible world of energy and spirits. Particularly during this...
Exploring the Shamanic Landscape
What should I journey about? It can be one of the most common questions a shamanic practitioner faces as they sit down with their drum. The fact that the landscape of the spirit world is truly limitless only serves to complicate the issue. There are many reasons to...
Witnessing Tree Spirits In Ordinary Reality
Our property on the Bay of Quinte is home to several species of native trees. In one area we call the glen, we’ve been witnessing an ongoing onslaught by invasive insects. Over a period of three to four years we watched helplessly as a group of ash trees slowly lost...
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...
The Legacy of Michael Harner: A Tribute from the SSP Board of Directors
MICHAEL HARNER 1929-2018 Michael Harner began his personal journey into shamanism in 1956-57 working as an anthropologist among the Shuar (Jívaro) and Conibo peoples of the Amazon. In time he became recognized as a shaman by many indigenous people in North and South...
The Peaceful Passing of Elsa Malpas
The local community here in Glastonbury was saddened to hear of the death of Elsa Malpas, who passed peacefully into spirit on the 18th November 2018. Elsa, along with her partner Howard, contributed significantly to the shamanic community in the UK, and particularly...
What You Should Know About Taking Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca: A Brief Helpful Manual Currently tens of thousands of people are exploring the visionary medicine known as ayahuasca, huasca, yaje, (and many other names) both in South America and around the world. Many seek the experience out of curiosity and sometimes...
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...
On the journey of Bonnie Horrigan…
In Loving Memory Bonnie became SSP's first executive director when the organization was founded as the Society for Shamanic Practitioners. If not for her organizational skills and passion, we as a society would not exist. We are sad to announce that Bonnie Horrigan...
RHYTHM, DRUMMING, AND SHAMANISM
In the Beginning, There Was the Beat When you came into this life, your first felt experience was the sensation of rhythm. Not the sound, but the sensation of rhythm. Before you could hear, see, or think, you were unadulterated physicality—pure instinctual and primal...
Shamanic Practice and Sacred Imagination
In this piece I delve a little into my personal journey to shamanic practice and why I see shamanism as an antidote to much of the malaise we feel. At the end of this piece I offer you the most concise list of "shamanic core values" I've ever come across, and a...
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
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,...
How To Pray the Shaman’s Way
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. -Gandhi What is Prayer? Prayers are an intensely personal communication with what anyone might consider a higher source of power. For some this power source is a vague notion of something...
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...
Five Practices for More Potent Prayers
Over the past 30 years I have had the good fortune to participate in many spiritual traditions including Methodist Christianity, Islamic Sufism, Zen Buddhism, contemporary Paganism, Lakota ways and the Native American Church, Buryat Mongolian shamanism, and West...
My Way on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela
What I think is a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you arecalled to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? ~ Joseph Campbell It has been more than two years since I...
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...
Pilgrimage as Shamanic Practice
"To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim." -Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk¹ As a shamanic initiatory rite of passage, pilgrimage has...
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?
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,...
Problem Solving Using the Medicine Wheel
Clients work with me for a variety of reasons . . . crisis intervention, personal growth and very often for problem solving. Time and time again, I’ve seen the effectiveness of using shamanic wisdom as a template for problem solving, especially through the use of the...
Shamanic Offerings
There are specific locales on Earth that hold great power, contain the ability to heal and can quicken the awakening process. These areas, sometimes referred to as power spots, act as portals to the spirit world and often reside near natural expressions of beauty such...
Teachings & Stories
The Four Daily Sacred Portals:
A Shamanic Alignment with the Times of Power
In the wisdom traditions of the Andes and Amazon, nothing is done by chance—especially not ceremonies or rituals. Shamans and their communities have always known that the Earth, the sun, and the moon move in divine rhythm. They understood long before science caught up...
Spring Equinox/Ostara
From Earth Magic by Dr. Steven Farmer The spring or Vernal Equinox is the time of year when the sun crosses the plane of the Earth’s equator, and day and night are of equal length across the entire planet. Now there’s increasing evidence that the season that was begun...
CELEBRATING THE WINTER SOLSTICE
Winter Solstice/Yule (December 18-January 6) This is the season of religious and cultural celebrations worldwide, including Christmas, New Year, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa. It’s the darkest day of the year, around December 21, yet with that darkness comes the promise of...
The Old Bone Mother, Chaos
and The Wild Hunt
We live in a world of increasing disorder, proliferating injury to humankind, accelerating loss of Earth's life forms, and spreading destruction of Mother Earth herself. And yet, I find hope and comfort in ancient wisdom and practices. Shamanic people the world over...
Finding Your Muse: The Source of Inspiration and Creativity
Several months ago I read about an intriguing idea that I initially dismissed, yet one that continued to dwell in my consciousness. The idea was to write a poem in ten minutes or less without regard to any familiar structures usually associated with poetry. Instead,...
Embracing the Dark Feminine in a Time of Seeming Chaos
In the northern hemisphere, as we step into winter, the north on the medicine wheel, we have stepped into the embrace of the Dark Feminine. What is this power, and how can we work with it? I hope this article helps you grasp what is happening in our world right now...
Shamanism: What it Ain’t
Introductory note by Jaime Meyer, SSP Board President: I’ve been fascinated with how much vitriol is expelled into the world trying to define what shamanism is. When this discussion gets heated, as it often does, I believe we have stopped talking about shamanism, and...
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,...
LUGHNASADH (LUNASA) CEREMONY VIDEO, AUGUST 2023
Below is the video of the Lughnasadh/Lunasa Celtic Ceremony by Dr. Karen Ward and John Cantwell, originally aired live on August 7th, 2023. THE CELTIC FESTIVAL OF LUGHNASADH (LUNASA) When the birdsong calms as the crops grow towards harvest, the earlier sunsets...
Australian Aboriginal Wisdom
This month we are republishing “Australian Aboriginal Wisdom,” an article by Hank Wesselman that we first published in our Spring 2014 issue. In it Wesselman reflects on the concept of dadirri, a word that means deep listening and quiet stillness of the soul. This...
Discovering Evil
Personal Encounters of a Non-Believer
This month of December we are republishing an article that Itzhak Beery, who presented at our conference this past fall, wrote for us in 2012 about the discernment of spirits, particularly what many call “evil spirits.” As Itzhak says, evil energies feed on darkness...
Recall to Basic Consciousness
As we write this, hurricane Ian is approaching the west coast of Florida, thousands of young men in Russia are fleeing their homeland or risk incarceration for taking a stand against their country's war in Ukraine, and women in Iran are risking their lives to protest...
Refuge for our Spirits
My daughter is still young enough to want to cuddle up with me when she’s scared or just in need of comfort. I cherish those times when we get to nest together in that way, her brother stopped joining us when teenage years hit. Our habit of snuggling was especially...
The Land Has Its Own Timeline
One of the most interesting things I’ve encountered in my shamanic work is the emotional connection that the land has with us. We often think of it as the other way around, that we are the ones actively experiencing a connection to the land, whether that be through...
Singing the Soul of the World
By Stephanie Rutt with a postscript by Tom Cowan. Then one day I knew if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. God is everywhere. —Alice Walker from The Color Purple Some thirty years ago, my husband took me deep into the Maine woods to introduce me to wilderness...
Brigid: The Celtic Spirit of Fire
This year, February 3rd marked the celestial midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and for the Celts, this is "Brigid time." It is called Imbolc (pronounced IM-olk), one of the cross-quarter days on the Celtic Medicine wheel. Brigid is arguably...
Reindeer in the Spiritual DNA
Today, across the vast expanse of northern Europe, sub-Arctic Russia and Mongolia, stretch many nations of reindeer-herding people. The Sami, the Evenki, the Chuckchi and many more. Many cultures, languages and customs abound, but something these people share is a...
The Shamanic Grail Cup––The Sangraal
This month we are republishing an article written by our editor Nita Renfrew that we published in our print journal in the fall of 2013. Her article, “The Shamanic Grail Cup – the Sangraal,” traces the origin of the Holy Grail to Mongolian and other Asiatic sources,...
Don Jose Matsuwa’s Triple Challenge
The shaman's path is unending. I am an old, old man and still a baby, standing before the mystery of the world, filled with awe. ~Don Jose Matsuwa I've been haunted by this statement from the renowned Huichol shaman Don Jose Matsuwa since I first read it back in...
Interview with GOGO EKHAYA ESIMA
SSP Board President Jaime Meyer interviews 2019 Eagle Feather Award recipient Gogo Ekhaya Esima, a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist in the mental health field, a trauma survivor, a Spiritual Coach, and initiated healer in the South African Sangoma tradition. SSP’s...
Re-imagining Imbolc
Astronomically, February 1 is the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. In the Celtic shamanic tradition, this is an important day dedicated to the Goddess Brigid. SSP offers you this overview of the Celtic Goddess of new life, of new fire, Brigid,...
The Journey of Rewilding
This year I returned to beekeeping and bought a package of honeybees for the first time. I’ve avoided packaged bees and prefer to catch swarms because in the process of swarming the bees have proven their vigor. I wanted a sure thing, though, so I shelled out $180 for...
Advice from Elders
The Society for Shamanic Practice asked a few "Shamanic Elders”—those who have walked the path for some time—to share their thoughts on things they wished they had learned earlier on the path. In no particular order, here is some "advice from elders." Laurie Schmidt:...
Interrelationship As the Foundation for Shamanism and Life
Much is written about the mystical and spiritual dimensions of shamanism, including how to work with the Elements, the nature of shamanic journeying, and the ins and outs of soul-level healing. However, what can get lost in the mix is the perspective underpinning all...
Running for Macha – Championing the Goddess, the Earth and Lady Sovereignty
Dark eyes, the color of rich, loamy soil, hold my gaze. “Would you run for me?” The woman’s voice spills across my shoulders and down my back before drifting upon the breeze. The green grass of a running field stretches to my left. Out of view, horses chuff and stamp...
What Shall We Do About Sedna?—A Feminine Possibility.
“If we allow a story to enter into us, we also enter the psychic ground held in that tale. A story reads us as much as we read it. As the Aboriginal hunters of Australia say, “You can’t hunt in the tribal lands until the country knows you!” By entering the symbolic...
An Interview with Nepalese Shaman, Bhola Banstola
This year’s winner of the SSP Eagle Feather Award is Bhola Banstola, a 27th generation medicine person from Nepal. For many years, Bhola has taught extensively throughout the world. Recently he has turned attention toward making ethnographic and shamanic healing...
THE LAND THAT KNOWS ME: MY SPARROW FRIENDS IN NEW YORK’S CENTRAL PARK
“Nearness to nature... keeps the spirit... in touch with the unseen powers.” ~ Charles Eastman, Ohiyesa It was after I became a Pipe carrier on the Red Road (Native American spirituality) a few years ago that I slowly began to understand that I must work with the...
Rolling Thunder and Beautiful Painted Arrow: Two Native American Shaman Elders Whose Lives and Work Inspire Me
I first became aware of Rolling Thunder in the late 1970’s when I read Doug Boyd’s book called simply, Rolling Thunder. Although I was never to meet him personally, I was fascinated by this powerful healer who demonstrated extraordinary abilities and skills,...
The Sacred Stag: A True Story of Mystical Connection
The early autumn day was gray with a low and heavy sky. Around mid-morning, rain began to fall. The thick atmosphere took on a meditative rhythm, expressed in the soothing patter on lush late-summer vegetation. I was drawn to the large window overlooking the swift...
The Tastes of Life Ceremony
I learned about the world of Ifa, the indigenous religion of the Yoruba people, from Oba Odumade, a babalawo from Nigeria. Oba was a traditional healer and diviner as well as a master drummer and ceremonial leader. I met him in Los Angeles in 1992 and remained his...
Transition Blanket
I created a Transition Blanket in preparation for my father's imminent death. To this day, this sacred object continues to bestow life-altering blessings on my entire family. I'm convinced that this divinely inspired gift is meant to reach far beyond my own family...
Healing Methods
The Four Daily Sacred Portals:
A Shamanic Alignment with the Times of Power
In the wisdom traditions of the Andes and Amazon, nothing is done by chance—especially not ceremonies or rituals. Shamans and their communities have always known that the Earth, the sun, and the moon move in divine rhythm. They understood long before science caught up...
Unraveling the Red Thread –
a pattern-based approach to ancestral healing (part 2)
Clients sometimes come to a shamanic healing session with a vague sense that a piece of pain they are experiencing is ancestral. They may have a general awareness that a parent or grandparent struggles with a similar issue. In the diagnostic journey, I ask my helping...
Utiseta: The Northern European Art of Plant Communication
My introduction to the practice of utiseta was purely accidental. I didn’t know I was doing it. As a child in rural Wisconsin, I had the freedom to roam the woodlands and prairies that were my home. Many times I would walk into a place, quietly gathering twigs,...
The Gathering Place: A Safe Place for Ancestral Healing
When I first began my shamanic practice, I noticed early on that I had an affinity for ancestral healing. The client’s ancestors would appear in the session and share the story of the original wound in the family. Many of these suffering ancestors brought their pain...
Soul Retrieval:
A Method for Trauma-related Soul Loss
I was first trained in Soul Retrieval back in 1993 through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and then later through The Four Winds. These organizations formed the foundation of the style of soul retrieval work I do, however, cross culturally, there are many ways of...
USING SHAMANISM IN A MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE
“All mental illness has a shamanic piece.” (Hale Makua, 2001) Mental illness is permanent, right? Most of us believe the best a mentally ill person can hope for is managing the condition with medication and good psychotherapy. Then in 2001, I started studying...
Refuge for our Spirits
My daughter is still young enough to want to cuddle up with me when she’s scared or just in need of comfort. I cherish those times when we get to nest together in that way, her brother stopped joining us when teenage years hit. Our habit of snuggling was especially...
A Table of Union
The Peruvian Mesa as a Syncretic Tool
My shamanic training is rooted in Peruvian curanderismo, specifically in the use of the spiritual altar called a mesa. A mesa is the shaman’s gateway into the soul realm. In Spanish, mesa literally means “table,” which is fitting because it is the place where the...
The Land Has Its Own Timeline
One of the most interesting things I’ve encountered in my shamanic work is the emotional connection that the land has with us. We often think of it as the other way around, that we are the ones actively experiencing a connection to the land, whether that be through...
RHYTHM, DRUMMING, AND SHAMANISM
In the Beginning, There Was the Beat Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood; we are a rhythm machine, that's what we are. —Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead When you came into this life, your first felt experience...
Healing the Spirit of Place
As we watch Russian armies create havoc in Ukraine, our hearts and minds are drawn to the widespread suffering of the Ukrainians and their land, the latest chapter in a long history of repeated invasions and destruction. SSP board member Ana Larramendi's article on...
Healing Trauma: A Shamanic Approach
Trauma can leave imprints in our energy body that influence our current life. These imprints cause us to attract people and experiences that recreate and repeat the traumatic stories. Both psychology and shamanism support this idea. Indeed, science is now able to show...
Medicine for the Soul in the Wake of Abuse
Sadly, traumatic events in the form of abuse, harassment, community violence and/or environmental degradation darken our news headlines nearly every day. Research documents a startling prevalence of one particular aspect of trauma - childhood abuse and neglect. The...
Our Unspent Grief: The Lost Art of Keening
Perhaps no other story in Celtic mythology demonstrates more succinctly the unbearable weight of grief than that of the great hero, Cu Cuchlainn at the death of his son, Connla. The young warrior’s death comes tragically and unwittingly at Cu Cuchlainn’s own hand,...
Venus Alchemy: Shamanic Descent and Rebirth
Bright morning star's a-rising, Bright morning star's a-rising, Bright morning star's a-rising, Day is a-breaking in my soul. --American Folk Song, Author Unknown It was 5:30 am on a cold November morning in downtown Albuquerque. We were a circle of eight women...
Soul Loss: An Interview with a Mayan Daycounter
[Note: Bob Makransky met Gg (Pronounced "Gigi"), an American woman who is an initiated Mayan daycounter, several years ago in Antigua Guatemala. Bob studied extensively with his teacher don Abel Yat Saquib until his teacher's death in 2009. This interview took place...
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: the Resuscitation of Beauty
Soul Retrieval is a powerful topic for people walking the shamanic path. This article is about my experiences learning and conducting soul retrieval, but it is equally about doubt and wonder, because my thirty plus years on the shamanic path is ever and always about...
Shamanic Healing Applications of Systemic and Family Constellations
Systemic Constellations are a means of revealing the hidden structure of relationships in a system. By representing parts of the system with people or objects, we connect with the energies and information of those parts and with the system as a whole. When asked...
Honoring the Pequots: Healing War & Trauma through Shamanic Ceremony
When I was a young child, I was fascinated by the local native history of the Fairfield and Bridgeport areas of Connecticut where I was growing up. One of the main indigenous communities were the Pequots, a tribe I felt a very familial connection to. Little did I know...
My Journey With Cancer
I am alone at home, on a Wednesday in January 2014. My wife Noelle is teaching a shamanic workshop across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The phone rings. The doctor’s voice is somewhat shaky, “It is cancer, stage 4 advanced lung cancer, with metastases.” I...
Modern Perspectives
Meeting 2025 with Power and Joy
Many people in my life don’t have optimism for 2025. Instead, they see a darkness looming and feel dread. I feel like this often too. The social media provocateurs on “both sides” are dedicated not to describing reality or helping you understand the world, but only...
Your big question is not going to get answered.
You have a giant question writhing around inside you. For each of us it may be a different question, but we all have one. You’ve been wrestling with it, trying to articulate it your whole life, trying to find an answer. The image comes up for me of the Tarzan TV show...
To Appropriate or not to Appropriate — that is a question
The appropriation–-adoption, misuse, fraud, stealing, cheating, annexation–-of Native American cultures and other Indigenous traditions by Westerners in their search for meaningful spirituality has become a topic of increasing controversy and sensitivity in our...
HOW LIGHT COLUMNS CAME ABOUT
Introduction by SSP Board Member Joan Levergood: The Society for Shamanic Practice is pleased to share Jill Raiguel's lovely article about working with Light Columns. We thank her for sharing the history of the Light Columns and her insights with us. Our Shamanism...
How to Summon Optimism in this World
Follow me on a winding journey: 1. Authenticity: People like to argue over what is authentic and what is not. In shamanism, in all religion, in art, in science. In my world of Western-urban-neo-shamanic practice, it’s always “how the indigenous masters do it or did...
Creativity and Shamanism
The creative process is evident in so many different activities and expressions, yet you can discern a common thread amongst all of these despite their unique characteristics. The examples below of a painter and a shaman provide the contrast and similarities between...
Light Of The Shaman
The sustaining tradition of the indigenous heart is being remembered. Our survival as a species may depend upon it. Step forward you, the wild, natural mystic... Buddhism, Reiki, Christianity, Drumming Circles, Islamism, Yoga, Herbalism, Trance Dance, Mindfulness,...
Magic Mushrooms, The Wild West, and Ceremony
Everyone is doing ‘shrooms. The term “psychedelic wild west” has entered daily lingo. Various cities and states are legalizing them. Medical science sees promise in them and the pharmaceutical industry sees neon dollar signs. The blogosphere sparkles with promises of...
Shamanism and Christianity
A Review of Soul Journeys: Christian Spirituality and Shamanism as Pathways for Wholeness and Understanding by Daniel L Prechtel, John R. Mabry, and Katrina Leathers One of the important teachings Michael Harner gave us is that shamanism is not a religion. It is a...
The Personhood of All Things and the Healing Nature of Animism
We are the people for these times We live in a strikingly beautiful world with a spectacular diversity of life. It gives us abundant resources for living, for joy, and for countless paths of personal expression. And yet we suffer illness-producing stresses. For nearly...
Building a Container for Abundance and Prosperity
Many people who are called to the shamanic path have a deep desire to be of service. It seems natural to believe that once you have cultivated your skills and are living your life in service to Spirit, the doors of abundance and prosperity will open to you. Sometimes...
The Art of Marketing Your Medicine: Part 2
Mapping Your Path to Service In part one of this series, I talked about the importance of understanding the relevance of your innate gifts and honing in on your WHY--- to help focus your work, improve your marketing message, and increase your potential to be of...
Coming Home to Power: Backyard Shamanism
We recently had the opportunity to connect with a group of shamans from Mongolia who offered to hold ceremonies to help heal the effects of the COVID 19 virus here in the US. They partnered with the spirits of their home place and their ancestors. They asked...
Black Lives Matter: Calling on Our Spirit Guides
Dear Shamanic Community, The shamanic path teaches us responsibility to the collective dream we live within. It calls us to recognize our part in creating injustices in our communities, to take action to make amends, and to participate in creating a new and better way...
The Art of Marketing Your Medicine: Part 1
Insights for Growing a Shamanic Business Each one of us has an Inner Shaman or True Self that carries unique medicine and great potential to bring love and healing to the world. The trick is that our ego, the very thing that gives us the capacity to express our...
Perceiving Covid 19 As An Ally
In the shamanic perspective each person accumulates allies along the path of their life. Some of these allies are other human beings that show up throughout your life to help you in times of need. Some of them offer limited help like giving you directions when you are...
It’s WAR!!! (Or is it?)
Reporters covering the coronavirus keep referring to this as a war. So too do health-care personnel, politicians, and commentators. Certainly there are enough aspects of this pandemic to warrant the war analogy. We hear about the president's War Powers Act, wartime...
BEYOND SURVIVAL: Managing Fear and Anxiety with the Invisible Predator
“The presence of fear does not mean you have no faith. Fear visits everyone. But make your fear a visitor and not a resident.” —Max Lucado As this crisis continues to unfold it becomes increasingly challenging to know how to deal with what it triggers for the...
Feeling Small
As the coronavirus spreads around the earth, we may teeter on the brink of despair. Despair that there’s nothing we can do, or despair that things are not going to get better, or despair that the good things may be gone forever. I’d like to wallow in this despair for...
Walking the Edge of Cultural Appropriation
The young man was goth-like, pale and pimply, dressed in a long black coat and lecturing to a circle of listeners at an Earth First! gathering in the western wilderness. The subject of his talk was the cultural appropriation of earth-based spiritual traditions. He had...
The Corona Virus: The Bigger Picture
By this time you probably have had your fill of reading about the corona virus, to wash your hands and keep them away from your face, where it is striking in the world and how many people have contracted it. Since many people have requested it, here I will try to...
WHAT DOES ACTING HAVE TO DO WITH SHAMANISM?
Several years ago during a shamanic training I had with Michael Harner, he said something that stayed with me for a long time. He commented in an off-handed manner, “Some of the best shamanic practitioners are actors.” I puzzled for some time as to what he meant by...
Authentic Self, Authentic Shaman
We live in a time when authentic shamanic work is deeply needed. But "authenticity" has been so grossly overused, it doesn’t mean much anymore. You do not search for authenticity. Rather, your life is meant to be an expression of your authentic self. The first work...
Rumi’s Field
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.” —Rumi We've described the United States and other nations as polarized for so long now it seems this condition is normal. Government, societies, churches, schools, towns, families,...
Our Legacy to Our Children: A Shamanic Parenting Story
With so much focus today on consumerism, materialism, and corruption of power in the world, we have to wonder what is happening to our children. We live in a society that rewards people for overproduction, consumption, and mindlessly following what we are told. These...
Why Poetry?
Like shamans, poets have visionary experiences which they share with others through their poetry. If a poem is mystical, or even semi-mystical, it resonates with something deep within us. We feel that our souls understand the poet's vision. Aristotle said that image...
Western Fire Season 2018
As the fires rage in California and throughout the west, I have been prodded to respond by those who know me as a shamanic practitioner whose specialized work is with earth healing, nature spirits, and elementals. I feel and sense the frantic plea for help: “Stop the...
Praying at the River
Unless they are flooded and overflowing their banks, rivers pretty much keep to themselves, flowing through channels cut into the land since ancient times. Although many rivers are powerful, even mighty, they can become somewhat helpless in the face of human abuse. ...
Being in Right Relationship with Our Indigenous Teachers
In this audio José Stevens explores cultural appropriation through the lens of being in 'Right Relationship' with our indigenous teachers....
Shamanism & Astrology
This is an interview with shamanic astrologer, Pat Liles and SSP board member Lena Stevens. In this interview Lena and Pat explore the shamanic roots of astrology and touch on some of the big shamanic themes in astrology that are relevant today. Pat shares how she...
Seeing the World as Magic
Becoming an astrologer was not part of my life plan. The shift came for me during a shamanic journey at a dream workshop, cues that my life plan, as such, had already taken some strange turns. In this journey, I met a being who introduced himself as Mercurius and said...
Facing the Archetypal Forest
Excerpted from Chapter One of Lessons in Astrology as Magic by Dana Gerhardt Shadows can erupt at the most inconvenient moments or sabotage us quietly over time. They might also bring great gifts. Living at the fringes of our nature, they break the rules, assault our...
Venus Alchemy: Shamanic Descent and Rebirth
Bright morning star's a-rising, Bright morning star's a-rising, Bright morning star's a-rising, Day is a-breaking in my soul. --American Folk Song, Author Unknown It was 5:30 am on a cold November morning in downtown Albuquerque. We were a circle of eight women...
Shamanic Wisdom of the Planets and the Sky
Based on the Teachings of The Shamanic Astrology Mystery School In May of 1990, Daniel Giamario, founder of the Shamanic Astrology Paradigm, invited me to attend a talk he was giving in Tucson, Arizona. Little did I know that event would forever change my life in ways...
Shamanism & Astrology: My Enchanted Cosmos
Please note that this is the 1st in a series of 4 articles from 4 different authors on the topic of Shamanism & Astrology. I spent much of my twenties sitting in Friday-night ceremonial circles with my mentor, author and ecofeminist Eileen “ike” West. We didn’t...
How to Save the World with Shamanism One Species at a Time Starting with the Bees
We should forever bear in mind that the beautiful world our species inherited took the biosphere 3.8 billion years to build. Like it or not, and prepared or not, we are the mind and stewards of the living world. Our own ultimate future depends upon that understanding....
FORUM ON APPROPRIATION: Appropriation by Whites of Indigenous Traditions
The subject of appropriation by “whites” of Indigenous spiritual and shamanic healing traditions and practices is a serious one, fraught with many unmarked pathways and crossroads that raise deep political issues, with many historical implications. There are at least...
FORUM ON APPROPRIATION: Who has the right to practice indigenous traditions?
As a man of mixed Mexican, Basque, Irish, English, and Scottish heritage I have often run into rather extreme prejudice about my interest and practice of shamanism over my many years of teaching and ceremonial work. I can understand some of the sentiments of...
FORUM ON APPROPRIATION: Lewis Mehl-Madrona & Tom Cowan
ON APPROPRIATION BY LEWIS MEHL-MADRONA Wondering about this question leads me to wonder if anyone can own healing? All cultures have developed methods for healing, and cultures throughout the ages have freely borrowed from their neighbors. Personally, I do not use...
FORUM ON APPROPRIATION: Jaime Meyer
The articles and commentaries over the next four weeks offer a journey into the thorny issue of “white people doing shamanism.” The Society for Shamanic Practitioners (SSP) reached out, inviting perspectives on an issue fraught with passion, vitriol, defensiveness,...
Shamanism: Approaching Indigenous Wisdom with Care and Respect
Shamanism has grown in popularity as an idea and practice in the modern world. Shamanism is defined by the recognition of a common wisdom based on ancient or indigenous spiritual traditions. This broad definition has some advantages and disadvantages that are worth...
Shamanism Without Borders
An Extraordinary House Clearing in New Mexico
In January there was a tragic incident that took place in a rural house outside of New Mexico. A husband who I will call Fred and his wife were involved in a custody battle over their three-year-old son. The mother had moved out and the boy was staying with his father...
Healing the Vibration of Trauma in the Land
For twenty-two years I studied with a gifted shamanic healer in Malaysian Borneo. Each time I went to apprentice with the late Ismail Daim, I felt the surge of the spirits of the land rush out to meet me as I stepped off the plane. The spiritual aspect of one’s...
Healing at the Scene of an Accident
A WORD ON SHAMANISM WITHOUT BORDERS After a number of years of discussion and preparation, in 2011 The Society for Shamanic Practice published SHAMANISM WITHOUT BORDERS: A Guide to Shamanic Tending for Trauma and Disasters. The idea was to publish a collection of...
Book Reviews
Book Review of The Energetic Dimension by Ann M. Drake
As I begin to write this review of Ann Drake's excellent new book The Energetic Dimension, Americans are trying to make sense of the two most recent shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which together left 31 people dead and many more...
Shamanic Features of C.G. Jung’s Red Book Experience
A Braided Path My professional career began in 1973 as a school psychologist. I spent most of my time providing psycho-educational assessments and consultations to parents and teachers. Later in the 1970s, I trained in hypnotherapy and then a “de-hypnotic” method of...
Santa the Shaman: An Interview with Melville Hunter
This is one of a series of interviews Cecile is doing for a forthcoming book that looks at shamanic practitioners who integrate shamanism into Western culture in interesting and unusual ways -- ways that open our hearts and minds to what’s possible for spirits’...
BOOK REVIEW: Shamanism in the Ice Age
Reflections on Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Shaman by Tom Cowan Often we derive secret pleasure when informing people who label shamanism a “new age fad” that shamanism is 35,000 to 40,000 years old, maybe older, more ancient than the world's “major...
BOOK REVIEW: Speaking with Nature
Authored by Sandra Ingerman and Llyn Roberts Book Review by Tom Cowan ~ Sandra Ingerman and Llyn Roberts have written an engaging account of how they incorporate their love of the natural world into their shamanic practices. Each writes from personal experiences about...
Print Archives
Contemporary Shamanism: Spring 2015
Volume 8, Issue 1
Contemporary Shamanism: Fall 2014
Volume 7, Issue 2
Contemporary Shamanism: Spring 2014
Volume 7, Issue 1 Click here to download Spring 2014 as a pdf.
Contemporary Shamanism: Fall 2013
Volume 6, Issue 2
Contemporary Shamanism: Spring 2013
Volume 6, Issue 1
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Fall 2012
Volume 5, Issue 2
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Spring 2012
Volume 5, Issue 1
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Fall 2011
Volume 4, Issue 2
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Spring 2011
Volume 4, Issue 1
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Fall 2010
Volume 3, Issue 2
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Spring 2010
Spring 2010, Volume 3, Issue 1
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Fall 2009
Volume 2, Issue 2
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Spring 2009
Volume 2, Issue 1
Journal of Shamanic Practice: Fall 2008
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Journal of Shamanic Practice: Spring 2008
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Do You Have an Article to Contribute?
The Journal of Shamanic Practice welcomes articles and stories from people who practice shamanism professionally, often in a healing capacity, and those who use shamanic practice for daily life. If you are interested in contributing to the journal, please review our submission guidelines..