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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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

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,...

Becoming the Song You Are Here to Sing

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

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...

Scent of the Sacred

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...

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...

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...

In Service to a Sovereignty Goddess

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

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,...

Shamanic Offerings

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

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,...

Australian Aboriginal Wisdom

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...

Recall to Basic Consciousness

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...

Don Jose Matsuwa’s Triple Challenge

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...

Re-imagining Imbolc

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

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...

The Tastes of Life Ceremony

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

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

RHYTHM, DRUMMING, AND SHAMANISM

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 Trauma: A Shamanic Approach

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...

My Journey With Cancer

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

Shamanism and Christianity

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...

It’s WAR!!! (Or is it?)

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...

Feeling Small

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...

Rumi’s Field

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,...

Why Poetry?

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

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

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. ...

Shamanism Without Borders

Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Shamanism in the Ice Age

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

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...

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..