Many Guides One Path

 In my previous two posts you will have seen that I was in a dilemma about which path to take and which teacher to follow.

As I write today, I believe Spirit has guided me to the right path for me at this time - I will go into how this came about and what this path is in my next blog post.

Today I would like to clarify my journey and my gratitude to the various teachers who have helped me to understand the Shamanic Path and in doing so, have helped me to understand myself. I have approached Shamanism from many different directions - which is probably why I managed to confuse myself.

My main teachers (in book form and from the internet) have either come from North America or from the UK. When I was younger I believed Shamanism to be the sole property of the First Nation peoples of the North American continent - USA, Mexico and Canada. I have since learned that Shamanism has been practised all over Mother Earth for hundreds of thousands of years - only ending with the advent of organised religion, especially Christianity where the Church was ruthless in it's persecution and destruction of all the "old" spiritual practises and the wholesale murder of those who held them dear. This makes a mockery of the common belief that Christianity is a religion of peace and love - check your history books to see how many wars were started in the name of Christ.

The word Shaman itself comes from the culture of the nomadic peoples of Siberia and Mongolia and I think it was mainly down to the ground breaking work of the anthropologist Michael Harner that it came to be accepted as a universal term for those people who were able to "walk in both worlds" - the world of men and the world of Spirit. Harner also came up with the concept of Core Shamanism - this was a philosophy and practice that incorporated many of the universally accepted ideas and practices of various Shamans, Medicine Men/Women, Witches, Wizards, Witch Doctors, Sorcerers and Spirit Healers from around the world.

Core Shamanism has become the go to teaching for urbanised people in the industrialised, Western societies. We modern people who practice Core Shamanism are never going to have the "knowledge" that an indigenous person would glean from being an apprentice to a genuine aboriginal shaman. We who follow the path of Core Shamanism could never really call ourselves Shamans - were are Shamanic Practitioners at best and students of Shamanism and Animism is probably a more realistic title for most who are on this path.  

My problems began because my earliest influence in Shamanism was Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda was a true enigma - he was a modern, urbanised anthropology student from South America who was studying at UCLA in the USA and somehow he managed to be accepted as an apprentice to a genuine Shaman or Sorcerer or Man of Knowledge (all titles are appropriate) in the form of the Mexican Indian of Toltec heritage - the famous don Juan Matus. Castaneda went on to become a Sorcerer or Shaman in his own right and he taught many apprentices who were not indigenous people but modern, urbanised people. And what he taught was definitely NOT Core Shamanism.

Then, when I started to have an interest in Shamanism again in 2018, the majority of available teachings were focused on Core Shamanism. There was also a fairly strong South American, Peruvian, Inca tradition that had been popularised for the Western Market (if you could afford it). I looked into the Inca tradition but it did not gel with my heart so I followed the path of Core Shamanism which was more easily accessible and more affordable. Most Core Shamanism teachers follow a pattern that is rooted in North American First Nation traditions with a few in the UK, Ireland and northern Europe who have adapted it to include Celtic and Norse shamanic traditions.

These are the teachers I would like to thank publicly for the work they have done in helping myself and others to understand and practice shamanism as a way of life. There are many guides, including Spirit in all It's many forms, animal, plant, mineral, bird, insect, wind, water, fire and human - but there is only one path, the path of Knowledge.

NORTH AMERICA

Carlos Castaneda, Michael Harner, Gerry Starnes and Victor Sanchez

THE UK

Paul Francis, Rhonda McCrimmon and Jason & Nicola Smalley

Thanks for reading, see you next time.