What is shamanism?

Shamanism is what came before religion, science, medicine, and so on and was practised by humans for roughly a million years of our evolutionary history. It's commonly associated with the hunter gatherer stage of human culture but is still practised throughout the world particularly in indigenous cultures.

What is shamanism about?

Shamanism is essentially the science of individual human life experience. Unlike a priest, doctor, psychologist or therapist a shaman is not ordained by some higher authority passed down through hierarchy, tradition and good practice. The shaman figures out the mystical principles by themselves by isolating themselves from the community or society and going off into nature to study and learn about actual reality. Shamanism is about boundary dissolving and elevating human conscious awareness through various techniques and methods; ayahuasca, psychedelics, meditation, aesthetics, ritual magic, rock seeing, divination, sexual abstinence and so on.

Fundamentally shamanism is all about three things:

  • liberation from suffering, struggles and misery
  • dissolving of ignorance through the elevation of conscious awareness
  • inspiration and insight

The Forest Tradition

I became a shaman through what is known as the Forest Tradition, which is associated with Theravada Buddhism. I spent around 2 years completely isolated from society living alone with nature during this period. I also went through what is known as 'mauna' - not speaking or communicating for long periods of time, weeks, months, and cycling out almost completely my thought processes. I spent 90% of the time either sleeping or meditating among trees. What happened was that I went through a transformation of physiology and senses. My hearing became far more acute, colours became far more vivid, sunsets seemed real. I felt the harshness of cold weather and numbness of snow. I learned a lot about the differences between actual reality and cultural or conceptual reality. This is also where I learned that enoughtment was not a state of mind or a level of consciousness, but a fleeting, momentary experience which we all share.

My individual techniques and methods as a shaman

I practise my shamanism primarily through dream weaving, divination, and ritual magic. I also take a multi-disciplinary approach which is a kind of an odd fusion derived from eastern cosmology, the Kabbalah and Western mysticism, theosophy and in simple terms Qultura. As the founder of Qultura Core and Qultura, I'm the Core Facilitator, which is a fancy term for shaman and mystic. I work with community volunteers and activists directly, and act as a human mystical resource, guide, problem solver, mediator and the ultimate support figure. I have a nickname, the 'impatient empath', because while I connect I strip away false beliefs and notions and offer anyone a 'factory reset' of their conscious perspective.