Shamanism Book & CD List

Because there are so many junky books out there on "shamanism" (with a capital "S" for silly), people are always asking me for book and CD recommendations.

Besides the extended resource list pages on my animism and shamanism web site, http://www.shamanista.com, I have a brand new list of recommended books and CDs at another site.

I just started writing a regional column on shamanism as the new Houston Shamanism Examiner. So I have added a list of books and CDs, with links to review pages, on the right-hand side of every page on my Examiner column. But you need to scroll down to find it below the ads.

I hope you find it useful. These are some of my all-time favorite books and CDs on shamanism, the ones we use in our Shamanism Meetup Group.

This new list includes some books and CDs that did not exist when I built the Shamanista web site. Let me know what you think.

One famous book is, so far, conspicuous by its absence. Let's see if anyone actually misses it.

If you have any suggestions, please comment here, and I'll take a look. I'm always interested in new shamanism information and resources.

Why Shamanism Is Hard to Learn in Houston

I am the new Shamanism Examiner for Houston at Examiner.com. I'll be writing a new column on doing shamanic work in the Houston area.

Here is the first post, on why it is hard to learn to do shamanic work in Houston in particular and large cities in general:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-16972-Houston-Shamanism-Examiner~y2009m7d12-Why-shamanism-is-hard-to-learn-in-Houston

I hope you will stop by and take a look. I would love to read your comments.

If you have a question or want to get a discussion going, please leave a comment about it. I might write a column about it.

Thanks for taking a look. I will be back here to post again soon, I hope.

Can Shamans Change the Past?

Recently someone wrote to me, asking for tips, insights, or books that included instructions on changing the past. He had been reading books on mongolian shamanism by Sarangarel, who had said that shamans could change the past. He wanted to know how.

Just in case you are interested, here is what I replied:

I cannot think of a particular book that mentions changing the past, though I do see it mentioned in books sometimes. Certainly we can change our feelings about past events.

Very few people are likely to be able to actually change an event that was witnessed by others. You would be changing their reality, too.

However, I believe that we do not make our own reality, or change it, so much as (if we are successful at our magical work) move ourselves into a different reality.

If you read some of the popular books on particle physics, you find that some of the greatest physicists of the last century believed there are multiple realities. They say that a new reality forms every time you make a decision.

My belief (as described in the novel, The Witch's Dream, by Florinda Donner) is that shamans and other magical adepts can indeed move into different, parallel time streams in which the reality is different, including the past.

The slippery thing about changing the past (or one's feelings about it) is that if you are successful, it seems to have always been that way. So you may not feel that you really did much.

If you read or listen to an account of someone else doing it for himself or herself, you may think it was their imagination. And, of course, it might be.

Personally I sometimes have the feeling that reality has changed, and I remember how it was.

Here is an example:

I have a bronze sculpture near my desk. I bought it in April of 2006. At that time, the sculpture consisted of a sculpture of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi and the god Ganesh, sitting on a swing (like a child's swingset, but ornate).

I'm very familiar with Lakshmi and have several sculptures and pictures of her around the house. So I know how she looks.

Recently, after moving a plant that had partially hidden the sculpture, I noticed that the figure sitting on the swing with Ganesh is now a Buddha. As a Tibetan Buddhist, I know Buddhas. I would not make that mistake.

So what happened? Somehow, I believe reality changed. I certainly did not set out to change the past involving that sculpture.

Maybe some other change I made resulted in the change in the sculpture. Or did it change my memory, so that I now think that I bought a sculpture with Lakshmi in it?

So the subject of changing the past is very tricky, but I believe it can be done.

The thing to remember is that shamanism and other forms of magic are not tricks. When they are effective, it is because we have developed our souls/spirits/minds in such a way as to be able to create the effects we want. Even then we are limited to going with the flow of the Universe.

As an analogy, in a very fast-flowing stream, paddling a canoe downstream, the current, may help you travel faster, but if you are trying to paddle against a very strong current, you probably will not make much progress. It is important to be in harmony with higher goals of the spirit world in choosing your goals.

And just as with any skill or talent, you need to work to develop your abilities. It may not happen immediately. But if you persist in living your life according to your spiritual guidance, with the goal of helping others, you will make progress and your abilities will grow.

If it turns out that changing the past is not relevant to your spiritual purpose after all, you will probably lose interest in it. However, if it is important for you, then you should eventually be able to change the past and to help others change their pasts.

That is my belief. Does it make sense to you?

Since changing the past is not a trick, not a special technique, persisting with your shamanic practice should eventually take you there.

For example, I feel the same way about soul retrieval. When I first read an interview with Sandra Ingermann, I reallized that I could do soul retrieval, but that I was not ready yet. A few months later, I was ready, and I started doing soul retrieval. After that, I took the Foundation for Shamanic Studies soul retrieval course and found that I was right.

Spirit will tell you what you need to know. When you are ready, you will do it if it is truly needed.

The spirit world seems to be pragmatic about such things. You are given what you need, not necessarily what you want.

Shamans, Pretenders & Thought Police

For some reason, the topic of shamanism seems to attract very diverse types of people. Not all of them are very pleasant to talk to about it, because most don't seem to bother to find out what it is before they begin spouting opinions and arguing about it. That is why I no longer participate in online shamanism discussion groups.

I have needed to write about this for a long time, and yet I really didn't feel up to it. That's why I neglected this blog for so long: I was avoiding having to write this very post. But it had to be written sometime, so here it is.

Shaman Pretenders

On the one hand, you have a lot of folks who have no idea what shamanism is but have a whole lot of opinions about it. They seem to think the word means something very cool; therefore they must be doing it, because they know that they are very cool---or want to be.

The Prevalence of Ignorance

Most folks have never bothered to read or study anything at all about shamanism. All they know is what they have heard from others like themselves. And apparently that is all they want to know.

Bad Books

Some others, having read a pot-boiler of a book or two, written by someone who was out to make a few bucks without actually doing much work, are sure that they are experts. There are a lot of really bad books out there that purport to be about shamanism.

Such books may be entertaining, and they are generally great ego-strokers. Often the premise is that the reader is already a shaman but just didn't know it yet.

Fluffy Bunnies Bite

These pretenders may sound like harmless fluffy bunnies, but they can turn quite vicious if you tell them that shamanism is, in fact, a specific discipline with well defined and well documented practices. In other words, shamanism is real and not just whatever you want to make up.

Him Heap Big Shaman

The general ignorance leads to the notion that just any indigenous healer or spiritual practitioner is a "shaman." Not so. There are many, many different types of healers, holy people, sorcerors, herbalists, psychics, priests, conjurors, and mediums in many, many cultures.

Some cultures have a wide variety of these different functions. Others combine two or three functions in one or two types of practitioner. Each and every culture has its own name for each of those functions in its own language.

Neopagan Myth-Making

Nowadays we also have many modern neopagans who are being taught that Wicca or whatever brand of neopaganism they subscribe to is, in fact, "The Olde Religion."

In complete defiance (or ignorance) of the archeological and anthropological record, they claim that their modern belief system is the oldest religion. Therefore, in their way of thinking, shamanism derives from their religion, so they must be shamans.

In fact, animism is the oldest spiritual belief system. No gods or goddesses existed until comparatively recent times in the history of human beings. It's OK to believe in whatever mythology you choose, but don't confuse it with historical fact or archeological evidence.

Shaman as Superlative

Then there is the craving of Americans for superlatives. Some people think that shaman signifies some sort of extraordinary degree of ability in any spiritual field, the top of an imaginary hierarchy of spiritual accomplishment. It doesn't.

Shamanism is a particular set of practices of a spiritual specialist of a particular kind within an animist culture. Some shamans are more powerful and accomplished than others. But there is no hierarchy. Either you are practicing shamanism, or you aren't.

Shamanism Thought Police

The shamanism thought police are a political bunch. In the United States, quite often they claim to be Native Americans whose constant assertion is that no NA has ever, in the tens of thousands of years of existence of over 500 NA nations been a shaman. Or even studied shamanism. Period.

That raises several obvious questions:

1. How can they speak for all Native American nations and cultures of all time? Thousands of miles apart, thousands of years apart, and speaking hundreds of different languages and dialects, many of the peoples of the Americas would never have even heard of each other, much less interacted.

Many NA nations were extinct before Columbus arrived, and most of the rest disappeared within the next 200 years. As many as 95 percent of NA people had died of European diseases or were murdered by the Europeans before 1700.

That's right. Archeologists now estimate that 20 million people lived in North America before Columbus arrived. Two hundred years later there may have been only a million left.

How would modern NA people know what every single person and culture in North America believed over the last 20,000 to 50,000 years? They don't. They can't possibly. No one does.

2. If you have never studied a given topic, and therefore do not know what people are talking about when they use the terminology, how could you possibly know even whether or not you are doing it? Much less whether or not others are doing it? Or ever have done it? Or ever have studied it. Naturally you can't.

Their other constant assertion is that any Native American who does study shamanism or agree that it has ever been practiced by an NA, anywhere in time or space, is a "plastic medicine man" (or woman).

Any NA who disagrees with them is, by their definition (and who made them the judges?) not a real NA. Very circular logic, that.

AIM Attacks

In the old days the thought police on the Internet were mainly self-proclaimed members of the Florida chapter of the American Indian Movement (AIM). They constantly trolled the shamanism newsgroups and Yahoo groups.

They lurked, waiting to pounce on any poor soul who used the terms shaman and Native American in the same post. And if anyone claimed to be part Native American, the thought police tended to quickly become abusive.

One of their declarations was that no NA had ever called himself (or herself) a shaman, because the word did not exist in any NA language. Well, duh. Of course not. But that does not mean that the function and practices of shamanism never existed in any NA culture.

Apparently, according to anthropologists, they did. Furthermore, some NA groups today do accept and use the term shaman when describing their spiritual practitioners to outsiders.

According to anthropologists, some NA ceremonies, especially those relating to bears, are so similar to shamanic ceremonies in Europe and Asia that they must be related. Reading the descriptions of eye witnesses, you can hardly tell them apart.

That does not mean that the ceremonies were spread by diffusion (a politically charged term that simply means spreading from one culture to another by contact). But if one ceremony and set of practices is almost exactly identical to another, and has the same purpose, and one is shamanism, then so is the other one.

Siberian Chauvinism

Nowadays there is a new twist. Because of a woman who called herself Sarangarel, who claimed to have been initiated as a Siberian shaman, there is now a whole new group of thought police. They vociferously object to anyone using the term shaman for anyone outside Siberia.

They claim that because shaman is a Siberian word, it is disrespectful to Siberians and is stealing from indigenous people to use the word shaman to describe anyone but a Siberian, because "shaman is a Siberian word."

The flaw in that faulty logic is that Siberia is not a culture. It is not a country. Siberia is a huge geographical region, made up of many countries. Most important, it is made up of many language groups that are not even related to each other.

Only one small tribe in Siberia used the term shaman. Their sister tribes, descended from the same original tribe, used different words. And those were people in the same language group, speaking different dialects of the same language.

Across the huge Siberian region, there are many cultures who have (or had) shamans (people who practiced shamanism). Every single culture had a different name (or several names) for those practitioners.

The reason that anthropologists use the term shamanism is that they first learned about shamanism by studying the tribe that created the term shaman. In describing the practices of those shamans and publishing descriptions worldwide in anthropology journals, anthropologists coined the term shamanism to describe what shamans do.

So the term shaman is not used throughout Siberia. It is used by one tribe. By the logic of the new shamanism thought police, the terms shaman and shamanism should be used only to describe that one tribe's shamanic practitioners.

The thought police do not make that distinction. What they are demanding is not logical. It is simply the new political correctness.

There is also an element of elitism about it. The author they consider to be the sole authority on Siberian shamanism, Sarangarel, also started a school and organization, which you can join, too, if you are willing to pay them.

The Irony

The irony of all this was brought home to me when I started Shamanista, a website on animism and shamanism, for my shamanism Meetup group. I put a link to the site in my email signature and used it when posting to shamanism groups on line.

One day I got an email from someone who told me to change the terminology on my web site and in this blog. He said I must not use the words shaman and shamanism to describe any practices outside of Siberia, especially since obviously (he assumed) I had never bothered to study anything about Siberia.

In response, I explained the origins of the words shaman and shamanism, named various books and resources I had studied, including most recently the work of a folklorist who had lived in Siberia and returned there for years, documenting the different words used for shamans and their work in the various (often unrelated) language groups across that vast and diverse region. It was a pretty long email.

So the guy responds that I clearly have no respect for the rights of indigenous peoples, and he should know, because he himself (the major proponent of "Siberian shamanism"), is Native American.

What can you say to a statement like that?! In other words, he is no more Siberian than I am, and he is basing all his "knowledge" on one teacher, Sarangarel. (It seems to me that he must be, because I've read a good bit of anthropology, as well as his teacher's book, and I've never seen any other author claim what his teacher does, or did.)

So the obvious question is, why isn't he studying his own people's indigenous ways? Why isn't he practicing the spirituality of his own NA culture, a large NA nation with a still-living language and tradition?

Why All This Weirdness?

Over and over, across the years, I've wondered how it is that whenever the topic of shamanism enters the picture, for most people logic flies right out the window.

Why is that, do you think?

70,000 Year Old Python Shrine Found in Africa

Until recently the oldest evidence of religious practices that archeologists had found was about 35,000 years old. A new discovery in Botswana, Africa sets back the date by 40,000 years!

Core vs Classic vs Ethnic Shamanism

There are three main categories of shamanism: core, classic, and ethnic. (No, "Make believe" doesn't count. )

Michael Harner did a great thing, in a way, by popularizing "core shamanism." It's a great concept: Teach the techniques that all or most shamans use, without the ethnic content. However, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, or maybe just some of the instructors, seem to me to carry that too far. Shamanism really can't be empty, generic, and value free.

In the basic shamanism class I took from them in 1992, the instructor said that shamanism is compatible with all religions. Living in the Bible Belt, I know that's untrue, but they probably feel they must say it.

Nowadays all over the web you find people saying that shamanism appears in every culture worldwide. That is really not true. Shamanism seems to have developed in most parts of the world in gathering-hunting cultures and lingered in some cultures for much longer. Once cultures turn to farming (rather than just gardening), shamanism disappears.

The problem, of course, is many people are calling just about everything shamanism. Shamanism is a very specific belief system and set of practices. The basic, core practices are recognizable in many gathering-hunting cultures, but not just every indigenous healer is a shaman.

Shamanism depends on the animist world view, the belief that all things have spirit. It depends on belief in the spirit world. Journeying involves interacting with spirits in a setting of rich imagery. For ethnic shamans that imagery is provided by the teaching stories and belief system of the culture, and also by the reality of the local and ancestral spirits themselves.

Lots of teachers seem to be telling people that a shamanic journey is a light trance, a form of meditation. That is also untrue. According to recent medical research the EEG readings of meditators show them to be in alpha state, while the those of indigenous shamans are in theta.

In hypnosis, theta state is where the most powerful work is done. From what I've experienced in mediation, in hypnosis, in guided meditation (a form of hypnosis), and in shamanic journeying, in order to get to theta state, where real changes happen, there must be content. There must be imagery more profound than just going into a light trance and letting your imagination run wild.

We can all learn to journey in some sense of the word, but if we stop at the light trance level (alpha state), we aren't really doing shamanism. Yet most of us in modern, industrialized countries not only didn't grow up in animist/shamanist cultures but also don't really have access to them.

Not only is adopting indigenous spiritual practices from books or hearsay stealing, it's also pretty useless. So what are we to do?

I think we have to learn from whoever wiil teach us. And we can learn from books some clues to how to interact with the land spirits where we live. Some indigenous peoples have explained how they contact the land spirits, and we can glean clues from that. But we need to go outside onto the land and experience the spirits on our own.

Go camping. Find some undeveloped land. Even near, sometimes in, large cities in the US like Houston and Chicago, there are parks that are mostly wild, with picnic tables along the edges. Go into the forest or desert. Walk out in the prairie. Sit by a stream.

To practice shamanism we have to construct our own mythology, so to speak. Each of us, from our own reading and experience, can develop our own system that works where we live. Eventually we can reach the theta state and go into the real spirit world in our journeys.

For several years I've been calling that "classic shamanism" to distinguish it from the emptiness of "core shamanism." To me it's a middle ground between "core shamanism" and the powerful practices of indigenous, ethnic shamanism.

Raven Kaldera eloquently compares core shamanism with ethnic shamanism (which he calls "classic shamanism") in a table that makes it very easy to see the differences: http://www.cauldronfarm.com/writing/shaman_compare.html

My only quibble is that I think there is something between the two. That middle ground is what I call "classic shamanism." It can be powerful, and we can use it to be of service to our community, to the spirit world, to the environment where we live, and to the Earth.

Shamanism in Tibetan Buddhism and Bon

I have studied and practiced eclectic spiritual healing and Tibetan Bon and Buddhism since 1990. I don't really mix those things with shamanism, but I find them to be complementary.

Bon, the indigenous Tibetan religion, actually has a shamanic component. Although it has become more and more like Buddhism, Bon was originally an animist belief system that included shamanism. There are still shamans and sorcerers in Nepal and possibly (despite persecution under Chinese rule) in Tibet.

When Buddhism was adopted in Tibet, so many shamanic practices were incorporated in it that Tibetan Buddhism is, to this day, very different from other forms of Buddhism. When you receive an empowerment or initiation from a reborn lama, a rimpoche (precious jewel), you can sometimes really feel the shamanic energy.

(Most lamas are not consciously reborn with memories of other lives as lamas. The ordinary lamas generally have a geshe (doctorate) degree in Tibetan religious studies, so their ceremonies are word perfect, but the energy is quite different.)

One of the most important practices in Tibetan Buddhism, Chod, came from one of the female founders of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a classic shamanic initiation of dismemberment by the spirits. Interestingly, Tibetan Buddhism coexists very well with shamanism in Siberia, Mongolia, and the countries of Greater Tibet, such as Nepal and Bhutan.

I haven't studied the shamanic practices of Bon yet. I have some books and CDs by Tenzin Wangyal Rimpoche, though, and I recommend (and will eventually review) them on my website on classic shamanism, http://www.shamanista.com.

Rimpoche is a wonderful teacher, who lived in Houston and taught at Rice University in the early 1990s. He gave teachings in Houston even before he moved here, and I studied with him and later with his teacher, Tenzin Namdak Rimpoche, the Lopon (highest teacher) of Bon.

While living here, Tenzin Wangyal Rimpoche started a Houston branch of his Ligmincha Institute, and he returns at least once year to teach. His lectures are wonderful.

Like the Dalai Lama, the consciously reborn lamas (and perhaps the others, too) can transmit knowledge directly (psychically) while teaching. It's hard to describe, but it is real. (I've experienced it with Tibetan lamas and with a Mayan daykeeper, Hunbatz Men, who spoke only Spanish but was understood by listeners who knew no Spanish at all.)

Although Bon has grown closer and closer to Buddhism, its shamanic roots are much closer to the surface. Bon also has more female deities, making it more appealing to women than Buddhism.

Both Tibetan religions are almost the opposite (to me) of the emptiness of Zen. They are filled with sensory imagery (vision, sound, taste and touch), which is their legacy from Tibetan animism. Like shamanism they often deal directly with spirits.

Before Tibetan lamas do a ceremony, they check on the land spirits at that place. Then, if need be, they heal the land spirits before conducting their Bon or Buddhist ceremony.

[By the way, not all monks are lamas, only the senior teachers are called that. And not all lamas are monks, even in Buddhism; some of them are married and have families.]

Both the intricate, colorful imagery and the animistic practices of Tibetan Bon and Buddhism appeal to me. The energy feels familiar, attractive, and powerful.

Classic Shamanism and Why I'm Here

I'm new here. My interest is in classic shamanism (as practiced by indigenous peoples)--not to copy but to learn from.

I believe shamanism is rooted not just in the Earth in general but in working with the land spirits of a particular place. Generally the people who have lived in a place and worked with the land where they live for generations are the experts on the spirits of that place.

So I think we have to make our own shamanic practice, tailored to where we live. Spirit is our best teacher but it sure helps to be able to learn from others.

I read The Way of the Shaman when it first came out, and being by nature an animist, I was very interested, but I couldn't seem to get started. Later I studied with students of Leroy Anderson, and a little with Leroy himself. That's how I got started journeying.

In 1992 I co-taught a 10-week class on experiencing shamanic energy. Then I took a couple of FSS courses.

Now I lead a shamanism Meetup group that meets once a month to journey together and do shamanic work, such as guiding the spirits of the dead to the spirit world. We use ecstatic trance postures and experiment with other sounds for journeying, as well as drumming.

I've started a web site to answer questions asked by members of the group and to put the things we do into a framework, to give people some background.

http://www.shamanista.com

There are a few dozen pages there now, but I expect the site to keep growing steadily. Please stop by if you are interested, and let me know what you think. There are a couple of buttons you can click to send me an email. I'm open to suggestions and very grateful when people tell me about typos!

Web sites are good for presenting a lot of information in an organized way, but lately I've felt the need for something more informal and interactive as well. I hope this blog will be it.