| Golden Deer Joan Mickelson Holistic and Shamanic Practitioner and Mentor in Evergreen, Colorado |
What is Shamanism?
The word saman originally described the Siberian (Tungus) men
and women who served their community on a spiritual level. When
the shaman drummed, it was said the shaman’s soul left his or her
body with the help of the animal powers, in search of game,
information and healing for members of their community.
Today the word shamanism describes a philosophical and
psychological orientation toward spirituality. The shamanic
worldview recognizes that everything is alive and has spirit and that
all is connected, through what the shamans refer to as the Web of
Life.
Because all is connected, the stars, the ocean, forests and trees,
the animals, birds and fish, by this hidden web, the shaman can, by
entering another state of mind, see and travel in the non-ordinary
reality (NOR) or imaginal realm. With our ordinary or daily way of
seeing, we see a tree, its trunk, branches, and leaves. When the
shamanic practitioner enters the NOR he or she can sense the tree’
s own consciousness and life force.
Everything has consciousness; however, the consciousness may
be very different and alien to our human consciousness. A simple
organism like a mold has a very different life force and
consciousness than a human has. Some creatures have a
consciousness more similar to ours and frequently those creatures,
such as a bear, a deer, or an eagle, will become the guide, the
animal power, that the shaman identifies with (called merging) to
enter the portal to non-ordinary reality.
Historically the shaman identified levels of NOR as upper, middle
and lower worlds. These levels became maps that described the
parallel universe. In the upper and lower worlds, time and space do
not exist, so the shaman can travel forward and backward in time.
In this way, the shaman perceived and communicated with the
ancestors and retrieved useful knowledge and wisdom that helped
members of the present community.
Shamanic practitioners have also been healers, and were able to
search for the spiritual causes of illness and disease. They brought
back lost soul fragments or extracted energetic influences that may
have been causing illness.
Today many people learn shamanic practices for the benefit of
self-healing, to enhance their spiritual insights, and to benefit their
friends and family members. With the organ of perception that the
Sufi scholar Henry Corbin called the Imagination, the shamanic
practitioner travels in the mythic, folkloric, or archetypal imaginal
realms to add richness and meaning to their daily lives.
The holistic healing methods presented in this website should not
be considered an exclusive method of confronting psychological
and/or medical problems. It should be viewed as an adjunct to
orthodox medical or psychological treatments.
