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Shamanic Store
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Come visit and look around in the Shamanic Store. Hundreds of shamanic tools, clothing, bags, pouches, and more!
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Santa Cruz Community Shamanic
Drum Circles
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Find out more about shamanic drum circles for Santa Cruz and surrounding communities!
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Greetings!
A lot is happening this month! Of course, at the height of summer in these northern latitudes, there is much work being done, including our fair share right here at home. Seems like digging, painting, building, watering and planting were all lined up the last time I spoke with you, and then came tromping in just a few weeks ago. Sigh.
Oh well, I do try to get out and get some fun also. For instance, we have finally put together a great community shamanic drum circle that will be meeting at 8 in the evening on the fourth Saturday of every month... and all are invited! We have lots of room for something short of a zillion inspired Earth-'luvin shamanic enthusiasts at Santa Cruz's Quaker Meetinghouse. For info on that, head to the sidebar on the left, and there is a link to find out how to get there and such.
Also, among Shamanism 101's advanced practitioners we have some who are stepping forward to help provide mentoring to the newbies. Our teaching staff is growing! This is an extraordinary opportunity to get really sound 'been there / done that' hands-on advice and encouragement from matured practitioners who have excelled in their practice and are now coming forward to help us all. More on this shortly!
One of the biggest things that happened is that our faithful old Shamanism 101 website is getting ready to retire!!! We are all very proud and pleased with the new site, which is located at
The old site - don't worry, we still are holding onto it! - is still the place where you will find your coursework, however we will be gradually transitioning all of our work to the new site.
Last but not least, Shamanism 101's new location now has a shamanic store that sponsors both this newsletter, as well as the Santa Cruz Shamanic MeetUp group that provides the local communities with easy access to shamanism and nature-based spirituality through drum circles (supported by donation) and various shamanic classes. This store is surprisingly (even to me, and I oversaw its construction!) jam-packed with hundred of crystals, shells, rattles, drums and all sorts of things that build a practitioner's tool kit. Even a huge variety of shamanic and nature-focused t-shirts and clothing for men and women. It is worth a 'click' to the store (through the link in the block to the left), if only to find one of those beloved shamanic t-shirts we like so much! All purchases through this store support Shamanism 101's outreach program.
So, welcome to the Summer newsletter. I hope you enjoy the articles below and find something that can inspire or encourage your practice, and if you are in the Santa Cruz area, I invite you to come join us at our community drum circles!
Always with much love and respect,
Steve
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 | Teacher Training
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Through the surge of interest in shamanism that arose over the past 50 years, many are now familiar, even if just in name, with some of the healing strategies that were developed and maintained by our ancestors, such as soul retrieval, power animal retrieval and psychopomp. The early researchers in shamanism were naturally attracted to such demonstrations of healing and divination as 'clear instances' of shamanism, and some recognized within them their core agreement with one another, leading to the spread of what we call 'core' shamanism today. Though many specific cultural streams of shamanism still exist, we are aware that shamanism is not simply a particular 'teaching' belonging by any tribe or culture, but is a way of understanding how the world is put together and how we find our human wellness in it.
Much of today's shamanic curriculum still harbors this early emphasis on practical healing and divination protocols that shamans are indeed known for. And yes, these healing and divination practices are important and need to be internalized. Of course, having experienced this path ourselves, we are now also aware that technical procedures in ordinary and nonordinary reality are only the barest tip of shamanism. So, even though it's teaching has been somewhat narrowed to individual journeying and learning healing practices to use with clients, a lot of students have since gained a lot of the experience. In a sense, the past decades of experience has helped our understanding of shamanism mature back to the deeper, general understanding of reality, spirituality, and human existence that was our global ancestral wisdom from which these techniques arose.
The contemporary world has been demonstrating a tension between jettisoning the wisdom of the past and retaining it. We are aware of the alarming nature of how our distancing from the old ways and the Earth has been leading ourselves as a species, and the rest of the Earth, rapidly towards unwellness. We hardly know each other, separated as we are from the Earth and each other. We no longer live in a village where we know one another intimately, we no longer live on the land where we can know and develop a relationship with the soil, water, plants and animals. Indeed, we hardly know ourselves.
To read further, follow this link.
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| Shamanism Does Not End With the Shaman |  It is pretty much a fluke of history that shamanism is looked upon generally as it is today. The monotheistic religious powers over the recent millennia did such an excellent job of eradicating our general awareness of what was, in different forms, our ancestral spirituality. So I guess it is at least an understandable fluke. If Rome and the other religious power centers of were a little kinder and a lot more understanding, we might be living today in a communities that recognized our need for empowerment and wholeness, and not only encouraged us to go visit the local shaman, but were there to help us remember to keep nurturing the soul part or power that may have been returned to us until it grew up within us healthy and strong. But something has happened regarding what we think of as 'shamanism'. We generally have it all wrong. Shamanism is not what a shaman does when journeying, or even doing a healing or divination, as many might think. Well, yes, of course shamans do these things. Soul and power retrieval, journeying, psychopomp, extraction, divination... these definitely are a part of shamanism, but only the smallest part. It is like me saying that 'gardening' consists of planting. Period. Gardening would be a lot easier for everyone if it consisted of only planting! Let's suppose you were (and maybe you are) growing your own vegetables this year. I put in some tomato plants and look forward to later, when because of the effort I am putting in, my tomatoes will be 'coming out of my ears'. Yes, planting is a part of gardening as clearly you are engaged in one aspect of gardening, but since a lot more sweat and work goes into gardening than just sticking it in the ground. To be fair I need to put it in context: I cleared a section of weeds, turned the soil, added some mulch, I got young sprouts from a local seller, set them carefully so I could water around them, and..." Enough. Point made: 'gardening' from seedling to the table is much more than just planting. Although I suspect that I going to be out watering my tomatoes more than simply on occasion this very hot summer, I will also be gently guiding them up into their wire frames, watching for insects, observing when they are ripe, carefully removing the luscious orbs of mouth-watering red-orange, washing, slicing, and eating them... Something like a confusion of 'gardening' with 'planting' has happened with shamanism. Most of shamanism is what someone does with the information or healing that a shaman, for a brief (comparatively and generally speaking) period of time, helps facilitate. Actually, a shaman's work is only the smallest part of shamanism. In fact, much of what a shaman does could be done by anyone with a little training, even children. But again thinking of tomatoes, if all I did was plant something and didn't take care of soil preparation, watering, tending, and harvesting, it more than likely wouldn't lead to a single tomato! So contrary to public opinion, 99 percent or more of shamanism is everything that is not being done when a shaman is journeying, divining, or engaged in a healing practice. Of course, these are engaging, interesting, even fascinating things to experience or witness. However, the preparation of the shaman is a long and arduous process, and the work a client must do to integrate and develop the power, soul part, healing or information that is provided is potentially just as difficult and lengthy. If the work of shamanism was just a retrieval of information and telling it to a client, or the retrieval and transferring of power or soul parts, a client would have only barely touched the healing or positive life changes that are possible. The real work of shamanism is the integration and development of a soul part, power, or whatever healing has been catalyzed, or the turning of important information into life direction in order to make changes. And these are things that shamans generally are not a part of! Shamanism precedes and continues long after any particular shaman was involved. Shamans often finish their practice feeling exhausted, but if anyone thinks that shamanic practice takes work, just try being a shamanic client! You think that power that was retrieved is going to grow on its own? Not a chance. That client has their work cut out for them, and probably a lot more than they bargained for. Shamanism does not end with the shaman. It's just the beginning. |
| Shamans as Scientists (or)
"Mummy, the birds are talking to us..."
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Shamans engage in investigative research, gathering information, working with what they see and hear like pieces of a puzzle. The picture of what it is and how it fits together starts to take shape over time. This is actually the scientific way: gathering information, sorting, hypothesizing, testing, and looking for consistency and repeated results. This is essentially how anything has been discovered. Humanity didn't start with textbooks and construction manuals. We began by looking for clues, and slowly an understanding took shape of how things were put together and functioned.
I guess in a philosophical way and specific way of talking about it, shamans engage in phenomenological research. Here, we set aside our former conceptions (such as regarding what is real) and observe our experiences as something in and of themselves. In investigating what we don't know, we let our experiences show us how we might conceptualize what we are studying, rather than using whatever concepts we walked in with to pretend to understand that which we know nothing about! In other words, the shaman researches without bias.
This is actually how shamanism took shape in the past. However, it didn't end there, for it is a research method that practitioners today must likewise follow.
to read further,
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