So ya wanna be a shaman...

I answered this question over on Tumblr, but thought it might be worthwhile to share it over here as well.

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mysticalshamanjosh asked you: Hey. I myself am studying Shamanism and I wish to become a Shaman myself. Any advice or help you could give me? Thanks.
Hi there

Well, there are a few preliminary things to think about and research.

First, "shamanism" is not a monolithic concept. There are a few relevant categories that I use to describe the various shamanisms (plural) out there:

Traditional, or indigenous, shamanisms, are those spiritual/medicinal/practical paths that have been developed in indigenous cultures worldwide, not just the Americas. The word "shaman", in fact, comes from the Siberian Evenk (formerly Tungus) people's language; it was appropriated by European anthropologists to describe similar practices in other cultures.

Neoshamanisms are shamanic paths created by non-indigenous people who, generally speaking, were not raised in culture that had intact shamanic paths or figures. The most common and well-known neoshamanisms is core shamanism. This was created by anthropologist Michael Harner in the 1980s; he had spent several years studying with indigenous cultures, particularly the Jivaro in South America. He saw several motifs, practices or activities among shamans in various cultures that he thought were similar, such as spiritually journeying up and down a tree or other axis, and tried to distill them into a "core" of universal shamanic practice.

Unfortunately, this completely ignored a couple of very important facts: First, that you cannot divorce a shamanic practice from its culture of origin without radically changing the meaning and context of it. When an Evenk shaman uses a drum, it is NOT the same in context as when, say, a Sami shaman drums. They may both be using single sided hide drums with symbols painted on them, but you can't necessarily say "Well, this is what they're both doing" beyond a very general level, and certainly not to the point of saying "this is what all shamans do". This is especially since there is very little you can say about ALL traditional/indigenous shamanisms—not all shamans use drums, not all shamanisms are male-dominated, not all shamanisms involve journeying, etc. Korean shamanism, for example, is primarily practiced by women who go into possessive trance (spirit going into shaman's body instead of shaman traveling to spirit world), and the drum is generally played by an assistant, not the shaman.

The second thing he ignored was that he himself has a cultural context that he brought to core shamanism when he created it. Core shamanism is not culturally neutral. It is predominantly white, middle class, academic, English-speaking shamanism, with all the privileges that come with that status. Traditional/indigenous shamanisms generally developed in contexts where life and death were a lot more immediate, where the shaman's role as the keeper of medicine and healing was a lot more prominent, and where things like famine, attack by enemies, and diseases were much more of a lethal danger than for the white middle class people who are the most common practitioners of core shamanism.

This is not to say that core shamanism, or neoshamanisms created by white people, are necessarily bad things. But one thing to keep in mind is your own culture and other social locations and how those may affect your attitudes and thoughts about shamanism and the practice thereof. My own path, Therioshamanism, has been very consciously created with the fact that I am a white neopagan chick from the Midwest in mind. It doesn't mean that I have to use electronic trance or industrial music instead of a horsehide drum to journey (though I have done that). But what the drum that I use means to me and how it came to me is very different than the same drum path of a traditional shaman. And that makes my shamanism very different by necessity.

So: what does all this mean for you as you're beginning your exploration into shamanism? First, that you need to figure out what you mean by "shamanism" when you say "I want to practice shamanism". Do you mean you want to try to get in touch with an indigenous culture and see if they'll teach you their ways? (It's not an easy thing, just saying.) Do you want to try core shamanism on for size, both Harner's original creation and the elements that have been added on by other practitioners since then? Or do you want to try a neoshamanism that isn't based on Harner's work, that the creator may have put together from scratch, such as James Endredy's Ecoshamanism, Raven Kaldera's Northern Tradition Shamanism, or my Therioshamanism?

So before you go any further, let that be your first thing to figure out. Think about what's calling you to shamanism, for sure, but also think about what you're even being called to. Knowing what your options are can help you to start piecing out a framework to place your calling, your desires, and your need to learn and practice on.

(Feel free to ask follow-up questions—I'm happy to help!)