Quotes about shamanism

The communication function of modern writers is akin to the ancient role fulfilled by tribal shamans. All writers ultimately perform a shamanistic role in society their mythmaking voices speak to us from the underworld after their passage to the other side. Writers place themselves in a trance-like state where their unconscious mind dictates to them what to write.

I think the common experience is that modern shamans are called by the spirits we just don’t have a collective belief system or community that recognizes the calling for what it is.

When we accomplish one thing, our ego wants to bask in the glory, though our soul is ready to move on to the next.

All wisdom contracts then expands, contracts then expands. That is how consciousness evolves.

I think that being a soul in flesh is really challenging and we should all give ourselves more credit.

We must remember that the only true wealth we have is the freedom of another human, not their entrapment.

You have to live the way you are going to end up.

Though it doesn’t feel like it, crisis places us front and center of desire, which is the force of power.

Our Soul Allies light the fire in those initial visits, but it’s up to us to keep it burning.

The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be pacified lest they revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies

I practice neither black nor white magic.What I do is a technology that I use for my own individual purposes. I don’t strive to be a member of a club.

Mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over.

The core practice of magic is: The execution of a willed intent to create change in the material world, which either defies, hastens or purifies the consequences of natural cause and effect.

Life comes and goes. …If you know that, you know it all.

Healing is active involvement in your process, ongoing.

Healing stories are magickal tales born from personal tribulation and victory, which are then shared.

Throughout the history of medicine, including the shamanic healing traditions, the Greek tradition of Asclepius, Aristotle and Hippocrates, and the folk and religious healers, the imagination has been used to diagnose disease.

Often it isn’t the initiating trauma that creates seemingly insurmountable pain, but the lack of support after.

We don't heal in isolation, but in community.

This stuff of a past not worthily lived is also medicine.

Being healed means committing to use your resources and knowledge.

The soul is infinite, made up of aspects that come and go all the time. It’s our nature for parts of the soul to travel while we meditate or dream. Through this process we grow, we learn new thoughts, thus desires, and our consciousness evolves.

Consciousness is naturally shamanic.

Becoming 'color blind' isn't helpful. Who you are matters, how you are matters. Things like race and culture are a manifestation of flows of creation. Your identity doesn't just matter, without it your soul can't interact with the world. The key is we need to understand that all races, ethnic groups, cultures and like treasures are equal and we must remember to follow our soul rather than our identity. The identity is something the soul works through, not the other way around.

Symbols are miracles we have recorded into language.

What we believe spirit visitors to be influences how they affect our lives. What we believe ourselves to be dictates how we react to them.

Just like a human foetus, while in the uterus, retrieves and assimilates the components that allow its physical body to become whole and fit to emerge into the outer reality, the third dimension serves the purpose of shamanic pregnancy, which is about retrieving and integrating the fragmented pieces of the soul, finally giving birth to the multidimensional self.

Our fellow men are black magicians. And whoever is with them is a black magician on the spot. Think for a moment, can you deviate from the path that your fellow men have lined up for you? And if you remain with them, your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. The warrior, on the other hand, is free from all that. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible to pay. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don't waste your time and your power fearing fr

With the manipulation of abstract symbols, an artist can send you information without sound, change your feelings and,sometimes, even beliefs. Artists convey the unspeakable. Artists inspire.

Phrases such as "I'm beside myself," "I was frightened to pieces," "I feel lost," "I feel like part of me is missing," originated from a sense of soul loss.

We are all but symbols of some greater thing—totems of ourselves--subject to change and growth. When we forget that metaphoric sense of ourselves, we lose sight of the overall path.

REVIEW: Like a master artisan, Weisberger weaves together threads of anthropology, botany, ecology and psychology in an inspiring tapestry of ideas sure to keep discerning readers warm and hopeful in these cold and desolate times.Unlike other texts, which ordinarily prescribe structural (ie. social, political, economic) solutions to the global crisis of environmental destruction, Rainforest Medicine hones in on the root cause of Western schizophrenia: spiritual poverty, and the resultant alienat

The LSD phenomenon, on the other hand, is—to me at least—more interesting. It is an intentionally achieved schizophrenia, with the expectation of a spontaneous remission—which, however, does not always follow. Yoga, too, is intentional schizophrenia: one breaks away from the world, plunging inward, and the ranges of vision experienced are in fact the same as those of a psychosis. But what, then, is the difference? What is the difference between a psychotic or LSD experience and a yogic, or a mys

We can only prosper where we are.

Engaging spirits isn’t an elitist ability or industry, it’s being active in the connection with All Things. It’s innate to us all.

It's important to talk about fringe-of-the-fringe experiences, not just to show the humanity of intuitives, but to show humanity the commonness of intuition.

Transformation can come in the mysterious guise of shape-shifting, or through a simple change of mind

Unless we can interpret that ecstatic trip in a way that better grounds our physical reality, trance isn’t worth much.

When I started to climb, the sky seemed to be sunny and blue. But being up here on the oak tree it is cloudy and foggy.

Exploration is a quite legitimate purpose for a journey. You have the opportunity to learn the territories of the Upper and Lower Worlds and their assets, which you can employ as needed in the future.

Health is being in harmony with the world view. Health is an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one's many levels. Unlike the more "modern" notions, in shamanic society health is not the absence of feeling; no more so is i

In the end, bless the darkness, hold the light, because the two aren't divisible.

What people resist the most about spiritual healing is changing their minds.

Be within your heart.See and feel with your heart.Recognize your heart within another.Speak words from the heart.Receive the words of another,within those precious chambers.

In most cases, it's not what you do but what you don't do that delivers you to a state of personal power.

The deep self has been referred to by many names over the ages. You may know it as Essence, Spirit, Soul, Source...or, perhaps by no name at all. I prefer to call it The Inner Shaman...The Inner Shaman simply waits for your sanity, that glimmer of light or recognition on your part. In short, it is waiting for your readiness to be aware of it.

Need is choice come to fruition.

When I say ‘practice’ I don’t meanrepeating an act until you get it right. In this use, it means to instill regular discipline to accomplish a specific task, ritual without which we feel incomplete, or that our experience of each day is less.

The forces that we deal with have two sides: one is good and helpful and the other is dark and dangerous. Part of your training is to learn to distinguish between them, and know when to use which.” (Nakoma)

We are responsible. There is nothing being done to us apart from what we are doing to ourselves.

To the non-initiate, whose experience of sexuality and bodily pleasure may be distorted by negative cultural conditioning, the introduction of sexuality into a sacred context is often mistakenly misconstrued as the ordinary pursuit of sex for recreation.

The body is more than the temple of the soul. It’s the grounded celebration of its rapture.

The reality is, it takes daily cultivation of a spiritual path, preferably with spiritual kin in proximity, to sustain not the feeling of elation, but the focused, mindful path of steady growth.

Being present is being connected to All Things.

A racist notion found in neoshamanic circles is placing high value on indigenous wisdom but not on indigenous people.

Since the so-called Age of Enlightenment, our shaky anthropocentric, rationalist egos have been brainwashed to forget what 'primitive' cultures once understood: Animals can be manifestations of celestial beings in disguise; they possess supernatural abilities, and they can be our spiritual guides and healers.

Artists are the shamans of our time.

I don't argue things being spiritual vs scientific, because I've never met anyone who knows enough about either to be convincing--including myself.

Regardless of geographical region or culture gardening is perhaps the most common and shared experience of Nature.

My first-year mentor Leslie taught me that the hurrieder we go, the behinder we get.

We can’t turn our true selves off and on situationally and expect them to carry and sustain us. Rationing creativity results in bipolarism of the spirit. Our creativity is also our life force. When we turn it off and on like a spigot, we start to become less and less able to control the valve.

If we didn't have shadow we'd just sit around loving the light, likely doing nothing with it.

You don't find light by avoiding the darkness.

Loving someone but not trusting them is a spiritual emergency.

In shamanism it is not the jaguar or the crow that has meaning, it is what follows from whatever you view as an energetic transfer.

Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.

If a gesture is the most powerful command that you have, then words mean very little.

The only path that has any meaning is one that resolves your being in the feeling that your heart is empowered by doing what is necessary for your existence.

Have intention, sacred will travel.

The more I work with Nature and totemism, the more church is everywhere.

Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.