Reemergence of the Shamanic Worldview

Many contemporary spiritual organizations are concluding that the “modern” worldview is taking us down a path that is not viable in the long run. In searching for a viable alternative, some of them are reexamining the ancient shamanic worldview and incorporating it into their practices.

Broadly defined, a shaman is an individual who, at will, enters into altered states of consciousness in service of the Community. In early historical times (and in some indigenous groups today) those with special facility at managing altered states of consciousness were recognized and acknowledged as sorcerers, witches, witch doctors, medicine men, or seers. Use of the anthropologists’ term “shaman” is appropriate because it encompasses the other terms while lacking their prejudicial overtones and conflicting meanings. The word “shaman” comes to us from the language of the Tungus people of Siberia.

Traditional shamans were, first and foremost, healers; they were visionaries and mystics, who could communicate with nature, with gods, and with spirits; they were able to perceive things others could not and to make meaningful connections between objects and events separated by both time and space; they were keepers of knowledge, both sacred and secular; they were artists, poets, singers, and dancers; they were psychologists, social workers, consultants, and mediators; they were masters of ecstasy and masters of death.

The roots of Western shamanism are said to lie in the practices of the “wise women,” the priestesses of early Anglo-Saxon times. As spiritual leaders, they helped their people to understand and to live within the framework of a worldview that was called “wyrd” (pronounced the same as “weird”) and which suggested that:

• all things and all events are intimately interconnected, as if by a seamless web, on all levels of reality;
• objects that are perceptible to human senses are nothing more than local manifestations of larger energy patterns;
• that which is imperceptible to human senses is just as important as that which is perceptible;
• any event, anywhere, affects everything else, everywhere, as a result of vibrations transmitted throughout the web;
• everything, everywhere, is alive — that is, consciousness is all-pervasive;
• body, mind and spirit are all one; and
• the entire universe is sacred and has purpose and meaning.

This worldview, it is interesting to note, is very similar to the nature of reality as described by quantum physics today.

Our “modern” worldview — based on anthropocentrism, humanism, rationalism, mechanism, and materialism — authorizes and even encourages, aggression, exploitation, and destruction. Grounded in a literal, fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis 1:28, in which humans are said to have been given “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth,” its tacit assumption is that the world and everything in it exists for our benefit and that we are free to do with it as we please.

From this perspective, we tend to think of ourselves as being separate from and superior to everything else … as well as separate from and superior to each other. As a species, we emphasize separateness over interconnectedness, independence over interdependence and differences over similarities. Such a posture provides few checks and balances against our aggressive tendencies — and aggress we do … against nature, against each other and against ourselves.

The shamanic worldview of wyrd, on the other hand, provides a viable, life-enhancing alternative for human behavior. Taken seriously, experienced directly and lived as if the future of humankind depended on it (which perhaps it does), wyrd would permit us to perceive our individual selves as sharing a common identity and a common destiny with all other human beings, to accept all living things as being interconnected and interdependent and to honor the Earth as a living entity vital to our survival. Instead of separation, conflict, alienation, and chaos, the human experience would become one of unity, harmony, cooperation, and order. From a psychological perspective, a change such as this would help people, both individually and collectively, to satisfy one of their deepest needs — that of connectedness and belonging; it would relieve those feelings of aloneness and isolation that lead to anxiety, depression and ill health; it would provide a sense of harmony, of meaning, of purpose and of personal value.

David Ritchey is the author of The H.I.S.S. of the A.S.P: Understanding the Anomalously Sensitive Person. Go to www.hissofasp.com to find out if you are an anomalously sensitive person.