Shamanism

Introduction

Shamanism is widely regarded as the oldest human spiritual practice, with roots going back to the Paleolithic era or Stone Age, from 2.5 million to 200,000 years ago. The Dance of the Deer Foundation notes that

“One could view shamanism as the universal spiritual wisdom inherent to all indigenous tribes. As all ancient spiritual practices are rooted in nature, shamanism is the method by which we as human beings can strengthen that natural connection.”

The shamanistic way of life, which is regarded as a religion by some but not all people, regards every element of the world (and presumably the wider universe) as having its own spirit. This includes not just people and animals, but also plants, minerals, bodies of water, mountains, entire forests, and so on. Everything is interconnected; everything is part of the great web of life. A shaman is a healer, capable of communicating with these spirits and with spirit guides who can inform the shaman what the community or the individual client needs.

Origins

It appears that the earliest shamans practiced among the indigenous peoples in Siberia and Mongolia. The word “shaman” comes from the Siberian language Tungus: “saman” means “one who knows.”

This tradition was of course completely oral, and reflects early humanity’s efforts to understand the world in which they lived and their place in the vast universe. Shamanism evolved in cultures all over the globe, without reference to each other or to any central figure. It seems to be the most basic of human attempts to comprehend the mysteries of the cosmos. One website notes that

“This universality speaks to the shared human experience and the intrinsic need to connect with the sacred and spiritual dimensions of existence.”

History

Shamanism has no scriptures or named founders; as noted above, it is apparently the worldwide first step in humanity’s effort to understand Nature and our place in it.

In the theosophical teachings, every human attribute begins in the mind of the Divine and gradually works its way "down" to the physical plane. Shamanism, then, is simply where we began to try and make sense of the world around us. Presumably this would occur only after we had reached a stage where we knew how to meet our basic physical needs and thus had time to think about the spiritual world(s). It would also seem to point to a degree of separation between humans and the spirit world that did not exist previously. It has been suggested that prehistoric humans may have lived in the higher planes of consciousness as easily as they did on the physical plane. To serve the collective evolution of consciousness, we had to “descend” further into physical reality, leaving our direct experience of the spiritual world behind us. Theosophy posits the beginnings of humanity at a spiritual level, from which we underwent “involution” into the physical realm. Thus very early humans --- perhaps earlier than the scientific record can show --- may have been aware of the higher planes of consciousness as a reality on a par with the physical plane. Shamans represent those humans who were (and are) still capable of direct experience with other levels of reality.