Shamanism?

[serenarian]

Up to now I have considered myself an Eclectic hedgewitch with Wiccan leanings, but I have been having a lot of dreams lately and the word 'shaman' keeps popping up in them, along with beautiful animal imagery. Does anyone have any good links to sites about shamanism, just the basics?

Better still, are there any practising shamans out there who could tell me a little about what they do?

I'd be grateful for anything you could provide.

BTW - feel free to move this if it's in the wrong place, I wasn't sure whether to put it here or in Paths.

Seren x

[DraoinanDuanaire]

"Shaman" is an interesting term (to me, at least).

Properly, it once referred only to functionaries within certain tribes...it's a cultural term, like rabbi or draoí. It stems from a root meaning "monk", which I find intriguing, given the "primitive", sort of unorganized picture contemporary culture paints of shamanism.

Popularly, "shaman" is (especially in neopagan circles) applied to whomever identifies as such, much like any other term. Usually, they see some manner of ideological or spiritual kinship with whatever it is they imagine "shamanism" to be, though in truth, the techniques that defined the saman (from whence "shaman" derives) are found in many other cultures around the world, so employing them hardly seems (to me) to be the mark of a shaman.

I hope one of our resident shamans (shamen?) chimes in...I'm sure we have some. :)

[serenarian]

I hope some resident shamans see this thread too, as I'm eager to know whatever I can. :D

[Shanti]

If your interested in traditional Shamanism, I would suggest reading anthropology type material. If your interested in neo-shamanism, there are many books at new age stores and the net.

Here are a few links to articles about traditional shamanism. They contain references to many books on the subject too.

http://deoxy.org/shaover.htm#2

http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/shamanism.html

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/shamanism/overview/

[merlo]

My uh, friendgirl is from Peru. She tells me about the shamans there and I am soooo interested. She does cinema documentaries, and I almost have her convinced to do one on the shamans there. We are meeting this weekend to talk about it. As her english is very good, I asked her if she might want to join M/W, I think she is considering it. I can get her to come on my name here and answer questions if you would like.

[Romani Vixen]

I'm a Hedge Witch as well. There are some who consider hedgewitches/cunning ones to be shamans.

The shaman is the healer, and spiritual leader. One consistent mark throughought traditional shamanism all over the world is other-world travel. Some call it astral... it's similar at minimum. A stable foundation of meditation, including the visualization variety.

http://shamanscave.com/
http://deoxy.org/shaover.htm

there's also some threads in the 'paths' forum

[serenarian]

As her english is very good, I asked her if she might want to join M/W, I think she is considering it. I can get her to come on my name here and answer questions if you would like.

That would be absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much! :D

Some great links there - thank you Shanti! And thanks Romani Vixen for mentioning the other threads on the subject. :)

[sonjabeck]

http://www.nierica.com/shamanism/shamanismdefined.html