Is/was anyone in here under the guidance of a shaman?
Share your experiencess
Oh man… This is just dying for a WoW joke.
Eh, I don’t think I ever found a better suited place for the question so…
Alright, I’ve learned in the History classes that, historically, a shaman was the guy in certain primitive communities that would contact the spirits in order to guarantee good vibes and heal the sick, a spiritual diplomat so to speak. It would be the guy who, when those communities became civilizations, would become the king. So far so good.
Now, I have absolutely no idea of what a shaman nowadays is/does/believes in. 
Can somebody help me with that? What’s the modern shaman like, out of a tribe, perhaps with fundamentally different attributions?
Actually I believe that a shaman played many roles in one society.
The most common I think was the one of the witch doctor.
Shaman in many occasions was responsible for the good crop and he was obligadged from his tribe to contact with the spirits and secure a good crop.
Many times there would not be a good crop and the shaman could be sacrificed.
Well my idea of the shaman is the one able to communicate with nature/with the ability to heal.
I guess being a shaman is mutch more.
Shamanism, in my opinion is one who controls “magic”. I’ve seen a movie with a shaman in it who would cast spells on people… if this is the case I have to say shamanism is evil. But yea you should understand i’m a Orthodox Christian who regards magic as a “dark art” in all its forms, for it says so against it in the bible.
The concept has changed over tthe years, in the past Shaman’s used to belief in their ancient religions and follow their rules with information they got from their predessesors, shaman’s also had a tendency to be the wise man/woman of the village and was therefore obliged to tell story’s to the tribe on scary dark nights.
As far as I’m concerned there is’nt alot of magic involved in taking shrooms or peyotl and having visions.
But hey, shamans these days are usually just new-agers (a girl I used to be friends with, her father was a shaman, she used to describe it to me once as him standing in a circle of candles, screaming with a joint in his hand(in person he was a pretty nice guy)) that think this will bring them in contact with nature or bring them some sorta spiritual revelation.
They usually know nothing of ancient customs real shamans used and rely on own interpertation or books they read on the matter.
There are a few left in this world that actually still hold the stories of their tribes for the generations, I guess some native americans and tribe’s in generally uninhabited areas like jungle’s or desert also still have their shamans, but dont expect to ever get to meet them.
This forum is for beyond dreaming discussion, so I removed the off topic posts about new age things in general.
poseidon asked for personal experiences of members who had had guidance from a shaman: he did not ask for your opinions
Hey im an Orthodox Christian too…
But don’t be too swayed by Christianity’s laws and ethics. This is good, this is bad, etc. I know that they regard magic as evil ive been told this many times by my teachers and those preaching the faith.
Its common that when religions see something which they don’t understand, they cast it as evil.
What I believe though is that nothing is evil, everything is just as it is supposed to be.
If “God” exists, then he obviously allows for evil to be around. And if he allows evil to exist, then evil obviously serves a good purpose, and so for something evil to serve a “good” purpose, is it really evil?
Anyway sorry for going off topic I just wanted to reply to NeoMarine’s post.
Regarding shamanism, yeah its quite extraordinary and amazing the things you can achieve with this. I have had some slight experiences with this but not really anything solid at all, I’de like to become a shaman some day but it does require a lot of work, as far as I can see.
To answer poseidon, I’ve had a shaman read my energy and tell me some importan facts about myself, what stage in life im at, a little about my past life, and a little about my future. She has helped me quite a bit but its all so very complicated I decided to let it go for now, and focus on other things which feel important to me, then i will contact her again.
I knew a shaman who claimed to be trained by Don Juan Matus, the man who trained Carlos Casteneda. He was an odd guy who explained nothing, and often contradicted himself. I gave up on him after awhile, as he tended to fall back on the old, “it cannot be understood intellectually” tripe.
However, I did attend many of his shamanic storytelling sessions, and while the content of the stories was as bizarre and esoteric as most of what he talked about, there was still something odd going on that I couldn’t explain. He definitely had a connection with something wider than most of us, though it was hard to nail down. One of his students, who followed a more Lakota tradition, had this same capacity, and when he filled in for Koyote (the shaman) at one storytelling session, I thought I was going to pass out from all the energy of the experience. It was truly uncanny.
I gave up on Koyote eventually, deciding that he probably know more than most of us, but not as much as he’d like us to believe, like a guy who can read minds passing himself off as a god or something (that’s the best analogy I can think of, even though it’s not that great).
The Rev
A shaman is someone who uses different techniques for altering consciousness and is able to talk to the spirits and other creatures. I am practising shamanism and I’m going to start my apprenticeship under a sami shaman from Norway.I would like to add that many shamans are beeing trained directly by the spirits, from within. This happens through dreams, inner journeys etc. The shamanic traditions are different throughout the world, but there are similarities. Shamans are said to be dream experts. For them there is no difference between the seen and the un-seen. The physical and the non-physical. LD’ing has been used by many shamans(i also think this practice is still alive) to contact the spirits and for magical uses.
Not all shamans use peyote or mushrooms to induce the trances. Some use drums, rattles and dancing to alter their consciousness to fall in to a dream like state. It is similiar to day dreaming only you have complete controll. In this state you can experience sounds, smells, touches and visions. Sounds quite similar to drams, don’t it? 
I’ve met two shamans. One was for a routine exorcism (okay maybe it wasn’t so routine.)
I don’t remember much about it. He had some type of medicine bag that he put on my chest. He laid his hands on me and was calling forth some coyote god (he told me if I wanted I could think of the coyote god as some type of energy.) And at the end he took a swig of some, maybe lavender oil, and sorta spit it in a mist above my body. I asked him about how he became a shaman and I think he told me it wasn’t something he really talked about, but he had some sort of traumatic, life transforming experience. He was a westerner but I think learned from a traditional shaman. That was in the back of a new age bookstore.
The other time was when I met Reb Gershon Winkler. He’s this Jewish guy who had a midlife crisis, left his ultra-orthodox community (where he was a writer of novels for really religious folks) and lived in a shack in the woods in New Mexico for a while. He started talking to some of the native peoples there and started to realize the similarities between his tradition and theirs, and the stories most people don’t take so seriously anymore about types of shamanic practices and beliefs, not typically called that of course. So he ended up staying in NM, not in a shack anymore, and now does work to reclaim Jewish shamanism. I met him at a Jewish retreat center where he was teaching, but I never sat in with him for his class. I saw him do melave malka, a special meal after Shabbos, but that was more borscht belt than anything. He led something else that I don’t remember clearly. I’ve got one of his books, Magic of the Ordinary, but when I got to the shamanic stuff I put it down. It’s a bit dense. May pick it up again at some point.
Besides the shamanic practices and some shared beliefs, the one thing the two seemed to have in common was a sense of humor. Neither seemed to take themselves too seriously. But that’s fairly anecdotal.