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Shamanism and the Power of Symbols

I practice shamanism, an ancient form of spirituality believed by Western researchers to be older than 70 000 years, to put that in perspective humankind developed agriculture about 10 000 B.C. Western anthropologist have developed an idea about what a shaman is, by studying shamans in remote parts of the world. Anthropology is the study of culture, so thus the shaman has been characterized based on its social and cultural role. From a cultural perspective, the shaman has many roles; the shaman is a therapist, a doctor, a teacher, master of ceremony, an artist, a psychopomp and a spiritual and political figure. A problem have arisen because of the power Western thinking has, even after the colonial era. The shamans that have been studied have been aboriginal tribes in remote places like the Siberian tundra, the Amazonian rainforest, the African savannah, etc. But the anthropologist forgot something crucial – the Western world had a tradition of shamanism too. Up until the rise of the Christian Roman Empire, Europe had a strong tradition of shamanism for as long back as the first migrations from Africa, where humankind and shamanism originated from. One of the largest cultures in Europe, commonly believed only to exist on the British Isle, was the Celts. The Celts had a spiritual figure called a druid, which is a type of shaman. In Scandinavia, among the Vikings, women practiced herbal and sexual magic, and were referred to as Seidr. It is the Seidr that were later referred to as witches, a witch was a female shaman, and also the time where the Western tie to shamanism was severed. Christians said that witches used their brooms to fly off to Blåkulla, where they fornicated with the Devil. This rumor started because witches used the broom shaft to rub a salve made from fly agaric mushrooms into the absorbent and blood vessel rich parts of their vagina. In this psychedelic state of mind, the witches did what most shamans do, they transcended into a different dimension called the Spirit World. The best description is that it resembles a waking dream. So in other words, you don’t have to be a brown bare-assed Indian to practice shamanism, even though that is the stereo-type propagated by Western academia. Also defining a shaman from a social and cultural point of view doesn’t do a shaman justice; it is what is happening inside the head of a shaman that really signifies the tremendousness of the shaman’s power. As shamanism is a deeply personal journey, I will only speak about my own experiences. As a child I was very intelligent and empathic, but as a result of an emotionally rough childhood I closed myself off, I was no longer empathic. I was an atheist and thought that anyone who was religious was either ignorant or deluding themselves. I believed that science was the way forward for humanity and represented reality and truth. I also had an interest in philosophy and art, I have always loved to paint and create. At this time I was 18, me and my best friend decided to try cannabis. However stereotypical it sounds, it opened my mind. I had different experiences to that of my friends, experiences one of them said he only had on LSD. When I was 20 I moved out of my parents’ house and I had started to meditate every night before bed. As I lay there relaxing, listening to ambient music, the strangest thing happened; it felt as if waves moved through my body, and later I could direct them either up or down at will. I realized that for the first time in several years I was happy, I had developed my rational thinking through studying philosophy and opened up my emotions, and through this arose my spirituality. I later learned that the waves I felt was energy – or Spirit, or Chi, etc. Now I felt it from other people, trees, animals, crystals, the earth, fire, the wind, water, deep inside mountains. It was not just a wave, but I could sit still and feel a movement outside of my body with a crystal clear direction, speed and shape. I started to read about shamanism, and came across the concept of animal spirits, a personal bond between you and the spirit of an animal. In his book, His Story – Masculinity in the Post-Patriarchal World, Nicholas Mann says this about animal spirits: “… it is through the experience of the animals that we can find the ability to shed an outworn belief or a manifest norm, as an animal can shed its skin and move with its total being from one state to another. The animals are agents of the process of transformation because they are at one with the needs and the drives of their bodies. When an animal is tired, it sleeps. When an animal is hungry, it eats…” “… When an animal is evoked by a shaman, there is no separation between the human, the animal, the spiritual, and the experiential worlds. The shaman can fly and see with the vision of a bird. They can run with the grace and agility of the deer. Move with the strength of the bear. Swim with the fluidity of the fish. Hear with the sensibility of the otter. And from these things, learn how to be, how to act, how to behave in a world where there is no division between spirit and matter. In this sense, the animal is the mediator between the worlds and can be used to facilitate rites of passage – transitions from one stage of life to the next…” “… The power animals are essentially about transformational qualities. The power of the elk can be summoned when seeking the stamina to move through a long process. The quality of the eagle is about being able to see the way to an outcome and to achieve it through swift and efficient flight. Every animal has its power, a rabbit can get through low undergrowth, a chameleon can remain concealed, a butterfly go through one life stage to another. This transformational ability works within our psyches as symbol of direct experience. The eagle does not mean far-sightedness, it is far-sightedness that is eagle”.  I decided to go into a forest and sit down and meditate and see if an animal would approach me, you never know unless you try right? I never got around to meditating, because no longer than 10 minutes after I entered the forest I crossed paths with a deer and her fawn, through the trees our eyes met and for a few seconds we looked into each other, and then went our separate ways. What was strange about this encounter was that normally when deer encounters humans they bolt at first sight. When I got back home I looked up the description on the deer as a spirit animal, and I was moved, exited and surprised by how perfectly it fit me as a person. After that I saw deer everywhere, in pictures, in the woods, on people’s shirts etc. One time, I was on my way to a friend, we had decided to dumpster dive that evening, I went to the tram station. The station is called Almedal, two stops from Korsvägen, and halfway there I stumbled across a torn off deer’s leg, in the middle of Gothenburg. I looked around for the rest of the body, thinking it might have been run over by a car, but I couldn’t find it. Perplexed I went to my friend, we dumpster dived, but to get back we had to climb a fence. As I climbed the fence, I twisted my leg and had a limb for several days after. The Deer is about love, and so it led me towards what I thought was love, but it broke my heart. But in this pain I found myself, I realized that pain was a great teacher and that before I had gone through the same experience but hadn’t been open to its message. After the summer passed I had evolved from an insecure, socially awkward introvert to a confident, relaxed introvert/extrovert. I got there by looking at emotional pain even further and I found something called the shadow self. The Shadow Self is the part of ourselves where all the pain, trauma, anger, sadness and grief is stored – it is there at the back of our mind, and we keep pushing it aside. When we have a difficult time, we normally go through the same types of experiences, these situations arise because of our shadow self, and these experiences are there for us to realize what our shadow is so that we can resolve it. After that summer, I had resolved my shadow around love. For a period of 3 years now, I have gone through tremendous transformations, and each six months I felt as if I was a different and better person. I had integrated the transformative powers of fire, and at the most intense part of this transformational period I would find myself meditating next to a campfire, as I sat there I went into a trance so powerful it could only be compared to a psychedelic drug. I felt the energy of the fire move towards me, and twist on itself before surrounding me, forming the symbol of eternity. Other times, I would move the energy of the fire inside myself and when I was fully connected to the fire it would feel is if I was burning on the inside, the movement of the flames was in me. At these times I would raise my own vibration, and to my delightful surprise the flames of the fire rose higher and burned faster, as if more wood had been put on the fire… yes, I would not have believed that either, if I hadn’t experienced it myself. After that summer I decided to purchase a drum, a shaman’s drum is made from wood and animal hides and the handle is made from either wood or bone. I started having unusual dreams, in one I met the Egyptian god Anubis, and they all gave deeply personal messages about my life. After looking for a long time I found the right person to make my drum. After he had completed the drum he held a ceremony for the birth of my drum, and that morning I had a dream – in the dream I looked at a blowhorn, blowhorns are symbols of victory, the horn transported me into a memory, I sort of had a dream within a dream, in this dream I was confronted by a furious wild boar. The boar charged me and I responded by bashing its head in, killing it. I later learned that killing an animal in a dream means that you have conquered its spirit or what the animal represents. Up until that dream I had been challenged to study hard, while I lived on about 1 500 kr each month, it was a challenging time. The boar represents survival, achievement and victory. The dream told me that I had overcome these challenges. The drum was sent through the mail, and the day after I picked it up I went to study at the library. After I was done, I smoked a cigarette just outside. On the ground was the carcass of a jackdaw, a familiar urban bird from the crow family, it was completely eaten up save for the wings, tail feathers and claws. I took them home and preserved them in salt. I have also learned about chakras, a tradition from India. Chakras are energy points on the human body which govern different emotions and properties of the human soul. The root chakra govern survival and presence in the moment, the sacral chakra governs sexuality, creativity and your relation to other people, the solar plexus chakra governs willpower, confidence and your relation to yourself, the heart chakra of course governs love, the love you have towards others and the love you have towards yourself, the throat chakra govern your ability to speak your own truth, shyness and personal integrity, the third eye chakra governs insights, dreams and visions, the crown chakra connects you to the higher dimensions, gives you information crucial to your life and connects you to the Light. There are many other chakras as well, and I found one through a message from the crow family. The day before the message I had read about a new chakra called the Well of Dreams, located at the back of the head right between the base of the skull and the neck, a chakra responsible for multidimensional communication, in other Words a opened Well of Dreams chakra gives you clear information from the Spirit World. Then the next day I decided to take the drum for a spin in the warm weather, I went outside and sat on the little hill, outside my window. I drummed, went into trance and felt the wind blow, heard the birds singing and felt the pulse of nature around me. After the drumming I closed my eyes and meditated. My meditation was interrupted by a loud “craw”, and when I opened my eyes a flock of five jackdaws had landed all around me. The one that rudely interrupted my meditation was no more the one meter away from me. He alternated between hopping around, picking at the ground and tilting his head looking at me with his darting eyes. I turned around to look at the other birds, but after a short while the first bird crawed at me again, as if to say “hey, look at me, don’t mind them”. I kept looking at the first bird, and he hopped around me, behind my back and came around to my side, still he was picking at the ground and tilting his head, looking at me. Eventually he came up in front of me, and I had the sun at my back so my shadow was cast in front of me. The bird hopped into my shadow and stood where the Well of Dreams chakra is located, the bird tilted his head and looked at me one last time, and flew away.

Each piece I’ve created incorporates the experiences that I’ve had, the result is symbolism. When I use the horn of a deer or the wing of a crow it symbolizes the experiences that created the meaning behind the symbol, and the connection to the spirit of that animal. And some of the material I use I got from such an experience, like the wings. Symbols are usually thought of as cultural, representing a cultural phenomenon, but with shamanism it can also be personal. Another aspect to my work is that it is functional, both in its symbolism and its design – I use my work for meditation and ritual. The energy of the crystals, the horns, the feathers all influence me in trance and so are selected and placed according to a specific purpose.

The Staff

This is the second staff that I have created, however the first a storm of ideas (it even has inbuilt speakers for listening to music). The wood is juniper, which I choose because it smells lovely and is easy to carve. I put a deer skull on top, because it is my spirit animal. The crystals respond to the chakras, and I have placed them so that they line up according to my body, the symbols on the one side are symbols of those chakras and the flowers are in the color of the chakras. Besides the chakra stones, I use the staff hiking and it is great to lean against while attending raves. It can also connect you to the energies of the place you are in. At a rave, Love Forest, I stood in the middle of the dance-floor, feeling the almost overbearingly strong energy through the staff. It was so strong I thought the staff would splinter. During that meditation I came in contact with my higher self, it felt old, wise and knowing – like a grandfather who is worth respecting for his wisdom of experience.  

The Drum

The Headdress

The Crow Necklace

The Fan