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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 has arisen because of the power of Western thinking, even in the post-colonial era. The shamans that have been studied have been from 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 that reached as far back as the first migrations from Africa, where humankind and shamanism originated from. One of the largest cultures in Europe, commonly misbelieved only to exist on the British Isle, was the Celts. The Celts had a spiritual figure called druid, which is a type of shaman-priest – the difference arises because the Celts had a hierarchy based in rank, and still do, whereas shamans have a more fluid hierarchy based on knowledge and experience. 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 this was also the time period where the Western tie to shamanism was severed, in the time of the witch-burnings. Christians said that witches used their brooms to fly 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. Because of the lack of a shamanic integrated culture in the Western world and the focus of Western academia on aboriginal tribes, the notion that a white western citizen could be a shaman is not thought of, ridiculed or argued against as cultural appropriation. But shamanism is universal, it is an element of all cultures on each continent, and thus can’t be the sole property of one culture. Spirit does not see color, culture or heritage. 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.

My own journey

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 and became apathetic. Throughout my teens I was an atheist and thought that anyone who was religious was either ignorant or deluding themselves. I believed that science was the only way forward for humanity and represented reality and truth. I also had an interest in philosophy and art, I have always loved to paint, think and create. Around the time I was 18, me and my best friend at the time 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, in other words I was more susceptible to a psychedelic experience. Overall cannabis made it possible for me to look inwards and open myself up after being closed for that long. Shamans do not refer to these plants as drugs; they refer to them as plant teachers, an intelligent life-form that imparts knowledge when you interact with it and it demands respect. Despite the Western approach to drugs, these plant teachers can have a therapeutic and spiritual value if used with the proper intention. They are tools, and the effect of a tool is determined by how it is wielded. In the case of addictions, the intention might not be conscious. Most addicts have reported that the cause of their addiction is childhood trauma or a devastating trauma suffered later in life. The first animalistic instinct is to escape the problem, and the drug acts as such an escape – the good feeling gotten from the rush blocks the negativity of the trauma. But after a while you need more, larger dosages to continue the escape and in the end you risk an overdose. In the case of psychedelic drugs, if the intention is to cure the problem, in other words face it instead of escaping it then the result is quite different. The added depth of insight makes it possible to look at the problem and understand it and understanding provides distance making the trauma less overbearing. If the psychedelic is used in a ritual setting, in Nature with an experienced shaman one session could be as effective as years of western therapy.

The Awakening

When I was 20 I moved out of my parents’ house and I 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 with introspection, meditation and psychedelics, and through this arose my spirituality. I later learned that the waves I felt were energy – this is also called Chi in Asian tradition, Shakti or Kundalini in India and as a broader term used in English deriving from Native American tradition, Spirit. Now I felt it from other people, trees, animals, crystals, earth, fire, wind, water and 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”. So 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 individual that had lost a lot of personal baggage. 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 - and 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 with my fists, 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 that 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.

My work and the symbols of my soul

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. Other symbols I use are the sun and moon. My determination and lust for progress in myself, my work and for the world is like the sun – unstoppable and powerful. A friend of mine looked at my aura, and she said it looked like the sun, as if I had a halo around my head. I also love sunrises and sunsets, and while attending the rave festival Love Forest 2014 with my best friend, we had the most amazing and hands down religious moment during a sunrise. We sat next to a campfire, with other people, throughout the night. I was very tired and went into a state of sleep deprivation, which is a great state for trance but not that comfortable. I meditated next to the fire, connected with it, and elevated my energy to make the fire burn faster. As I was done with this, the first rays of sunshine, across the lake, rose from behind the tree line. As I looked towards the sun I noticed that three branches formed a perfect triangle, not one moment after that the sun aligned perfectly with the triangle, centering itself within it and forming the symbol of the Third Eye. By this time I was in awe, and people started moving away from the fire, walking down to the shore to greet the sun. Without thinking I and my friend followed, and we stood there watching the rising sun cascade its light on the calm lake, coloring it and the clouds in its burning orange presence. Time had stopped, this moment was an eternity and I was madly exited. Energy flowed from my heart, so strong it almost hurt. The poetry with which I write this captures but a fraction of what I felt in that moment. The moon has a long tradition of symbolism, everything from being a god to werewolves, but personally I experience that the three days before and after a full moon strange things happen, like coincidences and synchronicity and it is a time greatly suited for ritual and meditation.

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, so thus it is not art in the modern sense – modern art, or western art, is made to be looked at and to evoke thought and feeling – my work, is made to be used and so becomes what it is based on that purpose. 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 crystals are chosen based on what chakra they stimulate, what their energy does and of course their shape and design.

In shamanism, or any other form of spiritualism, symbols work as tokens for direct experience. What is direct experience? When you for the first time kiss that person you’ve been going out with for a while, when you cross the finish-line victorious, when you get really angry, or scared, when you cut yourself or when you find serenity in a sunset – in other words it is an emotional state that envelopes your entire mind, however briefly. These spiritual symbols are used to attain these direct experiences in order to expand your awareness and insight, push you through a transformative period or reach beyond the confines of your previous existence. However, as a shaman, these symbols are not chosen per se, but arise out of your relationship with… to but it simply, Nature. Western civilization, as said before, has lost its connection with the shamanic tradition and thus its connection with Nature – it is related to as a commodity, garbage pile and means to an end. When you form a personal relationship to Nature, when you regard the natural world as a source of knowledge and inspiration what occurs is completely counter-intuitive to the Western mentality – Nature responds, it gives you signs that when followed leads to positive affirmation, love and abundance. It is as if Nature has some kind of awareness, a claim that shamans have made for thousands of years. Out of this communication symbols are created, and when working with the emotional states that such symbols represent your life leads in a prosperous direction.

I use parts of real animals in my work, such as skulls, horns, feathers and wings. Some might object to this because they find it gross or morbid and others might dislike it because of a political or moral persuasion. But like me and others shamans using parts of animals are about capturing the essence of that animal and to use it your work is considered to honor the animal and its Spirit. For instance, the wings I found would have ended up in trash-can if I didn’t pick them up and choose to use them and breathe new purpose into them as art.

Some of my works are not completely done, as I changed project in the middle of the course.        

The Staff

It took me about two months to complete this staff, and about two weeks to do the finishing touches. The wood is juniper, which I choose because it smells lovely and is easy to carve. I put a deer cranium 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 2014, 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 explode or splinter, which believe it or not is a real possible outcome. 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 staff is not completely done.

The Headdress

Like any other projects I’ve created, the headdress started as an idea that came to me through intuition – my ideas rises from my subconscious as a complete idea, left to be created and solidified in matter by my conscious mind. As a tool for meditation the headdress is designed to stimulate the chakras of the head (crown, soma and third eye) while the hands are freed for drumming or other crystals. The white feathers were chosen to attract the light that connects the upper chakras to the Higher World. This light is drawn down from above during meditation, through the crystals, and in the chakras the light and the energy of the crystals synergize. The jackdaw wings are placed in the back of the head both for esthetic purposes and to stimulate the Well of Dream, as this chakra is connected to that animal. The horns have been placed to mimic the deer. The wood used for the feather medallions are juniper just like the staff, and once again the moon is used as symbol. The colors green, red and white are used to gain color uniformity with the textile bands.

Eye Shades

Most forms of meditation happens within the individuals psyche, thus closing the eyes enable one to look within and focus on the internal nuances of emotion and vision. Meditating during the day, or with a bright source of light, when closing the eyes, can cause a flickering that makes it harder to concentrate during meditation. This piece can be used to achieve the darkness that enables a concentrated deep meditation while freeing up the hands. The sodalite crystal is placed near the Third Eye chakra to help induce the visions that form during meditation. The bone is the nasal bone from a Deer. The painted eyes are inspired by the Wisdom Eyes of Buddha. I will complete this with some feathers and a metallic beak.  

The Fan