Quotes & Sayings About Shamanism

A racist notion found in neoshamanic circles is placing high value on indigenous wisdom but not on indigenous people. — S. Kelley Harrell

It is of the first order of importance to remember this, that the shaman is more than merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself, who is cured, and who must shamanize in order to remain cured. — Terence McKenna

Every initiation reaches a point of crisis, by design. If it was easy to let go of the old way, there would be no need for initiation. We'd seat easily into new wisdom. — S. Kelley Harrell

One of the things that's so striking about shamanism in the native context is the absence of mental illness. — Terence McKenna

They're doing a rain dance? A rain dance? In my hotel? On Waikiki Beach? A rain dance? — Richard Tillotson

I think the common experience is that modern shamans are called by the spirits; we just don't have a collective belief system or community that recognizes the calling for what it is. — S. Kelley Harrell

We're all bit of relaxation away from being Gods and Goddesses. — S. Kelley Harrell

The idea that we sacrifice our innate wisdom at the feet of our Guides is really no different from the rigid religious doctrines that talked us out of our childhood spiritual knowing. — S. Kelley Harrell

What we have become accustomed to witnessing is a social illusion that takes precedence due to the fact that the process is so intrusive that it becomes difficult to bear witness to the unobtrusive, which is so subtle in comparison. — Lujan Matus

Start with a girl whose blood has been steeped in Korea for generations, imprinted with Confucianism and shamanism and war. Extract her from the mountains. Plant her in wheat fields between the Red River and the Mississippi. Baptize her. Indoctrinate her. Tell her who she is. Tell her what is real.
See what happens.
Witness a love affair with freaks, a fascination with hermaphrodites and conjoined twins, a fixation on Pisces and pairs of opposites. Trace a dream that won't die: a vision of an old woman slumped on a bench, her spirit sitting straight out of the body, joined to the corpse at the waist. — Jane Jeong Trenka

Though it doesn't feel like it, crisis places us front and center of desire, which is the force of power. — S. Kelley Harrell

Techno-shamanism is a sub-genre of science fiction that is not recognized. Ernest Hogan's "Smoking Mirror Blues" is a seminal work in techno-shamanism. — Frank S. Lechuga

The old Oriental shamans had a much different view when they recalled the movements of kung fu. — Lujan Matus

Again, all the true shamans were wiped out long ago. — Shaman Elder Maggie Wahls

And what is shamanism but philosophy with a hands-on attitude. Philosophy not made around the camp fire, but philosophy based on the acquisition of extreme experience. That's how you figure out what the world is, not by bicycling around in the burbs, but by forcing extreme experience. — Terence McKenna

In the end, bless the darkness, hold the light, because the two aren't divisible. — S. Kelley Harrell

Health is being in harmony with the world view. Health is an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one's many levels. Unlike the more "modern" notions, in shamanic society health is not the absence of feeling; no more so is it the absence of pain. Health is seeking out all of the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one's singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe. — Jeanne Achterberg

Engaging spirits isn't an elitist ability or industry, it's being active in the connection with All Things. It's innate to us all. — S. Kelley Harrell

Result-oriented, low-tech, low-cost, shamanic medicine, uses natural elements, spirit, and the healing power of a caring community, as practiced by indigenous societies for millennia. — Itzhak Beery

You are the one who takes the peace away from yourself. You are the one who's harming yourself. — Sandra Harner

Healing stories are magickal tales born from personal tribulation and victory, which are then shared. — S. Kelley Harrell

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. — Jeremy Narby

Exorcism is a subject that interests me, and books on shamanism, I've read through. — William S. Burroughs

Shamanism is a path of knowledge, not of faith, and that knowledge cannot come from me or anyone else in this reality. To acquire that knowledge, including the knowledge of the reality of the spirits, it is necessary to step through the shaman's doorway and acquire empirical evidence. — Michael Harner

We must remember that the only true wealth we have is the freedom of another human, not their entrapment. — Lujan Matus

In the end we are the sum total of our doings and we will be faced by those doings at the moment of our death. Or is it our death in every moment that we live that faces us with what we do? — Lujan Matus

The poor are so common they're invisible, just part of the ambience of this place. I tuck a few soles under them as they sleep and walk off, feeling like a guilty tourist here for thrillseeking in a culture that's trying desperately to survive. Can shamanism help them? I wonder, as I make my way back to the hostel by moonlight. — Rak Razam

When we accomplish one thing, our ego wants to bask in the glory, though our soul is ready to move on to the next. — S. Kelley Harrell

Oh, they're always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness," he corrected. — Michael Talbot

The way other people practiced a sport, learned a dance, I sat with feelings to learn who I am. — S. Kelley Harrell

It's important to talk about fringe-of-the-fringe experiences, not just to show the humanity of intuitives, but to show humanity the commonness of intuition. — S. Kelley Harrell

Just like a human foetus, while in the uterus, retrieves and assimilates the components that allow its physical body to become whole and fit to emerge into the outer reality, the third dimension serves the purpose of shamanic pregnancy, which is about retrieving and integrating the fragmented pieces of the soul, finally giving birth to the multidimensional self. — Franco Santoro

Terror of the future can be put out to pasture with psychedelic shamanism. — Terence McKenna

If a wound was all that was required to be a shaman, we'd all be one. If wounds were required, no one would be. — S. Kelley Harrell

Shamanism is not some obscure concern of cultural anthropologists. Shamanism is how religion was practiced for its first million years. Up until about 12,000 years ago there was no other form of religion on this planet. That was how people attained some kind of access to the sacred. — Terence McKenna

Mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over. — Tom Cowan

The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be pacified lest they revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies — Knud Rasmussen

There's beauty and there's ugliness. You have to love both. — Sandra Harner

The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along. — Terence McKenna

How can a nation nourished on diversity
breed its own shamanic tradition without retracing its steps to its varied ancestors? — S. Kelley Harrell

Shamanism, on the other hand, is this world wide, since Paleolithic-times, tradition which says that you must make your own experience the center piece of any model of the world that you build. — Terence McKenna

Shamanism is not a religion. It's a method. And when this method is practiced with humility, reverence and self-discipline, the shaman's path can become a way of life. — Hank Wesselman

We are responsible. There is nothing being done to us apart from what we are doing to ourselves. — Lujan Matus

Our fellow men are black magicians. And whoever is with them
is a black magician on the spot. Think for a moment, can you
deviate from the path that your fellow men have lined up for you?
And if you remain with them, your thoughts and your actions are
fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. The warrior, on the
other hand, is free from all that. Freedom is expensive, but the
price is not impossible to pay. So, fear your captors, your
masters. Don't waste your time and your power fearing freedom. — Carlos Castenada

It isn't that a warrior learns shamanism as time goes by; rather, what he learns as time goes by is to save energy. This energy will enable him to handle some of the energy fields which are ordinarily inaccessible to him. Shamanism is a state of awareness, the ability to use energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the everyday-life world that we know. — Carlos Castaneda

Consciousness is naturally shamanic. — Joy Manne

You don't find light by avoiding the darkness. — S. Kelley Harrell

I don't argue things being spiritual vs scientific, because I've never met anyone who knows enough about either to be convincing
including myself. — S. Kelley Harrell

Constant renewal is the only internally vibrant point of reference that we can truly recapitulate, via the fact that we wait for it to manifest as an arrival that has wisdom encased within it, instead of a subjective injection that reflects one's wants and needs, which may be socially bound to what is incorrect. — Lujan Matus

I think that being a soul in flesh is really challenging and we should all give ourselves more credit. — S. Kelley Harrell

Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with. — S. Kelley Harrell

Cultural conditioning is like bad software. Over and over it's diddled with and re-written so that it can just run on the next attempt. But there is cultural hardware, and it's that cultural hardware, otherwise known as authentic being, that we are propelled toward by the example of the shaman and the techniques of the shaman ... Shamanism therefore is a call to authenticity. — Terence McKenna

The core practice of magic is: The execution of a willed intent to create change in the material world, which either defies, hastens or purifies the consequences of natural cause and effect. — Zeena Schreck

Since the so-called Age of Enlightenment, our shaky anthropocentric, rationalist egos have been brainwashed to forget what 'primitive' cultures once understood: Animals can be manifestations of celestial beings in disguise; they possess supernatural abilities, and they can be our spiritual guides and healers. — Zeena Schreck

When I started to climb, the sky seemed to be sunny and blue. But being up here on the oak tree it is cloudy and foggy. — Sandra Harner

We can't turn our true selves off and on situationally and expect them to carry and sustain us. Rationing creativity results in bipolarism of the spirit. Our creativity is also our life force. When we turn it off and on like a spigot, we start to become less and less able to control the valve. — S. Kelley Harrell

We Who Solve Mystery, Become Mystery — Rak Razam

Often it isn't the initiating trauma that creates seemingly insurmountable pain, but the lack of support after. — S. Kelley Harrell

Loving someone but not trusting them is a spiritual emergency. — S. Kelley Harrell

I have an image of
Turtle
right on the forehead.
She seems to go through the lobes of my brain. Sort of
like swimming. — Sandra Harner

Learning shamanism isn't just about acquiring techniques in how to do it, but also how to incorporate and deal with the
changes it brings to everyday life. — S. Kelley Harrell

Past experiences are effluvial.
Burn them.
The now is important. — Sandra Harner

Shamanism is about shape shifting. Shamanism is about doing phenomenology with a tool kit that works. — Terence McKenna

Those who claim to be shamans there (Old East-Block Countries) today are just trying to pick up those remnants that they can remember; or shards they can find; as there has been no practice of traditional shamanism in those Communist countries for over 100 years. — Shaman Elder Maggie Wahls

My first-year mentor Leslie taught me that the hurrieder we go, the behinder we get. — Weam Namou

It also ushered me back to the forest, back to the life energy that connects us all as one divine consciousness and urges me to never lose sight of it and to always protect it in a world where people are forgetting and shunning the natural for the digital. In the forest, I sense the trees and the leaves and let them grow all around me and on me. Suddenly, I feel as if the trees themselves are my spirit animals and they surround me with a sense of healing energy and I feel very maternal and moved to protect the earth itself and all the people in it, especially the ones I'm close too. — Lacey Reah

Being a medium who can communicate with souls isn't the same as one who can interact with them. It's the difference between listening in on a conversation and changing the subject. — S. Kelley Harrell

I am in the river now. I must have fallen. And I am in this river.
And I am just washed away
by the current of
the river.
This is not a river. It is just a small
rivulet. — Sandra Harner

In shamanism it is not the jaguar or the crow that has meaning, it is what follows from whatever you view as an energetic transfer. — Lujan Matus

The body is more than the temple of the soul. It's the grounded celebration of its rapture. — S. Kelley Harrell

Shamanism is essentially a living tradition of alchemy that is not seeking the stone but has found the stone. — Terence McKenna

All wisdom contracts then expands, contracts then expands. That is how consciousness evolves. — S. Kelley Harrell

Shamanism is a great metal and emotional adventure, one in which the patient as well as the shaman-healer are involved — Michael Harner

Experientially there is only one religion, and it is shamanism and shamanic ecstasy. — Terence McKenna

The reality is, it takes daily cultivation of a spiritual path, preferably with spiritual kin in proximity, to sustain not the feeling of elation, but the focused, mindful path of steady growth. — S. Kelley Harrell

Shamanism is just show business and philosophy is just a branch of that vaudevillian impulse. — Terence McKenna

The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons. — Starhawk

We don't heal in isolation, but in community. — S. Kelley Harrell

The blue light is all over. Actually it is within my body. Makes my joints feel all warm.
Vulture thinks I talk too much. — Sandra Harner

In Spirit, there is no such thing as indifference. — S. Kelley Harrell

In shamanism and certain yogas, Taoist yoga, claim very clearly that the purpose is to familiarize yourself with this after-death body, in life, and then the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche. You will recognize what is happening. You will know what to do. And you will make the clean break. — Terence McKenna

As long as we string out the ecstasy of awe, we won't do the work required to mine its precious teachings. — S. Kelley Harrell

Your journey is at hand and you are responsible. — Lujan Matus

The soul is infinite, made up of aspects that come and go all the time. It's our nature for parts of the soul to travel while we meditate or dream. Through this process we grow, we learn new thoughts, thus desires, and our consciousness evolves. — S. Kelley Harrell

Historically, shamans have always been part of the society where they lived, taking care of its problems, whenever they were allowed to operate. For centuries shamanic cultures have been persecuted in the western world until they were almost entirely exterminated. They have managed to survive in secrecy or through complex esoteric camouflage. Nowadays there seems to be more freedom and this ancient knowledge can re-emerge and be used in our own cultural context and not relegated somewhere else. The world needs shamans able to function on the roads, among the electronic equipment and engines, in the squares and markets of our contemporary society. — Franco Santoro

Have intention, sacred will travel. — S. Kelley Harrell

Homosexuality is the most beautiful aspect of humanity. For its existence is proof that altruism is natural; it is to demonstrate that the theory of the "survival of the fittest" can only apply to the species as a whole, and that reproduction is insufficient to secure our place in the great jungle of life, which means being nice is a more stable evolutionary strategy than making kids; and if the homosexual is attracted to religion or to art - or, in smaller societies, to shamanism or caring for other people's children - is this not due to his or her search for purpose? If so, then what we call purpose must be something that encompasses all modes of life. What we call love must be greater than child rearing or caring for a mate. — Anthony Marais

Learning shamanism solely from a book is like running with a razor sharp Ouija board. — S. Kelley Harrell

Turtle is putting seaweed all over me. It is the big turtle. She is so big that she can regurgitate
seaweed over me. It comes out of her mouth like
coming from a spoud of a fountain, which is actually a very nice feeling. It is not sticky at all. It is just
a very nice clean feeling and it is a wonderful ocean smell
about it. — Sandra Harner

Take your thoughts off.
The invading
thoughts you have. Push them aside. See your future in a
bright way. Don't struggle with the past. It is gone. Look
for the future. Look for the future. — Sandra Harner

When we are clear enough about our own point of view, we can find help in the methods of Eastern Christianity or in the ways of the Far East, perhaps by consulting the I Ching or through mandala contemplation; we may even find help in the ways of shamanism or Islam. If we are clear about where we stand and the direction we must take, such methods may be useful in order to follow our own way to the end. — Morton T. Kelsey

What's really important about shamanism is that there is another reality that you can personally discover ... we are not alone. — Michael Harner

Becoming 'color blind' isn't helpful. Who you are matters, how you are matters. Things like race and culture are a manifestation of flows of creation. Your identity doesn't just matter, without it your soul can't interact with the world. The key is we need to understand that all races, ethnic groups, cultures and like treasures are equal and we must remember to follow our soul rather than our identity. The identity is something the soul works through, not the other way around. — Rebekah Elizabeth Gamble

Saints and mystics, revelations, origin myths, and heroes' journeys, as well as ethical and spiritual guidelines, speak to us from ancient times and far-flung lands and peoples. — Sandra Harner

I don't believe that shamanism without hallucinogens is authentic shamanism or comfortable shamanism. — Terence McKenna

Exploration is a quite legitimate purpose for a journey. You have the opportunity to learn the territories of the Upper and Lower Worlds and their assets, which you can employ as needed in the future. — Sandra Harner

I practice neither black nor white magic.
What I do is a technology that I use for my own individual purposes. I don't strive to be a member of a club. — Christopher Rankin

Shamanism is not a course, but a life journey. — Alberto Villoldo

Our Soul Allies light the fire in those initial visits, but it's up to us to keep it burning. — S. Kelley Harrell

I see You, Every time I look into Buddha's eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic