Shamanism is the oldest of the practices in this collection by a very wide margin, older than any religion, older than written history. It’s also the most easily misunderstood, partly because the word now gets applied to a great many things. It’s worth returning to what it actually means.
Shamanism refers to a range of ancient spiritual practices, found across many indigenous cultures worldwide, centred on a practitioner, the shaman, who is understood to enter altered states of consciousness in order to interact with a spirit world for the benefit of their community. Traditionally, the shaman’s role includes healing, guidance, and mediating between the human and spirit worlds. It is not a single religion or a unified system but a description of similar practices that arose independently across many different peoples.
An ancient and widespread practice
Shamanic practices are among the oldest known forms of human spiritual life, with evidence stretching back tens of thousands of years. What is striking is how widely they appear: strikingly similar practices developed independently among peoples across Siberia, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia, cultures with no contact with one another. The word shaman itself comes from the Tungusic peoples of Siberia, but the phenomenon it names is close to universal in traditional societies.
This near-universality is part of what makes shamanism significant. It suggests that the practices answer to something deep and common in human beings: a need to make meaning of suffering and death, to heal, to seek guidance beyond ordinary knowledge, and to feel connected to a larger living world. Whatever one makes of the spirit world the shaman is said to travel in, the human needs the practice serves are real and enduring.
What a shaman does
In traditional contexts, the shaman occupies a specific and demanding social role. They are typically called to it, often through illness, crisis, or a powerful experience, and trained over years. Their work centres on entering a trance or altered state, historically induced through rhythmic drumming, chanting, dancing, fasting, or in some cultures plant medicines, in order to journey, in the tradition’s understanding, into other realms.
From these journeys the shaman is said to bring back healing, insight, or guidance for individuals and the community. The practices are deeply tied to the natural world: to particular animals, plants, landscapes, and ancestors. A shaman is, among other things, a keeper of a people’s relationship with the living land and the unseen forces they understand to move through it.
Shamanism in the modern world
What has emerged in recent decades is often called neo-shamanism or core shamanism: an attempt to draw shamanic techniques, particularly journeying with the aid of rhythmic drumming, out of their specific cultural contexts and make them available as a contemplative and self-development practice. In this form, people use drumming and guided visualisation to enter a relaxed, meditative state and explore their inner world through imagery and symbol.
This raises a genuine tension worth naming honestly. Traditional shamanism is embedded in specific living cultures, and its removal from those contexts raises real questions about appropriation and depth. A weekend workshop is not the same as a lifetime’s initiation within a tradition, and it is worth approaching modern shamanic practice with respect for where it comes from and humility about what a decontextualised version can and cannot offer. Approached that way, with respect rather than acquisition, many people find that shamanic journeying, understood as a structured, drumming-supported form of meditative inner exploration, offers a genuine experience of stillness, imagery, and reflection.
How to understand it
For a modern person, the most grounded way to understand shamanic practice is as one of humanity’s oldest technologies for entering altered states of consciousness and for maintaining a felt relationship with nature and with something larger than the self. The trance states shamans enter are real psychological states, achievable through drumming and rhythm, and the experience of journeying is a real experience of the imagination and the deeper mind, whatever its ultimate nature.
Understood this way, without either dismissing it or making exoticised claims, shamanism belongs to the same broad human impulse that runs through much of this territory: the desire to quiet the ordinary mind, to reconnect with the natural world, and to seek meaning and healing in dimensions of experience that modern life has largely forgotten how to reach.
Common questions
What does a shaman actually do?
Traditionally, a shaman enters an altered state of consciousness, often through drumming, chanting, or dancing, in order to interact with what their culture understands as a spirit world, bringing back healing, guidance, or insight for their community. The role also involves mediating between the human and spirit worlds and maintaining a people’s relationship with nature and ancestors. It’s a specific, trained social role within a particular culture, not a generic title.
Is shamanism a religion?
Not exactly. Shamanism isn’t a single unified religion but a term for similar spiritual practices that arose independently across many indigenous cultures worldwide. Each has its own beliefs, spirits, and traditions. What they share is the figure of the shaman who enters altered states to work with a spirit world. It’s better described as a widespread type of spiritual practice than as one religion.
What is shamanic journeying?
Shamanic journeying is the practice of entering a trance or meditative state, traditionally induced by steady, rhythmic drumming, in order to explore inner realms through imagery and symbol. In modern, non-traditional forms it’s used as a method of meditative self-exploration and reflection. The rhythmic drumming helps shift consciousness into a relaxed, receptive state in which vivid inner imagery can arise.
Can anyone practise shamanism?
Modern, non-traditional forms, such as drumming-based journeying, are accessible to anyone as a meditative practice. Traditional shamanism, though, is embedded in specific living cultures and involves years of initiation within them, so it’s worth approaching the practice with respect for its origins and humility about what a decontextualised version offers. Many find genuine value in modern journeying when it’s approached respectfully rather than as something to simply take.
