“For example, shamanism has to adapt to the fact that modern-day people have uniquely difficult childhoods compared to the ancients, who grew up in community.”Įveryday shamanism is generally invisible to the outside eye. “Any practice that seeks to help its followers must address the contemporary issues they face,” he said. That is not to say shamanism has not adapted to the modern world, said Leo Rutherford, the founder of the Eagle’s Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism. Built on four pillars – connection with nature, healing of self and of community, spiritual practice and pilgrimage – for those who practise it seriously, it is a way of life. Shamanism is a healing tradition, a spiritual practice with its own symbolism and cosmology, inhabited by beings, gods and totems. It’s only the last 2,000 years or so that we’ve practised monotheistic traditions and religions,” he said. “This is people coming home, back to something that we were engaged with right back to the dawn of human consciousness. This is not middle-class yoga teachers going deep, said Simon Buxton, the founder and director of the Sacred Trust Faculty. Photograph: Northern Drum Shamanic Centre Matt Guy, from Cornwall, began training with the Northern Drum Shamanic Centre in 2007. “I think Covid played a big part because it made people question what was important in their lives at a time when the only way they could entertain themselves was by going outside,” she added. McCrimmon is tranquilly unsurprised by the increase: “Shamanism takes you directly to the source of the divine in nature-based spirituality, empowering people to take responsibility for their own health and wellness,” she said. In the past decade, many thousands have found relief in such surrender: this week’s 2021 census revealed a twelve-fold increase in those identifying as shamanic followers, from 650 in 2011 to 8,000 last year. I much prefer this morning’s secret ceremony of healing: lying in a dark room with my laptop glowing, listening to Rhonda McCrimmon, a shamanic practitioner and founder of the Centre for Shamanism, incanting ancient enchantments and whistling tunes that evoke birds calling across hypnotically vast distances, all the while monotonously beating a tempo that nudges my brain towards the dreamlike theta state.
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