Shamanic Initiations
Shamanic lore throughout history is imbued with tales, most often cloaked in mystery, of important initiations that the young shaman-to-be had to face. The mystery around these initiations is intentional, due to an agreement between teachers and students to not to talk about these experiences. This is not because of any need to keep knowledge esoteric, but simply to maintain the freshness and power of the experience for each new student who faces them. Even more, because of the sacred nature of these experiences, one is left with a natural sensitivity to exactly how intimate and important they are to each person.
Initiations are often quite ancient. In one way or another, they have basic templates beneath them that have existed very much the same since times long forgotten, basic formulas for catalyzing certain kinds of experiences that are found broadly throughout the world.
They are not a 'secret handshake' or entrance into some private community. Shamanic initiations are practices that open up a kind of liminal ‘space’ for a practitioner to make discoveries. It is a ‘threshold’ space, psychological and metaphysical, between realities and offering room for transition. Because initiations can do this, the steps are maintained and passed down.
Needless to say, a shamanic initiation experience is not for everyone. If there were several mountain ranges ahead on the path of a growing shamanic practitioner, this is the next one that he or she must climb. Though I encourage people to try to not worry about the initiations, we inevitably do. It is also true that a certain heightening of anticipation and ‘charge’ about it encourages a stronger initiatory experience, I encourage people to reach this heightened state prior to undergoing one.
Most of today's shamanic students taking coursework such as what I offer are not from from Siberia, nor ordinarily from a Brazilian jungle. They are not normally from an indigenous, tribal community where some of the most rigorous initiations are said to take place. Most of us today have not had preparatory cultural and physical conditioning experiences, not living amidst a climate and lifestyle in which endurance and toughening might prepare them for some of the ordeals about which you may have heard rumors.
Never should a person have to face more than they can handle, and each person should have a complete choice whether or not to experience any initiation at all. Everyone on the shamanic journey of education and training goes towards what is right for them, and them alone. I always encourage people forward to experience these, however I know from my own experience that we are ready for things only when we are ready for them. These things cannot be hastened. They are strictly for a person's benefit, and one can take them, or leave them.
Some of the initiations my students experience are during specific journeys, while others involve a combination of non-ordinary reality and ordinary reality effort. Naturally, given everything I have said - and obviously everything that I have not said - I will not be proceeding to describe initiation steps. However, students often have spontaneous initiations because of their preparedness and effort in giving themselves to this study. I am pleased to be able to present some of these to you, for even though they do not disclose initiations that are intentionally kept silent, they do speak very clearly to the initiatory experience itself.
A Self-initiated Directed Initiation
Student Practitioner's Letter: “…it was around the winter solstice. I had mentioned to you I was going to hold a fire ceremony in the mountains during the eclipse and I did that. At 10,000 ft on winter solstice in Colorado the elements can be bitterly adverse. I had set my intent and was prepared for whatever the night would have to offer. I was very pleasantly surprised when I arrived at one of the places I frequent to find only 6" of snow on the ground. Typically it would be 4' at this time of the season.
The wind however was blowing fiercely. I cleared the snow and built the fire. I called the directions and opened sacred space, then proceeded to feed the fire for the next 5 hrs, and I burned it strong. There was so much that happened that night I could probably turn it into a book. But it was like all the spiritual doors there are were opened to me. I danced my soul and I sang my soul and I don't know how many times I was overwhelmed by tears of joy.
Nearing the end of the eclipse, but it was still full, there were two spirit helpers that showed themselves to me. One from the lower world and one from the upper world. Knowing I was to begin working with you, I thanked them and asked them to wait for me until the time was proper for me to engage with them...”
My Reply: Your experience on the Solstice was a self-initiated, initiation. This is the kind of experience that you will find honored in religious texts, and is more of a reflection of the person on the spiritual path than anything having to do with the particular spiritual path itself. This is why initiations throughout the world turn out to be so very similar, as they are more of doors, as you describe it, rather than the ‘to’ or ‘from’ for which the doors open. This says a lot about the deep inner consistency of much of spirituality per se, but that is another issue. What is important here, is that you have chosen to take your spiritual path in no halfway measure.
A Spontaneous Initiation into Deep Interconnectedness
Student Practitioner's Letter: We (the practitioner and his spirit helpers) all return to the lower world but they take me to a different place. This is one of Badger's homes, which is a hole in the ground, and we go into a tunnel that opens to a large comfortable room. There we sit, then dance and sing, seems like for hours. We leave the den and go back to the surface where they begin to take me on a tour. We travel to the east and then to the south, the areas that were shrouded in a dusty haze are now clear.
I am feeling a fresh oneness with all of creation, a sense of belonging with intensity I have not experienced before. This is the power of my soul connecting with the power of all the souls in the universe and I get a glimpse of how all this is interconnected. I am dumbstruck… speechless… totally numb!! How can I possibly hang on to all of this?
This power has been missing in my life only in the fact that I have not been aware of it. Then I'm not sure that this is an accurate statement or not as I have always believed that we are one, interconnected, but never have I 'seen' it before. This is something I'm sure will be unfolding for the rest of my life. It has been an entire paradigm shift. I don't know how else to put it.
My Reply: This is an initiation, one that you proceeded to bring forth by the work of you and your spirit helpers. You did not have someone directing you forward, nor was this particularly ritualized. In classic directed initiations, the transitional and transformational initiatory experience (stepping through a door, over a threshold) is directed, accelerated, and ritualized.
The education is in the experience. Having ‘been there’, is like having taken a hike to a lofty peak. You can’t take the peak or the view back with you (ok, you can take a photo, but that is just a meager representation): what you take back is the experience, which is now in your bones and heart, and which proceeds to integrate with the person who you are becoming. This is the essence of initiatory growth.
One further thought: you speak also of power... without awareness of one’s ability to tap power, can we really say the ‘power is there’? Power in this form may not be something latent in the world, but something that manifests because of our relationship with it. There is power in speech, for instance, yet it is not manifesting until one speaks.