What is a Traditional Indigenous Shaman?

The roots of my traditional indigenous family lie deep in the lands of the reindeer
people, a nomadic tribe from before written history who cared for the reindeer
and in exchange were given their food and clothes and all sustenance from that
mighty animal. These people often spent months alone leading their herds to the
best grazing lands in the high plateaus of the Himalayas and outer Mongolia.

The principal function of this ancient indigenous shaman is the healing of any
illness that may afflict the members of one’s tribe. This shaman not only brought
healing to physical maladies but also to illnesses of the soul, in order to heal the
fracturing or fragmentation of the mind and spirit to bring wholeness. This
shaman had the ability to use altered states of ecstasy produced through sheer
will and balance to enter other realms of consciousness not possible for the
average man. Here the shaman is able to explore the mystery of man’s mind as
well as the collective unconscious mind that we all contribute to and in so doing
to bring this knowledge and power into his or her practice to benefit us all.

Traditional Shamanism is based on these spiritual and mental techniques which

go back to the very beginning of the human race. Bedsides offering physical
healing and the guiding of souls disincarnate, there is a direct communication
between this earth and the heaven worlds above that only the most skilled
traditional shaman can attain. In ancient times the shaman was the first miracle
worker, the first cultural hero, the first of all humans to walk and talk with Creator.
The traditional shamans sees the human beings as another manifested form of
the Essence of Creator just as nature is a manifested form of the Essence of
Creator. Man is meant to live in cooperation with this natural environment in a
very close and intimate way as a child of Mother Earth and Father Sky. So
another function of the traditional Shaman is to keep the balance between man
and Mother Earth so that we continue to be nurtured and supported for eons to
come. The Shaman can successfully promote this intimate bond through his or
her abilities of communication with all manifested forms of the Essence of
Creator. With these abilities the Traditional Shaman helped provide for his or her
tribe good hunting, plentiful crops, propitious weather and protection of all
species to live and be bountiful. In a way, he negotiated a harmony between the
ways of man and the ways of Nature.

The traditional indigenous shaman knew that illnesses and dis-ease of any kind
grow out of an imbalance between that person and the natural way. When the
energies of a person contradict the ways of Nature then that person’s energy
begins to be depleted and this can cause all kinds of mental, emotional and
spiritual dis-ease. When a group of people or a community or tribe contradicts
the ways of Mother Earth and Father Sky, huge dis-eases and disconnects can
occur. It is man who causes the balance to be shattered by mans thoughtless
words and actions out of ignorance or lack of responsibility for this home of ours.
The traditional shaman is here to bring that imbalance back into balance, to re-

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establish that lost harmony, and to remove the effects of the negative and selfish
thoughts, words and actions created by man. Yes I am saying that it is the
thoughtless words and actions of selfish man that have created the diseases that
are now manifest on this planet. Man has let his own ego supersede his
interdependence upon Mother Earth for his sustenance and health and has
caused tremendous destruction of Mother Earth’s air and water and land. The
Shaman sees all living things on Mother Earth as equal in itself to the human
being, no less vital, no less important, no less sentient, no less alive. The
traditional Shaman sees that Creator has given life to everything that Creator
created and so every tree, every mountain, every leaf, every animal, bird , fish is
thinking, knowing, feeling, having a life experience here just as man is. This
place we call home is a living Mother with energy that surrounds her and is her
Essence just as cells are a living part of the human body. If man kills some of
those cells he gets sick. So too, if man kills some of the life upon Mother Earth he
is killing Mother Earth. And if man kills his own harmony within himself he is
killing himself. But the shaman can honor the living sentience of all that Creator
created and communicate with these living beings to re-establish that original
unity that is necessary to mans very existence. By working with the sentient
energy creations all around us the shaman can directly heal the individual and
bring harmony to that person’s own energy. You can see why the traditional
Shaman is even more needed today than ever before. Yet there are less than 50
true traditional indigenous shamans left on the planet today. Why? Because the
world’s religions have persecuted the traditional shaman and his beliefs that we
are all united children of Creator.

Over the centuries, the religions of the world replaced the tribal shaman with a
priest or lama or ritual expert who never had the ability or desire to see the world
as a union of sentient beings but instead decided to create gods and goddesses
to overpower and command and manipulate the sentient beings of this world.
And indeed because man intended them to be powerful gods and goddesses
they were thus in reality. But here too began disease and poverty and most of all
fear. In my country the Shaman were all killed by the religious fanatics who
wanted to gain the respect and fear of the people and convert them to
Catholicism. It also was timed according to when the Tsar converted to
Catholicism. Just as in many countries, when the leader of that country declared
a national religion for that country, the shamans were then tortured, deported or
killed. Shamanism is not a religion. And in each country if the Shaman was not
willing to adopt the religion of that country’s leader, then the shaman was killed.

The first shaman, the archetypal shaman who brought the knowledge of
shamaniism from the heaven worlds above to an intellectually able humanity on
earth was known in the Yung Drung mountain region of central Asia as Shenrab
Miwoche which means “the great supreme human shaman” . Tales of his work
have survived even to this day and he was considered a fully enlightened
Buddha before there was a Buddha or a Buddhist religion. He was said to live
here over 18,000 years ago. From here, shamanism grew and spread through

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Tibet, Mongolia, China, Asia and Europe. It was then carried across the seas to
South America and Africa and Australia and can be found in the histories of all 7
continents.

This is the origin of traditional shamanism. However it is no longer available and

only vestiges of it can be found in certain families who have kept the oral
traditions alive, handing down the teachings by word of mouth from father to son
or mother to daughter within the original family over the centuries as my own
family has done. My grandmother escaped the persecution of Shamans in her
country by coming to America. All traces of traditional shamanism in her country
are now wiped out, even among her relatives who lived under communist rule for
the past fifty years. There is no more traditional Shamanism alive in her mother
country now. There is no more traditional Shamanism alive and true in any
European or Asian country because the religious fanatics of various ages have
seen to it that Shamanism does not survive. Now we only have a very few
traditional Shamans still practicing the true ways who have managed to hide from
or escape from the missionaries of assorted religions out to convert all people or
kill anyone who will not convert. Many of the old shamans did indeed convert to a
religion. The Shamanism of Hawaii, for example was converted to Christianity
when the missionaries demanded conversion there in the 1850’s and the rulers
of that land agreed to have Christianity as their country’s religion. The kahunas
there had to convert to the country’s religion and now the teachings of Kahuna
are warped and distorted with all kinds of religious inflections and Christian
wrappings.

Even centuries ago the original traditional teachings of Shamanism in Asia were
quickly distorted by the Buddhist religion who would not tolerate a Shaman
offering balance and healing and instead persecuted the Shamans and told the
people that only the Lamas would have the power to heal by following the
Buddhist faith. And even so long ago man began to fall into imbalance with
Mother Earth and Father Sky and so dis-ease and suffering took hold of
mankind. The Native Americans never practiced Shamanism but rather had
medicine men and women who had that wonderful connection to Mother
Earth and could bring balance through the ways of air, fire, water and
earth to their people. But again in the 1700’s the missionaries came
and offered them Christianity as a religion or death. So the medicine
people who survived did choose religion and altered their ways to fit in
with what they were being taught by the missionaries. So much was
lost and will never again be found. The ways of today barely contain
even the slightest semblance of what medicine used to be. The
effectiveness of the ways as they are today is barely nothing at all.

Because of the persecution of the Traditional Shaman we have been

left with contemporary shamanism; reduced to seek healing through
hypnosis, trying to convince ourselves that we are not sick when we
very obviously are sick. We have reduced the powers of the

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contemporary Shaman to simple faith healing, hocus pocus, chanting
and drumming and calling the traditional shamanic journey a variation
of simple astral projection which anyone can do. Traditional
shamanism has been all but lost to the people of the Earth and if you
just look around at the conditions of Mother Earth today you can see
that there are apparently no contemporary shamans able to do
anything about the imbalance and suffering and dis–ease we see
everywhere around us. Yet there are thousand of people calling
themselves shamans today. I call them contemporary shamans
because they are not trained by any traditional shaman, they are
learning from books not written by any shaman, they are not balanced
themselves , not healed themselves but still they claim they can heal
others which speaks of personal fame and gain but not of healing at
all. The word Shaman has literally been denigrated to mean someone
who does faith healing and uses his or her imagination to pretend to
travel to inner worlds. How sad!
And you wonder why those few true Traditional Shamans are not to be
found here? I don’t think you would choose to be associated with a
group of fools who misuse your name to make money and be famous
either.

Those few true shamans who have been able to receive the original
teachings from their own family lineage are busy helping their own
people in their own tribe, hidden away from the internet and society at
large as there is enough to take care of right in their own community.
They are not interested in teaching anyone other than their own clan.
They are not interested in becoming rich or famous. They choose to
not get involved in the game of Shamanism that is being played on the
internet today. If everyone on the internet who claimed to be a
shaman was actually a Shaman there would not be anyone left who
was sick at all.

The traditional abilities of Shamans, to enter into altered states of

consciousness without chemicals or drugs or plants and to
communicate and negotiate with the spirits of all sentient beings to
bring balance and harmony back into a person’s life or mind or body or
even a community or nation as a whole is not something very many
people can ever hope to achieve. The Shaman actually leaves this
world and enters the gateways of other worlds. The whole body of
knowledge to promote balance and fix the distortions created by man’s
thoughts, words and actions is not in any book today. It can only be
learned as one Traditional Shaman passes it on to his or her students.
And to find a traditional Shaman to work with today is nearly
impossible. The Traditional Shaman knows that even today this power
to affect cures and balance the bodes of a suffering human being are
still not welcome by religion or the current medical community. The

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True Shaman is still under persecution and so is not going to put you in
danger by teaching you something so hated that you too will be
persecuted. Most Traditional Shamans feel that the people of today
are not yet ready to receive these teachings. So they only teach their
own tribal members, perhaps a son or grandson or a daughter or
granddaughter, enough to keep the teachings alive but by no means
teaching it to the general public. Don’t kid yourself that the teachings
of true traditional shamanism are easy to find and easy to learn.

Vestiges of the original teachings of Traditional Shamanism can

sometimes be seen in the writing of ancient religions as they
incorporated parts of Traditional shamanism that suited their purposes
and also to entice the indigenous peoples to embrace their religion just
as the Catholic missionaries built churches over the holy grounds of
the Native Americans and chose their holy days to coincide with the
seasonal celebrations of those indigenous peoples. Over time the
native Americans would hopefully forget their “pagan” ways and pray
instead to the saints and attend Mass to replace the ceremonies of
their forefathers. The chod ritual of the Tibetan religion where the
monk uses drumming and visualization to ceremonially offer his gods
the flesh of his own body can be seen as the death, burial and
resurrection of the more ancient shamanic initiations and is another
example of traditional teachings still surviving within the cover of
religion today. How odd isn’t’ it that even today there are ancient
rituals and rites and practices that recall Traditional Shamanism. What
does that say about the power of the traditional Shaman?

So traditional shamanism is about living in a balanced cooperative

relationship with all sentient beings of Mother Earth and Father Sky as
well as all our brothers and sisters. And hopefully, for those who have
the immense privilege of learning traditional Shamanism from one of
the very few traditional indigenous shamans left on this planet, we can
once again grow into harmony within ourselves and create a
congruous, balanced, beautiful planet once again. The Traditional
Shaman negotiates a harmony between the ways of man and the ways
of nature and energy. This is Traditional Shamanism. Its not about
money or fame or power or title or accolade. It is a path that leads to
certain death for the Shaman practitioner and is done for the good of
others, not for personal gain.

Copyright 2010 – 2017 Shaman Elder Maggie Wahls

Shaman Elder Maggie is one of the world most beloved Traditional indigenous
shamans handing down her family’s own shamanic wisdom to a select few
apprentices through an online course offered at www.shamanelder.com . If you

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are interesting in learning traditional shamanism or would like a free consultation
just visit www.ShamanElder.com