Achieving Shamanic Consciousness

Shamanism is based on the principle that the spiritual world may be contacted through the inner senses in ecstatic trance. Shamanic consciousness is a term that's often used to refer to the state of mind into which shamans enter when they journey to reach another shamanic reality where the spirits dwell. This is done in order to gain wisdom, healing techniques, and other vital information that can benefit the community. To understand shamanic states of consciousness, it is necessary to first understand shamanic paradigm. To learn more click here. To help you achieve shamanic consciousness, try the following Synthesized Binaural Beats Journey.

Owl Vision - Ayahuasca Journey

"Owl Vision" is my new video release featuring a track from my Power Animal Drumming CD. The visionary animation was created by Brazilian recording artist Psysun. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant brew known throughout the Amazon for its powerful healing and visionary properties. Ayahuasca has been used for millennia by South American shamans to divine the future, journey to the spirit world, and induce healing. The great Owl (Urcututo) guards the shamans while they are curing. Owl medicine includes prophecy, wisdom, stealth, silence, intuition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, shapeshifting, and keen vision that can pierce all illusion. Call upon Owl to unmask and see what is truly beneath the surface -- what is hidden or in the shadows. Owl is a messenger of omens who will call out to let all share in its vision.

Crafting a Shamanic Mask

My "Rainbow Man" Mask

Shamanic mask making is a very ancient art of bringing out your inner or spirit self and embodying it into a mask form. Crafting a spirit mask of your face can be a very empowering process -- one that enables you to see into the deeper realms of the self. You can journey within to access wisdom and archetypal energies that can help awaken your soul calling and restore you to wholeness. The process reconnects you with your deepest core values and your highest vision of who you are and why you are here. Summoning the energy of the true self, you then channel your discoveries into painting and adorning your mask of personal transformation. Wearing a shamanic mask heightens your sense of mission and purpose, empowering your personal evolution. To learn more, read Faces of Your Soul and visit The Art of Plaster Life Mask Making. To view my shamanic mask collection, click here. 

Shamanic Drumming Online Interactive Flipbook

I always enjoy the irony of a digital version that mimics a paper product, so I smiled to myself when I saw this interactive flipbook created for me by Italian film director Angelo Giammarresi. The advantage of flipbooks for readers is ease of locating content which in turn results in a more pleasurable reading experience. Readers also get the benefit of a completely interactive document, which can be embedded with audio, pictures, and other multimedia features. Angelo has embedded audio from my albums Power Animal Drumming and The Shamanic Drum Instructional. If you're one who enjoys Amazon's "Search Inside this Book" feature or BarnesandNoble.com's "See Inside," then may I tempt you with this exclusive 3D preview of my new book Shamanic Drumming: Calling the Spirits? 

Drumming in Boynton Canyon

I love the sound of the drum echoing in the canyons. The Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling, near Sedona, Arizona, is one of the most memorable places I have ever drummed. After all, my journey into shamanic drumming began in Sedona in 1989. Known for its deep red color, Sedona has some of the most spectacular sandstone canyons and buttes found anywhere in the world. Boynton Canyon is one of the most scenic of the box canyons that make Arizona Red Rock Country so famous. The Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling is located 2 miles west of Sedona in the Secret Mountain Wilderness which is part of Coconino National Forest. You'll find the Boynton Canyon trailhead just outside the entrance to the Enchantment Resort. 

From its start, the Boynton Canyon Trail hugs towering red rock cliffs and offers a view of "Kachina Woman," a red-rock spire rising high in the desert sky. Here among the towering buttes, crimson cliffs, and natural desert gardens, the Verde Hohokam (aka Southern Sinagua) built cliff dwellings between A.D. 1125 and 1300. Look for ancient ruins tucked into shallow cliff-side caves. The largest ruin, Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling, is located about ½ mile north inside a cave-like alcove about half way up the right (East) face of the canyon. Keep looking to your right for a trail up to the ruins in the side of the cliff with a large overhang.

The Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling has a few rooms, constructed around a small spring that emanates inside the overhang that shelters the dwelling. It is not unusual to hear chanting, drumming, or the haunting sounds of a flute emanating from the ruins. If ceremonies are in progress, do not interrupt. Boynton Canyon is still sacred to the Yavapai Native Americans who consider Boynton as their place of origin.  

Drumming and chanting in this acoustic grotto and canyon produce an ethereal soundscape.  The combination of instrument and architecture can be used to create an elaborate sonic environment. This is a mystical place where the human voice is amplified and where musical sounds linger in the air as abiding echoes. Tones magnified and echoed by stone surfaces seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. The harmonics create a great opening or gateway to the spirit world. Just as I use musical sound to create sacred space in my home each day, my musical improvisations in places like Boynton Canyon are rooted in an attempt to reach the divine -- to harmonize heaven and earth.

Feel the Universe: An Online Unity Experience

Feel the Universe is a "color energy flip book" by American multimedia artist Frances Ward and Italian film director Angelo Giammarresi. This simple book is a great tool. The book's creators invite you to imagine something new. Suspend old beliefs. Enter a realm of new possibilities. Connect with both your inner spirit and the collective spirit of our cosmos. True enlightenment means feeling and recognizing our true oneness with everything else - reaching a state of "unity consciousness." Try it: Experience release. Allow change. Receive clarity. Accept transformation. Believe! Click here to browse this online experiential book.

Drums, Not Guns

Drums Not Guns is a non-profit membership organization devoted to promoting peace and non-violence through the power of percussion; to provide at-risk youth with creative ways to diffuse anger and re-channel negative energy; and to promote team spirit, self-esteem and self-expression through "Instruments of Mass Percussion." They believe that when people come together to enjoy and play music, greater communication and understanding are fostered and we are reminded of our common humanity and inter-reliance. Research has demonstrated that group drumming alleviates self-centeredness, isolation, and alienation, moving people from the fear of self-expression to a more creative state where they can serve as true human resources for both themselves and their communities. Drums Not Guns hosts workshops and community drum circles, and maintains the networking site drums.org.

"The Universal Drumming"

by Jonathan Merritt 

There is a recurring image that often wakes me and returns in my daydreaming. In the place of the gods there is a large central fire, and around the fire, arrayed in ever increasing concentric circles, the gods are drumming. In the innermost circle the great drums of essence, light, darkness, emptiness, fullness and form reverberate into the world. They animate the elements of wind, rain, growth and burning whose drums in turn bring forward the drums of ocean, mountain, lake, forest, stream, plains and deserts. Read more.

Seven Principles of Huna Shamanism

Serge Kahili King, Ph.D. is the author of many works on Huna and Hawaiian shamanism, including Urban Shaman and Instant Healing. He has a doctorate in psychology and was trained in shamanism by the Kahili family of Kauai. Today he teaches people how to use shamanic healing techniques and uses his knowledge of Huna to help others discover their own creative power. Huna refers to a way of life, a way of being, that brings healing to the self and to the world at large. Uniquely suited for use in today's world, Hawaiian shamanism follows the way of the adventurer, which produces change through love and cooperation - in contrast to the widely known way of the warrior, which emphasizes solitary quests and conquest by power. Read Seven Principles of Huna Shamanism by Serge Kahili King. 

Free eBook: The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees

This eBook is a reprint of the classic 1891 ethnographic study of Cherokee shamanic practice by the gifted anthropologist James Mooney. Based on several manuscripts written by Cherokee shamans, it includes the actual text of the rituals to treat various diseases, information on herbs used, love spells, hunting rituals, weather spells etc., and, in fact, embodying almost the whole of the sacred rites of Cherokee shamanism. The original manuscripts were written by the shamans of the tribe, for their own use, in the Cherokee characters invented by Sikwa'ya (Sequoyah) in 1821, and were obtained, with the explanations, either from the writers themselves or from their surviving relatives. 

 

Originally published as two separate volumes by the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees has enduring significance for both Native Americans and non-Indian people. The book contains the full texts of James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee (1900) and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891), with an exclusive biographical introduction by George Ellison, James Mooney and the Eastern Cherokees. Mooney's exhaustive research preserved essential Cherokee history, lore, and rituals in a time when such knowledge was dying because younger Cherokees were accepting Western education, commerce, and medicine. The first section of this text covers Cherokee history from the time of DeSoto's search for gold in the 1600s to the late 1800s when the tribal consciousness nearly came to an end.

The second section reveals the rich Cherokee mythology, detailing how the earth was made, how all "people" (both two-and four-footed) came about, and how they could all converse with each other. The third section of the book provides 28 sacred formulas from a mass of over 600 prayers, formulas, and songs. These formulas are centered on such things as medicine, hunting, love, finding lost articles, and frightening away storms. Exclusive to this edition, George Ellison's biographical portrait of James Mooney emphasizes the ethnologist's timeliness and his empathy for the Cherokees and their rich heritage. Completing this book are photographs of many of the chiefs and shamans, a glossary of terms, an index, and an immense section on notes and parallels to the Cherokee myths. Download The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees.   

Free Online I Ching Reading

Divination is the art of seeing and interpreting signs in everything around us. The goal of shamanic divination is to encourage well-being by helping a person live in harmony with the universe around them. One of the best known systems of divination is the I Ching, or Book of Changes. For some 3,000 years, people have turned to the I Ching to help them uncover the meaning of their experience and to bring their actions into harmony with their underlying purpose. The I Ching is an invaluable divination tool in the shamanic art of restoring harmony and balance. Consult the I Ching online using a javascript hexagram generator based on the yarrow stalk method. The result is the immediacy of the coin tossing method with the reliability of the yarrow stalk method.

 

The program is based on my book I Ching: The Tao of Drumming -- the only shamanic interpretation of the I Ching from a rhythmic perspective. A synthesis of shamanic drum ways and Taoist philosophy, The Tao of Drumming provides for the first time the rhythmic structure of the 64 hexagrams or potential human situations. Drum patterns derived from the hexagram images render the essence of each archetype of experience into sound, giving it physical, mental, and spiritual impulse. Through the natural law of resonance, the drummer then embodies the qualities and attributes necessary to effect change or harmonize with change in any given situation.

More than an oracle, the I Ching is a keyboard or periodic table of rhythm archetypes. The key to understanding the I Ching and its place in your life is to realize that the universe is made of vibrational energy; that it is a single, flowing, rhythmic being. According to quantum physics, everything in the universe, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest star, has an inherent vibrational pattern. The entire universe is created through vibration and can be influenced through the vibrations of drumming. The Tao of Drumming is a shamanic tool for altering or harmonizing the vibrational state of the drummer or a particular situation in the community. With clear and practical explanations of each of the 64 hexagrams along with useful exercises and illustrations, this innovative handbook demonstrates how drumming these simple rhythm archetypes brings the essential self into accord with the pattern or way of cyclical change, and that way is known as Tao. Find an I Ching Rhythm for your need of the moment.

 

Drumming the Hollow Bone

We need to get out of the way of our dreams and passion so they can be birthed in a clear way. In the current issue of Sacred Hoop Magazine, I share a simple meditation method using the drum to help us shift our consciousness to become a hollow bone or conduit for spirit. It is a way to clear away anything that could possibly clog the bone of our spirit and mind. When we can move our ego and rational mind out of the way to channel the divine power of the universe through us, anything is possible. Read my article "Drumming the Hollow Bone" in Sacred Hoop Magazine, Issue 78, 2012.

Our Ancestors, the Acoustical Engineers

Chavín de Huántar

New discoveries in the young field of archaeoacoustics hint that just as we create elaborate sonic environments with our electronic stereos and theatre sound systems, the ancients may have sculpted their soundscapes as well. In a recent article in Discover Magazine, archaeologists demonstrated that ancient builders of the temple complex of Chavín de Huántar in central Peru designed subterranean soundscapes as stirring as any special effects. In short, the temple's designers may have been not only expert architects but also skilled acoustical engineers. View the Chavín acoustic findings video.

"Shamanic Journey Down Tobacco Road"

My Journey With My Ally Plant
by Dr. Carol Parker

"About 10 years ago while leading one of my first vision quest ceremonies in a remote location in Death Valley, I was shocked when a young woman named Ricki returned from her solo site laden with three - foot long stalks of Wild Tobacco. I had no idea tobacco could grow in such a bone-dry environment. Ricki is an accomplished herbalist, and explained to the group that she had found a spring about two miles from basecamp in a hidden canyon, and near the spring were thick stands of this sacred plant. She planned to dry them and use the dried tobacco in ceremony." Read more.

The Mayan Calendar and Spiritual Evolution

Kenneth Johnson is the author of Jaguar Wisdom: An Introduction to the Mayan Calendar, the only available book written with the assistance of traditional Mayan Daykeepers. In an article for Parabola Magazine, Johnson explains how the Maya used the Mesoamerican Sacred Calendar to compute large cosmic and historical cycles using a system of reckoning called the Long Count. The Long Count is one of the greatest achievements of Maya civilization -- a unique and visionary effort to mathematically quantify and define cycles of emergence. In Maya cosmology, the world is constantly developing in a state of emergence, and hence unstable. Therefore it must be maintained through a mutual divine-human interaction. It is only through the prayers of human beings and their spiritual behavior that the world's equilibrium is made possible. This idea of humankind's spiritual evolution lies at the heart of the history of the cosmos as the Maya understood it

The Archaeoacoustics of the Maya Pyramid of Kukulkan

On my first pilgrimage to the Maya ceremonial center of Chichen Itza in March 1995, I discovered that an incredible acoustic phenomenon can be heard at the Pyramid of Kukulkan. If you clap your hands directly in front of the pyramid's main staircase, it echoes back an almost mechanical bird-like chirping sound. Handclaps from different positions along the base of the staircase likewise trigger the echo, but with different musical tones spanning half an octave. Tour guides and tourists like to clap their hands to hear a chirped echo in a range of different notes. 

Me atop Kukulkan Pyramid in 1995

In 1998 acoustician David Lubman recorded the hand-clap echoes at Kukulkan Pyramid and compared them with recordings of the nearly extinct Quetzal, the sacred bird associated with both the name of the pyramid and its plumed serpent deity Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl. He found that recordings and sonograms of several echoes really do match the bird's cry. Even more amazing is that same clap also seems to echo back the sound of a rattlesnake off the stairway of the nearby Temple of the Warriors a split second after the bird sound. On either side of the stairway are two stone columns four feet wide, carved to represent feathered rattlesnakes. It takes a while to find the right spot to clap to get the effect of both sounds, but it's worth it to hear that at least once in a lifetime. 

Whether the pyramid was built to deliberately produce these evocative echoes, or it happened by chance, is still a matter of debate among scientists and archaeologists. Inspection and ray acoustic modeling provide a simple physical explanation for the chirped echo -- the "picket fence effect" due to periodic sound reflections from the treads of the staircase. The reason that a chirp like a bird is produced is because of geometry. The time between later reflections is longer than early reflections causing the frequency of the echo to rapidly drop by about an octave.

Me in the Ballcourt with friends-1995

The Great Ballcourt is another structure at Chichen Itza that displays unusual and unexplained acoustic anomalies. The stone walls act like an acoustic waveguide and words softly whispered at one end of the ball court (measuring 545 feet long by 225 feet wide) are clearly audible all the way at the other end and a single clap or shout sounded in the center of the ball court will produce nine distinct echoes. According to acoustician David Lubman, "the Great Ballcourt (GBC) can produce mind-bending sound effects supportive of ancient Maya mythology described in their best-known creation story, the Popol Vuh. GBC sound effects include hallucinatory disembodied voices, shouting crowds, the whooping of an invisible bird flying rapidly through the playing field, and, with middling success, growling jaguars and menacing rattlesnakes. These animals are also represented in GBC carvings and frescoes."

Lubman's findings at Chichen Itza suggest that its ancient builders were skilled theatrical sound designers who engineered sound for mind manipulation. Sound effects discovered so far seem uniquely appropriate for each monument and may be intentional designs. If the theory of intentional design has merit, we are led to two extraordinary conjectures. The Maya may be the only people known to have "coded" a sound into stone. The chirped echo at this 1300-year-old Maya pyramid in the Yucatan may be the world's oldest known sound recording!

Shamanic Journey Drumming

Shamanic Journey Drumming is now available on iTunes. This album has been digitally recorded to support the listener in making shamanic journeys. The harmonic overtones and undertones on this recording were produced by a 22-inch single-headed, elk hide, cedar frame drum pulsed at four-beats-per-second. This tempo induces a theta wave cycle in the brain. Theta rhythms are associated with the deepest states of shamanic consciousness. Researchers have found that if a tempo of four-beats-per-second is sustained for at least 15 minutes, most people can journey successfully even on their first attempt. Listen to all my music on SoundCloud. To learn more read Shamanic Journeying.

Mongolian Shamans: Masters of Ecstasy

In the post-communist era shamanism is undergoing a dramatic revival in Mongolia. Harshly suppressed during Mongolia's long Soviet rule, shamanism is suddenly widely sought to fill the spiritual void of a newly democratic society. Mongolian shamanism evokes a rich and barely-tapped store of astrological, environmental, and geographic cultural knowledge. In partnership with National Geographic Magazine, Carolyn Drake has published a photographic essay exploring the shamanic resurgence.

"Intimacy in the Eco-fields: The Mother Tongue"

Streaming live on the Co-Creator Radio Network on Tuesday, November 20, at 11 a.m. Pacific time/2 p.m. Eastern time, on her show "Why Shamanism Now?: A Practical Path to Authenticity," Christina Pratt interviews Will Taegel, Ph.D., author of The Mother Tongue: Intimacy in the Eco-field. Taegel shares "The Mother Tongue Hypothesis," challenging listeners to enter into deep reflection and question their current beliefs. According to Taegel, today's science shows that all life communicates, and that our intimate relationship with nature can guide us through these turbulent times. Taegel shares tools to communicate with and learn from the natural world so that we are able to participate fully in our role in the manifestation of a new era. Prior episodes from "Why Shamanism Now" can be downloaded for free on iTunes. 

"Mindfulness and Animism: The Art of Soul Healing"

In a recent article for The Huffington Post, Kelley Harrell, neoshaman and author of Gift of the Dreamtime, explores how our cultural perceptions affect our ability to heal and stay well. Many of us invite soul healing into our lives, and then experience an initial phase of euphoria and wellbeing, only to eventually take on symptoms of dis-ease or imbalance again. Kelley attributes this to our inability to fully embrace the mindfulness and worldview of our animistic forefathers. Read more.