Core Shamanic Beliefs

Shamanism represents a universal conceptual framework found among indigenous tribal humans. It includes the belief that the natural world has two aspects: ordinary everyday awareness, formed by our habitual behaviors, patterns of belief, social norms, and cultural conditioning, and a second non-ordinary awareness accessed through altered states, or trance, induced by shamanic practices such as repetitive drumming. This second-order awareness can be developed over time or appear all at once, but once it is discerned the world is never the same. According to shamanic theory, the ordinary and non-ordinary worlds interact continuously, and a shamanic practitioner can gain knowledge about how to alter ordinary reality by taking direct action in the non-ordinary aspect of the world. Read more.

How to Make Prayer Ties

The sacrament tobacco is used cross-culturally as a unifying thread of communication between humans and the spiritual powers. Offering grandfather tobacco carries our prayers to the "Loom of Creation," thereby reweaving the pattern of existence in accordance with those prayers. Prayer ties are spiritual symbols created by wrapping tobacco into a cloth while praying and meditating. Upon completion, the prayer ties are ritually burned, opening a path of communication between the human world and the spirit world. To learn how to make prayer ties, read more. 

The Revival of Mongolian Shamanism

In the book -- "Tragic Spirits," MIT anthropologist Manduhai Buyandelger chronicles how the revival of shamanism has shaped Mongolia in the last two decades. From storefronts in Ulan Bator, the nation's capital, to homes in rural Mongolia, shamanism has become a growth industry. The return of shamanism, she asserts, represents more than the straightforward return of a once-banned religion to Mongolia. And it is more than just a convenient method for people to earn a little income by working as shamans. Rather, she says, shamanism became more popular precisely because, in a poor country recovering from Soviet domination -- where Mongolia's occupiers had wiped away its records and the physical traces of its past -- shamanic practices have offered some Mongolians a way to reinvent their own history. Shamans offer clients the opportunity to meet with the spirits of their distant ancestors and hear "fragmented stories about their lives in the past."

Winter Solstice Star Ceremony

The Sacred Tree

Winter Solstice: Ancient Origins of the Season's Icons
by Jade Wah'oo Grigori

Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, the longest night. In the northern hemisphere this occurs December 20, 21, 22 or even the 23rd, varying from year to year, dependent upon the elliptical path of the Earth around our Sun. Throughout the cultures of the northern world the Winter Solstice is recognized as a powerful time, a time that commands the respect of acknowledgment and celebration. Christmas is, of course, one such holiday. Yule and Saturnalia provide historic origins for the motifs integrated in the celebration of the season in the form of the Yule Log and decking the halls with boughs of holly, feasting and family gatherings. Mithraic rites of the birth of the Year-God recognize December 25th as the holy day of renewal. It is also the birthday of Osiris, Dionysus and Horus. There is nothing new, or particularly Christian, in the celebration of Christmas and other similar celebrations at or near the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere. The roots of this seasonal celebration run deep in antiquity, emanating from the Shamanic rites of the Neolithic era.