Becoming a Shaman

Many people in today's world are being called by spirit to become shamans. A yearning exists deep within many of us to reconnect to the natural world. It is a call to a life lived in balance with awareness of nature, of spirit, and of self. We live in a culture that has severed itself from nature and spirit. Humans have lost touch with the spirit world and the wisdom of inner knowing. The spirits, however, have not forgotten us. They are calling us to a path of environmental sanity, to rejoining the miraculous cycle of nature.
 

The spirits call many to work with them, but only a few may respond to the call. Choosing to ignore a calling may have undesirable consequences or none at all. For some, it can lead to depression and illness as the life force is constricted and thwarted. Those who choose to follow their shamanic calling may have no idea how to begin.

What do you do if the ancestral shamanic tradition no longer exists in your culture, but you still feel the call today? While traditional, indigenous shamanism continues to decline around the world, shamanic ideology has gradually entered Western humanities and social sciences and developed into the neo-shamanic movement. Neo-shamanism is a term used to describe the creation or revival of a shamanic culture. Most modern shamanic practitioners fall into this category. Neo-shamanism is not a single, cohesive belief system, but a collective term for many such philosophies. Neo-shamans use a variety of core techniques from different shamanic disciplines. 

Mircea Eliade, a religious scholar, was perhaps the first to write about neo-shamanism. In his classic work, "Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy," Eliade discusses the three stages of becoming a shaman: the Call, Training, and Initiation. The first stage to becoming a healer, as described by Eliade, is that of the calling--this call comes from the family, the community, or from the world beyond. Some are called, initiated and trained by spirit guides and/or human teachers from childhood.

Spirit calls us to a path of shamanism in many ways. It can be as dramatic as a life threatening illness or as simple as a dream. Some people receive signs of a shamanic calling through their dreams. Shamans frequently journey during their dreams, often flying through the air. Shamans may have recurring dreams in which they meet certain animal or teacher figures that are manifestations of the very spirits who are calling them.

The more common signs of a shamanic calling are ones of personality, such as a desire to spend time alone in nature. Shamanic candidates tend to be loners and are often considered eccentric or "different." One of the most reliable signs of a shamanic calling is the urge to learn about shamanism. One of the things I have learned working with spirits is that they often prompt me through urges to do one thing or another. This is a common form of communication and instruction by helping spirits. The very fact that you are reading this post at this time is meaningful. It is the spirits themselves who are guiding you to search for information about shamanism. Your yearning to learn more about shamanism is a sign that the spirits are calling you. The call functions to awaken your own inner knowing and the yearning to express your true self through the artistry of the shaman. 

Shamans are called, and then receive rigorous instruction. Training may follow an ordered tradition or take a spontaneous course guided by the shaman's spirit helpers. The function of training is to develop the skills and talents so that shamanic practitioners don't unintentionally hurt themselves or others. Though the spirits give shamans their healing powers, shamans must learn the technique of invoking them. Traditional shamanic training requires considerable devotion and personal sacrifice, not so much to gain power, but to become the person who can wield that power responsibly. Ongoing practice and learning are essential to perfecting any art or skill.

Where does one find shamanic training in the digital age? There are growing numbers of spiritual seekers who learn about shamanism from the internet or through reading the published works of individuals who have received shamanic training. Though a handbook is no substitute for an apprenticeship program, it can convey the fundamental methodological information. Authentic shamanic knowledge can only be acquired through individual experience; however, one must first acquire the methods in order to utilize them. Once you have learned the basic skills, your helping spirits can provide you all the training you need.

Then there is Initiation. Shamanic initiation is a rite of passage, connecting the apprentice shaman intimately to the spirit world. It is typically the final step in shamanic training, though initiation may be set in motion at any time by spirit's intervention into the initiate's life. Ultimately, shamanic initiation takes place between the initiate and the spirit world. It is the spirits who choose and make the shaman.
 

How does someone embark on the shamanic path? To be an effective shamanic healer, one must go through the three steps. The first step is to acknowledge the calling.

Milford Graves, Visionary Drummer, Dead At 79

Drummer, scientist, educator and improviser Milford Graves died in his Queens, N.Y. home around 3 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 12. He was 79. Lois, his wife of sixty-one years, confirmed that the cause was congestive heart failure. Mr. Graves was surrounded by Lois, his five children (four daughters and a son), his beloved granddaughter, Tatiana, and a cross-section of students across generations who had bestowed him with the honorific "Professor," a nod to his guidance in music, botany, martial arts and metaphysics.

 

Milford Graves was Professor Emeritus of Music at Bennington College in Vermont, where he taught the power and aesthetic of Black Music as a faculty member from 1973-2012. He used his platform there to express his many ideas, most well beyond the confines of the performance stage, operating instead as a kind of shamanic artist and teacher, whose emotional and intellectual connection to traditional music he fused with scientific inquiry and study.
 

Graves graduated from the Eastern School for Physicians' Aids in the 1960s, and worked in a diagnostic veterinary lab for two years. He purchased an album of stethoscopic heart recordings during a lunch break in 1973, and its content led him to pursue the path of his life's work: He began to record heartbeats and transcribe them into music notation. What started as a rudimentary documentation on reel-to-reel tape increased in sophistication with the adoption of advanced computing technology, culminating in Mr. Graves's use of algorithms to create visualizations and sound data that plotted the human heartbeat and its varied electrical states for the purpose of healing. His discoveries led to a patent for preparing non-embryonic stem cells from a tissue derivative, subjecting those cells to vibrations from a heart sound to control the degree of differentiation into several other types of cells. He once said, "Drumming should be taught in medical school. Know your beats. There are subtleties in the heartbeat that cannot be picked up through electronic imaging," and his scientific rigor on heart rates informed a non-linear approach to playing rhythm.
 

Graves was a prominent jazz drummer and percussionist from the 1960s New York avant-garde and free-jazz movements. New York City in the 1960s was an artistic cauldron, and the ideas of freedom and struggle coursing through the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements began to manifest in an expansive view of improvisation and music-making. The avant-garde, or New Thing, loosened certain strictures and gave improvisers like Graves an opportunity for wide-open self expression, and even established artists like Coltrane seemed to be drawing from the same creative well. "Milford played how he felt music should sound related to what was around him," says longtime friend and collaborator, drummer and composer Andrew Cyrille. The music felt like a departure from tradition, and some writers derided the striking new music with withering criticism. Meanwhile, Graves was transforming the role of the drums. He viewed his holistic approach to drums as an extension of how he lived with "outside forces having less control of you, allowing you to have more flexibility, more freedom and listening to the vibrations of the earth, that nature gave you."
 

Graves also began exploring martial arts in the late 1960s. He created a new form called Yara, from the Yoruban word meaning "nimble." He followed a teacher's interest in the praying mantis as a model. He subsequently bought and released these insects into his own garden, followed their movements and developed his own martial arts study based on their natural behavior. This inspired the title of a 2018 documentary on Graves, Full Mantis.
 

When his grandmother died, in 1970, Graves moved into her modest 20th-century home at the corner of Brinkerhoff Avenue and 156th Street in Queens, just blocks from the South Jamaica Houses he once called home. He personalized the lot and dwelling with a distinctive flair, adding stone and ceramic architectural elements to the exterior structure in a playful style akin to Antonio Gaudi. He created an organic garden to promote healing arts and added a dojo to teach Yara. Inside there's murals, sculptures and drums from around the world; a downstairs laboratory includes dried herbs and botany research, elixirs, Eastern medicine texts and acupuncture practice juxtaposed with electrocardiogram machines and computer monitors. And books. Lots of books. Graves was a generous polymath who openly shared his knowledge.
 

Mark Christman, artistic director of Ars Nova Workshop, has been measuring and curating aspects of Graves' immense contribution to music, science, botany and martial arts over the last several years. The collection spent four months at Philadelphia's Institute for Contemporary Art, with a five-week pause due to pandemic restrictions. The exhibit, A Mind-Body Deal, drew more than 2,000 attendees and over 5,000 participants to its many virtual events, including a solo performance from Moran. "Milford Graves offers a perspective that isn't limited by the way we've been forced to learn," says Christman. "That linear way of study doesn't allow a mixture or mash-up of thoughts and decision-making. That's why he's adored, and people looked to him for answers."

To learn more about Milford Graves, read “Taking Rhythm to Heart.”

Rare White Bison Spotted in Ozark Mountains

A surprising new guest has arrived at Dogwood Canyon Nature Park in Missouri's Ozark Mountains: a rare white bison calf. Named Takoda, a Lakota word meaning "friend to everyone," he was born on a private ranch and came to live with the herd of bison currently roaming Dogwood Canyon earlier this year.

A white bison's birth was once a very rare occurrence, with some estimates stating that only one in 10,000,000 bison were born white. However, you may now encounter one of these majestic creatures thanks to the work of conservationists. Though still rare, the phenomenon is more common due to crossbreeding as a result of attempts by ranchers to save the species from extinction after original populations plummeted to only a few hundred between 1830 and 1900.

According to traditional Native American teachings spanning thousands of years, the white bison is a sacred animal that promotes prayerful communication between Indigenous people and the Great Spirit, while also serving as a sign of peace and good fortune. The legend goes likes this:

 
Long ago during a great famine, a Lakota chief sent two boys to hunt for food. While searching, they came across a beautiful holy woman, who gifted their tribe the first sacred pipe: the White Buffalo Calf Pipe. Over a period of four days, White Buffalo Calf Woman instructed the people in the Seven Sacred Rites: the seven traditional rituals that use the sacred pipe. When the teaching of the sacred rites was complete, she told the people that she must return to the spirit world. She asked them to honor the teachings of the pipe and to keep it in a sacred manner. Before leaving, the woman told them that within her were four ages, and that she would look upon the people in each age, returning at the end of the fourth age to restore harmony and balance to a troubled world. She said she would send a sign that her return was near in the form of an unusual buffalo, which would be born white.

The prophecy of the White Buffalo Calf Woman is of great spiritual significance to the Lakota and many other tribes. Lakota holy man John Fire Lame Deer once said, "A white buffalo is the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter." Lakota people see the birth of a white buffalo calf as the most significant of prophetic signs. Some Lakota equate the birth of a white buffalo calf to the second coming of Christ. As Oglala  Lakota medicine man Floyd Looks For Buffalo Hand puts it, "The arrival of the white buffalo is like the second coming of Christ. It will bring about purity of mind, body, and spirit and unify all nations--black, red, yellow, and white."

Working with Shamanic Drums

As a drum circle facilitator, I get asked a lot about how to work with shamanic drums. Drums are an essential part of shamanic work; we use them for journeying, healing and celebration, both for ourselves and for the community. Additionally, the shamanic techniques of extraction, soul retrieval and divination can all be performed with the drum. Yet many people I meet who acquire a drum say they want to work with it but they are not sure how to.
 

Before shamanizing with a drum, sit and meditate with the instrument for a few minutes. By quieting the mind, you will be able to connect with the spirit of the drum. When you feel ready, pick up your drumstick and grip it with the thumb at the side and the fingers curled underneath. Hold the stick with a tight, relaxed grip and start playing at the rhythm the spirits direct you to use. Remember to "stroke" the drum, rather than "beat" it. Never vent your frustrations by pounding on a drum. One should always "drum the beat," rather than "beat the drum."
 

Always begin a drumming session by softly stroking the drum, and then gradually increase the intensity of your playing. It is not necessary to hammer the drum to bring out its unique voice and resonance. It is best to stroke the drum firmly, producing ringing tones and overtones. Use short strokes with a minimal amount of motion to pull the sound out of the drum. Keep your arms and shoulders relaxed, breathing slowly and deeply as you play. By playing the drum in this manner, you will have greater precision and endurance.
 

When a stick hits a drumhead, it rebounds in the opposite direction. The drummer who plays with too much tension, or hammers the stick into the drum, will find that the direction of the stick continues to move downward contrary to the upward push of the rebound. Rather than bouncing off the head, the stick is forced into the head by a hand still pushing down on the stick after it should have changed direction. The result is a loss of speed, control and clean, distinct strokes.
 

The less tension there is in the muscles of the arms and hands, the easier it is to respond to the bounce off the head. Moreover, by incorporating the energy coming off the drumhead into the upstroke, the drummer's playing will become quicker, more fluid and relaxed. That way the energy circulates, comes back and you can use it again. The key is to focus your energy to that point on the drumhead's surface that you are striking, not beyond it. Transfer your energy and intention into the drum, using a smooth, relaxed stroke. With practice, you learn just how much energy to send out to achieve a desired result and how much to retain so that you don't tire.
 

Move the drumstick around the head of the drum as you play, allowing the various tones and overtones to resonate through you. You will find the higher tones around the outer edges of the drumhead and the deeper sounds toward the center of the drum. If you can, find the sweet spot--that place where the drum begins to hum and sing. The drum has to sing in order to reach its full potential for healing and empowerment.
 

When playing a drum, life force energy flows between the drumhead and the drumstick. With practice, you should be able to feel this subtle force pushing and pulling on the stick. Allow this force to guide your drumming in order to draw out what is already within the drum. Shamanic drumming is about transposing already existing harmonics into sound by stroking them from the drum.

Native American Vows to Decolonize Native Burials

Robert Gill of Buffalo, Minnesota is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe and among only a few Native American morticians in the country. A hero to many tribal members, Gill has made it his life's mission to restore Native burial customs and to "decolonize," as he calls it, the process of honoring and burying those who die on Indian reservations. Since the arrival of the pandemic, death has become an all-encompassing specter of Gill's daily life, consuming his days and even his nights. He travels hundreds of miles each week to remote tribal communities as far west as the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and as far north as the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation near the Canadian border. 

 

Before the pandemic, Gill arranged three to four burials a month for Native families. Now he is receiving that many funeral requests every week. Even with a punishing work schedule, he sometimes struggles with guilt over his inability to meet the surging demand for traditional burial services. He knows that many tribal families are being left with no choice but to turn to white-owned funeral homes with morticians who do not understand their language and customs. Without ceremonies rooted in their culture, Gill argues, tribal members are disconnected from their history and unable to mourn properly.
 

The dearth of funeral options, some tribal leaders argue, is a legacy of America's dark history of racial subjugation of American Indians and their religious practices. Until 1978, when Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, spiritual ceremonies like the sweat lodge and drum dances were still technically illegal. The prohibitions enabled Christian churches to establish deep footholds on reservations and further restrict Indigenous customs--including their ceremonies for honoring the deceased.
 

Determined to bring more dignity to the burial process, Gill enrolled in the Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Chicago, where he graduated in 2012. He is believed to be the only licensed mortician of Dakota heritage in the country. Today Gill is virtually alone in the funeral business for his willingness to make long-distance house visits--sometimes driving entire days, through sleet and snow, to meet with tribal families in their homes. Each visit carries the risk that he will contract the virus still raging through Indian Country. Gill is the only one of five morticians who work at Chilson Funeral Chapel in central Minnesota who has not been sickened by COVID-19.
 

"You've got to have nerves of steel to do this work in a pandemic," Gill said.

 

A version of this article first appeared in the "Minneapolis Star Tribune."