Shaman's Drum Reviews - Exploring Shamanism

Exploring Shamanism: Using Ancient Rites to Discover the Unlimited Healing Powers of Cosmos and Consciousness by Hillary S. Webb. Philadelphia, PA: New Page Books, 2003. Index; notes; 222 pp.; $13.99 (paper).

Reviewed by Timothy White. Reprinted from Shaman's Drum, Number 69.

Hillary S. Webb’s Exploring Shamanism offers an easy-to-read introduction to the fundamentals of cross-cultural shamanism—at least to those generic neoshamanic practices being taught in workshop centers around this country. Webb is an inquisitive journalist whose understanding of shamanism seems to have been heavily shaped by her experiences working with neoshamanic journeywork teachers, and by a series of interviews that she conducted with twenty-three contemporary shamanic workshop leaders. She quotes extensively from these practitioners in Exploring Shamanism. Indeed, given Webb’s limited contact with indigenous forms of shamanism, particularly outside of workshop formats, I suggest that Exploring Neoshamanism might have made a more apt title for this book.

Despite this limitation, Webb offers a sympathetic introduction to the basic paradigms of shamanic journeywork. Considering that she only began studying shamanism in 1998, Webb does a good job of summarizing shamanic themes—such as soul retrieval, spiritual intrusion, and the shamanic journey—popularized by religious historian Mircea Eliade, anthropologist Michael Harner, and other well-known writers. Webb states that writing Exploring Shamanism was, for her, “an opportunity to take a scattered collection of ideas and information and synthesize them into a cohesive whole.” She also compares her approach “to sifting through pieces of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, fitting them together, and seeing the amazing shapes that could be formed.”

My concern—to use a slightly different metaphor—is that Webb has mixed and matched random pottery shards from various ancient cultures, creating a mosaic that bears only marginal resemblance to the original pieces of pottery. For example, she creates generic collages of the four directions, the axis mundi, and the upper, lower, and middle worlds that are pieced together from miscellaneous quotations and comments extracted from her interviews and other sources. While her collages are lively, she sometimes mixes metaphors, describing the axis mundi not only in the conventional images of the Hindu world tree and the Greek caduceus but also in more distant motifs such as the Huichol nierika (portalway) and the “Christian myth” of the Tower of Babel.

While examining the model of three worlds, she perceptively suggests that “this labeling is actually an arbitrary process, a way for our linear, compartmentalizing minds to grasp the concepts.” Inspired by comments by Q’ero elder Puma Quispe that the three worlds are linked and interwoven, Webb proposes that, instead of visualizing the three realms as layers of a cake, “one may think of the [shamanic] universe as a kind of vibrational stew” in which “the carrots take on the flavor of the meat, the meat is marinated by the broth, and the broth contains the essence of all the various flavors and spices added to it.” While I appreciate the freshness of her metaphor, I fear her stew sometimes mixes clam chowder together with coconut curry.

Webb seems to suggest that shamanic practitioners can toss almost anything into the melting pot of neoshamanism and that it will still produce an appetizing, nourishing meal. I would observe that combining random ingredients is often a recipe for disaster. For example, I know of a shamanic practitioner who naively invoked the dark powers of the Hindu goddess Kali during an entheogenic ceremony and came close to sacrificing herself in a traffic accident the next day. When potent shamanic forces are invoked without due precautions, they can run amok.

Another weakness of Webb’s eclectic journalistic approach is that she presents neoshamanic teachings without always accurately assessing their authenticity or relevancy. For example, at one point, she quotes a description by “Toltec renegade” Ken Eagle Feather of his visionary encounters with the mythic don Juan—“of Carlos Castaneda fame”—without even mentioning the controversy surrounding the fictionality of that now ubiquitous character. Promoting fictional “traditions” can unnecessarily mislead novices and, eventually, can breed disappointment and contempt. Luckily, Webb relies mostly on material from well-known shamanic practitioners—including Sandra Ingerman, Ralph Metzner, Oscar Miro-Quesada, Larry Peters, and Brant Secunda—who have been less prone to hyperbole.

On the whole, I found Webb does a good job of reporting the shamanic paradigms of others, but some of her own interpretations suffer from a lack of experiential reality testing. For example, in a section dealing with cosmic maps, she introduces the common mystical teaching that “each of us is a microcosm that reflects and contains the macrocosm,” and she quotes neoshamanic teacher Alex Stark: “At the most personal level we are the center of the world. We are the center of the Cosmos.” So far, so good. Then Webb interjects an East Indian-inspired mystical syllogism: “Imagine this: If the only reality accessible to any of us is the one that we perceive through our own consciousness, then the entire world that surrounds us is nothing more than a creation of our own minds—or, as the eastern mystical traditions would say, an illusion.” As a part-time mystic, I appreciate many of her metaphysical maxims, but I must question her subsequent suggestion that it is the ability “to redesign the illusion at will” that allows the shaman to heal, to divine knowledge, to predict the future, and to look deep into the past. Let me explain why I believe her reasoning is slightly off the mark.

“Think of it,” she says. “If we contain all worlds, if we are the worlds, then we hold within ourselves the answer to every question that has ever been asked or that ever will be asked.” First, I am not sure that all worlds exist within any individual, any more than the entire World Wide Web exists within a single computer. I propose that it might be more accurate to suggest that we are each connected—through a timeless web of universal consciousness—to all of creation, and that this is why all knowledge is theoretically available to each of us. Second, theoretical possibilities are not probabilities. In actual practice, our ability to access and interpret the cosmic encyclopedia seems to be limited by the capacity of our individual computers, the software programs that we use, the speed of our modems, and the selectivity of our search engines—in other words, our ability to navigate the cosmic web depends upon a combination of our innate abilities and our mastery of effective shamanic methodologies.

One of the inherent limitations of Exploring Shamanism is that it seems to rely on workshop teaching formats that do not lend themselves to exploring shamanic practices in depth. For example, legal liability issues may prevent workshop leaders from encouraging students to engage in long periods of fasting, intense physical purifications, prolonged sleep deprivation, entheogen use, and other traditional trance-induction methodologies. Consequently, workshops tend to employ, at best, truncated adaptations of shamanic methodologies. When teachers don’t explain the basis for workshop exercises, novices may start to equate shamanizing with visualization exercises and then blame shamanism when those exercises don’t produce dramatic results.

A parallel dilemma plagues self-help books on shamanism, and Exploring Shamanism is no exception. Webb ends each chapter with a few suggested exercises, designed to bring to life the material presented in the chapter. Significantly, most of her so-called shamanic exercises are based on imaginal visualizations—some structured and some open ended. And, as Webb herself notes, “most of these exercises involve doing a lot of writing.” While I appreciate that the exercises may teach useful sensory and spiritual awareness skills, I sincerely doubt that they will teach students how to enter and navigate shamanic states.

In order to illustrate the relatively superficiality of her exercises, I will examine those ending the chapter “Embracing the Shadow, Illuminating the Divine,” which deals with the issue of shamanic initiation. First, I should mention some of her preliminary comments on shamanic initiation. After Webb mentions that the most common traditional types of shamans were hereditary and spontaneous spirit-called shamans, she understandably focuses mostly on the path of self-selected, inner-directed candidates—the path taken most often by Western novices. As Webb correctly states, the inner-directed path can be quite arduous and challenging: “The potential shaman ‘cries for a vision’ or otherwise forces himself into a unitive state by intentional stimuli such as ingesting hallucinogenic plants or drugs, long periods of fasting, ceremony, and other trance-inducing stimuli.” Webb also accurately assesses the function of preliminary purification efforts: “This phase of the training often requires a number of physical and psychological tests and trials that take a toll on the initiate’s mind and body. These include fasting, long periods of isolation, and/or physically demanding pilgrimages to places of power.” She even wisely cautions that the initial “suffering, flashes of illumination and revelation into cosmic consciousness” are only starting points, and that the initiate must still undergo formal training in techniques of ecstasy and in other “tricks of the trade.” Finally, Webb advises: “Once the calling is accepted, [the shaman] takes on a lifetime of initiations, even after the formal apprenticeship has ended.” In short, she provides a fairly accurate and insightful picture of the serious challenges involved in traveling the path of a shaman. However, after ably enumerating the traditional challenges involved in becoming a shaman, Webb ends the chapter with some basic self-awareness exercises that she mistakenly refers to as “initiatory ordeals.”

Her first exercise is based on a belief that “life is constantly initiating us, if only we are paying attention.” She instructs the reader to write down recollections of “the most significant moments in your life,” and then to ask various questions, such as: “Who or what helped and guided you through that time?” Then, she offers some generic instructions for conducting an inner-directed initiation: “Design a ritual for yourself to honor these moments,” and “create an altar to honor and give thanks to those guides that have assisted you in our path.” While this well-meaning exercise might encourage a bit of self-awareness—a useful skill in any arena—I sincerely doubt that it would propel an initiate into contact with potent spiritual powers—the explicit goal of most traditional shamanic ordeals.

In a similar way, Webb’s second “initiatory ordeal” exercise, “Beginning the Process of Self-Discovery,” also promotes self-awareness, but, once again, it is no substitute for traditional trance-inducing ordeals. The exercise recommends writing spontaneous journal answers to such questions as “What are my gifts?” and “Who do I give my power away to?” Her formula for success is: “Keep your pen moving” for fifteen minutes, and she suggests, “If you draw a blank, just write gibberish over and over until something comes spilling out of you.” Such self-awareness practices may be psychotherapeutic, but they are unlikely to generate the ecstatic experience of “standing outside of or transcending oneself” that allows the shaman to communicate directly with the spirit world.

For the most part, Webb’s understanding of shamanic healing seems to be consistent with conventional shamanic paradigms, including the belief that “all illness—emotional, mental, and physical—is viewed as being the result of some spiritual manifestation beyond physical reality.” However, she also leans heavily toward neoshamanic perspectives. For example, she interprets spiritual intrusion and soul loss in metaphoric terms, and she suggests that shamanic healing may involve “removal of the [offending] symbol and energetic imprint from the psyche through ritual.” At one point, she cautions: “In shamanic philosophy, a healing does not necessarily mean a restoration of physical health.” While there is merit in each of those comments, my sense is that she may be simply repeating prevailing catechisms. If she was speaking from experience, it would have been useful to provide more case examples to support her statements.

Where Webb misses the mark, in my opinion, is when she theorizes that shamans heal illness primarily “by redesigning the illusion.” I agree that contemporary consciousness research has shown that we experience the realities around us through our interpretive, holographic minds, and that changing the way that we interpret our experiences can radically shift the way we respond to external realities. Imaging a healthy body may also help shrink a cancerous tumor, but I less sure that mentally “redesigning the illusion” will produce lasting shamanic healings or transformations. At one point, Webb makes a revealing comment: “I am a big fan of psychotherapy as a tool for self-exploration, because it allows the opportunity to have an objective person—the psychotherapist—reflect your own patterns that you may not be consciously aware of.” Based on the awareness exercises at the close of each chapter, it is easy to conclude that Webb considers shamanism to be a type of awareness training.

Webb does offer some perceptive insights into the fundamentals of shamanic journeying. For example, in the chapter “The Shaman’s Doorway,” which deals with the subject of shamanic techniques of inducing ecstasy, Webb makes the insightful observation that “what makes the shaman’s journeys so unique and useful is that the shaman is able to remain conscious and connected while, at the same time, fluid enough to allow for the voice of spirit to come through.” She suggests poetically that “during these ecstatic flights, the shaman must walk that tenuous razor-thin line of both controlling and releasing the conscious mind, engaging in a dance of being solid and flowing, wave particle and matter, all at once.”

I think that Webb has identified one of the key challenges involved in navigating shamanic states: simultaneously maintaining lucidity while diving deeply into trance states. However, I disagree with where and how she draws the “razor-thin” line between control and surrender. Webb obviously believes neoshamanic imaginal journeywork provides an effective balance, and I have no problem with her personal choice. However, I can’t agree when she summarily dismisses other methods: “Although dream- and drug-induced euphoria can often resemble shamanic states of consciousness in form and content, they cannot be considered ‘ecstatic’ experiences because the conscious mind is too far removed from the experience to allow for either controlled and intentional exploration or accurate recall of the information gathered.”

First, I contend that indigenous shamans in many cultures regularly rely on dreams as one of the most efficient methods of tapping into transpersonal knowledge. In my own experience, it is not difficult to incubate and remember specific healing and divinatory dreams. Webb’s view that dreams don’t allow for conscious control is also refuted by volumes of evidence documented over the last fifty years in various clinical and private dream studies. Second, my experiences working shamanically with entheogens suggest that it is also fairly easy to direct and recall the information gathered in psychoactive-induced experiences—as long as one doesn’t indulge in what recreational psychonauts call “heroic doses.” Most importantly, dreams and entheogens seem to be very effective methods for tapping into transpersonal powers. In contrast, imaginal journeys are too easily influenced by wishful thinking—although the imaginal mind’s associative tendencies may be helpful in bringing unconscious material into consciousness, they rarely tap into transpersonal forces. In short, I must assume that Webb’s casual dismissal of dreams and psychoactive methodologies and her promotion of visualization techniques may reflect her primary training in neoshamanic journey workshops.

Throughout this book, and particularly in her last chapter, “Shamanism: The Path of the Heart,” Webb regularly compares shamanism to other spiritual paths, leaving the impression that she sees shamanism primarily as a psychotherapeutic spiritual path. For example, she explains, “Calling shamanism the ‘Path of the Heart’ refers to a practice dedicated to reconnecting us to the part of the self that is at all times connected to the innate wisdom of the cosmos within and around us and that allows for unlimited possibilities with the world.” Although I personally appreciate Webb’s idealistic perspective, I think it is naive to assume that all shamanisms are highly spiritual systems. Many indigenous shamanisms are focused primarily on survival methodologies—aimed at healing illnesses, solving difficult problems, protecting territories, and providing for the needs of community—that can degenerate into self-preservational sorceries. For this reason, I prefer when shamanic methodologies are closely wedded to ethical spiritual philosophies. Webb seems to be aware of the same paradox, since she quotes one of her friends, who told her, “I’ve met a lot of shamans, but I haven’t met any saints yet.” I appreciate that she also offers an insightful quote from the Mayan-trained teacher Martin Prechtel: “[Shamans] are not holy people. They are people in love with the sacred.”

Although I sense Webb’s understanding of shamanism has been constrained by her background in workshop shamanisms, I appreciate her determination to understand and describe shamanic mysteries. Based on her accounts of several personal experiences, I assume that Webb is seeking something deeper than imaginal shamanistic entertainment. For example, she opens the book with an account of one of her first shamanic journey experiences, which provided her with a precognitive or remote-viewing image that unfolded later in reality, much to her surprise. At another point, she relates an interesting case when she challenged a shaman to cut her luminous threads “in order to create an energetic disturbance” in her body—partly because she was skeptical that it would have any affect on her. She describes how, after he reluctantly performed some ritual gestures near her, she doubled over, shaking and feeling overwhelmed with intense nausea. She admits she was humbled when the shaman restored her power, and she recovered.

Based on her forthright descriptions of such events, I trust that in time—as she experiences more intense shamanic events —her understanding of shamanism will deepen and grow. In the meantime, her skill at summarizing prevailing neoshamanic paradigms has produced an engaging introduction to shamanism that could be shared with mainstream friends and relatives who would like to know about shamanism but who are unlikely to struggle through scholastic anthropological studies.

Timothy White is editor of Shaman’s Drum.