Shamanic Crisis

The career of many shamans - witch doctors or medicine men and women - in different cultures, begins with a dramatic involuntary visionary state that the anthropologists call “shamanic illness.” During such episodes, future shamans usually withdraw psychologically or even physically from their everyday environment and have powerful holotropic experiences. They typically undergo a journey into the underworld, the realm of the dead, where they experience attacks by vicious demons and are exposed to horrendous tortures and ordeals.

This painful initiation culminates in experiences of death and dismemberment followed by rebirth and ascent or magic flight to celestial regions. This might involve transformation into a bird, such as an eagle, falcon, thunderbird, or condor, and flight to the realm of the cosmic sun. The novice shaman can also have an experience of being carried by such a bird into the solar region. In some cultures the motif of magic flight is replaced by that of reaching the celestial realms by climbing the world tree, a rainbow, a pole with many notches, or a ladder made of arrows.

In the course of these arduous visionary journeys, novice shamans develop deep contact with the forces of nature and with animals, both in their natural form and their archetypal versions – “animal spirits” or “power animals.” When these visionary journeys are successfully completed, they can be profoundly healing. In this process, novice shamans often heal themselves from emotional, psychosomatic, and even physical diseases. For this reason, shamans are frequently referred to as “wounded healers.”

In many instances, the involuntary initiates attain in this experience deep insights into the energetic and metaphysical causes of diseases and learn how to heal not only themselves, but also others. Following the successful completion of the initiatory crisis, the individual becomes a shaman and returns to his or her people as a fully functioning and honored member of the community. He or she assumes the combined role of an honored priest, visionary, and healer.

In our workshops and professional training, modern Americans, Europeans, Australians, and Asians have often experienced in their holotropic breathwork sessions episodes that bore close resemblance to shamanic crises. Besides the elements of physical and emotional torture, death, and rebirth, such states involved experiences of connection with animals, plants, and elemental forces of nature. The individuals experiencing such crises also often showed spontaneous tendencies to create rituals that were similar to those practiced by shamans of various cultures. On occasion, mental health professionals with this history have been able to use the lessons from their journeys in their work and develop and practice modern versions of shamanic procedures.

The attitude of native cultures toward shamanic crises has often been explained by the lack of elementary psychiatric knowledge of the shaman’s tribesmen and the resulting tendency to attribute every experience and behavior that these people do not understand to supernatural forces. However, nothing could be farther from truth. Shamanic cultures, which recognize shamans and show them great respect, have no difficulty differentiating them from individuals who are crazy or sick.

To be considered a shaman, the individual has to successfully complete the transformation journey and integrate well the episodes of challenging holotropic states of consciousness. He or she has to be able to function at least as well as other members of the tribe. The way shamanic crises are approached and treated in these societies is an extremely useful and illustrative model of dealing with psychospiritual crises in general.