To come to a working understand of how I use this term, we should first look at its parts: Wicca & Shamanism, and the central features of each. Read on...
The very question of what makes one Wiccan is hotly disputed among British Traditionalist and American (Eclectic) Wiccans alike. However, Wicca has some common core features:
- Mystery Tradition - A knowledge of Deity is gained by direct experience, rather than through intermediaries like books or clergy. Each Wiccan is considered Priest or Priestess.
- God & Goddess - Names and pantheons may vary, but a core belief of Wicca is expressed as a reverence for both a God and a Goddess.
- Earth Centered - By following a cycle of celebrations that follows the Wheel of the Year, Wiccans seek to attune themselves to the natural energies of the Earth.
- Magick - A belief in the ability to harness the energy that binds the universe together to effect change. This is governed by the Wiccan Rede, which urges them to “Harm None”.
Shamanism, although mostly thought of as only a Native American phenomenon in the United States, is actually an anthropological term used to describe a specific type of spiritual practice.
Shamanic practices can be seen in virtually every culture that believes in a spiritual “other world”. The Shaman is an “other world” specialist.
Shamans generally act as intermediaries between the material and spiritual realms. They are in service to their communities.
The Shaman travels to the World of Spirit to gain information related to past, present, or future, to perform “soul-retrieval” healings, as well as for wisdom and spiritual growth.
These practices rely heavily on meditation, trance work, and other methods of attaining different levels of awareness.
Shamanic Wiccans blend these two complementary practices. Both Wicca and Shamanism share a core belief in the spirit worlds, and both have developed methods of interacting with those other realms. Shamanic practitioners are sometimes called “technicians of trance” because so much of what they do takes place beyond the physical world, into the shadowy other world of spirit. The same could be said for many Wiccans, since they practice many of the same techniques.
Shamanic Wiccan practitioners experience the spirit worlds via “Journeys”, where their spirit travels to, and interacts with, spirit guides, which may take the form of animals, people, or any manner of real or mythical creatures of imagination. Some traditions of Wicca refer to these Journeys as “Pathworkings.”
There are three distinct realms of the spirit worlds called the World Above, the Middle World, and the World Below. The three realms of the Spirit Worlds each encompass different qualities, and often operate in fundamentally different ways.
- The World Above - to gain perspective on a situation. This is the realm of the Akashic Records, which store a memory of the entire history of the universe upon its ether.
- The Middle World - Focused attention on the physical world tunes the practitioner to this realm, which mirrors the mundane world, yet has a depth and complexity to it that is hard to describe.
- The World Below - is commonly the direction to go when searching for a Spirit Guide. There is a sense of the fantastical about this place... anything can happen, and happens effortlessly at the merest thought.
~Flame RavenHawk
September 17, 2004
A more complete discussion of this topic may be found in “The Shamanic Journey: Bringing Ancient Practices to the 21st Century,” an upcoming feature in the ‘05 Llewellyn’s Wicca Almanac.