Read the book: «The Shamaness. Notes of Shamans»

Vladislav Golenetsky, Svetlana Goleneckaya

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Illustrator Svetlana Goleneckaya

ISBN 978-5-0069-7068-7

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Svetlana and Vladislav Golenetskii

AFTERWORD

I originally wanted to call this book Scrawls of a Tipsy Shaman. But many friends who read the manuscript said:

“That title’s too frivolous. Call it, without false modesty, The Shaman’s Bible.”

To me, that felt even more presumptuous. Although, in the end, the word “bible” simply means “book” in Greek and originally had no connection to sacred scriptures.

In this book, I’ve tried to share my fifty years of experience with shamanic practices in an engaging way.

My main goal is to offer readers a reasonably coherent picture of the shamanic worldview. Perhaps it will deter some from walking the shamanic path, or, conversely, strengthen others’ resolve to do so.

Shamanism remains the most widespread and primordial religion on Earth, the root from which all others have sprung.

Countless prophets and saints of various religions – foretelling the future, healing the sick, influencing the weather – were doing what is everyday practice for many modern shamans.

The Christian idea of a triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – stems from the core shamanic concept of the human soul existing simultaneously in three worlds: the Lower, the Middle, and the Upper.

In Buddhism, the idea of karmic rebirth, and the very possibility of a soul incarnating in an animal or plant, is also deeply rooted in shamanism. But while a Buddhist’s main goal in the Middle World is “enlightenment,” a shaman strives for the opposite: “darkening.” This means gaining the ability to descend into the dark lower worlds to help souls that are lost or have accidentally fallen there.

In essence, one of Jesus’s central deeds – freeing the souls of sinners from hell – is something an ordinary shaman might do several times a day.

To ordinary mortals, the worlds a shaman inhabits are elusive and multifaceted. Each shaman enters them through a facet open only to him, and sees only what the Creator Spirit intends specifically for him.

This subjective experience is difficult to convey using the coarse, primitive languages of our Middle World. Much of this book’s meaning lies between the lines, so don’t be surprised by the thought-forms that arise as you read it.

Don’t rush through it all at once. Read a few pages each night before sleep, and put the book down if something becomes unclear or particularly strikes you. What is left unsaid, you may see in your dreams and understand upon waking.

Let us try, together, to peer into the shaman’s mirrors and the realms that lie beyond them.

PART I. SHAMANS OF THE THREE WORLDS

Chapter 1. How to Become a Shaman

If you’ve already figured out why you want to become a shaman, then the question of how might seem beside the point. It’s like happiness: if you want to be happy, then be happy. If you want to be a shaman, then be one, for Heaven’s sake – the ways of the Creator Spirit are inscrutable, and He has granted you free will.

That said, I haven’t met many happy shamans. And among shamans of the Lower Worlds – never.

Neo-shamans, on the other hand, are everywhere. Cheerful boys and girls joyfully dancing to the beat of drums and the twang of jaw harps. They frolic without a care, after smoking some choice herbs or nibbling on fly agarics, liberally pouring sacrificial vodka and milk into the fire and down their own throats, all while discussing the form and essence of their new hobby with an air of great profundity. This can go on for quite a while – until the first “shamanic illness,” the first accidental tumble into the Lower World, or the first encounter with genuine spirits.

It’s at this point that the first great winnowing of would-be shamans occurs. Some wind up in psychiatric wards or drug rehab clinics. Others break their necks trying to fly out a window on a drum or “shape-shifting” into a three-eyed raven. The least impressionable simply give it up for good. But a fourth group sets out on the traditional path: they start looking for a teacher. And more often than not, they find one immediately, somewhere on the vast expanses of the internet – not deep in the Arctic Circle, but in the nearest city, sometimes right on the next street over.

This mentor is usually an elderly neo-shaman or shamaness, claiming to be a seventh- or tenth-generation practitioner (depending on their level of modesty), and sometimes owning anywhere from five to ten staffs and drums. Quite often, they’re former Communist Party or trade union functionaries who’ve studied with famous gurus or voodoo priests somewhere in India or Africa, and who’ve also taken courses at a psychology faculty or some spy school. For a modest fee, or sometimes even for free, these teachers are willing to spend years initiating you into the shamanic craft and preparing you for some grand ceremony of initiation – imposing only a few restrictions “exclusively for your spiritual growth.”

These restrictions can be utterly absurd: avoiding genetically modified foods, or “not eating anything that runs away” (only things that sit still and wait to be cut down or uprooted). They may include eating grain sprouted in melted snow, drinking your own urine, or consuming the guru’s sacred excrement.

Many are even instructed to “live on air” – sacred prana, qi energy, or “the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Strangely enough, this often helps cure various physical and mental ailments.

You might be made to sit for hours in lotus position before a white wall with a black dot painted on it, staring at it without blinking until it starts racing up and down the wall like a cockroach. And if the dot leaves the plane of the wall entirely – well, then you’ve truly achieved enlightenment and a shamanic perception of the world.

Some form of self-mortification is almost always required: listening to the guru drone on for hours, standing on nails, walking on hot coals, wearing chains, or dousing yourself with ice water in the dead of winter.

Your freedom of consciousness will be steadily hemmed in by a fog of incomprehensible, illogical rules and prohibitions. There’s the obligatory kissing of dirty hands and ritual objects, rules about wearing or not wearing clothes, shoes, and headgear, the proper use of two or three fingers (mudras), strict regulation of your sex life, and – most importantly – divesting yourself of all movable and immovable property for the good of the community, the salvation of your own soul, and, naturally, “all humanity.”

Eventually, the student may realize that he’s heard or read all this somewhere before. But by then, breaking free from the clutches of this new local religious egregore, or the regional sect that’s become his home, is beyond him. In the end, it always comes to the same thing: burial outside the cemetery fence, a stint in a psychiatric hospital, a return to the fold of traditional churches, or yet another search for a new guru who’s closer to the “heavenly teachers” or some “cosmic mind.”

This cycle can repeat itself many times. Success will only come when the seeker stops going in circles, calms down, and finally gives up the search altogether.

Then, out of the blue, as if from nowhere, the one who is meant for him will appear – the one he walked past many times without ever noticing. The one who will open the paths to other worlds and give him spirit-helpers. This will be a Shaman of the Middle World.

Chapter 2. Shamans of the Middle World

A Shaman of the Middle World typically doesn’t advertise what he does. He doesn’t perform miracles in public, doesn’t preach to build his own religious following, and doesn’t collect tribute from devoted disciples.

Shamans of the Middle World are usually “pure practitioners,” with no pretensions to greatness. They are people who have – whether suddenly or as a long-expected awakening – discovered the “divine gift” within themselves: so-called extrasensory abilities. Using ancient rituals and spirit helpers, Shamans of the Middle World quietly help all those in need with personal problems – health issues, family troubles, business challenges, and social difficulties.

They are the same familiar healers, magicians, sorcerers, and witches, but they work with ancient shamanic tools and techniques. They may follow various religions and cults, be clergy or not, and may or may not recognize the pagan origins of the rituals they perform. What unites them is a different way of seeing the world around us and the possibilities of transforming it.

They understand that for hundreds of thousands of years, people have used the same shamanic rituals – merely dressing them up in the fine garments of religion.

Take the relatively young religions, for example. Exorcism, blessing water and washing with it, the “consumption of the Lord’s body and blood” in Christian communion – these are classic shamanic rituals.

The sacrificial bonfires have simply been replaced by the more convenient candle, the wooden staff and clay cup exchanged for gold. But if you look closely – all the shamanic attributes have been preserved.

To this day, pagan worship of mummified human remains still flourishes. And instead of people, they now slaughter chickens or sheep. Though, of course, the essence of sacrifice remains unchanged, for in many of those sacrificial animals, human souls have been reincarnated.

In our time, the conscious turn of many practitioners toward shamanism is explained quite prosaically – mainly by the more tolerant attitude of the authorities and society toward this kind of magic. Everyone has grown weary of the intrusive advertising from TV prophets, psychics, miracle healers, and voodoo priests. Shamans, by contrast, are seen as something from folklore, something native and quaintly Russian.

In many regions of Russia, shamans are officially permitted to practice at institutes studying local culture. They are granted state lands for new and old shrines, and substantial budget funds are allocated for large-scale traditional pagan festivals.

From time to time, legislators try to bring the activities of psychics under control in order to start collecting taxes from them. But shamans are left almost untouched – for some reason, the popular notion has taken root that “a real shaman doesn’t take money.”

It seems illogical, doesn’t it? If he truly doesn’t take money, then what does he live on? What happens to the huge amount of food, milk, and vodka that people bring, without a second thought, as payment for his services? And how does he afford pants, shoes, and the supplies used in his rituals? Yet there it is – we “love” our shamans and witches, we care about their well-being, and so we bring them slabs of bacon, baskets of eggs, and bottles of homemade moonshine…

At any rate, a shaman’s chances of being arrested by the police, burned at the stake, or having a grenade tossed through his window are considerably lower than, say, those of your average sorcerer or witch.

What’s more, every well-known Shaman of the Middle World has carved out his own social niche – a circle of well-disposed people with a sufficiently high level of spiritual development and material well-being.

Shamans of the Middle World generally don’t work with the underprivileged. And yet they always have a steady stream of clients from that very environment, because word of mouth is always more effective than any paid advertising.

As time goes on, professional Shamans of the Middle World usually find they no longer need to summon a horde of spirit helpers or make actual journeys to the Upper and Lower Worlds in order to successfully solve the problems brought to them.

To be sure, the rules of the game still require an imitation of traditional ritual – beating the drum, falling into a trance. But the real work is done directly with the client’s soul, as they strive to transform the large “smudge” of its projection in the Middle World into a neat “assemblage point.”

Often it’s enough simply to “heal” or “warm” the soul a little, to restore its lost connections with the ancestral egregore, and to re-establish a dialogue between the client’s conscious and subconscious mind and the spirits of their forebears.

Shamans of the Middle World rarely take on many students. But they can gauge the extent of your superpowers and their potential for growth. And if they deem it worthwhile, they may – usually late in life and for a considerable sum – agree to teach you their craft.

After apprenticing with your newfound teacher for a while, you’ll learn many useful things. In time, you may even become a fairly successful Shaman of the Middle World yourself, or perhaps even a Shaman of the Upper World.

The free sample has ended.