Shamanism As A Career
Joseph Campbell, the noted mythology professor and expert, once stated the difference between the roles of a shaman and a priest, despite the similarities in the two positions:
“The priest is the socially initiated, ceremonially inducted member of a recognized religious organization, where he holds a certain rank and functions as the tenant of an office that was held by others before him, while the shaman is one who, as a consequence of a personal psychological crisis, has gained a certain power of his own.”
What Campbell meant here, is that traditionally, a shaman is iniated into his practice by suffering from some crisis or another; more often than not, it is through a near death experience. Or it could be merely experiencing a calling of some kind or another, through personal or social phenomena, that compels the man or woman to become the shaman, or a shaman for the tribe. Typically, after initiation into the practice, a shaman begins his career, using the following methods and materials by which to work his or her trade.
- Tobacco
- Drumming
- Dancing
- Singing
- Listening to music
- Icaros / Medicine Songs
- Vigils
- Fasting
- Sweat lodge
- Vision quests
- Mariri
- Swordfighting / Bladesmithing
Other methods of working as a shaman often included healing, or ivination, working certain rituals or ceremonies, that required the use of powerful, or magic herbs, or plants. These listed below are some of the most prominently used plants and fungus used by those who choose shamanism as a career.
o Psychedelic mushrooms
o Cannabis
o San Pedro cactus
o Peyote
o Ayahuasca/Yage/Vine of the Dead
o Cedar
o Datura
o Deadly nightshade
o Fly agaric
o Iboga
o Morning glory
o Sweetgrass
o Sage
o Salvia divinorum
