Wanderings of the soul

In many shamanic cultures, one of the key differences that separates a shaman from an ordinary person is a unique control over the wanderings of his or her soul within the human and spirit worlds. Ordinary people's souls may leave their bodies to wander these worlds too; Some shamanic peoples believe that dreaming is the result of the soul leaving the body and travelling to different realms such as the spirit world. Only a shaman, however, is capable of intentionally sending her soul outside of her body on journeys to specific places throughout the realms of humans and spirits, later to return safely to her body; Whereas an ordinary person's soul will make the trip to the realm of the dead only once, when that person dies, some shamans make this journey countless times throughout their lives.

Trance and soul flight

Stimulated by music, dancing, fasting, exhaustion, or, in some cases, drugs, shamans are experts at entering altered states of consciousness called trances. During a trance, shamans communicate with spirits.

Many call spirits to them during trance and converse with them. Others are inhabited by spirits and speak with their voices during trance. One fascinating example of this type of trance reported by anthropologist and shamanism expert Piers Vitebsky is of an Indian Sora woman shaman who, when someone tried to hold her crying baby to her breast during trance, replied gruffly, "No, I'm a male spirit, wait until a female one arrives after me" (Vitebsky, 65).

Many shamans, however, go beyond hosting spirits in the human world and seek out spirits themselves; During trance, these shamans experience their soul leaving their body and journeying through the spirit world. On these journeys, shamans' souls have been known to fly, climb, and ride on the backs of spirit helpers from the depths of the underworld to the dizzying heights of worlds in the sky. Some also travel within the human world, flying to familiar places with spiritual significance, or, in some cases, thousands of miles and across oceans to places that they have never visited in person. Scholars who study shamanism often call these spiritual journeys "soul flight.”

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This work is licensed by Margaret Jones under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.

Last edited by Margaret Jones on May 16, 2012 12:12 pm -0500.