Reflection on Introduction to Shamanism

By Jaime Kraft

On March 14, I attended Faith House’s first Living Room of the year held at Charlotte’s Place, their new event home in the financial district.  The session was centered around Shamanism, an ancient path practiced by indigenous peoples from all over the world since the dawn of humanity, according to our guide for the evening, Stephanie Alston-Nero.

After a brief introduction by Bowie Snodgrass, Executive Director of Faith House Manhattan, the lights went low and Stephanie Alston-Nero, appeared with a drum.  Without a word, she took the drum in one hand and with a traditional-looking Native American beater, she began to play.

The rhythm of the drum filled the air, creating a kind of stillness and focus in the room that just-moments-ago was laden with uncertainty and anticipation.  The vibrations reverberated through my body, becoming almost hypnotic.

I closed my eyes and was immediately carried away.  I found myself almost instantly in a state of deep meditation that when done in silence, would usually take me a good fifteen minutes to uncover.

The drumming continued for a long time – maybe ten minutes or so and then—two high-pitched dings of a bell and the drumming stopped.  Stephanie asked us all to stand and take each others hands.

Then she spoke: “We are grateful to you Spirits of the earth, of the sky, of the water, of the four directions, the angels, and the arch angels, the beings of the light…”

“Under this land where we stand right now,” she told us, “are the bodies of over 20,000  Africans, enslaved and buried in the African Burial Ground, beneath this land. Let us remember them as the land remembers.” She explained that the Wall Street area port had once been the second largest slave trading port in the country,  second only to Charleston, South Carolina. “The land remembers,” she repeated.

She then asked us to silently say a prayer to the Divine; however we may refer to He/She/It, in remembrance of the thousands who were buried under our feet.

She asked us to share about what we experienced during the drumming.  What changed for us when it began?  How did we feel now that it had ended?  Most participants spoke of a state calm and relaxation, and of becoming more present in the moment.  One man though expressed the opposite sentiments – saying the hurried pace of the drumming invoked in him a feeling of “urgency”.

After each person spoke, she thanked them with, what was for me, a markedly rare sincerity.  She responded to each comment in the exact same way – as though that individual had just given her a gift.

She then switched gears and started to speak to us in a conversational tone.  Introducing herself officially, she told us about how she had grown up in North Philadelphia, and as a child, she had no dream of ever being a shaman, did not know what a shaman was or have the language to express what they do, but she did know from a very young age that it was possible to communicate with the Divine directly, and that the Divine was of the sort that would listen, respond, and solve the problems of living.  She explained that she is an artist, and part of her attraction to Shamanism was that Shamans were the first artists, so there is an intimate connection between communicating with the Divine and the essence of expressing oneself through art.

She also talked a little bit about her teachers, and shared that even now after all these years, she hears certain words coming out of her mouth, like “Spirit world”, and still can’t really believe that she is saying these things.  Since this kind of language was completely foreign to me, and let’s be honest, I have been taught by the society in which I live to think of it as “hokey”, her admission made her instantly more relatable for me.

She also gave a very brief background on Shamanism itself and the core of its belief system.   She explained that Shamanism has been and still is practiced all over the world in different cultures and traditions.  The form of shamanism she practices is called “core shamanism” which is a set of beliefs and practices that are common to all shamanistic traditions around the world.  The practices are founded upon a shared shamanic view of that the universe is composed of two worlds:  the seen and the unseen, the hidden, or Spirit World.  The shaman’s role is to be the one to travel back and forth between those two worlds.  The shaman will go into the Spirit World to ask questions of the spirits and to bring back answers and medicine to the people of the seen world.  The drum is one of the tools the Shaman uses to lift the veil between the worlds of ‘the seen’ and ‘the unseen’.

Before she concluded this part of the discussion, she asked if there were any questions.  I inquired as to whether all these spirits were in fact separate entities, or whether they were all faces of One Divine being or consciousness.  She explained that Shamanism’s world view is that of ‘Oneness’ and that when she refers to the spirit of this or that, she is actually speaking about the same spirit; that is, the ‘Spirit’ in you is the same ‘Spirit’ in me, just as we might say the God in you is the same God as the God in me.

Samir Selmanovic, Founder of Faith House, also asked about the idea of a “thin place”, which is where the veil between the “Spirit World” and the physical world is thin enough for one to step through.  He explained that he was familiar with this concept as coming out of pre-Christian spiritual practices in Ireland and wondered if it had originally descended from Celtic Shamanistic beliefs.  Stephanie responded that this concept was indeed a part of Shamanism, and that the place where a Shaman passes through from one world to another is called the “thin place” and in other shamanic cultures by other terms.

As our final activity, Stephanie prepared us for a Shamanistic journey we would all be taking before the evening was through.  We were given instructions, the lights went low again, and the drumming began again.

I closed my eyes and was immediately whisked away to a place in nature that has great significance for me.   When I got there, I spoke with the seals who lay out on the rocks below this place and the birds and the big Cyprus tree.  I understood these beings as representing the “Spirit of the Place”.  I then asked if they would please reveal my “Power Animal” to me.

The first flashes I saw were of a lion, but this was what I had expected to see – I am a Leo and have always considered myself very cat-like in my qualities.  To my surprise though, while I saw flashes of the lion, I didn’t feel the sense that this was actually my Power Animal.  I also saw an elephant, but this only flashed once or twice and then disappeared.

Then a huge, majestic eagle flew up to me.  I stood near the edge of the cliff I was on and the eagle held its body upright, spreading its huge wingspan out like wide arms, and flapping them just enough for it stay floating a few feet from my face.  I knew this was my Power Animal.

I climbed onto the back of the eagle and we flew over the ocean and back around through the tops of the trees, during which time it morphed into a Chinese Dragon at one point, and then a Phoenix, but it always returned to the form of an eagle.

I heard the rhythm of the drumming change, which Stephanie had told us would be our cue to say ‘goodbye’ and return to the material world.  I thanked my eagle and the “Spirit of the Place”.   Then turning around to face the Cypress tree, I pulled the trunk apart like two hanging curtains, and stepped into the dark.

The drumming stopped and I opened my eyes.  When my vision cleared and I saw the room around me in which we were all seated, I was shocked.  During my journey, I had completely forgotten that I was sitting in a room with other people and when I opened my eyes, I had this strong sense of not really understanding how I got there.  I sometimes get this feeling as I come out of meditation, but the intensity at which I felt it this time was very surprising.

Again, Stephanie asked people to share about their experiences, but this time I kept silent, still somewhat disoriented from having just woken up in a strange place.  Again, Stephanie thanked each person for their gifts as they shared.

When we had all finished sharing, Stephanie once again thanked all the spirits, and the angels, and the beings of light on our behalf.  She then thanked us for coming and sharing this experience with her.

The experience overall was very unique for me, unlike any ritual in which I had participated in the past.  Though I believe that the terms we use to talk about the Divine are, in essence, irrelevant (considering It is beyond all language anyway). I do think that I would personally have trouble trying to use the language of the Shamans on a regular basis.  That said, I think I very well may get myself some Shamanistic drumming recordings to meditate to in the future, because those beats definitely took me to another place.  I can still hear them now…

All photos by Miguel Colmenares