The Shaman’s Life: The Hero’s Journey

The shaman’s life takes place along the hero’s journey, which was exposed by the mythologist Joseph Campbell in five main stages. They are:

1) The early conventional life of the shaman;

2) The crisis, or call to adventure and awakening;

3) Discipline and training;

4) Completion of the search in enlightenment, death and rebirth; and

5) The final phase of return and contribution to society.

Shamans were the world’s first spiritual explorers. They laid the foundation for what we now know as the spiritual path to enlightenment, the heroic quest for the grail, the journey to death and resurrection, that is, as Joseph Campbell called it, the hero’s journey.

In the words of Roger Walsh, shamans were the first to “systematically explore and cultivate their inner world and use their knowledge and images for the benefit of their people.”

They were the first to feel dissatisfied with everyday life, waking consciousness, the first to renounce acceptance of the superficial and simple reality of things, the first to blindly delve into the world beyond.

Stimulated by the call of the helper spirits, or by his own inner curiosity and questioning, the shaman set out on the path of discovery. This path plunged them into a strange world of visions, dreams, and the inner realities of the soul.

All those who have taken this path since then have done so in the footsteps of the shamans who came before us.

In short, the trip goes something like this:

1) The conventional early life of the hero:

Here, the hero is blissfully unaware that culture is an illusion. He accepts the conventional beliefs, morals and limitations set by his society.

The hero’s task is to go beyond these limitations. It is to question his own beliefs, as well as the moral foundations of his society. As Roger Walsh explains, this “requires facing the internal fears and external social sanctions that restrict and paralyze our abilities” (Walsh).

First things first though, the hero must realize that there are fears that need to be faced and beliefs that need to be questioned. This is accomplished by…

2) The crisis, or call to adventure and awakening:

At some point, the hero’s normal daily life is challenged by a crisis, or an encounter with the unknown that calls into question previous beliefs.

This crisis can take many forms. For the shaman, it was often the emergence of a strange disease, a visitation from within a dream, a powerful vision, or a confrontation with death. Whatever form he takes, “this challenge reveals the limits of thought and cultural life, and urges the hero [the shaman] beyond them” (Walsh).

Once the crisis or the call arrives, the shaman is faced with a choice. Either he accepts the call and takes those first blind steps towards an unknown alien, or he suppresses the crisis and tries to go back to living a normal life as if none of that happened.

The call, however, never really goes away. That feeling of dissatisfaction and discomfort persists forever, and most shamans who try to reject the call go mad or die.

Those who accept face a road just as difficult, but infinitely more rewarding.

3) Discipline and training:

The next step for the shaman is to find and acquire a teacher.

A teacher can be both internal and external. For the shaman, the teacher often took the form of an inner guide or spirit. Just as often, the shamans were trained and educated by other shamans in their community.

Whatever form they take, the master initiates the future shaman into a program of discipline, both physical and mental, to develop the will and disrupt the shaman’s ordinary, ie comfortable state of mind. This is so that his mind can open up to new possibilities and modes of consciousness. Such disciplines may include fasting, sleep deprivation, physical exertion, isolation, or exposure to extremes of heat or cold.

The goal and effect of these disciplines is to change the way the mind perceives reality.

4) Completion of the search–death and rebirth:

The search culminates in enlightenment, or a life-changing breakthrough.

This can take the form of a vision, a special perception, or, and this is more common with the shamanic experience, a death and rebirth experience.

Again, whatever form it takes, the end effect is the same: “a deeper realization of one’s own nature and a resultant self-transformation” (Walsh).

5) The final phase of return and contribution to society:

Having healed himself, the shaman is now spiritually equipped for the task of healing the world, his immediate community being.

While the search itself was a departure from society and into his deeper inner self, the search ends with a return to society to share and give what was learned and achieved on the journey.

This story of the development of the shaman, the hero’s journey, is essentially a description of human history. The experience of an artist, a teacher, a scientist, a writer, the experience of any human story worth telling, follows this same general pattern. An encounter with a crisis or problem, and then through the work of solving it, the discovery of something profound that can benefit everyone.

The hero of the hero’s journey is the one who brings something true and worthwhile to this shared human reality, from the alternate reality of one’s own inner self.

This is the great spiritual work, and it is the essence of the shamanic life.