Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog!! We got back on Tuesday at 4 in the morning from our most recent festival: Medicine festival. It was another wellbeing festival filled with healers from all over the world teaching and practising certain traditions and philosophies which really allowed me to learn a lot about Native American, Tribal African and Aborigine ceremonies and spiritual teachings. My knowledge is obviously limited because I was working in the stall for most of the time but I was able to attend some ceremonies and while serving customers, they were happily chatting to us about things which was really lovely. This post is just my understanding of their beliefs and I am still learning about it so I want to try and use this blog as a medium to share and learn more about different beliefs. When reading posts like this, it is important to keep your mind open because this is really different to what we learn through our conventional societal ways of life. Of course, as always, what I write in this post does not replace any sort of doctor's advice or professional help you may have been receiving.
What is a Shaman?
A shaman is one who walks between worlds to bring medicine and use plants to provide healing for the world we are in right now. This may sound a bit hard to grasp but essentially they could do things like walk through dreams and are able to move between the physical world and spiritual world. They use plants and nature to create medicines and help heal. They also do a lot of rituals to honour their ancestors and spirits to receive their blessings and allow them to help when healing others.
How Do Shamans Travel Between Realms?
So what differentiates a shaman from a normal person is that a shaman has immense power over their soul which allows them to travel between the spiritual realm and human realm. Shamans have rituals which include music, dancing and sometimes psychedelic drugs which allow them to be in a 'trance'. A 'trance' is what the altered state of consciousness is called and it allows the shaman's soul to safely leave their body and travel across the world to check on their patients or travel to the spiritual realm to gain knowledge. These journeys that shamans go on are essentially 'in their head' or a controlled state of dreaming as other people cannot see it. The spiritual world is something which many people may not believe in it but unsurprisingly it is metaphysical which means that these journeys are invisible and impenetrable for ordinary people to grasp.
How Does One Become a Shaman?
I actually do not have much knowledge on this aspect but what I do know is that you find a teacher or a very experienced shaman to guide you and safely allow you to learn how to gain control over your soul. I'm pretty sure it also involves a lot of living in nature and remote areas to allow you to learn about herbal medicines and to appreciate nature as that is a very important part of shamanism. They are healers and use plant medicines to provide healing so I'm assuming that in order to become a shaman you would learn all of that from your teacher. I don't really know much else about how to become a shaman and I'd rather not post misleading information so I think it's time to move to the next bit.
Ayahuasca, Shrooms and Weed
I don't know much of the biological or scientific sides of this but as many of you guys know, these are all drugs. I don't think weed is classified as a psychedelic but I believe it allows a person to have hallucinations and feel as though they have opened their third eye chakra. I think magic mushrooms are classified as a psychedelic and ayahuasca most definitely is. Why am I mentioning these drugs? Well, continuing with what I wrote above, shamans are firm believers in using nature as remedies and to create herbal medicines. This means that they often may consume these drugs for healing purposes (eg. CBD oils). Many of you may not have heard of ayahuasca and that's because it's a Native American drug that is created from plants during shaman ceremonies. These drugs, specifically ayahuasca, are used to allow shamans to reach the altered state of consciousness when letting their soul travel. It isn't necessary to use these drugs but I believe that some shamans do use them to ease the process. I know that all of these drugs have certain side effects, both good and bad, which I do not fully understand, so again, I'd rather learn more about it and then write about it rather that post misleading information.
I hope you enjoyed this week's post!! I had another post in mind for this week but I might save that idea for a later date. I feel like recently I've been so overworked from festivals and trying to get schoolwork done that I've not been able to revise for my exams which start on the 1st of September and I've barely been able to do university application related stuff which makes me feel so guilty when I rest after festivals because there's so much that I need to do. I'm trying to just list my priorities, my health being at the top, and I want to make sure I start this next school year a bit different to last year so I can have a fulfilling last year of school. Anyways, see you next week, love you guys <33
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