Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion Article from All-Creatures.org



Share

Shamans, Ancient and Modern, and Animal Relationships

From Dr. Michael W. Fox, OneHealth.com
August 2024

Shamans, historically, were probably the first advocates of One Health, recognizing the connections between personal and public health, animal health and welfare, and environmental protection. Most human diseases come from infectious insects, contaminated food, water, and air, and from infected animals and other people. How we mistreat insects and other animals, mishandle food, and pollute our water and air, make many diseases anthropogenic.

Boundless Cicle

"I, who was born to die shall live. That the world of animals, and the world of men may come together, I shall live."
~ Inuit Legend

"The world itself has a soul, the anima mundi."
~ Pythagoras

"Nothing will be well unless we learn to live in harmony with the Power of the World as it lives and moves and does its work."
~ Black Elk

I define shamanism as a spiritual practice and state of empathic mindfulness of the needs and condition of others and of their relationships with other sentient beings, plant, and animal, as well as with the Earth. University of Minnesota Prof. Karen Lawson, MD, puts it this way:

"Shamanism is a spiritual practice found in cultures around the world from ancient times up to the present day. First and foremost, shamans' practices are practical and adaptable. These practices coexist over millennia with varying cultures, systems of government, and organized religious practices. Many formalized religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, came from ancient shamanic roots and still bear the shamanic threads of deep connection to the divine in all things. But shamanism itself is not a formalized system of beliefs or an ideology. Rather, it is a group of activities and experiences shared by shamans in cultures around the world. These practices are adaptable and coexist with different cultures, systems of government, and organized religious practices. (1). A shaman is said to have the ability to speak with animals, and some of them express that they can shapeshift into animal forms by using hallucinogens or a combination of dancing, drumming, and singing." (2).

Cambridge University anthropologist Piers Vitebsky writes, "When shamans talk of other worlds, they do not mean that these are disconnected from this world. Rather, these worlds represent the true nature of things and the true causes of events in this world." (3).

In contemporary times we still have shamans in our communities whose views may or may not be ridiculed as amateur pretenders and explorers of mystical, or even demonic realms. But in my opinion, just as Dr. Albert Schweitzer proclaimed, "Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves," (4) so our careful observation of animals and nature can awaken the healer-shaman within us. I see many holistic veterinarians, ecologists, conservationists, animal defenders and rescuers, and wildlife rehabilitators as latter-day shamans healing our broken connections with animals and Nature, which urgently need repair.

Shamans, historically, were probably the first advocates of One Health, recognizing the connections between personal and public health, animal health and welfare, and environmental protection. Most human diseases come from infectious insects, contaminated food, water, and air, and from infected animals and other people. How we mistreat insects and other animals, mishandle food, and pollute our water and air, make many diseases anthropogenic, (human-caused or exacerbated).

The demonization of shamanism to negate the animistic spirituality that embraces the freedom of all peoples and species is evident in corrupted religious and politically allied fundamentalists seeking power and control. The only tyrants are humans who lack the wisdom of the wild. Tyrannosaurus rex became extinct, lacking the socio-emotional intelligence of the predators who succeeded them, such as the wolf and the lion.

The shamanic mind-state is non-dualistic, metaphorically combining the perception of a wolf looking in and a dog looking out. The shamanic vision of our spirited lives spinning in ever-moving and crossing-over circles, as mirrored by mesmerizing Native American Hoop Dancers*, sees the hoops of the Geosphere, Biosphere, Atmosphere, Ionosphere, Empathosphere, Somatosphere (collective body of sentient life) and Noosphere in quantum field entanglements. These vary from species to species, plant and animal, human to human. Some have more empathy and insight than others into the deteriorating state of the Biosphere and Atmosphere, now threating survival on planet Earth. We all have agency but without immediate action we are no better than the proverbial frogs going to sleep in a slow-to-boil pot that would immediately jump out if thrown into a boiling one!

Shamanism involves "becoming" another, being pan-empathic, feeling for other beings. This is what Martin Buber called the I-Thou relationship, which he described in his relationship with a horse; it is the non-dualistic relationship of affinity and love. It is the antithesis of treating others as objects and having no empathy or respect. Some slaughterhouse workers told me that they "stopped feeling anything for the animals they were killing because it hurt too much." Where this protective distancing from animals in segments of society we find evidence of empathy deficit disorder and family violence. Lack of instructive contact in childhood with nature leads to the compounding nature deficit disorder.
Pan-empathy, extending our feeling for other sentient beings, leads naturally to embracing panentheism that holds that God is in all and all is in God: The divine principle or vital force in all living beings and living places. The shamanic realm therefore covers the inscapes and landscapes of the life community, the antithesis of materialism, conspicuous consumerism and techno-triumphalism of the outer-space, fossil-fuel-burning rocket propelling space-race billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson. The more money people have, the more they are ethically bound, under the duty of care, to donate to support initiatives to restore the climate and biodiversity, the inscapes and landscapes of our shared environment that none should harm.

Cyberspace has no security and outer space is no place for us to play and cause more pollution and leave dangerous debris. The escalating energy costs of data storage (of much trivia) and cybercurrency transactions must be capped along with the harmful non-ionizing radiation of ramped-up telecommunication systems. Our Technosphere should not be damaging the Ionosphere and the Biosphere. As Teilhard de Chardin envisioned, through techno-involution, integrating the Technosphere with the Biosphere, the Noosphere of a collective, reflective human consciousness becomes global (5).

My avocation as a veterinarian was to help repair the broken connections between people, nature, and animals that I witnessed as a child. These broken connections mark the beginning and the end of the Anthropocene age, and which, if restored, will herald what my friend the late Fr. Thomas Berry called the Ecozic era. This is the emerging period in which humans would recover their creative orientation to the world. I call this the Empathocene era. If we do not follow such a path of positive transformation, the future will bring devolution and escalating extinctions.

Shamanic divination is simply connecting with the divine, like touching a tree and asking for balance and direction, or looking skyward to see a sign or find inspiration. Extending our senses to other living beings can give us communion, spiritual renewal and better understanding of our relations, place, and purpose. The wild ones teach us that there is no freedom without responsibility for others, great vigilance and sometimes, self-sacrifice. Ask any animal—predator or prey—who evolved and survived for millennia before us, and who can teach us much about the responsibilities we all have in our place and purpose.

Collectively, as we render such ancient relations extinct and cause great suffering to these highly sentient beings, we ultimately harm ourselves. The duty of care is the moral responsibility of every culture and community (6). Every shaman bears the wounds of empathizing and finds the wisdom in self-healing, to help others better care. The shamanic doorway is through an empathetic open heart-mind. Egotism and anthropocentrism are two barriers of our nature and nurture/culture that shamans and all who seek to serve and heal, transcend by putting others before self and seeing the self-reflected in all. This doorway may be opened by a deep emotional wound such as the suffering or loss of a loved one, an intense emotional, inspiring, transcendental experience in Nature, or with beings other than human. This door will never close behind those who pass through, as long as they are anchored in the existential and ever-lasting reality of all whom they love and care for. This is the link of the empath and the thread of the shaman in the entanglements of the quantum field of cosmogenesis and human evolution.

I wish all students can find and open that door to discover all that lies beyond. The Empathosphere, for instance, has been shown to us by animals and resonates with shamanic remote sensing and spirit travel (7).

The shamanic healing power of sensing and feeling where a suffering person or animal is hurting can take its toll. Veterinarians and others healers and health-care providers who have passed through the doorway can burn out in the fires of empathy if there is no peer-support or some degree of protective, self-disciplined clinical detachment and objectivity. But that detachment can impair both empathy and quality of care and is too commonly unmodulated by spiritual experience and maturity.

I was fortunate to spend time with Frank Fools Crow, Ceremonial Chief of the Teton Sioux, who told me about the Yuwipi healing ceremony of mindful visioning and "calling up the Helpers" (8). He instructed me to trust them to show me the way, and that Christians might call these light-beings, angels. But first we must fearlessly trust and submit to the higher powers of divine love and revelation when we "go through the door."

I strongly advise people not to try botanical psychedelics without a guide. Often the best beginning of opening, the Second Birth of St. Francis of Assisi, (and the fulfilment of the Anishinaabe Vision Quest) can come from simply sitting still in some natural place and quietly observing. Even something as simple as walking quietly with one’s dog and observing what she or he does, and stopping and stroking and making eye contact can provide the first step in learning ethology, the science of animal behavior. As we learn how animals behave and communicate, we will be more able to commune with them.

The planetary existential crises that we face today will be more severe for future generations. They can meet these challenges in the spirit of a humanity that puts compassion and the power of love into action, by caring for those who suffer and protecting all in need in the shamanic tradition. The alternative route is to live in ignorance in denial, pursuing short-term pleasure of conspicuous consumerism, thereby surrendering to the consequences of our collective inhumanity and what many see as Nature’s retributive justice. Through the second route I see the extinction of all that makes us worthy of the self-anointed title of Homo sapiens. A life unexamined is a life unlived. A culture unexamined is a culture unlivable. Hallelujah!

REFERENCES

  1. Quotation from Shamanism.
  2. Äikäs T, Fonneland T. Animals in Saami Shamanism: Power Animals, Symbols of Art, and Offerings. Religions. 2021; 12(4):256. See also Shaman Links.
  3. Vitebsky P. The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul, Trance, Healing, Ecstasy, and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1995. See also Dreaming with Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture by Michael Tucker, Aquarian/Harper San Francisco, 1992.
  4. Quoted by Norman Cousins in Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. W. W. Norton, New York. 2005.
  5. Teilhard de Chardin, P. Science and Christ. Collins. London.1968.
  6. Fox, MW. One Health: Veterinary and Ethical Perspectives. CRC Press, London. 2025.
  7. Fox, MW. The Boundless Circle, Quest Books, Wheaton IL. 1996.
  8. Mails, TE. Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power. Council Oak Books, Tulsa OK. 1991.

*According to writer Basil H. Johnston in Anishinaabe culture, a Manitou named Pukawiss, brother of Nanabozho, and born to live amongst the people, created the hoop dance. Unlike the other boys, Pukawiss did not show an interest in running, swimming, or hunting. He only wanted to watch the animals.----Pukawiss learned so much about life in the movements of eagles, bears, snakes that taking their life would have been wrong. The animals had much to teach human beings about values and relationship like loyalty, kindness, and friendship. Pukawiss taught his village about the animals by spinning like an eagle in flight or hopping through grass like rabbits or bouncing like a baby deer. He became a dancer (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Hoop_Dance#).

Posted on All-Creatures: August 3, 2024
Return to Animals: Tradition—Philosophy—Religion Articles