Shamanic peoples of the world
Many paths to the same fire
On every continent people have found ways to open consciousness and speak with the world of spirits, ancestors and nature. Some do it with sacred plants. Many, however, need nothing but a drum, a song, a dance, the breath, fasting or the stillness of darkness.
Where plants belong to the path, they are teachers on a long way: with experienced healers, with rules, dieta and community. They are not an experience to take away. Many of these plants are prohibited in Switzerland or dangerous to health. This page tells stories; it does not give instructions.
The peoples are arranged by region. With the buttons you can show who works with sacred plants and who with drum, dance and breath.
Europe
Kelten
drum, dance & breathThe druids learned by heart for twenty years, the bards sang the world into being. Their gateways were the wheel of the year, sacred groves, springs and fire – knowledge lay in word and song.
Sámi
drum, dance & breathThe noaidi, the shamans of Lapland, travelled into other worlds with the painted magic drum. The joik, a song that does not describe a person, an animal or a place but is it, lives on today. Many drums were burned by missionaries; some have now been returned to the Sámi.
Asia and Siberia
Peoples of Siberia
plants and soundThe word shaman comes from the Evenki. The drum is their mount into the other worlds. In the north-east the fly agaric was also sacred to the Koryak and Chukchi – many link it to the origin of Santa Claus.
Mongols
drum, dance & breathBöö and udgan travel with drum, song and mirrors; the ancestor spirits speak through them. Under the eternal blue sky the earth is honoured at the ovoo – entirely without plants.
Tuvans
drum, dance & breathIn Tuva on the upper Yenisei the kam, the shamans, work with drum and song. Tuvan throat singing, imitating wind, water and horses, is famous. Since 1993 there has again been an association of shamans in Kyzyl.
North and Central America
Lakota
drum, dance & breathSweat lodge (inipi), vision quest (hanblečheyapi) fasting alone on the hill, sun dance, drum and song. The sacred pipe (chanunpa) is a prayer, not an intoxicant.
Maya
plants and soundToday above all prayer, fire ceremony and the sacred calendar of the ajq’ij. In ancient times the Maya also knew the balché drink and sacred mushrooms, as mushroom stones from the highlands show.
Wixárika
sacred plantsFor the Wixárika, hikuri (peyote) is a sacred brother. Every year they make the pilgrimage to Wirikuta, sing whole nights by the fire and paint their visions in yarn paintings.
Mazatec
sacred plantsIn the Sierra Mazateca in Oaxaca, sabias heal with the «holy children», psilocybin mushrooms, in night-time velada ceremonies full of song. María Sabina became world-famous in 1957 through R. Gordon Wasson – with grave consequences for her village.
Rarámuri (Tarahumara)
sacred plantsThe neighbours of the Wixárika in the Sierra Tarahumara know peyote (híkuli) as healer and protector. They are famous for their runs over hundreds of kilometres – running itself is a prayer for them.
Native American Church
sacred plantsA church of many North American peoples, which arose around 1900 among the Kiowa and Comanche. At all-night meetings in the tipi peyote is taken as a sacrament, with prayer, water drum and song until morning.
Kogi
plants and soundIn the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia the mamos are trained in darkness for years from childhood, so that they learn to see the world «in thought». Their path is meditation and attentiveness; chewing coca with the poporo is part of everyday life for the men.
Andes
Andean peoples
plants and soundPaqos and yatiris speak with Pachamama and the mountains: with coca leaves, despachos and prayer. In northern Peru curanderos heal with the San Pedro cactus (huachuma) – a tradition reaching back to Chavín.
Inka
plants and soundFor the Inca the sacred spoke through the sun, the ancestors and the huacas. Coca was a gift of the gods, chicha was offered to the ancestors, and priests used snuff made from willka seeds.
Amazonia
Shipibo-Konibo
sacred plantsOn the Ucayali the onanya work with ayahuasca (oni) and the dieta: living with one plant for months, eating simply, keeping silent. The ikaros, their healing songs, are kené patterns in song.
Huni Kuin
sacred plantsThe «true people» in Acre (Brazil) and Peru drink nixi pae, their ayahuasca, to receive knowledge from the spirits. Their visions give rise to kene patterns and the huni meka songs.
Yawanawá
sacred plantsOn the Rio Gregório in Brazil the Yawanawá work with uni (ayahuasca), rapé and strict dietas. In recent years women too have become pajés – a new beginning within an old tradition.
Cofán, Siona and Secoya
sacred plantsIn the borderlands of Colombia and Ecuador the sacred vine is called yagé. The taitas, the old healers, sing through long nights and guide the community. Their knowledge is threatened by oil extraction in the rainforest.
Yanomami
sacred plantsThe xapiri spirits come to the Yanomami shamans when they take yãkoana or epená, a snuff made of tree bark and seeds. The shaman Davi Kopenawa tells of this in the book «The Falling Sky».
Africa
Bwiti (Fang, Gabon)
sacred plantsIn Gabon the Bwiti faith joins old ancestor veneration with Christian images. At initiation the newcomers eat iboga root bark to meet the ancestors; they are carried by music on the mongongo bow and by dances until morning.
San (Kalahari)
drum, dance & breathThe San dance in a circle around the fire all night long while the women clap and sing. A power they call n/om «boils» up in the healers until they fall into trance and heal with their hands – entirely without plants.
Australia and Oceania
Aboriginal Australians
drum, dance & breathFor the first peoples of Australia the Dreaming is not past but always present. The songlines, sung paths, connect land, ancestors and law. Knowledge is passed on through song, dance, painting and long initiations; the sound of the didgeridoo comes from the north of the continent.
There are no entries for this path yet.
With respect
This page is not a guide and not a recommendation to take plants. Peyote, ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, iboga and fly agaric are in part subject to the Swiss Narcotics Act and can be dangerous, especially with medication or with mental-health or heart conditions. Iboga has already led to deaths.
Many Indigenous peoples suffer from tourism, from biopiracy that patents their plants and knowledge, and from people who copy and sell their ceremonies without any connection to them.
At the same time, the old knowledge also lives on wherever it has been passed on with respect. Many shamans here where we live received their knowledge over years from Indigenous teachers, work together with them and keep the connection alive. In this way the knowledge may travel – from person to person, from heart to heart. Those who wish to encounter a tradition look at where a path comes from and whether its connection to its roots is alive. Listening, supporting, taking part with an open heart and giving something back – that is the way of respect.
Sources
Mircea Eliade: Schamanismus und archaische Ekstasetechnik, 1951 · Peter T. Furst (ed.): Flesh of the Gods – The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens, 1972 · Richard Evans Schultes & Albert Hofmann: Plants of the Gods, 1979 · Michael Harner: The Way of the Shaman, 1980 · Richard Katz: Boiling Energy – Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung, 1982 · Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff: The Shaman and the Jaguar, 1975, and The Sacred Mountain of Colombia’s Kogi Indians, 1990 · James W. Fernandez: Bwiti – An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa, 1982 · Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert: La chute du ciel, 2010 · Piers Vitebsky: The Shaman, 1995
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