CÉAD MÍLE FÁILTE:
SHAMANIC CRISIS ©
by Tira Brandon Evans

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The information in this article is based entirely upon the research and experiences of the author. None of this information is intended as a substitute for or should be substituted for consultation with your medical doctor or other qualified professional health care providers. No one should cease taking their prescribed medication based on anything stated or implied in this article. None of the alternative treatments described should be used in place of medications or treatments prescribed by your medical doctor or other qualified professional health care provider. Neither the publisher nor the author are responsible for any adverse effects or consequences whatsoever arising or resulting from using any of the suggestions or procedures herein described or discussed.



(This article contains information regarding shamanic crisis or shamanic illness. Some symtoms of shamanic crisis resemble symptoms of mental illness. Not everyone who is mentally ill is undergoing a shamanic crisis. No one should cease taking their prescribed medication based on anything stated or implied in this article.)

What Is A Shamanic Crisis?

Many of us, when first called to the shaman's path, resist this call. The reasons we resist are as many and varied as the individuals who experience the call. In many cases we are, quite simply, frightened. We wonder if we are losing our minds. The initial call, especially to an adult, is often accompanied by visions and dreams of such intensity and power we may come to believe we are going crazy.

The initial call may cast down our psychic defenses and allow us to experience all of ordinary and non-ordinary reality at once in ways we simply cannot comprehend or absorb. Our senses are flooded with too much information all at once. We may temporarily enter into a state in which we literally see, hear, feel, smell, and taste all of the universe without any filters on the sensory experiences. As we experience all of the 'here', the physical universe, simultaneously we also experience all of the 'now', all time—past, present, and future—simultaneously. The physical human body and brain is simply not wired to take in all this experience at once. Our systems overload.

Caught Between Worlds

At this point we tend to either slam our psychic doors and refuse to open them again or we enter into the experience not knowing where we are going or what we are doing. Newly called shamans often develop religious megalomania and/or paranoia. The religious megalomanic believes she is a spiritual superhero. He often feels he is godlike. Depending on the prevailing religous beliefs in her culture she may begin to imagine she is Jesus, a prophet, a goddess, an angel, or some other supernatural being. Women who go through this when they are pregnant or have a young baby sometimes believe their child is the chosen one.

We often believe we are on a mission to save the world. She may feel she needs to tell the world of her amazing and wonderful visions and dreams. When his message is rejected, he may become paranoid. Paranoia may also develop when she tries to accomplish some miracle which fails. Rejected messages and failed miracles should be a clue to him that he is delusional. Instead she decides there are 'forces' working against her. These forces may be negative people, negative 'entities', demons, or aliens beaming rays from space.

The new shaman may completely withdraw from reality, either by physically withdrawing from the world or by retreating into her own fantasy world. He will quit his job and go live in a cabin in the woods, far away from his friends and family. She will withdraw into her home and refuse to answer the phone, only coming out to cash her welfare cheques and buy food. If he retreats into his mind, he will wander the streets screaming at his invisible friends. At this point, the newly called shaman is a failed shaman. She has not connected with her ancestor guides. He has not connected with his animal guides. She is wandering in a state between this world and the Otherworld, neither here nor There. He is lost to this world but not able to follow the shaman's path into the Otherworld.

In tribal cultures the clan's shaman would see these signs in the new shaman and take her/him under his/her protection and care. The new shaman would be brought back down to earth and his/her education and training would begin. This does not happen today. The new shaman's bizarre behaviour is seen as a sign of mental illness.

We must, of course, bear in mind that not everyone who exhibits these behaviours is a failed shaman. Most mental illness is due to chemical inbalances in the brain and has nothing whatever to do with the shamanic experience. Nevertheless, for those who are caught between the worlds, psychiatric care is essential and should always be recommended and pursued. No one should ever stop taking their medication unless they do so on the advice of their doctor.

Wounded By Fear

"Unlike the medicine man, the Shaman's adoption of his profession is in many cases not voluntary. The future Shaman's experience of being called seems frequently to consist in a compulsive state from which he sees no other means of escape than to 'Shamanize'. It is often clear, particularly from reports from Siberia, that the man who is to become a Shaman consciously does not wish to do so at all, but is driven and forced to it by the 'spirits', and finally, in order not to perish, takes the only path open to him and becomes a Shaman. The future Shaman, the young man suited for Shamanizing, is a sick man. He suffers from psychopathic or epileptic states and is very often also physically ill. He cannot escape the demands of the spirits, which drive him deeper and deeper into the illness, although he very often tries to resist. He gets into a situation, into a mental illness, from which he can find no way out but death or the assumption of the office of Shaman." ( p, 11. Lommel:1967.) [Reference found at: http://www.futureshock.co.za/page3.htm]


Sometimes the shamanic crisis could more accurately be called a shamanic illness. The newly called shaman slams the door on the overwhelming experience of Inworld initiation. But the ancestors don't just quietly go away. They keep knocking on the doors of our perception. The longer and more determinedly we ignore their call the more likely we are to develop a physical illness. In my case, I developed Fibromyalgia.

In 1978 or '79 I noticed I began to experience strange pains in my hips, neck, shoulders, and back. The pain was sometimes so intense I could not fall into a deep sleep because every random movement caused pain, which woke me up. I also experienced what is called 'brain fog'. I could not concentrate or think clearly. I forgot common, everyday words and fell silent during the middle of sentences. Sometimes I forgot what I was talking about halfway through a sentence. I went to doctor after doctor but was not diagnosed until well into the 1980's. Even with a diagnosis there was nothing any doctor could do except prescribe medications for the pain and insomnia.

All this time I knew I was being called but I ignored the call. I had spent most of my life doing 'spiritual things': teaching yoga and meditation, reading and studying religions, and working as a spiritual counsellor. At age thirty-five I decided I had to start being more serious about worldly things and found a career based on business. My ancestors had other ideas.

By the time I finally found my guides I was extremely ill. I was terribly weak—so weak I could only walk using a walker. I was in constant pain, suffered from blinding migraines, and unable to get a good night's sleep. I was on eleven medications—some narcotic pain killers, anti-depressants, and a scary migraine prescription that nearly gave me a heart attack everytime I had to take it.

Finally, a series of happy 'accidents' brought my ancestor guide and I together in the Shining Realms. I realized I was called to be a Celtic Faery Shaman and answered the call. After coming on path the first thing I did was heal myself. It took several months for me to deal with the things that were making me ill, but over time I was able to work out the crisis and I know this gave me a way of looking at and understanding illness—any illness—that helps me to help and heal others.

Taken

In Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Britain we find many stories of children or adults 'taken' by the faerys. Most of these stories are accounts of people who are physically ill, probably suffering from malnutrition or vitamin deficiences. Others describe men and women who are suffering from mental illness, people who are depressed may be very withdrawn. We did not have the concept of mental illness until quite recently. People who behaved in strange ways were considered possessed. Now we know they may be autistic, depressed, or suffering from some other mental illness.

We need to remember that not everyone who hears voices is a shaman. People with certain types of mental illness hear voices. People who suffer from dementia brought on by alcoholism and drugs hear voices—and may talk to their invisible friends. We have seen these unfortunates on the streets of our towns on more than one occassion. Just because people hear voices doesn't mean they are shamans.

In many of the folktales we find a great fear of 'being taken'. This is not surprising. I don't think there is any group of people in the entire world that faces the unknown without fear. But we need to remember these folktales and accounts are generally told by people who are not shamans.

The only people who are not afraid to be taken are shamans—and even we have some fears that need to be overcome. These fears are not necessarily cultural. Some of our fears are purely physical. Our bodies are programmed to respond to danger. A part of that response is fear. Fear triggers certain physiological responses in our bodies. Our adrenal glands pump more adrenaline, our muscles are flooded with this hormone and they get stronger, our hearts pump faster, our instincts tell us to run away or start fighting. This is something we do instinctively and this response is triggered by fear.

What does the angel say to Mary? "Fear not, I've got a message for you from God." The words 'fear not' are almost always first in the mouths of angels confronting humans. Why? Because meeting an angel is scary. I mean, whoa! One second no one is there and then !bang! a being of pure light and love is standing before you ... this is scary stuff. Something from another world has popped into yours to say hello. Anyone who thinks they wouldn't be at least startled by that is lacking in imagination. Goodness! I jump when a garter snake comes to sudden life at my feet or when a bee abruptly bumbles into face. How much greater my startlement when an angel or faery appears?

In most indigenous cultures shamans do not live apart from their clans. The medicine man or medicine woman is fully integrated into the life of their clan. They hunt, farm, fish, herd reindeer, or do whatever their clansfolk do to get along in the world. Sometimes the shaman is blind, lame, or otherwise handicapped and in these cases their shamanic talents are compensation for their inability to lead normal lives. But this is not always the case.

In other words, most people in most places and times have been afraid of contact with the Otherworld. The reason for this is natural fear of the unknown. Even in the very old stories people try to avoid contact with folk of the Otherworld. One of the reasons we may resist the shamanic call today is because organized montheistic religions reinforce this natural reluctance to get involved with things not known. But our reluctance predates Christianity.

Fibromyalgia, a Shamanic Crisis?

It has been observed that many called to be shamans suffer from a severe illness immediately prior to hearing or responding to the call. I am often asked if it is possible to be a 'real' shaman if one has never suffered through the shamanic illness.

I think there are several reasons so many shamans experience a shamanic illness just before they respond to their call. Many of these relate to how people lived in the old days but still apply to today.

In the old days everyone had to pull their weight in their clan if the clan was to continue and increase. So children with a disability that prevented them from working with their clansfolk were pretty well left to their own devices most of the time. They were not deliberately isolated perhaps, but they were isolated by circumstance. A child who was blind, had asthma, was very lame, and so on, was left out of most of the activities of their peer group.

I understand this isolation very well because I have had asthma since I was around eleven years of age. Rescue inhalers were not available until I was eighteen. I remember, sitting propped up with pillows in my bed, and watching the other kids playing on sunny summer days. My friends did not mean to isolate me but I was isolated by illness from their games and from normal socialization. I became very solitary. I was literally outside looking in.

Now, people who are outside looking in tend to see the people who are inside in a very different way then the people who are inside see themselves. This does not mean the outside view is better, but it is certainly different.

When the onset of a shamanic illness is later in life it may also isolate the shaman. It is very hard to lose your job because you are too ill to work or watch your children growing up without the care you feel it your duty and joy to provide.

In either case, child or adult disability may engender in the shaman feelings that they are different, not worthy, cursed, a changeling, and so on.

The solution to this alienation, for some people, is to seek meaning in their isolation. Why did this happen to me? What does it mean? What good can come from this? And sometimes the answer is that god, goddess, an angel, a faery, or some other supernatural being has brought this about so that I can work for them for the good of all my relations.

We all want to be valued by our peers. We all want to feel we have something to contribute to the general welfare of the clan. And even if we are disabled we can help by being the one who mediates between this and Otherworlds on behalf of the clan.

Also, shamanizing quite literally begins in dreams and daydreams. Disabled adults and children have more time to daydream than people who are involved in the daily hustle and bustle of hunting, gathering, commuting, working, driving kids to lessons, and so on.

A third factor, especially in childhood onset disability, is that the disabled or sick child spends a great deal of time with the family elders. They hear the stories and they benefit from the wisdom of the elders in ways the healthy, more active, children don't. This is why the only child is often more mature than the children in families where there are many siblings close together in age. Children who relate exclusively or most frequently to adults from the time they are toddlers until school age tend to find their peers childish and uninteresting when they do start school or are cast into a group of their peers for any reason.

In adult onset shamanic illness, I think the isolation leads to people reading more and thinking more than they otherwise would. And this, of course, may lead to people developing a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world.

Those are, I think the main dynamics at work in the 'making' of a shaman through shamanic illness.

Of course, it is clear that some of these dynamics may work without an illness. Being born an only child may work as well as being disabled. Moving to foreign land as an adult and thereby becoming the stranger in a strange land, may cause an adult to see the world with new eyes.

In other words, I don't think the illness itself is as important as the results of an illness — isolation, independence, self-reliance, development of interior resources. [From Thoughts of Becomming a Shaman copyright © 2005 by Tira Brandon-Evans, used with permission.]


Since founding the Society of Celtic Shamans in 1997, I have had the opportunity to work with many, many people. Within a very few years I began to realize there were a awful lot of new shamans, people just coming on path, who had Fibromyalgia. I began to think that this condition is the modern version of the shamanic illness or shamanic crises. Over the years, through speaking with new shamans about their illness and how it began in each one and how it had progressed, I began to see a definite pattern. Here are some conclusions I reached and some questions still to be answered.

How waking and sleeping dreams affect us and our reality in the material world is a subject that humans have long pondered. What is the nature of dream? How does the dreaming mind differ from the comotose or unconcious mind? Why do some people remember their dreams and others do not? Are dreams merely the random synaptic charges of a brain downloading hours of conciousness into the unconcious mind? Are dreams generated by the unconcious mind trying to assimilate and make sense of waking stimuli by internalizing them? While dreaming are we connected to the Jungian collective unconcious, processing ancestral wisdom through the medium of archetypal metaphors? If so, what of lucid dreams? How does the sleeping lucid — self-aware and self-directed — dream differ from the waking daydream? Is there any real difference between the sleeping dream and the daydream? How are sleeping dreams, daydreams and trance states related?

We all dream during sleep. Many of us do not remember our dreams and therefore say we do not dream at all, but medical research on sleep and dreaming shows that, indeed, we all dream. Some people dream more than others. Some people remember their dreams and others don't. Sometimes a person may frequently remember dreams at one stage of their lives and at another seldom remember their dreams.

Research has discovered that when we dream our eyes move rapidly beneath our closed eyelids. This is called REM sleep — Rapid Eye Movement sleep. REM sleep occurs in cycles during the night and is associated with a particular pattern of brain waves in the sleeper's brain. People who, for physiological or psychological reasons are unable to attain normal durations of REM sleep often suffer from the exhaustion and/or muscle pain associated with the condition known as fibromyalgia or fibrositis.

Fibromyalgia can be very serious and lead to partial or complete disability in those who suffer from it. Many shamans who avoid pathworking for extended periods contract fibromyalgia. This condition is so common that it is coming to be known as the 'shamanic illness' in some circles. More often than not, people with fibromyalgia who begin shamanic pathworking find their condition improves. In some cases the improvement is gradual and takes a long time. In others, the improvement is quite dramatic, and those who experience this may call their sudden release from pain and exhaustion 'miraculous'.

This raises a very interesting question. Shamanic pathworking involves taking journeys, moving in mind and spirit into the Shining Realms and interacting with Otherworld folk. The shamanic trance may be very deep, in which the shaman submerges her concious mind completely in a sleeping trance and relates her experiences during the trance or immediately after her return. The shamanic trance may also be very light or shallow. This type of trance corresponds to the activity we call daydreaming. It is a type of fugue in which the mind and spirit is released from complete concious control so they it can wander into the Shining Realms and return while the shaman is still aware of his physical body and of the material world. These are the two ends of the shamanic trance spectrum. The states between these two extremes are also available to the shaman in trance.

The interesting question is this: When a shaman blocks the development of their gifts, does this create the neurological conditions that lead to fibromyalgia?

This, of course, leads into another question. When the shaman with fibromyalgia begins to pathwork, and thus to develop their shamanic gifts, does this create the neurological conditions that lead to improvement and healing?

I think the answer to both of these questions is yes. As to the why, I do not know, but this is a field of study for members of the medical profession who would like to pursue it. I do have an idea as how shamanic pathworking, or lack thereof, in people who have shamanic gifts, may affect their health. I think this is directly related to dreaming.

[From The Dreamer and the Dream copyright © 2003 by Tira Brandon-Evans, used with permission.]


If you believe you are in the midst of a shamanic crisis, do not stop taking your medications, but do begin your shamanic training. You will want to begin on your own by reading a good book or two. I recommend some at the end of this article. You may want to join an on-line community of people who are engaged in the study and practice of shamanism. You may want to find a teacher who can help you find your ancestor guide and animal guides. There is a path back to health and a normal life. Have courage and all will be well.

BOOKS TO READ

Tira Brandon-Evans is the Founder and Moderator of the Society of Celtic Shamans, editor of Earthsongs: Journal of the Society of Celtic Shamans, and is, herself, a Faery Shaman. Her books, The Green and Burning Tree: A Faery Shaman's Handbook, Portals of the Seasons: A Celtic Wheel of the Year, Through the Unremembered Gate: Journeys of Initiation, The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World, and Healing Waters, are all published by Elder Grove Press. She is presently writing a book about the Ogham. You may contact Tira by email at info@faeryshaman.org.

Céad Míle Fáilte: Shamanic Crisis copyright © 2007 by Tira Brandon-Evans, all rights reserved. Used with permission. Top of Page



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