Contempory Shamanism
Contemporary Shamanism
By Gwendolyn Toynton
Traditional Shamanism is often thought of as a magico-religious tradition of the past, existing today only in indigenous populations. Whilst to many the practice of Shamanism is still limited to such areas, Shamanism itself has survived and perhaps even flourished under the blessing of a new incarnation. At the moment, the revival and new found interest in Shamanism is particularly predominant in the Western world. Finding themselves limited to Western doctrine of Christianity, a number of people have rejected such traditional concepts and have either created for themselves new traditions, or, as in the case of Shamanism, revived a religion which predated Christianity. Collectively, these newly emerged traditions are sometimes referred to as belonging to the ‘New Age’ phenomenon. However, this term is incorrect and often regarded as highly offensive to modern day practitioners of magic, who instead prefer to be called Pagan or Heathen, for to them the term ‘New Age’ conjures up images of ‘pop’ culture and mass commercialism. The ‘New Age’ phenomenon is the commercialised face of the occult, for serious practitioners of magic books of this genre are classed as both uninformative and without substance. They have no roots, no foundations on which to lay there beliefs, although many lay claim to fictitious antiquity. As they have no scholastic merit to followers of the Shamanic Path, ‘New Age’ works shall not be examined here. Instead, what follows will be a comparison of traditional practice of Shamanism in Siberia, and modern day Shamanism as practiced by two international organisations, the Bond of the Grae Wolf and Ásatrú, both of