Shamanism explores non-ordinary states of consciousness for:

• healing
• divination,
• and communication with spirit realm.

Scholar Mircea Eliade explains that shamans have: "special relations with 'spirits,' ecstatic capacities permitting of magical flight, ascent to the sky, descent to the underworld, mastery over fire, etc." Shamanism involves transformation of humans into animals, prophetic dreams, and interaction with the dead.

Shamans transit uninhibited through spacetime into other dimensions. They traverse the Axis Mundi, a metaphoric tree of life with roots seeking the lower domains of ghosts and spirits, and branches extending to the gods. "The underworld, the center of the earth, and the "gate" of the sky are situated on the same axis, and in past times it was by this axis that passage from one cosmic region to another was effected," Eliade notes.

The shaman is a master of time and space. The myths of ancient "cosmic serpents" that brought life to earth, of an original battle in which the men overthrew a primordial and feminine chaos to begin time, of the healing power of rock crystals and the magic breath of the shaman reveal the magical origins of earth.

Shamanic initiation often begins with personal illiness - the cure is the discovery of the vocation. During the illness, visions of spirits or ghosts emerge. The calling to be a shaman may also be inherited through an ancestral family line.

More dramatically, a shaman may be called by surviving being struck by lightning. "The Greeks believed a person struck by lightning was in possession of magical powers, and in tribal cultures throughout the world lightning shamans are venerated and feared as mighty shamans," notes Holger Kalweit, a German scholar. The powers of a shaman are received from the "Thunder Beings."

To evolve as a shaman, the person must accept the calling and be recognized and trained by an elder shaman. The training is lifetime work to progress through the 9 degrees of traditional shamanism. These levels correspond to the nine branches of the world tree. Nine is also the number of completion.

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