Dreaming big: Alison Leonard on Shamanism

‘It rang Quaker bells for me.’

One of the curious nuggets from the 2021 census is that the fastest growing religion is Shamanism. Numbers are small (650 people in 2011, up to 8,000 in 2021) but continued growth would bring about significant societal change. So what is Shamanism?

In the 1990s, searching for the feminine divine, I discovered Shamanism almost accidentally. I went to Goddess Conferences where I met women, and a few men, who took a shamanic stance. Later, I interviewed Gordon MacLellan about his life as a shaman. He told me: ‘I work with vision. In your life there’s a spirit that’s you, that inspires you, that gives you character. And it’s trying to live out a particular pattern.’ It rang Quaker bells for me.

The shaman, said Gordon, is one of our earliest societal roles. ‘Often, in traditional societies, the shaman is also a hunter or a mother or a fisher… As a shaman you’re owned by the community you serve.’ The central concept is that every thing, animal, vegetable or mineral, is spiritual as well as physical. And every action, too: ‘If we’re drinking tea here, we have a connection with a tea plantation somewhere else in the world. I sit in the house and listen to what it’s feeling, what its energies are like. These connections comprise the web. For me, there’s a way of moving along my line that causes the least disturbance in the web.’

This role can be priestly. But Shamanism is not patriarchal. It’s not about power. Gordon says, ‘Shamanic control is control of yourself, not control over other things.’

Caitlin Matthews, one of the best writers on Shamanism, has attended Quaker Meetings and run workshops at Woodbrooke. The task of shamanic practitioners, she says, is to ‘walk between the worlds’. She writes about the ‘fragmented soul-life’, where people are ‘orphaned of the female spirit’. What could better describe our western lives? Like Gordon, Caitlin seeks reconnection. She speaks of journeying with spirit guides – animal spirits or ancestors.

In Shamanism, animals have wisdom from which humans need to learn. This was new to me, and revelatory. In recent years nature writing has also explored the worlds where animals – or even trees – reveal themselves as our teachers.

One aspect of Shamanism that we find difficult is the trance. In Shamanism Will Adcock says: ‘We all have the ability to journey to different worlds…these … are places of infinite possibilities.’ I have experienced these.

Once at a Goddess Conference I found myself with twenty or so other people listening to drumming. We were asked to close our eyes and let things happen. Quite easily, I became (not saw, but was) a young wildebeest in a vast herd. A predator was chasing and I was caught. Everything vanished: I had died. Suddenly, my spirit was high in the air. I was hovering above my wildebeest family, mourning my loss. Then the drumming changed, and I was human again.

I have never tried to repeat this experience. But it has stayed with me. I know now that other animals are my kin. They can teach me, and I must not exploit them. At this time of planetary crisis, this seems a necessary lesson.

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