The Golden Age of Shamanism

"In the 'Golden Age of Shamanism' the tools for trance were the Drum and the Rattle, the Breath, the Voice and the Dance. This is how Shamans summoned the Spirits, how they communed with them, and brought back the medicine for the people...

As Indigenous Peoples became more settled, more specialized, they began to lose their connections to the Hunt and to the Spirit Worlds, and Shaman became fewer.

Many Shaman began relying more and more on ethnobotanicals--psychoactive mind-altering substances like Alcohol, Soma, Amanita Muscaria, Ayahuasca, Peyote, San Pedro, Psilocybin, Dartura, Sage, Tobacco, Iboga, Cannabinoids, and many other plant substances to cross-over, to achieve trance and access altered states of consciousness. Even then, thousands of years ago, Elders complained about the reliance on these inferior methods as a degradation of the Art, and they began longing for a return of the Purity of the Old Ways...

In some isolated places in this World, people still hold to the Old Ways; like China and Tibet, Siberia and Mongolia... Places where Taoist Qigong and Bon Lineages still exist that extend back into Neolithic times...

The Medicine is created within. It is endogenous. It does not come from without. The Exogenous Path is not only an inferior Path, it is potentially Harmful and very Dangerous. The true tools remain available to all of us... The Drum, The Rattle, The Breath, The Song, The Dance.

Spirit is always and forever there. It is up to each one of us to find the True Connection.

Hao La!

--Pahka Dave