shaman may travel to the underworld, where a dog guards the entrance to the realm of the dead. Going to retrieve the souls of sick people, he or she must cross a dangerous bridge that the soul of a sinner cannot cross. The shaman passes the place where sinners are being tortured and succeeds in entering, despite the dog. The shaman may be there to retrieve the soul of a sick child, for which a costly sacrifice may be required. The soul of another consenting victim may be given. In that case, the shaman turns into an eagle, descends on the victim, and tears out the person’s soul. On the return from the underworld, the shaman may come back riding a goose.
Often an ecstatic journey to the otherworld may take place in a vision. The Samoyed shaman sees a helping spirit, a reindeer, taking the adventure as he or she sings about its travels. The shaman’s spirit learns of the cause of the illness, and if the Supreme Being (Num) sent the disease, the shaman will not treat it; instead, he or she lets the helping spirit ask Num for assistance.
The Yakut and Buryat shamans fly on horseback at great speed. These beliefs, in relation to flight, are figurative expressions for ecstasy, describing the mystical, superhuman journeys into regions inaccessible to humankind.24
Since shamans live today, we have a rich source of information available regarding the ways of paradise, or ecstatic joy, and the spiritual nature of animals. All one need do is ask a shaman. A genuine shaman is elusive, however — they are not always involved in the normal affairs of modern life, nor listed in the yellow pages or on the internet. As Jeremy Narby writes, “In shamanic traditions, it is invariably specified that spiritual knowledge is not marketable.”25 Certainly, the shaman’s work deserves remuneration, but by definition, the sacred is not for sale. The use of this knowledge for personal power defines black magic.
I wanted to talk to a modern shaman, one who does not conduct business with websites and retail stores. I met such a man from my husband, Jean-Luc Boucher, who had been on a vision quest with a shaman named Iron Feathers. Iron Feathers agreed to be interviewed for this book, and we spoke over the phone several times.
When we talked, Iron Feathers described himself as a “nonnative, European mongrel.” Without a tribal society to teach him, he had to find his own path to shamanism, which he did by studying with shamans in the United States, Mexico, and Peru. He acknowledged his struggle with the responsibility of his chosen path, which he takes seriously. I asked him to describe the process of becoming a shaman, and after considering my request, he cautiously agreed to talk about it.
“I will do the best I can to answer your question,” said Iron Feathers. “And know that this is my opinion, and that the spirits are having a mighty laugh at my expense.”
Iron Feathers explained that he had undergone several shamanic initiations, dying and being dismembered three times.
“It wasn’t that pleasant,” he said. “It is hard to describe because you don’t know what’s going on. You have the training that tells you that this is initiation, but part of you is dying, being torn apart. You know that you can, in fact, die. There are two entities — ‘I’ who am going through the process and I who am watching. You leave your body; still, a piece remains in the body. It is nondescriptive, not your soul or astral body. When I have heard people ask about it, we are told that it is not important; it happens.
“After dismemberment, you are rebuilt in shamanic form. You are usually given something, like a crystal, and it’s inserted into you. Crystals are the only things that don’t change between worlds. Everything else changes over there, in nonordinary reality.”
I asked, “When do you see your spirit guides?”
“When a spirit helper comes, it shows itself to you four times. In the otherworld, you may see a bunch of different animals, but only the one you see four times agrees to help you. It shows you how to do things over there, where to go.”
“Do you think this is hallucination,” I asked, “or do you think what you see is real?”
“I have no problem believing it,” said Iron Feathers.
I asked Iron Feathers about the experiences of other shamans, such as Malidoma Somé, who describes seeing spirit beings and communicating with animals in normal waking life, without being in a trance state. Malidoma tells the story of his grandfather, who was pronounced dead in a hospital. Malidoma’s father put a hyena’s tail decorated with cowry shells in the dead man’s hand, and his grandfather got up and walked home, four miles, then he was dead again. They woke him up again later to have a feast before his funeral.
Iron Feathers replied, “Well, depending on who you are, that can happen. A friend of mine spent some time with some yogis in India. They were arguing about something, when their guru returned from the dead to tell them that every one of them was wrong. They all saw him. Of course, Christ appeared to his disciples, but I’m not sure that we’re talking about the same thing. There is nonordinary reality. At some point, you are in both worlds. For Malidoma’s grandfather, the yogi, or Christ, there is no veil anymore. But for us mere mortals, we have to use a trance state.”
I asked Iron Feathers if he had ever transformed into an animal and how that happens.
“I watched a Peruvian shaman turn into a very beautiful white egret,” he said. “And I have a drawing made by a friend who watched me turn into a bear. So, from this, I know it is a real thing and not just a figment of someone’s imagination. Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel Prize winner in the seventies, put forth the idea that in the motor cortex is an image of the body, and the body tries to conform to that image. Some would call this body mapping.26 What I believe is that the shaman receives the image of the animal in his motor cortex. From the quantum physics point of view, the body, and all matter, re-creates itself every nanosecond. The energy for this change comes from the electromagnetic field of the universe — the Divine, God, or Universal Life Force. Yogis have talked about this kind of transformation for about five thousand years. So the shaman has the image of the bear in the motor cortex, and in nonordinary reality he has the ability to take that image and re-create a new image of a bear. Because he is of strong enough force, he can maintain the form until he has finished doing whatever is required, and then he can revert back to human form. Sometimes one can imagine the same thing happening when he feels like a bear. Inside he is touching the image but not strong enough to bring it into this reality and maintain it.”
“What does it feel like to be in shamanic form?” I asked.
“It’s not like in the movies where your face rips off. One minute you are human; the next you’re an eagle. One minute you’re driving a car; the next you’re flying in the sky.”
“So shamanic form is your transformed animal form.”
“Yes, I assume you feel like the animal feels. So as a bear you feel strong, with a strong sense of smell and poor eyesight.”
I asked Iron Feathers to describe the purposes for visiting nonordinary reality and to describe what it feels like.
He said, “The idea of shamanism is to bring back information from the other side to help people — find plants for medicine, learn where the deer are. You find out what your specialty is once you get to the other side. My intention is to help heal people spiritually by putting the spirit in balance. Everything is different over there. A cat in this world may be a human or a tree over there. The problem with a spiritual discussion is that we do not have the words to explain it. We lack the language to define the indescribable.”
“So if a cat looks like a human
