The Shamanic Calling: A Detailed Anthropological Account

Anthropological research has identified a more nuanced sequence than simple "crisis and recovery." The full pattern typically includes:

1. Childhood difference and sensitivity
2. Early attraction to liminal realms
3. Prolonged suffering or depression
4. Failed attempts at conventional life
5. The initiatory crisis
6. Spirit encounters and communications
7. External confirmations of the calling
8. Resistance and terror
9. Life dismemberment
10. Apprenticeship and training
11. Controlled reintegration
12. Community authorization

Each stage builds upon the previous, creating what anthropologists recognize as a distinctive vocational trajectory.

Cross-cultural studies consistently document that future shamans are often identified as different from early childhood.

The "Marked" Child

Common observations include:

• Unusual emotional sensitivity or reactivity
• Heightened empathy for others' suffering
• Difficulty fitting into peer groups
• Being labeled "strange," "weird," or "too sensitive" by family or community
• Preference for solitude or nature over social activities
• Intense inner life, vivid dreams, or imaginary companions

Anthropologist Michael Winkelman notes that many cultures recognize these children as having characteristics that mark them for potential shamanic roles. The child may not understand their difference, but they feel it acutely.

Social Marginalization

This difference often leads to social marginalization. The child exists in what Victor Turner termed a liminal position—between social categories rather than fully belonging to any. They may be:

• Excluded from typical childhood activities
• Misunderstood by parents and teachers
• Subject to bullying or isolation
• Unable to articulate why they feel so different

This early liminality is not pathology in anthropological terms—it is the beginning of a vocational pattern.

Many individuals who later become healers report an early fascination with liminal or occult subjects.

The Pull Toward Hidden Worlds

This may include:

• Interest in death, spirits, or the afterlife
• Attraction to mythology, folklore, or religious traditions
• Fascination with altered states of consciousness
• Study of divination, astrology, or other esoteric practices
• Sensing presences or energies others do not perceive

Anthropologically, this is understood as an early orientation toward the threshold spaces that shamans will later navigate professionally. The individual is drawn to the boundary between seen and unseen worlds, often without understanding why.

Ambivalent Belief

Notably, many future shamans report ambivalence about belief during this phase. They may:

• Be drawn to spiritual or occult topics intellectually
• Remain skeptical about the literal reality of spirits
• Experience phenomena they cannot explain but dismiss
• Feel a disconnect between their rational mind and their experiences

This ambivalence often continues until direct experiences force a reevaluation.

A critical element in the shamanic life pattern is prolonged psychological suffering, typically beginning in adolescence or early adulthood.

The Wound That Does Not Heal

This may manifest as:

• Chronic depression lasting years or decades
• Suicidal ideation or attempts
• Anxiety disorders or panic attacks
• Persistent feelings of meaninglessness
• Inability to find lasting relief through conventional means

Carl Jung and subsequent depth psychologists recognized this as the foundation of the wounded healer archetype—the insight that healers gain their power from their own suffering.

Failed Conventional Treatments

A common pattern involves:

• Trying multiple therapies, medications, or healing modalities
• Experiencing partial improvement but never full resolution
• Sensing that something fundamental remains unaddressed
• Gradual reduction in symptom severity through personal work, but persistent underlying condition

The individual may improve from severe dysfunction to moderate suffering, but complete healing eludes them through ordinary means.

Many future shamans attempt to establish conventional careers and relationships, but the conventional path never quite fits.

They may:

• Pursue professional training in unrelated fields
• Achieve external success (education, career, relationships)
• Feel persistent emptiness despite accomplishments
• Experience a fundamental disconnect between their work and their nature

There is a persistent sense that they are meant for something else, even when they cannot identify what that might be.

This phase often involves:

• Chronic uncertainty about life purpose
• Feeling like an impostor in professional roles
• Difficulty maintaining long-term commitments
• Sensing that their real gifts are going unused

At some point—often in the 30s or 40s, though timing varies—the individual experiences what anthropologists term the initiatory crisis or shamanic illness.

The Breaking Point

This is not ordinary sickness but a transformative breakdown. Common features include:

• Sudden or severe psychological disorientation
• Physical illness with no clear medical cause
• Intense dreams, visions, or altered states
• Collapse of normal functioning
• Experiences that challenge fundamental assumptions about reality

Mircea Eliade documented that across cultures, this crisis often involves experiences of symbolic death and dismemberment—the complete breakdown of the old self.

The Existential Rupture

The crisis typically produces:

• Profound questioning of reality itself
• Loss of certainty about identity and purpose
• Experiences that cannot be explained by the individual's existing worldview
• A period of confusion, terror, and disorientation lasting weeks, months, or years

During or following the crisis, the individual typically experiences direct communication with what they perceive as spiritual beings.

First Contact

These encounters may occur through:

• Dreams or visions
• Voices or messages during altered states
• Overwhelming sensory experiences
• Encounters with deceased ancestors or unknown entities
• Visions during ceremonial or ritual contexts

The communications often convey specific information:

• That the individual has a healing vocation
• Instructions for their development
• Warnings or guidance about their path
• Teachings about the nature of reality

The Reluctant Recipient

A crucial anthropological observation is that these communications are typically unsought and unwanted. The individual:

• Did not seek to become a shaman
• May actively resist the message
• Often responds with disbelief or denial
• May try to ignore or suppress the experiences

Cross-cultural studies document that shamanic vocations are received, not chosen. The call comes from outside the individual's conscious intention.

One of the most striking patterns in shamanic calling narratives involves external confirmation from unexpected sources.

Strangers as Messengers

This may include:

• Strangers approaching the individual with messages
• Independent confirmation of private experiences
• Synchronistic events that reinforce the calling
• Dreams or visions experienced by others about the individual

These confirmations often come from people who:

• Have no prior knowledge of the individual's experiences
• Claim to be conveying messages from spiritual sources
• Provide specific information the individual has not shared

The Multiplication of Signs

Anthropological accounts document that these confirmations typically:

• Occur multiple times from independent sources
• Increase in frequency during resistance
• Contain consistent themes despite different messengers
• Eventually become impossible to dismiss as coincidence

This external confirmation serves a crucial function: it prevents the individual from entirely dismissing their experiences as personal delusion.

A consistent cross-cultural finding is that future shamans resist their calling, often for months or years.

The Unwilling Initiate

This resistance includes:

• Denial of the experiences' significance
• Attempts to return to normal life
• Fear of what acceptance might mean
• Terror at the prospect of the shamanic role

Roger Walsh documents that this resistance is often intense and prolonged. The individual may:

• Know intellectually that they are being called
• Feel emotionally unable to accept it
• Fear ridicule, isolation, or loss of their previous identity
• Be terrified of the responsibilities involved

The Price of Resistance

Anthropological literature consistently records that resistance prolongs suffering. The more the individual resists, the more intensely the calling manifests—through:

• Worsening psychological symptoms
• Escalating physical illness
• Increasing external confirmations
• Dreams and visions of greater intensity

Many traditions describe spirits as not accepting refusal. The calling continues until acknowledged.

A critical phase that anthropologists document involves the systematic dismantling of the individual's previous life.

The Unraveling

This may include:

• Loss of career or professional identity
• End of significant relationships
• Financial difficulties or loss
• Health problems
• Geographic displacement
• Dissolution of social networks

The individual often describes feeling as though their life is being taken apart piece by piece, leaving them with:

• Little or no external identity
• Minimal attachments to their previous life
• A sense of complete emptiness or void
• Only their internal experiences remaining

The Symbolic Death

Mircea Eliade identified this as the death of the old self—a necessary precursor to rebirth in the shamanic role. The dismemberment is not random misfortune but follows a pattern:

• Everything that is "not the shaman" is stripped away
• Previous identities and attachments are removed
• The individual is reduced to bare existence
• Only then can the new identity emerge

Following the crisis phases, the individual typically enters a period of structured training under experienced practitioners.

Finding a Teacher

This may involve:

• Seeking out established healers or shamans
• Entering formal or informal apprenticeship
• Learning traditional practices and techniques
• Developing skills for managing altered states
• Receiving ethical instruction and boundaries

The training is not merely technical—it provides:

• A framework for understanding their experiences
• Techniques for inducing and controlling altered states
• Methods for healing work
• Connection to lineage and tradition

The Skills of the Shaman

Roger Walsh documents that shamanic training develops specific capacities:

• Voluntary entry into altered states of consciousness
• Navigation of visionary experiences
• Communication with perceived spiritual beings
• Techniques for healing and soul retrieval
• Mastery of cultural rituals and symbolism

From an anthropological view, this is skill development—the transformation of raw experience into professional competence.

Unlike psychotic breakdown, the shamanic crisis resolves into enhanced function.

Return to Function

Signs of successful reintegration include:

• Stability compared to the crisis period
• Ability to move between ordinary and extraordinary states at will
• Integration of spiritual experiences into daily life
• Capacity to help others rather than being overwhelmed
• A sense of purpose oriented toward service

The experiences that once overwhelmed the person are now structured and contained—available when needed, quiet when not.

The Difference from Psychosis

Anthropologists and transpersonal psychologists distinguish shamanic crisis from psychosis by its outcome:

• Schizophrenia typically produces progressive deterioration
• Shamanic crisis produces enhanced function and integration
• The shaman gains abilities and social role
• The psychotic loses function and social position

This distinction was formalized in the DSM-IV (1994), which included "Spiritual Emergency" as a non-pathological category.

The final stage in the shamanic life pattern is community authorization. A person becomes a shaman only when the community recognizes their gifts.

This requires:

• The community recognizes their gifts
• They are formally or informally authorized to practice
• They take on responsibility for others' wellbeing
• Their role is integrated into social structure

This authorization may involve:

• Public ceremony or ritual
• Endorsement by established practitioners
• Demonstration of healing abilities
• Acceptance of ethical obligations

From an anthropological perspective, the shaman's role is fundamentally social. They exist to serve the community—mediating between ordinary and extraordinary realms for the benefit of others. The personal journey, however dramatic, finds its meaning in this service.

Several important qualifications frame the anthropological understanding of the shamanic calling.

Not a Prescription

Anthropology does not argue that people should follow this path. It observes that when this pattern appears, cultures that recognize, guide, and structure it tend to produce better outcomes than those that suppress or pathologize it.

Cultural Variation

While the pattern is widespread, it is not universal. Different cultures have different:

• Criteria for identifying potential shamans
• Methods of training and initiation
• Social roles for healers
• Relationships to spiritual traditions

The shamanic calling is not a single phenomenon but a family of related patterns across cultures.

Modern Context

In societies without shamanic frameworks, individuals experiencing this pattern often:

• Receive psychiatric diagnoses
• Struggle to find appropriate guidance
• Spend years in confusion and suffering
• Eventually find their way to helpful traditions or teachers—or not

The shamanic calling, as understood anthropologically, is a distinctive life pattern involving early difference, prolonged suffering, transformative crisis, spirit communication, and eventual reintegration as a healer.

It is characterized by:

• Unwantedness: The call is received, not chosen
• Resistance: The individual typically fights the calling
• Dismemberment: Previous life structures are systematically removed
• Transformation: The crisis produces enhanced rather than diminished function
• Service: The culmination is a social role oriented toward helping others

• Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951)
• Halifax, Joan. Shaman: The Wounded Healer (1982)
• Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process (1969)
• Walsh, Roger. "The Making of a Shaman: Calling, Training, and Culmination." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 34(3), 1994
• Winkelman, Michael. Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing (2010)
• Grof, Stanislav and Christina Grof. Spiritual Emergency (1989)
• Turner, Edith. "The Making of a Shaman: A Comparative Study of Inuit, African, and Nepalese Shaman Initiation." Metanexus, 2006