Shapeshifting
by Jeffrey Pierce

If you spend enough time hanging around a shaman, you'll eventually hear them talk about Totem animals. The vast majority of the information shared with the public focuses on the concept of Totem animals as a mirror of our subconscious processes, which is a valid and valuable way of utilizing the concept.

Go a step farther into shamanism and you'll discover that some shamans seem to call upon the spirit of a Totem animal to aid them in their magickal workings. An example of this would be a shaman who was doing healing work and called upon the energy of Bear to assist in this process. The easiest way of understanding this concept is to imagine that the shaman is praying to the archetypal spirit of the animal.

Up to this point in Totem work, there is a great deal of similarity between many modern pagan paths and a shaman's workings. Calling upon a Totem animal's energy in a rite is symbolically very similar to calling upon one of the Elements (Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit) to empower a ritual. The concepts that wait beyond this point are where shamanism branches off from many of the more "civilized" pagan paths.

"Civilized?" you ask. Absolutely. It's easy for us to grasp that a shaman relies on a connection with Nature. Nearly every tool that a shaman utilizes - from concepts like Totem animals to physical tools that are integrated with bones, feathers, and stones - reflect this natural leaning in a shaman's path. What many people don't realize however, is that this is simply the surface of a shaman's path.

A shaman doesn't simply work with Nature; they go even deeper to connect and work with primal energy. Take, for instance, a shaman's connection with the spirit world. While such a connection can be trained and honed, there are cultures that only accepted candidates for shaman training who have nearly died and have had near death experiences.

A shaman doesn't simply consider a concept.

They don't simply embrace a concept.

They become the concept.

In this particular example, it isn't enough for a shaman to simply understand the textbook concept of death and the spirit world. For a shaman to fully embrace their connection with the spirit realm, they must symbolically "die" and release their grasp on the physical world. In this and many other areas, shamanism is an experiential path. To be able to travel across the line between the physical and spiritual worlds, a shaman needs to symbolically die. To heal, they must become both the disease and the cure. To fully embrace the power of a Totem animal, they must become that Totem.

Becoming the thing that you want to work with is a concept known as shapeshifting, a path shamans have walked since before recorded history. This approach to shamanic work is pregnant with power only because a shaman is able to remove all concept of self from the working. There is no room for ego in shape shifting. Those who go into this portion of the path seeking power or personal gain will find one of two outcomes - either it will not work or they will pay a heavy price when the energy they seek slams into their still present ego.

The first step in this process is to develop a deep and intimate understanding of the energy that you intend to shapeshift into. Typically this connection is developed through a number of different approach including meditation, shamanic journeying, observation of the subject, and mimicking the subject's behavior and traits.

For instance, if a modern shaman intended to shapeshift into Dog, they would study canine behavior in books and documentaries. With this base of knowledge, they would begin to observe actual dogs in various situations and begin mimicking their behavior by themselves and with other animals. The shaman would meditate on the concept of Dog, feeling their body transform bit by bit into a dog in the same way that many traditions teach you to relax your body one piece at a time to prepare for meditation. At least one shamanic journey would be undertaken in which the shaman would seek out Dog and humbly ask for Dog to teach the shaman how to shapeshift into its form. During this process, a merging typically happens where the shaman becomes the Totem within the framework of the shamanic journey.

Shapeshifting isn't simply a process of taking on the power of a Totem but the surrendering of self to become the Totem. You'll noticed in each step above the shaman isn't focused on utilizing the energy of the Totem, but on setting aside the concept of being human and embracing the concept of becoming the Totem animal. You can't become Bear when you're still holding onto the concept of you. The challenge is found, not only in developing the trust to surrender our sense of self, but in learning how much that sense of self is woven into our thoughts, our ideas, and our intent.

For instance, take the concept of shapeshifting in order to heal. As part of this process, you must be able to become both the illness and the cure. "But I'm trying to heal them," you say. "Why would I become the illness?" The simple answer is that a shaman treats all of existence as sacred; you cannot embrace one part of the process and discard the other if it is truly sacred to you. You must first become the illness that you seek to remove, not simply to honor the sacredness of that illness, but as a practical matter of energetic transformation. Imagine that you're a shaman in a tribal society and that someone in your care has an infected cut. You've tried your entire dictionary of herbal and holistic cures and nothing has worked, so you decide to shamanically heal the individual using shapeshifting. The first step is to become the infection. You have to be able to feel it, to breathe it, to replace your own energy with that of the infection. A shaman must understand the how, the why, and the process behind the infection. Only when you are deeply immersed in that energy can you become the infection - and once you are the infection, you can begin to release "your" hold on the tribesman's wound. There comes a point in the middle of the process when you must shift from being the illness to the cure and embrace the energy of the healthy flesh. Once you have shifted from one to the other, you, as the cure, can begin to manifest yourself where the infection once existed in your tribesman's body.

This ability to shift from one state of energy to another is closely related to the warrior concept of Fūrinkazan - literally a composite of the Chinese words for Wind, Forest, Fire, and Mountain. Being able to fully and completely shift from one energetic state to the next takes a great deal of clarity and commitment, a process that I've outlined in the sister article to this one.

Whether or not we engage in shamanic shapeshifting, it's critical that we stop thinking of our energy as defining us. We define our energy. When we come to that realization, our energy becomes both a tool and an art form.

The easiest way to think of personal energy is that it is deeply connected to our reactions, our defenses, our prejudices, and our emotions. Letting go of the concept that our energy defines us is a scary process. Imagine a teacher told us, "Okay, I want you to let go of all of your defenses - those walls and reactions that came to exist when you were challenged, suppressed, and hurt." Our response is usually some variation of "No way!"

However, allowing our persona energy to manifest in such a manner radically limits who we are and what we can do. Imagine that you were being given a role in a play and told, "Your character has this prejudice and you must show this in each act." What we were able to do on stage would be tremendously limited. Our personal energy limits us and the options available to us in much the same way. However, when we release our hold on this energy, it allows us to replace it with literally anything we choose to replace it with.

Instead of our energetic responses coming from the buildup of experiences we've embraced or endured, when we begin to define our energy instead of allowing it to define us, these responses begin to be governed by our core - for lack of better terminology, our spirit or our higher self. Instead of lashing out, we can choose compassion. Instead of anger, we can choose forgiveness. Instead of shaman, we can choose Bear.

When a shaman calls upon a Totem animal in this manner, they first become that animal, then they work with and through that Totem. When a shapeshifting or shamanic witch calls an Element into a circle or rite through this method, they become each Element in turn and fully integrate both the Element and themselves into the ritual.

There's a common experience on our spiritual paths where we push through an intensely challenging lesson and look back, only to realize two things. First of all, in retrospect, the lesson was much easier to embrace than we made it out to be. Second, the lesson involved some variation of either claiming our strength or letting go of something we held tightly to that was limiting our growth. Shapeshifting isn't only a powerful tool for ritual work; the concepts involve in embracing shapeshifting can also radically empower our personal growth and development.

Thoughts? Comments? You can contact us at connect@oldways.com or interact with Jeffrey, Briana, and the Old Ways community on our Facebook page.

Originally published in Old Ways on October 20, 2010