The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft: Shadows, Spirits and the Healing Journey

by Christopher Penczak

Overview

Is shamanism all that different from modern witchcraft? According to Christopher Penczak, Wicca's roots go back 20,000 years to the Stone Age shamanic traditions of tribal cultures worldwide. A fascinating exploration of the Craft's shamanic origins, The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft offers year-and-a-day training in shamanic witchcraft.

Penczak's third volume of witchcraft teachings corresponds to the water element—guiding the reader into this realm of emotion, reflection, and healing. The twelve formal lessons cover shamanic cosmologies, journeying, dreamwork, animal/plant/stone medicine, totems, soul retrieval, and psychic surgery. Each lesson includes exercises (using modern techniques and materials), assignments, and helpful tips. The training ends with a ritual for self-initiation into the art of the shamanic witch—culminating in an act of healing, rebirth, and transformation.

COVR Award Winner

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738717319
Publisher:	Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Publication date:	08/08/2013
Series:	Christopher Penczak's Temple of Witchcraft Series , #6
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Christopher Penczak is a Witch, teacher, writer, and healing practitioner. He is the founder of the world-renowned Temple of Witchcraft and the Temple Mystery School, and he is the creator of the bestselling Temple of Witchcraft books and audio CDs. Christopher is an ordained minister, serving the New Hampshire and Massachusetts Pagan and metaphysical communities through public rituals, private counsel, and teaching. He also travels extensively and teaches throughout the United States. Christopher lives in New Hampshire. Visit him at ChristopherPenczak.com.

Read an Excerpt

Witchcraft and Shamanism

To most people, witchcraft and shamanism appear to be two distinct and separate disciplines. The general public associates shamanism with the holy healing people of native tribes, while they associate witches with spells, potions, Halloween, and, due to popular misconceptions, evil. The two seem worlds apart, but in reality, they come from a very similar root.

What Is a Shaman?

The word shaman, or saman, is Tungus in origin, coming from the Ural-Altaic tribal people of Siberia. Related to the Tungus word sa, which translates as "to know," the Siberian people use the word saman to refer to men and women who act as the spiritual healers and wise ones of the tribe. They are the ones who know the mysteries of spirit. The word shaman is properly used to refer to the spirit healers of those tribes who share a similar genetic origin to those of Siberia. It is usually used in reference to the healers of the North and South American tribes, but culturally and linguistically it can be used throughout Eurasia.

The role of the shaman applies to both men and women, though culturally one gender can be more prevalent than the other. Few refer to female shamans with a different word, such as shamaness. Sexual orientation and gender identity does not preclude one from shamanism either. In many traditions, shamans dress in the clothes of the opposite gender or practice homosexuality.

For anthropologists exploring the spiritualities of tribal societies, the word shaman is an easier and safer term than the words witch, wizard, sorcerer, magician, and seer, even though these labels were used in the past to describe the tribal shaman's European counterparts. For those from a Western mainstream academic background, shaman has less negative baggage than these other highly charged terms.

In an effort to be more precise, some anthropologists and mystical students use the term core shamanism to differentiate the use of shamanic techniques and ideas from traditional Siberian or Native shamanism. Although it is not a religion, shamanism has a definitive set of core practices that sets it apart from other traditions of magick, yet it can be found worldwide, particularly in tribal cultures, and in the foundations of visionary traditions. Not all mystics can be referred to as shamanistic in the truest sense of the word.

Core concepts to the practice of shamanism include the following:

• The ability to enter an altered state of consciousness through the use of sound, rhythm, movement, and plants.
• The experience of one or more nonphysical realities that are just as "real" to the practitioner as the physical world, and of actions in the nonphysical worlds that directly affect the physical world.
• The use of an altered state, a trance sometimes defined as an ecstasy, to project self-awareness from the physical world to the nonphysical worlds.
• Dealings with nonphysical beings, or spirits, who enter into a relationship with the practitioner. They offer guidance, healing, or power used to create change in the physical world.
• Other mystics may have the same gifts and abilities but do not access them through ecstatic trance or working with the spirits. Though they can be gifted medicine people or spell casters, without that link to the spirit world they are not necessarily shamans.

The voluntary interface with the unseen and the ability to use this link to create change is what sets a shaman apart from other magi. Shamans are typically equated with the title of "medicine person," though not all medicine men and women use shamanic techniques to effect healing.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Exercises . . . xvii

List of Tables & Figures . . . xix

Foreword to the New Edition by M. Belanger . . . xxiii

Introduction to the New Edition: Called by the Spirits . . . 1

Introduction: What Is the Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft? . . . 11

Chapter One: Witchcraft and Shamanism . . . 17

Chapter Two: Opening the Veil . . . 49

Chapter Three: Making Sacred Space . . . 69

Chapter Four: The Role of the Shamanic Witch . . . 95

Chapter Five: Lesson 1: The Worlds of the Shaman . . . 117

Chapter Six: Lesson 2: The World Aside . . . 167

Chapter Seven: Lesson 3: The Underworld Path . . . 197

Chapter Eight: Lesson 4: The Starry Road . . . 231

Chapter Nine: Lesson 5: Walking with the Spirits . . . 257

Chapter Ten: Lesson 6: The World of Dreams . . . 299

Chapter Eleven: Lesson 7: Rites of the Shaman . . . 319

Chapter Twelve: Lesson 8: Animal Spirit Medicine . . . 337

Chapter Thirteen: Lesson 9: Plant, Stone, and Song Medicine . . . 361

Chapter Fourteen: Lesson 10: Past-Life Healing . . . 407

Chapter Fifteen: Lesson 11: Shamanic Healing . . . 425

Chapter Sixteen: Lesson 12: Mastering the Three Worlds . . . 467

Chapter Seventeen: Lesson 13: Shadow Initiation . . . 483

Bibliography . . . 499

Index . . . 507

Editorial Reviews

COVR Award Winner

"...[Penczak] is both sensitive and non-demanding with his views, writing in a manner that invites his readers to consider his ideas impartially. An interesting and informative text, offering far more than the...title suggests."—Witchcraft & Wicca Magazine

From the Publisher