Can anyone become a shaman?

It would be funny to write, ‘no’. That you need to have been a shaman in your previous ten lifetimes. Or that you need to have been struck by lightning. But that’s simply not the case.

In the Q’ero community in the Andes, you have to be struck by lightning more than once. Granted, they live a few thousand feet above the tree line, so it’s fairly normal for people to get struck by lightning. But they still want to make sure that Spirit is truly calling you.

Shifting to the modern world, there’s a whole variety of shamanic training programs you can attend. If you can foot the bill, you will be initiated into a lineage within a month. In a very short time, you can make a lifelong commitment that will change your reality.

This raises the question: Without a serious calling to become a shaman, why would you pursue this path? A significant number of people who attend shamanic training programs want something else: secret knowledge, power, community, adventure, and more. They're not actually interested in a decades-long commitment of service, but personal elevation.

For these individuals, there may be a better option. Many well-meaning people would benefit more from working with a shaman rather than becoming one themselves. For a few hundred to a thousand bucks a year, you can pay someone else to handle the difficult parts of the path and keep your energy field clean and balanced. For most, that’s much easier than dealing with curses and entities yourself.

Reflecting on my own path, I had no desire to become a shaman. I went down to the jungle to drink ayahuasca at twenty-one for my own healing. It took two years for me to come to terms with the fact that my experience was also an initiation and that I was called to become a shaman.

As I look back, it’s been an incredible honor to be called by Spirit to the shamanic path. I genuinely love what I do. However, I almost always feel behind, out of my depth, and isolated from my society. There are endless responsibilities to manage with no conceivable end in sight.  All the gifts I have been given come with a tremendous weight to use them often and wisely.

After a decade of practice, I often wonder how anyone could manage this path without being called by Spirit. My calling has been a life raft, and it seems like madness to me that someone would seek it out! So, yes, anyone can train to become a shaman, but without Spirit itself intervening, why would you?

If you’re considering shamanic training and want a deeper perspective, my book describes my story before and after my initiation.