Shamanism, art, and music in the 21st century

when I try and explain what shamanism to the average person I am usually greeted with strange looks and the average laugh of disbelief.

So, in remembrance of Einstein, I'm going to explain what shamanism is as simply as I can.
To start off I want you to look at any piece of art that has ever been created. Why does it exist, what does it mean?
Art sometimes has a meaning applied to it, attempting to get a message across. It wants to persuade you to think a certain way by playing on your emotions. Other times art wants to convey nothing at a conscious level, it just is what it is. This kind of art has an object too, but it's objective is to change your own consciousness and allow you to access a part of yourself that normally is not available to your conscious mind. It offers you the ability to simply feel what the artist wanted you to feel.

The same goes for music, especially songs that do not include coherent lyrics. They want to express a feeling, an emotion, or a state of being.


The manipulation of consciousness is the essence of shamanism. It's the internal voyage that takes you to a place where you can experience a part of yourself that you may have never felt before. These events take have a "shadow" that manifest as neurological impulses in the human mind. That does not mean that the neuro-events are not real, they are as real as the unseen events. It's a two-way split between the seen and unseen - the Yin and Yang.

No, shamanism doesn't deal exclusively with spirits or communicating with gods. These events are all part of one's own self; but like the "real" and "unreal" experiences, they are both happening and are in motion in one's own life. In some cases they manifest as internal issues that eventually effect the outside world.