Marks, Y. (2024). Being the swarm: An intuitive inquiry into Western shamanic practitioners’ lived experience of shamanic power in a Western society [Unpublished Master’s thesis]. Alef Trust & Liverpool John Moores University.
There is a global rise of shamanism, however there is debate as to what a shaman is, whether a white person of the West can become a shaman and whether healing undertaken by Western shamans can be as effective as healing undertaken by Indigenous shamans. Furthermore, there has been very little academic research on the experience of shamanic practitioners in the West. This present study used Intuitive Inquiry as the research method to explore Western shamanic practitioners’ lived experience of shamanic power in Western society. It includes the sub-questions of what has changed in the shamanic practitioner’s daily life since they gained access to this extraordinary shamanic (spirit) power. Using a snowball sampling technique, seven Western shamanic practitioners participated in semi-structured interviews, and each undertook a 10-minute shamanic journey seeking an answer to a preset question. Eleven themes emerged describing a process of transformation from a personal to a transpersonal sense of self that involved engaging with spirit as ontologically real while seeking freedom from external control and deriving concrete value from their shamanic practice. Using Intuitive Inquiry, the researcher’s imagination was stimulated to generate concepts through which intuitive insights could be garnered. These included a shamanic teacher, the bee as a spiritual ally, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and the astrological archetype Pluto. Through engaging these concepts, it is suggested that the Western tale of Orpheus and Eurydice may describe the development of a transpersonal sense of self. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.
