Whether I am called a Doctor, Shaman, White Witch, Herbalist, or Phytochemist, I have been involved with herbal medicine and natural healing modalities for about 15 years now. Many people who meet me want to know how I came to be who I am and to do what I do.
Shamanism is a religion in the broadest sense.
It's practice is shared by all indigenous peoples with an underlying cosmography that cuts across through local customs, labeling systems and manifestations peculiar to regional biota. Even today, when long in retreat from the relentless onslaught of western rationalism and insensate technology, shamanism survives in native cultures on all of the planet's inhabited continents. The divergence of western religions from shamanism lies in the concepts of humans as the exclusive possessors of spiritual souls and in humankind as the lone interpreter of ordinary and extraordinary realities. Shamanic peoples are neither so audacious nor, perhaps so foolish. In shamanism, all of existence is viewed as highly integrated and connected.