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Angela Puca: Hello everyone. I’m Angela and welcome back to my channel. Your online resource for the academic study of Magic and Magic-practising religions and traditions.

This video will be a recording of a Zoom talk I gave as an invited speaker for the Centre for Pagan Studies based here in the UK. In this talk, I will cover indigenous and transcultural Shamanism in the Western world, Folk Magic and how it relates to Shamanism, shape-shifting, Italian Witchcraft, and a few other topics. Please check the info box because I will leave timestamps for all the different topics that I covered in the talk. Also, I do apologize for the poor quality. I’m currently working on upgrading my equipment to get better quality on future interviews and talks. So I promise that the next one will be much better quality if everything works all right. Thank you so much for bearing with me and help me grow. It’s thanks to every video sharing, like, comment, and well Patreon pledge that I’m able to make videos. So keep doing that, all of that, to see more of me in the future after the talk. Now don’t forget to check in the infobox all the references regarding the Centre for Pagan Studies. Their website and their purposes and aim for the centre. Bye now.

Julie Belham-Payneokay: Over to Angela then.

Angela Puca: So today’s talk will be on Shamanism, and yes, I’m pronouncing it Shamanism because scholars normally say Shaman and Shamanism rather than Shay-man or Shay-manism. After all, with this pronunciation, Shamanism is closer to the original word where the term comes from, which is from the Tungusic language and is Shaman. So that’s why scholars in the field normally pronounce it Shamanism rather than Shay-manism. I’m about to finish my PhD in Religious Studies, which is focused on Shamanism with fieldwork in Italy, and it was on both trans-cultural and indigenous forms of Shamanism.

So I’m fascinated, and I’ve been studying Shamanism in the Western world for quite a few years now in Europe, more specifically in Italy. So, how did Shamanism become a system of study as a subject matter of study? Shamanism came from Russian ethnography in the 19th century. To make it very simple and easy to follow, it wasn’t like Shamanism, which was discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was more like scholars acknowledged that there were similar patterns across different indigenous Shamanisms, so they gave it a name. At first, this name was applied to certain indigenous traditions around Siberia and in Russia. Then, later on, more scholars, anthropologists, and ethnographers realised that there were similarities in other places where indigenous people lived, which is another label that we may debate because I challenge that kind of categorisation. But yeah, basically, scholars came to use the term Shamanism to refer not only to Siberian Shamanism but to other traditions which were practised across the world, mainly by indigenous people, and that’s how the term came to be created by scholars, by academics to overlap existing local labels. If you go and see what kind of names and what kind of labels and terms those indigenous people or people who are believed to practice Shamanism used, these terms tend to be different depending on the place. Every place has its term for its Shaman, and every place has its specific term for Shamanism or that kind of vernacular healing or those kinds of practices. So, this is how the category of Shamanism came to be.

Now, let’s move on to how Shamanism came to the Western world, the United States first, and Europe afterwards. It all started with the works of Carlos Castaneda. Carlos Castaneda was also a PhD candidate at UCLA in Los Angeles, studying the use of peyote on the part of Mexican Shamans. He had an encounter, which became an apprenticeship, with Don Juan Matus, the pseudonym he uses for his spiritual teacher in his books. So he wrote his first book, “The Teaching of Don Juan,” which became quite famous and started to popularize the practice of Shamanism in the Western world, as I said, in the United States first and then it became pretty popular even beyond the United States. And this happened around the 70s, so the 1970s. So, of course, even the cultural movement going around at that time was quite favourable to sharing that kind of knowledge and the popularization of Shamanism and these novels and works on Shamanism. Then, around the 80s, another Anthropologist, a more, I’d say, more established Anthropologist because Carlos Castaneda only did his PhD, and that was it. Michael Harner not only then completed his PhD but had quite a long career in academia and a few publications. He also did fieldwork, especially in the Ecuadorian Amazon, with two, mainly two indigenous peoples, which were the Conibo and the Jivaro. So these two peoples then he also studied other forms of indigenous Shamanism from other parts of the world but not directly, not doing fieldwork, and what he thought to have realized was that across different forms of Shamanism, there is a common pattern, something which he described as ‘core principles’ which you find across all different forms of indigenous Shamanism.

So Harner created a new tradition of Western Shamanism called “Core Shamanism.” He also founded the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, which is based on the idea that there are core principles across all Shamanism that go beyond cultural belonging, and these core principles can, therefore, be applied, practised and endorsed even by Westerners. He believed that by doing so, westerners could have bettered their lives and gotten more in touch with themselves and nature. They performed the shamanic journey to obtain knowledge and power, as they say, and healing. So that’s how Shamanism got popularized in the Western world through the works of Carlos Castaneda first and through the works and the tradition of Core Shamanism by Michael Harner.

If we look at Italy, which is, of course, my example from my fieldwork, but I know from other colleagues that it’s pretty similar across Europe. Because we, with Graham Harvey and other colleagues, recently published a book called “Indigenising Movements in Europe,” and yeah, there’s a chapter written by me in the Italian version of this. So yeah, what we find in Europe then is either forms of Shamanism, which may be described as transcultural. By transcultural Shamanism, I mean either forms of Shamanism which were born in the Western world, like those inspired by Carlos Castaneda and Core Shamanism by Michael Harner or eclectic versions of Core Shamanism because it sort of set out a model for Westerners to practice Shamanism. So trans-cultural Shamanism can be either of these forms based on Castaneda and Michael Harner or imported and reinterpreted forms of indigenous Shamanism. So sometimes you can find Andean Shamanism or Siberian Shamanism. So, westerners who practice these kinds of traditions, but of course, since they are doing so in their contexts, in their cultural context and in their place of birth or the place they live, they have to reinterpret this kind of tradition to adapt them to their culture and places where they live. So yeah, we have this as transcultural Shamanism. Then, we have the indigenous or autochthonous forms of Shamanism, which are the forms of Shamanism that belong to the place where the people live. So, for example, Andean Shamanism is practised by people in the Andes, and Siberians practise Siberian Shamanism.

Does it make sense so far? Does any of you have any questions?

Tammy: There’s a place in Costa Rica called Rhythmia, and they do ayahuasca holidays where there are Shamans in that area. So it’s like a five-star hotel but with Shamans and people go to take ayahuasca for however long they’re there. Some people can take it for four days, and some people can stay for two weeks. So, I’m just wondering what you think of places that have Shamans. Do you know what I mean?

Angela Puca: Yes, I know what you mean. I think it is kind of in line with what I defined as transcultural Shamanism. In that some people, there are actually some scholars… I avoided the term, but they call it Neoshamanism instead of trans-cultural Shamanism. I avoid Neoshamanism because I know it can have negative connotations. But yeah, Neoshamanism or transcultural-Shamanism, since it is practised by people who do not belong to that culture, sometimes has certain differences from the indigenous forms of Shamanism. One of these differences is called “fast spirituality”, which means that you do workshops and shamanic training over the weekend, which happens, I mean quite a lot, if not in most circumstances you have this kind of shamanic training or shamanic workshops which occur over a weekend. So even people who are busy with work can go there and have some sort of training in certain shamanic techniques. So I do kind of equate this; I mean, it is quite similar to making specific trips in order to experience to have experiences with ayahuasca or peyote or even just experiences with indigenous Shamans. So, it is part of that transcultural approach to Shamanism. So it’s like you are, for example, a British person, but you want to have a taste of Shamanism, so you go on a weekend to get training, or you go to, yeah, Siberia or Costa Rica to have an experience with a with the indigenous Shamanism, with an indigenous Shaman. Either way, it is sort of stepping out of your cultural belonging and entering into a different culture. And when this happens, on the part of Westerners, often what this means is that there’s kind of an overlap of certain Western expectations and Western categories over very different cultural ways of doing that kind of thing.

Tammy: Yeah, the cultural-like philosophy of doing this. Yeah thank you, you thank.

Angela Puca: Did I answer your question?

Tammy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, very much, very much. Because I’ve watched a few documentaries on it and I’ve always found it strange that someone who can just take ayahuasca go on an ayahuasca holiday for a week is now a Shaman. And to me it’s like reading Carlos Castaneda, you have to… it’s not you’re not there just for a weekend, it’s, you know, it’s like doing your PhD.

Angela Puca: Yeah that is quite a shamanic training.

Tammy: Yes, you know…

Angela Puca: Including death and rebirth. I’ll let you know when I get rebirth because now I’m swathed in the death box.

Tammy: Thank you, thank you.

Angela Puca: Any other questions so far?

Emlyn Price: Nice quote from Kevin, yeah. “Having all the fishing gear doesn’t make you a fisherman.”

Angela Puca: Yeah, I guess it’s also fair to say, at this point, that in Core Shamanism, which is the most popular form of transcultural Shamanism in the Western world, they say that you cannot call yourself a Shaman, that you can only say that you are a shamanic practitioner. This is according to what my informants have said: appointed teachers by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Italy told me that it is out of respect for indigenous Shamans. So, some realize there is a difference, and others have a different idea. So, some practitioners feel that they are doing the same as a Shaman from the Ecuadorian Amazon would do because the techniques are believed to be the same, and even though the context varies, they still believe that they’re doing the same thing. But the official version from the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and from Core Shamanism is that as a practitioner of Core Shamanism, you cannot say that you are a Shaman; you can only say that you are a shamanic practitioner out of respect and acknowledge that what we do, in the Western world with different modalities and different concepts, makes a difference.

So it is important to highlight that and not everybody believes they are Shamans after a weekend of training. Although, in my fieldwork, I’ve seen that there is this kind of trend that they become teachers very soon, after just a few workshops that they have undertaken. So it is a trend that I have seen recurring over and over so that I can report, yes.

Tammy: Thank you so much.

Angela Puca: Another thing I can talk to you about is the differences highlighted in the literature between indigenous Shamanism and the transcultural forms of Shamanism, otherwise called Neoshamanism – which is, as I said, a label that I don’t prefer. Still, it is used in literature, so I’m mentioning it. So these kinds of differences between indigenous Shamanism and the trans-cultural forms of Shamanism which occur and are increasing increasingly popular in the Western world are:

The first one is universalisation which means that the practice is considered, is kind of decontextualised. So it is believed that either you perform a ritual in England or in Italy or in a country in Africa you are supposed to get the same exact results. So there isn’t there’s this kind of idea, this universalisation which is not something that you would normally find in forms of indigenous Shamanism because in that case the performer matters, maybe the astrological conditions matter, the specific places, specific location where you perform the ritual matters, everything matters and might affect the result. Whereas the model that has been imported in the Western world has, according to scholarship, they highlight this universalisation aspect which means that whatever and however and whoever performs the ritual, since it is the technique what matters, the most you’re supposed to get the same exact results. And this is something that I talked about in a publication of mine which is called “Scientism and Post-truth to Underlying Paradigms in Italian Shamanism” or something like that and yeah it is something that you find quite it is quite common to find this idea and I think that this is due to our western, the way our knowledge is built, so to speak. So since we are so imbued with a certain kind of science and we have a certain idea of what is real and what is not real we tend to have this kind of scientistic and scientific rather than scientific, a scientific approach to reality where only something is measurable and repeatable it can be deemed true. So as a consequence, what you see is that even when people are practising Shamanism since they are still embedded in this kind of culture and in this kind of ontology, where things are considered real only if they are repeatable and measurable and somewhat resemble natural science and its methodology, people tend to want that in Shamanism too. So they want a set of techniques which are going to work quickly, if possible, and they are supposed to get the same results regardless of the other conditions which might not be considered measurable, to take into account and into the equation.

Then another aspect that is related to this is called ‘psychologising’ in literature. It means that the element of psychology is quite all over is quite emphasised in this kind of transcultural form of Shamanism practice in the Western world because there is quite often, for example, if you look at works by Sandra Ingerman. Of course, I do have a few examples from the Italian context. Still, certain forms of Neoshamanism or transcultural Shamanism are somewhat forms of psychology – like an extended form of psychology, psychotherapy, and even, in some cases, where they try to include elements from the shamanic worldview—even in this case interpreted in a western perspective.

Another element reported in the literature, which we find in Western Shamanism as opposed to indigenous Shamanism, is called ‘sanitizing’, which means that all the dangers and hazardous aspects and trials and rituals performed in indigenous Shamanism tend to be eliminated. They tend to be just dismissed and, of course, discouraged, so, for example, the use of entheogens and hallucinogens or even, well, there are some indigenous Shamans who would leave you in a cave for weeks without food and water. You have to survive, or they are very dangerous; we may say rituals, which occur across different forms of indigenous Shamanism. Of course, they vary depending on the kind of indigenous Shamanism. Still, it is quite a common thing to see hazardous practices and rituals which the person has to endure, we may say, to become a Shaman, and these are not present at all in the trans-cultural Western version. So this is called this is usually called sanitizing, which means that it is Shamanism made safe, we may say.

Emlyn Price: sort of ‘fluffy Shamanism.’

Angela Puca: Well, I’m avoiding judgemental terms, but it is to make it safe; for example, I have undertaken a few training in Core Shamanism across my four years of fieldwork; actually, I’ve been with indigenous Shamans and transcultural Shamanism, Core Shamans. So I have been a participant-observer in a wider array of practices, and yeah, for example, what I’ve seen is that when you undertake a training, a workshop by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, they make you sign a form where you have to acknowledge that what they are teaching you is not a substitute for the traditional medicine. I found it interesting because it is a way of safeguarding themselves from possible legal actions. So yeah, it was clear through it all that there was a very strong safety aspect, which I wouldn’t expect to find among indigenous Shamans because I’ve also been in Argentina during these years of fieldwork. I’m also connected to the Mapuche Shamans, so I have experiences with different forms of Shamanism, and it is interesting to see how they differ. But I also want to highlight that I don’t want to… what I’m saying is not meant to be; although it may seem so, it’s not meant to be a criticism of transcultural Shamanism. I think that transcultural Shamanism has a value in and of itself. I also think it is important to highlight certain traits that clearly differ from one form of Shamanism to another. So what kind of bugs me is when transcultural Shamans claim to do the same thing which an Andean Shaman would do in the forest, or these are things that, yeah, I don’t like.

Emlyn Price: Angela I see this one picture, sorry, one question; is shape-shifting part of Shamanism and how do they achieve it?

Angela Puca: Yes, shape-shifting is part of Shamanism, but that is not something I found in my fieldwork. So I don’t have a direct experience from me. But I know that my supervisor, Susan Owen, has worked with indigenous traditions, which also performed this kind of shape-shifting, but it’s not something that I’ve come across in my research. I know from reading literature that this component exists, and let me think… There is an Italian Shaman because I haven’t mentioned that, although this may open quite the debate. In my thesis, one of the main arguments is that there can also be forms of indigenous Shamanism in the Western world, and yeah, there was. During my fieldwork, I encountered a form of vernacular healing, which, in my research, I argue to be a form of indigenous Italian Shamanism. Yeah, and we can go into details on that if you’d like, but this was just a premise to say that I encountered this woman in the countryside around Turin, and I spent a few days with her and her family. And she was into shape-shifting. That’s why I recalled this experience because otherwise, it wasn’t something I came across so much. But yeah, she was talking about certain rituals where she would shape-shift into her animal guide and to her spirit guide. I didn’t witness any of that; I didn’t participate in a ritual where there was shape-shifting, but I have reports from people who have participated in rituals performed by this Italian Shaman. They said that they saw the person morphing into that animal. But I didn’t personally attend it.

The only thing that came close to that was an experience with Core Shamanism when it was overnight and there was a bonfire and we were supposed to embody… It was like there was an outer circle of people who would play drums and rattles and the inner circle would be of people who had to embody the spirit guides that they had met during the shamanic journeys we had performed during the day, that specific day. And so and then, of course, we switch places so, if at first, you were in the inner circle, then on the second round you would be playing the drums and the rattles and the other half of the group would be at the centre doing this kind of ritual. And on that occasion, there were people who started to behave as the animals. So like for example you could tell that there were people who had seen in their shamanic journeys a bird and they would start like moving like a bird or people who had seen a serpent and they would slither and so it was but I could I didn’t actually see them transforming into that specific animal, just behaving and sort of embodying through gestures and dances that specific animal that they had encountered in the shamanic journey. So I only have reports from informants who participated in the rituals performed by this Italian Shaman and she strongly claims that her tradition is indeed indigenous Italian Shamanism. Yeah, so there are reports of these kinds of things but yeah what was the question again sorry, I’m not actually…

Emlyn Price: the question was, is shape-shifting part of Shamanism?

Angela Puca: Yes so the answer is yes…

Emlyn Price: …and how is this achieved.

Angela Puca: How is it?

Emlyn Price: I think the question is referring to is this a physical change or is it a change in the mind as a result of ingestion of infusions or whatever that allows the person to believe they have shape-shifted?

Angela Puca: That’s a very interesting question and I do have the answer to that well or at least I can try. So yeah, I guess the question implies a Western understanding of shape-shifting. So because, we tend to, as I explained earlier, have a certain way of constructing reality as Westerners and to see what is real and what is not real. So what is the mind, and what is outside of the mind? So there are forms of indigenous Shamanism; of course, it depends on the tradition, but to generalize, I can say that like, for example, drawing on my experience with this Mapuche Shaman, the idea is that there isn’t a separation between what occurs in the mind and what occurs outside of the mind. Reality is experienced through a very different lens when it comes to these types of Shamanism. So it’s not my mind doing something and experiencing outside of it; it’s more entering an altered state of consciousness whereby you enter a different state of reality. Castaneda calls it ‘non-ordinary reality’, which is a way to pierce inside this non-ordinary reality. In other cases, I guess they describe it similarly to how Buddhists describe enlightenment. So the idea is not that you have to enter a specific place or enter a specific mindset, but it is more like waking up to a state of reality where those kinds of things are ontologically possible. So, does that make sense?

Emlyn Price: Yes, thank you that does make sense.

Angela Puca: If it doesn’t just tell me.

Emlyn Price: Does anybody else have any questions? I’m not sure if Tammy had a question of she was twitching. Yes she does. But I can’t unmute her.

Tammy:I’ve got another question because it’s a fascinating subject, but not necessarily just a Shamanism point. Being Italian, did you have any interactions with the Strega?

Emlyn Price: Blast, I was going to ask the same question.

Tammy: Well that’s my question.

Angela Puca: Yeah. Yes, I actually have a video on my channel called, maybe a bit… yeah, with a very snappy title like ‘The Real Strega Tradition’. Strega in Italian or Strega if you’re from the north or Strega if you’re from the south as I am.

Angela Puca: Yes, Strega is the word for Witch. And yeah, it became, it’s quite popular among Italian-Americans because they try to find the Strega tradition, as they call it, or Stregeria, which was a Wiccan-based form of Witchcraft which claimed to have roots in Italian traditions. But yeah, in Italy, Strega just means Witch. So, there isn’t really a Strega tradition, but there are many vernacular Witches, which I have studied extensively in my research. As I said, a specific tradition within Italian Witchcraft is what I have defined and explained why. I have defined in my PhD as the indigenous Italian Shamanism because this is a centuries-old tradition of vernacular healers in the countryside, even in the cities. Still, it’s more common in the countryside. They have these specific gestures, which are called signatures. These Segnatore are practised across Italy, but it’s like every region has a specific specialisation, we may say.

So in Campania, my home region, these vernacular Witches tend to cast or remove the evil eye and the evil eye is perceived in broad terms. For example, even a persistent headache may be seen as an evil eye, and performing this segmentation would heal your headache. There are other regions where they cure sprains, and also, there are specific terms for certain illnesses, like Saint Anthony’s Fire, and I have to think of the translation because, of course, in my mind, it’s only Italian. But yeah, there is a set of illnesses that these vernacular healers heal. They are very used to being very concealed and don’t say anything about what they are doing. There was, traditionally, one for each town, and it’s the kind of thing that everybody knows of, but they wouldn’t openly say, oh, there’s the Witch of the town. No, it wasn’t like that, but it was like, oh, there’s the woman who will cure your sprain, go to her. There’s the woman who cures the herpes and things like that. So this would be the more traditional form of Italian Witchcraft, which you still find across Italy, and of course, now certain things have changed, especially thanks to the internet.

Many things have changed, but it has been present for centuries and are still there. It is kind of an underground religious practice.

Tammy: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know but apparently, I know a couple who are two people that say that they practice it.

Angela Puca: Oh the Italian Witchcraft?

Tammy: Estrega.

Angela Puca: Is that Jennifer Uzzell?

Jennifer Uzzell: Hello.

Angela Puca: Hi Jennifer. Thank you for being here.

Okay. Two questions; I think they’re connected. The first one you were saying, very rightly, about this different way of looking at the world between Westerners and indigenous practitioners and that our dualism, I suppose, even amongst shamanistic practices in the West where we divide things into what is real and what isn’t real in a way that a lot of other most other cultures don’t. My first question is whether the fact that poor practitioners in Western Europe have this distinction is making a difference, do you think, to what they experience and how they experience Shamanism?

The other question connected to that, when you were talking about the sanitization and the removal of danger from Core Shamanism, is whether that is restricted to the practices or whether it’s also connected to what people experience. So, for example, in indigenous Shamanism, what people encounter is very often terrifying and genuinely dangerous. Meanwhile, in Core Shamanism, very often, what is undoubtedly, in many cases, presented is in terms of self-development and reconnection with the other in a way that is entirely positive and helpful. And I just wondered if you’d come across, in your research, anything or any comments about how the different ways of looking at things and the different worldviews influence what people are experiencing.

Angela Puca: So the first question is whether the different way of approaching reality, on the part of westerners, will affect the shamanic experience wasn’t it?

Jennifer Uzzell: Whether the different worldviews, the different views of what constitutes reality, are affecting how they’re experiencing Shamanism.

Angela Puca: Yes. The answer to that, I think, is yes. Because, of course, how you construct your world will affect how you experience, a.k.a. construct your practice. Because everything that we absorb and experience needs to enter a certain framework, if the framework we have, as a worldview, is very much different or is of a certain kind, that will reflect how the experience will be perceived at that time. I’m Kantian, so the idea that reality in and of itself is the only reality we can perceive is through our senses and our perception of our worldview. So yes, I think that. There is always a relation between our experience and the framework that we allow the experience to be absorbed and understood into. So yeah, I think it’s kind of unavoidable that this would affect their practice. What was this the second question?

Jennifer Uzzell: The second question was really a case of whether what people are experiencing in the West is usually presented as something is very positive and very safe and I’m not talking about the mechanics of Shamanism. I’m talking about what people actually experience while they’re journeying. That in the West, not always, but very often it’s presented as self-development and it’s presented as something that’s very positive and safe and that people should be doing to reconnect with the other, whereas in indigenous practice, as I understand it and from what I’ve read, very often what people are encountering are things that are very dangerous and that they need to be trained to deal with. And I just wondered if that was your experience as well, of a difference between Core Shamanism and indigenous Shamanism.

Angela Puca:Yes, and this is a difference. Thank you for that question because it allows me to say something about my fieldwork. So yeah, for example, in Core Shamanism, which is the epitome of transcultural Shamanism and the most popular form of transcultural Shamanism in the West, they openly said, during the training that I have undertaken, that it is safe to do a shamanic journey. So, because there were people – there were about 30 participants. Some people were scared, before their first or second shamanic journey, that something bad might happen. The teacher reassured everybody that what they would encounter and the spirits they would encounter during their shamanic journeys would only be positive and would only give them positive experiences. It won’t be dangerous in any sort of way. So, I can safely say that that is the point of view of Core Shamanism because they said it upfront and during the lecturing part of the training slash workshop.

This was also one of the arguments by one of the Italian Shamans I have experienced. She claims to be the last Italian Shaman of a hereditary tradition, and what she told me was that when she was 16, her grandmother came from the South, but now she lives in the North; her grandmother brought her into the woods and left there at 16, alone for weeks, and she was tied to a tree, and she had to menstruate and defecate on herself, and she was without food and water. And she said that eventually, she could untie herself, and she had to encounter all the animals and beasts in the surrounding area and survive that. And yeah, she said that it was an intentional way of dehumanizing, which was part of her initiation. When she was explaining that to me, she felt strongly against Core Shamanism and forms of transcultural Shamanism, and one of the things she kept saying to me while I was at hers was that it is not the same to imagine a cave and being in a cave or even being left alone in a cave with your thoughts and your shadows and everything that will surface from your mind and all your fears. And yeah, she explained to me how her initiation worked, and it was terrible and dangerous.

And yeah, eventually, she could untie herself, and she didn’t even find her grandmother to welcome her. Still, a few other people brought her to a certain place to do other things that were part of her initiation process. So yeah, I guess that even in the Italian case, we may say that the difference, in terms of the danger, the danger of certain practices versus the safety, or how safe certain practices are done, is present when you compare forms of indigenous Shamanism – if we accept my way of labelling these practices and trans-cultural Shamanism which are both present, in my opinion, in Italy. So even in that case, you can see that there’s quite a difference. This was not the only report because then I could encounter and do interviews with other Italian Shamans, and they reported very similar struggles. Some even said that they were on the edge of dying, almost before they became Shamans and were granted certain gifts. So yeah, I guess the difference is there.

Jennifer Uzzell: Thanks.

Emlyn Price: Thank you for that. I’m not sure if it’s a comment or a question. Still, it says, “personal, mental, and emotional state before entering the journey will produce some kind of risk for trauma surely. E.g. unlocking repressed memories, etc.”. Do you have any comment on that?

Angela Puca: I’m not sure what he or she means.

Questioner: Okay right. I’ll say it. Indeed, suppose you have a certain mental state, emotional state, depression, or any kind of situation before you go on the journey. In that case, that will unlock lots of things in the mind. Could that, if you’ve got anything repressed that will come back, it’s a sort of follow-on to your previous question in that there are dangers. You may have things repressed but not aware; you go in experience, and it’s bad for you. Isn’t that the kind of danger you were talking about?

Angela Puca: Do you mean when I was talking about indigenous Shamanism or the transcultural, Western forms of Shamanism?

Questioner: Well, the fact that the Western one is saying it’s all safe, but that’s assuming the person going in is in a good position mentally and emotionally to do so.

Angela Puca: So yeah, if we’re talking about Core Shamanism, they think the first thing they will make you do is a journey to the lower world to encounter your spirit guide. So they believe that when you have retrieved your spirit guide, all the other journeys will be safe because that spirit guide will protect you along the way. They never really mentioned this kind of thing that you are mentioning having. So the idea is that perhaps if you have a certain mental health condition that might affect your journey because they were like… I’m trying to remember my fieldwork… and a few people were coming from a place of trauma. I do remember that I was distinctively an attendee who had recently lost her son, and she was trying to, I guess, also seek comfort in trying this shamanic experience. But yeah, nobody; when she openly talked about it, nobody mentioned any possible danger. So yeah, I have not encountered it, or it’s left unacknowledged. Or maybe they just honestly believe that the kind of shamanic journeys you do, according to the Core Shamanic techniques, do not present any risk even when you are in a certain state. Unless you were asking my point of view – I’m replying from the Core Shamanic point of view.

Jennifer Uzzell: It is worth saying, as well just briefly there, that within Shamanism it may well not be, certainly the Core Shamanic courses, there are places – I mean from my tradition, which is OBOD, the Order of Bards, Obates and Druids, in their material, well they don’t call it Shamanism but there’s quite a lot of shamanistic practice in there and certainly meditative techniques and there is something right at the beginning of that that warns against doing that if you have any sort of mental disorder or history of extreme depression or trauma. There are actually warnings in there. So at least it is acknowledged as something that is a potential danger.

Questioner: Yeah, in my altered state, I’ve been using altered states since I was a child and any kind of – when I’m in a very bad place, it’s made far worse because I’m doing stuff internally. And those that I’ve sort of coached a little bit who said, well, can I use this to help remove depression and so on and I’ve sort of said, try other means first. You need to get a bit better in place your head before you can sort of work that way. Perhaps, with the indigenous, it’s a completely different experience to the Western forms. You know, the “neo’ stuff. So yeah, there’s a difference between the two, I think, in that regard.

Angela Puca: I’m trying to think as a Core Shamanic Practitioner or a Trans-Cultural Practitioner. I guess that in that kind of… I mean, if you were in a place where you couldn’t journey yourself, they would say that you have lost part of your soul, and so somebody would help you by performing a soul retrieval ritual, and by doing so, they believe that they may help you heal from that mental state and that mental condition. So sometimes they don’t work just on their own but collaborate with other practitioners, and they perform shamanic rituals together, and this will help in case you have an issue of this sort. I undertook advanced extraction technique training, and we were paired. So the idea was you cannot see what’s wrong with your body, so there’s somebody else you have to work with, and we were working in pairs. And each one was working on the other to identify what was wrong in terms of health and to help the other person’s healing. So this also applies when it comes to mental health issues. In that case, I guess, it might be more a case that a transcultural practitioner will resort to soul retrieval because they believe that when you have trauma, it means that part of your soul has been lost and is stuck in the place where the trauma occurs and this is something that you also find in indigenous Shamanism.

So yeah, maybe in the Neoshamanism, it tends to be more psychologised, and there’s more of a psychological component to it. But the idea is pretty much the same: if you have mental health issues, they think you have lost part of your soul, and that part of your soul has to be retrieved for you to be whole again. And once you are whole again, then you will not experience those kinds of mental states anymore.

Emlyn Price: Okay Angela, that’s lovely. Thank you. Okay, folks, we’ve reached, well we’ve certainly exceeded our time for this session. Angela, that was absolutely fascinating, thank you so much.

Angela Puca: Thank you, I hope that was explanatory enough, certainly not exhaustive.

Emlyn Price: Okay well, thank you once again and thank you all of you for attending and your valuable input. We shall love you and leave you until the next session.

Angela Puca: Thank you for inviting me it was lovely to be here.

Bye.