The Universal Threads: What Shamanic Traditions Share Across All Cultures

A Pattern Too Consistent to Be Coincidence

Shamanic practices have been found independently on every inhabited continent — from the frozen tundra of Siberia to the tropical forests of the Amazon, from the deserts of Australia to the mountains of Tibet, from the savannas of Africa to the misty islands of the North Atlantic. These traditions developed in isolation from one another, among peoples who had no contact for tens of thousands of years. And yet, when we study them side by side, the similarities are striking — too consistent and too specific to be explained by coincidence or cultural diffusion alone.

This convergence suggests something profound: that shamanic practice reflects a fundamental human capacity rather than a cultural invention. Just as every human culture independently develops language, music, and mathematics, every culture also develops methods for accessing altered states of consciousness, communicating with non-ordinary dimensions of reality, and using these experiences for healing, guidance, and the maintenance of community well-being. Shamanism, in its broadest sense, may be the original spiritual technology — the one from which all later religious forms ultimately derive.

What follows examines the threads that connect shamanic traditions across all cultures — the universal patterns that persist despite vast differences in language, geography, cosmology, and cultural context.

The Three Worlds: A Universal Map of Reality

Perhaps the most striking universal feature of shamanic cosmology is the division of reality into three interconnected levels or worlds, typically arranged vertically and connected by a central axis.

In Siberian and Mongolian shamanism, these are the Upper World (realm of celestial spirits and sky gods), the Middle World (the ordinary world of the living), and the Lower World (realm of the ancestors and chthonic spirits), connected by the World Tree. In Norse tradition, the nine realms are organized around Yggdrasil, the cosmic ash tree, with Asgard above, Midgard in the middle, and Hel below. In Celtic tradition, the three realms are Sky, Land, and Sea. In Amazonian vegetalismo, the curandero travels between the visible world and invisible dimensions above and below. In Aboriginal Australian cosmology, the Dreaming exists as a dimension interpenetrating ordinary reality. In Yoruba tradition, the cosmos is divided into the realms of the living (Aye), the ancestors, and the Orishas.

The specific names, descriptions, and associations differ enormously. But the fundamental structure — a multi-layered reality in which the visible world is sandwiched between upper and lower dimensions of non-ordinary existence — appears with remarkable consistency.

The significance of this pattern goes beyond theology. It suggests that human consciousness itself has a vertical structure — that our awareness naturally reaches both upward (toward transpersonal, spiritual, and cosmic dimensions) and downward (toward ancestral, instinctual, and subconscious dimensions), and that the shaman’s primary skill is the ability to navigate this vertical axis consciously and deliberately.

The Central Axis: World Tree, Mountain, Pillar

Connected to the three-worlds model is the universal symbol of the central axis — the vertical structure that connects all levels of reality and provides the pathway for the shaman’s journey between worlds.

This axis takes many forms: the World Tree (birch, larch, or cosmic tree in Siberia; Yggdrasil in Norse tradition; the oak in Celtic tradition), the Sacred Mountain (Mount Meru in Buddhist and Hindu cosmology; the sacred mountains of Mongolia; the Andes in South American tradition), the Central Pillar (the potomitan in Vodou; the sundance pole in Lakota tradition), or the Cosmic Ladder or Rope (found in Australian and South American traditions).

The function is always the same: the central axis is the road between worlds. It is the point where the three realms intersect, the place where traffic between dimensions is possible. The shaman’s journey — whether described as climbing a tree, ascending a mountain, descending into a cave, or flying through the air — always involves movement along this vertical axis.

In many traditions, the shaman’s drum is itself a microcosmic representation of the World Tree. The wood of the drum frame may be taken from a tree associated with the cosmic axis (a tree struck by lightning is especially prized, as lightning is itself a connection between sky and earth). The painted surface of the drum may bear images of the three worlds. And the act of drumming is understood as activating the axis — opening the road between worlds and providing the vibrational energy that propels the shaman’s consciousness along it.

Altered States of Consciousness: The Gateway

Every shamanic tradition employs specific techniques for entering altered states of consciousness — states in which ordinary perception gives way to visionary experience, the boundaries between self and other become permeable, and communication with non-ordinary dimensions of reality becomes possible.

The methods vary, but they fall into consistent categories:

Rhythmic auditory driving. Drumming is the most widespread technique, found from Siberia to Africa to the Americas. Research has shown that rhythmic drumming at approximately four to four-and-a-half beats per second induces theta brainwave states — the same frequency associated with deep meditation, hypnagogic imagery, and the transition between waking and sleeping. Rattling, chanting, and rhythmic singing serve similar functions.

Psychoactive plant medicines. Ayahuasca in the Amazon. Peyote among the Huichol and Native American Church. San Pedro in the Andes. Psilocybin mushrooms across Mesoamerica and possibly Siberia. Iboga in Central Africa. Fly agaric mushrooms in Siberian tradition. Tobacco (mapacho) throughout the Americas. Cannabis in South Asian traditions. Each culture has developed relationships with specific plants that facilitate visionary states, and many traditions regard these plants not as drugs but as sentient teachers — intelligent beings who choose to share their knowledge with prepared humans.

Physical ordeal and deprivation. Fasting, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme heat (sweat lodge) or cold, physical pain (sundance piercing), isolation, and prolonged prayer — all of these techniques alter neurochemistry and perception in ways that facilitate visionary experience. The vision quest of North American traditions, the utiseta (sitting out) of Norse tradition, and the extended dietas of Amazonian practice all use deprivation and isolation to thin the boundary between worlds.

Movement and dance. Ecstatic dance — prolonged, rhythmic, physically demanding movement — is a pathway to trance in many African, Central Asian, and Sufi traditions. The whirling of the Sufi dervish, the hours-long dance of the sangoma, and the sustained movement of the sundancer all push the body beyond its ordinary limits into states where visionary consciousness emerges.

Breath and sound. Specific breathing techniques, chanting, overtone singing, and the vocal production of specific sound frequencies are used across traditions to shift consciousness. The icaros of Amazonian shamanism, the galdr of Norse tradition, the vardhlokur of the volva, and the healing songs of indigenous traditions worldwide all employ the voice as a primary instrument of consciousness alteration.

What is remarkable is that despite the diversity of methods, the states accessed are consistently described in similar terms across cultures: a sense of expanded awareness, a dissolution of the boundary between self and world, vivid visual and auditory imagery, the perception of intelligent entities or presences, the experience of traveling through non-ordinary landscapes, and the acquisition of information or healing energy that could not have been obtained through ordinary means.

The Shaman’s Crisis: Wounded Healer

Across cultures, the shaman is typically not self-selected but called — often through a dramatic personal crisis that may include severe illness, psychological breakdown, near-death experience, or a period of suffering so intense that it shatters the ordinary personality and opens the individual to the spirit world.

In Siberia, this is the shamanic illness — a period of physical and psychological torment that can only be resolved by accepting the shamanic calling. In Southern Africa, it is ukuthwasa — the calling by ancestors that manifests as mysterious illness, vivid dreams, and social disruption. In many North American traditions, the potential healer is recognized early through unusual dreams, visions, or behaviors that set them apart from their peers. In Amazonian tradition, the apprentice curandero must undergo years of physical deprivation and isolation that strip away the ordinary self.

The Greek term for this pattern is wounded healer — the archetype of the one who heals because they themselves have been wounded. The shaman’s authority derives not from academic credentials or institutional appointment but from direct personal experience of suffering, transformation, and renewal. They can guide others through the dark territory of illness, crisis, and spiritual emergency because they have traveled that territory themselves and survived.

This pattern also serves a sociological function: it ensures that shamanic practitioners are not power-seekers or ego-driven individuals but people who have been humbled, broken open, and reconstituted by forces beyond their personal control. The calling is often resisted — the future shaman may spend years trying to avoid their destiny before finally accepting that resistance only increases their suffering.

Initiatory Death and Rebirth

Closely related to the shaman’s crisis is the universal motif of initiatory death and rebirth — the experience of being symbolically (and sometimes physically) destroyed, taken apart, reduced to bones or essential elements, and then reassembled as a new being with new capacities.

In Siberian tradition, the initiatory vision involves dismemberment — spirits tear the flesh from the bones, examine and replace the organs, and reassemble the skeleton with new components that grant healing powers. In Aboriginal Australian tradition, the Rainbow Serpent swallows the initiate and later regurgitates them, transformed. In Norse tradition, Odin hangs on Yggdrasil for nine days, pierced by his own spear, dying and returning with the knowledge of the runes. In many African traditions, the initiate undergoes ritual death — separation from community, physical ordeals, and experiences of trance that symbolically kill the old self and birth the new.

The consistent message across all these traditions is that genuine spiritual transformation requires the death of who you were. The old self — with its limitations, its fears, its attachment to ordinary reality — must be dissolved before the new self, with its expanded capacities and its relationship to the spirit world, can emerge. This is not metaphor in the ordinary sense; it is understood as a real process that happens at the deepest levels of the practitioner’s being.

Modern psychology has begun to recognize this pattern. The concept of “positive disintegration” — the necessary breakdown of existing psychological structures as a prerequisite for growth into higher levels of organization — maps closely onto the shamanic understanding of initiatory death and rebirth.

Soul Retrieval: Restoring Wholeness

One of the most widespread healing techniques across shamanic traditions is soul retrieval — the practice of locating, recovering, and reintegrating lost parts of the patient’s soul or vital essence.

The underlying concept is remarkably consistent across cultures: traumatic experiences — fright, grief, abuse, shock, violence — can cause parts of the soul to fragment and separate from the whole person. These soul parts may flee to other dimensions, may be stolen by malevolent entities, or may simply dissociate and become unreachable. The result is a person who is alive but not fully present — diminished, depleted, unable to fully engage with life.

In Siberian tradition, the shaman journeys to the Lower World to find and return stolen souls. In Amazonian practice, the curandero uses ayahuasca to perceive and repair the patient’s damaged energetic pattern. In African traditions, the sangoma divines which ancestor or spirit is holding parts of the patient’s vitality and performs the rituals necessary for restoration. In Andean San Pedro ceremonies, one of the three traditional healing purposes is the retrieval of lost soul fragments.

Modern trauma psychology describes a remarkably similar phenomenon under the term dissociation — the splitting off of aspects of experience, memory, and identity in response to overwhelming events. The therapeutic goal of integrating these dissociated parts parallels precisely the shamanic practice of soul retrieval. What shamans have been doing for thousands of years, trauma therapists have recently begun to describe in clinical language — but the fundamental understanding is the same: healing requires the recovery and reintegration of what has been lost.

Extraction: Removing What Does Not Belong

Complementing soul retrieval is the practice of extraction — the removal of spiritual intrusions, foreign energies, or illness-causing entities from the patient’s body or energy field.

In shamanic understanding, illness is not merely a physical malfunction. It often involves the presence of something that does not belong — an energy, an entity, or a spiritual substance that has entered the patient’s field and is causing distortion, pain, or disease. The shaman, through their capacity to see with “spirit eyes,” can perceive these intrusions and remove them through suction, sweeping, pulling, or other techniques.

In Amazonian tradition, the curandero may suck illness-causing darts (virotes) from the patient’s body. In many North American traditions, the medicine person extracts spiritual intrusions through sucking, blowing, or brushing. In African traditions, the sangoma identifies and removes spiritual causes of illness through ritual, prayer, and the application of muti.

Working with Ancestors

Virtually every shamanic tradition places enormous importance on the relationship between the living and the dead. Ancestors are not merely honored memories; they are active spiritual presences who continue to influence, guide, protect, and sometimes challenge their living descendants.

In African traditions, ancestor veneration is the foundation of spiritual life. In Chinese and Japanese traditions, ancestor worship forms a central pillar of religious practice. In Celtic and Norse traditions, the relationship with the dead — particularly at Samhain and through the practice of utiseta — is a primary source of wisdom and power. In Aboriginal Australian tradition, the Dreaming ancestors are the living creative force that sustains all of reality. In Amazonian tradition, the spirits of deceased shamans continue to teach and guide through the plant medicines.

The universal message is clear: the boundary between life and death is not absolute. The dead remain present. They have knowledge and perspective that the living lack. And maintaining proper relationship with them — through prayer, offering, ceremony, and respectful remembrance — is essential for individual and communal well-being.

Spirit Communication and the Invisible World

At the most fundamental level, all shamanic practice rests on a single proposition: that the visible, material world is only a fraction of reality, and that intelligent, purposeful beings exist in dimensions that are normally invisible to ordinary human perception but accessible to those who have been trained, called, or initiated to perceive them.

These beings take different forms in different traditions — animal spirits, ancestor spirits, nature spirits, plant spirits, deities, angels, faeries, elemental forces. But the underlying experience — contact with intelligent non-physical entities who communicate, teach, heal, guide, and occasionally challenge or test the practitioner — is universal.

The shaman is, above all, the specialist in this contact. The shaman is the one who can see what others cannot, who can travel where others cannot go, and who can bring back from the invisible world the knowledge, healing, and guidance that the community needs. This is the shaman’s essential function, and it remains constant across all the tremendous variety of cultural expression.

What the Universal Pattern Suggests

The consistency of shamanic patterns across isolated cultures suggests several possibilities:

Shamanism may reflect the architecture of consciousness itself. The three-worlds model, the central axis, the techniques for shifting states of awareness — these may be not cultural inventions but discoveries about the actual structure of human consciousness and its relationship to dimensions of reality that transcend ordinary perception.

Humans may possess an innate capacity for shamanic experience. Just as we are born with the capacity for language, for music, for mathematical reasoning, we may also be born with the capacity for visionary experience, spirit communication, and the kind of consciousness that shamans cultivate. Different cultures develop this capacity in different ways, just as different cultures develop different languages — but the underlying ability is universal.

The shamanic worldview may contain genuine knowledge. The proposition that reality has multiple layers, that consciousness is not confined to the physical brain, that intelligent non-physical beings exist, and that healing can occur through working with energies and entities beyond ordinary perception — these are not claims that modern materialist science can easily accommodate. But neither has materialist science been able to explain the consistent, cross-cultural efficacy of shamanic healing, the verified accuracy of shamanic divination, or the remarkable similarity of visionary experiences across unconnected cultures.

The Thread That Runs Through All

What ultimately connects all shamanic traditions is not a shared theology, a common set of rituals, or a uniform cosmology. It is something simpler and more fundamental: the recognition that human beings are not isolated biological machines living in a dead, material universe. We are conscious beings embedded in a living cosmos, surrounded by intelligences and energies that our ordinary perceptions are too narrow to detect, but that become accessible when we open the doors of perception through the time-tested methods that our ancestors developed and preserved across thousands of generations.

The shaman’s role — in every culture, in every age — is to be the one who opens those doors. To see what others cannot see. To travel where others cannot go. To bring back what the community needs: healing, knowledge, connection to the invisible sources of meaning and power that sustain human life.

In a modern world increasingly disconnected from nature, from community, from the inner life of the soul, and from the invisible dimensions of existence, the shamanic perspective offers not a nostalgic retreat into the past but a radical invitation: to remember what we already know in the deepest chambers of our being — that we are not alone, that the universe is alive, and that the capacity to perceive this aliveness is our birthright.