Shamanic initiation is the threshold experience that turns a student of shamanism into a practitioner: a symbolic death and rebirth in which the old identity is taken apart and a new one — able to work with the spirit world — is assembled in its place. It can arrive as a crisis, a vision, or a formal ceremony, but the pattern underneath is remarkably consistent across cultures. A new archaeological study from southern Siberia has just given us a striking picture of how old that pattern really is.
What a New Siberian Rock Art Study Reveals
In 2026, archaeologist Andrzej Rozwadowski published research in the journal Time and Mind showing that carvings of shamans in southern Siberia were deliberately placed inside cracks in the rock — as if the figures were disappearing into the mountain itself. At two sites, Ilinskaia Pisanitsa and Oglakhty, a shaman holding a drum was carved directly into a crevice, and the ethnography of the local Khakas people suggests why: their initiation stories describe novice shamans being taken into the heart of a mountain, taken apart by the spirits, and sent back out changed.
I love this finding because it confirms something practitioners feel intuitively: the rock face was not a wall, it was a door. The crack in the stone marked the exact place where the visible world and the spirit world touch — and the initiate was shown walking through it. If you know the three worlds of the shamanic cosmos, this is the Lower World journey, carved in stone centuries before anyone wrote a book about it.
What Happens During a Shamanic Initiation?
Across traditions, shamanic initiation follows five recognizable stages: the call, the descent, the dismemberment, the return, and the integration. Not every initiation contains all five, and they rarely feel tidy while they are happening — but the arc is old and reliable.
| Stage | What it looks like | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| The call | Recurring dreams, a life crisis, an illness, an unshakeable pull toward spirit work | Honesty: stop explaining it away |
| The descent | A journey into darkness — literal (the mountain, the cave) or biographical (loss, burnout) | Willingness to go in rather than around |
| The dismemberment | The symbolic death: old roles, defenses and self-images are taken apart | Surrender — this part cannot be managed |
| The return | Coming back with something you did not have before: a power animal, a song, a capacity | Receiving without inflating |
| The integration | Months or years of grounding the experience into ethical, everyday practice | Patience and community |
Mircea Eliade documented this death-and-rebirth pattern across Siberia, Central Asia and the Americas in his classic Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy — the dismemberment vision, in which the spirits take the initiate apart bone by bone and reassemble them, appears on nearly every continent. The Siberian carvings now suggest people were marking these experiences in the landscape itself.
Do You Need an Initiation to Practice Shamanism?
You do not need a dramatic initiation crisis to begin practicing — but you do need a threshold, and pretending otherwise is where a lot of modern shamanism goes shallow. A weekend workshop can teach you to journey; it cannot make the journey matter. What marks real initiation is not suffering for its own sake, it is that something genuinely ends. If nothing in you has died — an identity, a certainty, a way of staying safe — you have had an experience, not an initiation.
That said, the spirits are not cruel gatekeepers. Many practitioners are initiated gradually, through years of practice, rather than in one shattering event. If you are wondering whether this path is open to you at all, I have written an honest answer to whether anyone can learn shamanism.
How Initiation Works in Modern Training
In the trainings I lead, I do not stage initiations — I prepare people for the ones that arrive on their own. My own crossing did not happen in a ceremony; it happened in the months around one, when a version of myself I had spent years maintaining simply stopped being available. The ceremony gave it a shape and witnesses. That is, in my experience, what good training does: it builds the container — steady journeying skills, a relationship with your helping spirits, people who will recognize what is happening to you — so that when the mountain opens, you can walk in without being destroyed by it.
This is exactly how my Elements of Shamanism training is built: element by element, over time, with the descent held inside a community rather than faced alone. The Siberian novices were sent into the mountain by their tradition, not despite it — initiation was never meant to be a solo project.
FAQ: Shamanic Initiation
How long does a shamanic initiation take?
The threshold moment can be brief — a single vision, ceremony or crisis — but the full initiation, including integration, typically unfolds over one to several years. Most traditions treat the years of grounding afterwards as part of the initiation itself, not as an epilogue.
What is a shamanic initiation sickness?
Initiation sickness is a period of physical or psychological crisis that, in many traditions, signals a person is being called to shamanic work. In Siberian cultures it was considered dangerous to refuse the call. Today, any such crisis should also be taken seriously medically — shamanic framing complements professional care, it never replaces it.
Can you initiate yourself into shamanism?
You can begin practicing alone, and the spirits can absolutely initiate someone directly — tradition is full of such stories. What you cannot give yourself is witnessing and accountability, which is why even directly-initiated shamans historically apprenticed with elders afterwards. Solo start, accompanied path.
What is the difference between initiation and training?
Training builds skills: journeying, drumming, ceremony, ethics. Initiation changes who is holding the skills. Training is scheduled; initiation happens when it happens. Good training prepares the container for initiation but never guarantees or manufactures it.
Did ancient shamans really carve initiations into rock?
A 2026 study in Time and Mind argues yes: at two southern Siberian sites, shamans with drums were carved directly into rock crevices, matching Khakas accounts of initiates journeying into the interior of a mountain. It is the first time this symbolic pattern has been identified in Siberian rock art.
