The moment you start learning shamanism, you meet the argument. There are shamans, shamanic practitioners, shamanistic healers, medicine people, shaman apprentices — and, somewhere on a shelf, shamanic shampoo. The word has been stretched so far it sometimes seems to mean nothing at all. And underneath the noise sits a real and uncomfortable question that anyone serious about this path eventually has to face: who actually has the right to call themselves a shaman? I have been dragged through this debate more than once, and I want to answer it honestly rather than defensively — including the parts that do not flatter people like me.
Where the Word Shaman Actually Comes From
The word itself is not vague, even if its use has become so. “Shaman” comes from šamán, a term from the Evenki, a Tungusic people of Siberia. It named a very specific role inside a specific culture: a person who enters trance to work with spirits on behalf of their community. Everything else — every Western workshop, every book, every “shamanic” this-or-that — borrowed that word from somewhere it did not originate. Keeping that in mind is the beginning of any honest answer. We are all using a loanword, and a loanword carries obligations to the people it was borrowed from.
The Strict View, Taken Seriously
There is a position, held sincerely by many, that the title belongs only to those born and initiated within an unbroken lineage — and, on the strictest reading, only to certain Siberian, Mongolian, or Nepalese traditions. On this view, even the practitioners most Westerners would call “shamans” reject the term for themselves: many Native nations, including the Lakota, use “medicine people,” not “shaman,” and consider the imported word inaccurate and intrusive. A European who picks up the title, from this angle, is at best confused and at worst appropriating something that was never offered.
I do not think this view should be waved away, and I want to represent it as its defenders would. It is protecting something real. Cultures that have had their spiritual practices caricatured, commercialised, and sold back to them have every reason to guard the words that still belong to them. When someone slaps “shaman” on a brand of shampoo, that instinct to protect is not gatekeeping for its own sake. It is a response to genuine harm.
The Other View: The Work, Not the Label
And yet. I was not born into a lineage. I do go into trance, deliberately, and I do work with spirit helpers — and they help and heal the people who come to me. They even bring me the people they want to work with. So what am I? For years that question sat heavy in me, precisely because I am “just a Westerner.” What I have come to believe is this: the spirits I work with do not seem to care about the label. They care about the heart behind the work, and about whether people are actually helped. A shaman who helps no one and a medicine person who helps no one are, in the end, both just titles. So are the ones who genuinely help.
Both of these things are true at once, and I have stopped trying to collapse them into a single tidy answer. The word carries a real cultural debt. And the work of entering trance to help people is older and wider than any single tradition’s ownership of one term for it. Holding both is more honest than choosing the comfortable one.
Who Can Call Themselves a Shaman — in Practice
Here is where I have landed after years of sitting with it. The title is earned by conduct, not claimed by vocabulary — and there are ways to hold it with integrity:
- Name what you actually are. If you were trained in a cross-cultural, Western method, “shamanic practitioner” is more honest than “shaman.” It says: I do this work, and I did not inherit a lineage that would let me claim more.
- Do not wear another people’s role. Learn broadly, but do not take the specific ceremonies, songs, or titles of a living culture as if they were yours — especially not the closed ones offered only to initiates.
- Let the results speak. The only defensible claim to this work is that people leave your care more whole than they arrived. Everything else is marketing.
- Never trade on fear. Anyone who uses spiritual language to frighten people into paying them has already disqualified themselves, whatever they call it.
What I know about myself is simple: I am here to help people heal old wounds and to carry forward what ancient knowledge I can, respectfully. I do that because my spirits asked me to. Whether that makes me a shaman, a shamanic practitioner, a broken Celt, or none of the above, I will leave to the reader — and to the spirits, who, in my experience, are far more interested in the heart than in the noun.
Building Bridges Instead of Walls
The part that troubles me most about these debates is how quickly a person asking for help gets forgotten while everyone corrects the label. Someone arrives in pain, and within minutes the conversation is about terminology rather than the person. I do not want to add to that. There is far more need for cooperation than for policing. I learn continually from traditions older than mine, and I also have things to teach. The New Age is not automatically something to sneer at; it is also an opening — a chance to build something respectful rather than something extractive. The question is not only who is allowed to use the word, but whether we are creating more walls with our labels than we are dismantling.
Who Can Call Themselves a Shaman: Common Questions
Where does the word “shaman” come from?
From šamán, a word of the Evenki people of Siberia, describing someone who enters trance to work with spirits for their community. It was later applied by outsiders to many unrelated traditions, which is part of why its use is now so contested.
Can a Westerner be a shaman?
It depends who you ask, and both answers deserve respect. Strict traditions say no — the role belongs to specific lineages. Others hold that the work of trance and spirit-helping is universal, even if the borrowed word is not. Many Western practitioners resolve this by calling themselves “shamanic practitioners” and being transparent about their training.
Is calling yourself a shaman cultural appropriation?
It can be, if you claim a specific living culture’s role, ceremonies, or authority without initiation or invitation. It is far less fraught to name your actual method, credit the traditions you learned from, and avoid presenting borrowed practices as ownerless or generic.
What is the difference between a shaman and a shamanic practitioner?
“Shaman” traditionally implies a role held within a culture and its lineage. “Shamanic practitioner” usually describes someone trained in cross-cultural or core-shamanic methods who works with journeying and spirits without claiming that inherited cultural status. The second term is generally the more honest one for most Western teachers.
If you are still finding your footing with all of this, it helps to go back to the ground of the practice: what shamanism actually is, how many living traditions the word has been stretched across, and what genuinely happens in a shamanic journey. Start with the work. The label can wait.
