Shamanic offerings are one of the most ancient, most universal, and most misunderstood practices in Earth-based spirituality — yet in modern Western practice they're often reduced to a vague sense of "leaving something nice outside." This complete guide covers the three types of offerings every practitioner should know (gratitude, votive, and feasting), when to make them, what to offer, and a simple practice you can begin today.
Beltane is one of the most alive and potent holy days in the Celtic Wheel of the Year — a fire festival devoted to fertility, abundance, and the sacred creative power of life in full bloom. In Shamanic practice, Beltane is a time to align with the Earth's most generative frequencies and activate what is ready to bloom within you. Here's what Beltane is, why it holds such potent magic, and how I work with it in ceremony.
Ethical Shamanic practice is built on relationship, not technique. Over years of practice and teaching, I've distilled the qualities that make this relationship healthy into three core principles: Context, Consent, and Collaboration. These aren't rules imposed from outside — they are the natural expression of genuine, respectful relationship with the living world.
Land and nature spirits are among the most important — and most overlooked — allies in Shamanic practice. In animistic traditions worldwide, every tree, stone, watershed and animal carries both a physical and an etheric presence. Here's what land and nature spirits actually are, why these relationships matter, and how to begin building them where you live right now.
Before there were temples, before there were texts, before there were organized religions, there was animism: the belief that everything is alive. It is the original worldview of human beings everywhere on Earth, and it is the foundation upon which all Shamanic practice stands. Here's what animism actually is, where it comes from, and why it matters more now than ever.
Why do I practice Shamanism?
(And why you may want to, if you are called to it.)
I don’t practice Shamanism for my clients. I practice it first and foremost for Life.
I practice Shamanism because I love Life. By that I don’t only mean my life specifically, I mean capital-L Life itself. I love that Life exists.
I love that consciousness has manifested in the incarnate. I love that so many different bioforms have evolved over millennia to cooperate and live in concert with each other. I love that plants eat sunlight and trees sing to each other through the mycelial network. I love that elephant matriarchs remember for decades where to find water and pass this knowledge down to their daughters and granddaughters. I love the song of the red-winged blackbird. I love that hawthorn thorns eventually grow into branches, and what starts out as sharp and protective evolves into a flowering wand that bears abundant fruit.
I love that Life exists, and I am so grateful that I get to be a part of it.
I practice Shamanism to be awake in my life, to celebrate Life and to collaborate with this grand symphony of aliveness all around me every day.
I practice Shamanism as a student and steward of Life. I study the cycles. I study the darkness, hibernation and death. I study decay, rotting logs, and bones left after a cougar kill and scavenging coyotes. I study the explosion of budding flowers, eagles flirting, squirrels fortifying their nests. I study the rise and fall of the river. I study the movement of the stars and the planets, and the pattern of wheeling vultures.
I study Life so that I may collaborate with it, move in alignment with the flow of creation and be a harmonious contribution to something so, so much bigger than me: Spirit. The Great Unknowable. Thou. Life.
By studying Life, we learn its flow and rhythm. We learn what expands and supports and generates Life, and what contracts or restricts it. We learn to feel and collaborate with this flow of Life in our bodies, our health, our relationships, our daily experience. Healing and growth is the study and practice of Life-generating worldview and behaviors, and of course that offers a huge personal benefit to us.
But that’s only a tiny fraction of the whole. And the longer I practice Shamanism (now over 20 years), the more I feel absolutely certain that it’s not about us and our personal experience at all.
Something beautiful comes from de-centering the self. This inherently goes against all of the conditioning and foundation of modern, western culture (especially in the US) which is based on individualism and, to be brutally honest, this weird fetishization of selfishness. My rights. Look out for #1. Selfies. If it’s not on social media, it didn’t happen. Endless navel-gazing and pathologizing and self-diagnosing and therapizing and making it all about me, me, me.
How lonely. How small. How inherently blind.
But what happens when we de-center ourselves? What happens when we truly embrace that if I am sovereign, it means that all beings are sovereign? What happens when we remember that if I am a unique and special expression of consciousness, it means that all beings are unique and special expressions of consciousness? What happens when we believe that if I am devoted to cultivating life in myself, it means I am devoted to cultivating life for all beings? What happens when we make our Earthwalk into a prayer of gratitude and generosity to Life?
How connected we become. How expansive. How loving.
De-centering the Self helps us remember that consciousness is living itself through us. Life is living through us, just as it is living through all things. It helps us to take responsibility for what we are personally accountable for and to surrender burdens that do not belong to us. It helps us to be generous. It helps us to remember that we belong. You belong to Life, and Life loves you.
I practice Shamanism because I love Life, and I love that I get to be a part of Life, but even more than that, I want Life to thrive. I want so deeply with every part of my being to devote every day to honoring and advocating for the sovereignty of all beings. I am so excited to live in this world and cultivate relationships with forms of Life–people, plants, animals, mountains, elements–so that I can know Spirit in as many ways as possible. I practice Shamanism because I know truly that by devoting myself to Life, and collaborating with Life, and studying Life, it benefits me, and everyone around me, and all beings on Earth, and the Earth herself.
I practice Shamanism because it is the best way I know how to love myself, and you, and Thou, Life.
I cannot give you your why. I cannot make you fall in love with Life. I cannot give you the key that will make you excited to wake up every day and participate in this gorgeous symphony. That is for you to discover, if you haven’t already.
But I can help you learn how to listen. I can teach you Shamanic practices. I can guide you through Shamanic journeys, mediumship cultivation and help you connect with the spirits. I can give you the best tools that I know of to study Life, to awaken to your animistic consciousness and mediumistic gifts, to honor the spirits, to connect with something bigger than yourself.
Are you called to Shamanism?
Have you experienced a Shamanic awakening, but aren’t sure where or how to begin developing your practice?
Do you already have a Shamanic practice but are looking for deeper support, personal mentorship or healing work?
