How Can You Determine Whether or Not

You Have Had a Shamanic Initiation Trial & Calling?

While a genuine shamanic initiation trial and calling may take many forms, all forms share these characteristics:

~ Sudden physical injury or illness or gradually escalating psychological suffering so profound as to cause the person being to undergo an emotional experience that results in what feels like ego death; that is, the sense that they no longer “are”, in the sense that they experienced themselves prior to the onset of the trial. In fact, the ego has not "died". Rather, it has been realigned within one's psyche. Whereas prior to the trial, one very likely relied upon one's ego perceptions and thoughts to inform one of the nature of reality and how to understand one's role within that reality, now the ego has come under the guidance of the sacred feminine, thus assuming its proper role within the psyche.

~ The physical and emotional experiences of the trial are  accompanied or followed by visionary states, dreams and synchronicities of a specifically shamanic nature. (One may dream regularly of one or more animal spirits, for example, in settings that are so "charged" they can only be described as numinous.) During such events shamanic teachings are given to the called person by the animal spirits and other shamanic archetypes who are to become her primary shamanic guides;

~ If the initial trial is survived, a kind of psychological rebirth occurs that allows one to see and experience the interconnectedness of all things; and one develops a growing awareness of the source of universal love that is to be found even within such trials, and an alignment with it.