The Nepalese Shamanic Path: Practices for Negotiating the Spirit World - Softcover

Rysdyk, Evelyn C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1620557940 ISBN 13: 9781620557945

Publisher: Destiny Books, 2019

Synopsis

An experiential guide to the shamanic spiritual practices of the Himalayas shared by a 27th-generation Nepalese shaman

• Presents step-by-step, illustrated instructions for authentic Himalayan shamanic practices, including physical and spiritual healing, shamanic journeys, and ceremonies

• Includes exercises to meet the ancestors in your shamanic lineage, techniques to use your voice as a shamanic tool, and practices for negotiating the spirit world safely

• Details shamanic chants and rituals, how to create an altar, and the sacred objects of the shaman, along with exercises and techniques for using them properly

There are few areas of our world where shamanic traditions have been preserved in their original context and form. Nepal is one of these rare and special places. In the shadow of the Himalayas Nepalese shamans, known as dhamis or jhankris, are still consulted for healing and divination, as well as for providing comfort and maintaining harmony. Following the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015, shamanic teacher Evelyn Rysdyk and 27th-generation dhami Bhola Nath Banstola decided it was time to safeguard Nepalese shamanic knowledge for future generations by recording the practices in a book.

With this comprehensive, experiential guide to the ancient spiritual traditions of Nepal, Rysdyk and Banstola present step-by-step instructions for authentic Himalayan shamanic practices, including techniques for physical and spiritual healing, shamanic journeys, and advanced ceremonies, such as the Kalchakra Katne, a shamanic ritual for removing toxic energies from an individual. They include exercises to help you meet the ancestors in your shamanic lineage, techniques to use your voice as a shamanic tool, and practices for negotiating the spirit world safely. They detail shamanic chants and rituals, how to create an altar, and how to use the sacred objects of the dhami/jhankri, including the mala, the magic mirror, the drum, and the Khurpa, the shaman’s magic dagger. Rysdyk and Banstola also examine the importance of Nepalese cosmology in shamanic ritual and spiritual deities such as Hanuman, Garuda, and the Nagas.

Illustrated with photos and Rysdyk’s artwork, the book also explores the history of Nepal, its culture and myths, and the different ways Nepalese shamans serve their communities. Written specifically to share the traditional Himalayan shamanic method with the Western world, this guide not only preserves these ancient teachings but also reveals how they are still relevant in the modern world.

About this title

About the Author

Evelyn C. Rysdyk is an internationally recognized shamanic healer, teacher, speaker, and author of several books, including The Norse Shaman and A Spirit Walker’s Guide to Shamanic Tools. Teaching advanced experiential shamanism through her organization, Spirit Passages, she finds creative inspiration and renewal on the coast of Maine. Bhola Nath Banstola is a 27th-generation Nepalese shaman, or jhankri. With his wife, he teaches traditional Himalayan shamanic practices in Europe and North America and leads groups on shamanic tours of Nepal. He divides his time between Italy and Nepal.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Part 1: Awakening

Chapter 1: Everything Has a Beginning

For the Nepalese shamanic initiate, the calling to the path (deuta-aunu) can happen in one of four ways. The first method is the calling of blood, that is the ancestral call that comes from one’s place in a shamanic family. In this case, an initiate may be taught from childhood by another family dhami/jhankri or develop shamanic gifts later in life by becoming possessed by a shamanic ancestor or an ancestral shaman’s helping spirits.

The second calling is through a sudden and unexplained spiritual illness that overcomes the person receiving the call. This can occur anytime from childhood forward. The strange illness doesn’t respond to treatment and sometimes the initiates enter a kind of spiritual battleground in which they must choose to follow the path or succumb to their malady.

A third path of becoming a shaman, and often the most common way to the path for us in our Western culture, is by following dreams and or visions that lead a prospective candidate to seek a human teacher.

The fourth way of receiving the call is to be kidnapped by the primordial shaman, Banjhankri. (In the mountain regions of Nepal, Banjhankri is also known as Banaskhandi, “he who dwells in the plant kingdom.”) It is from this being that the term jhankri--one of the most common designations for a shaman--is derived. (The Nepali shamanic worldview is so complex that there are myriad designations for a person we would simply refer to as a “shaman.”) This male being dwells in a wilderness cave with his fierce spouse, Banjhankrini. These characters are spiritual beings who are also said to have a partly human/ partly animal physical aspect. The power of having a tripartite aspect of spiritual/divine, animal, and human is known as Tri-Khandi in Nepali. This means that which lives in and beyond the three realms of existence.

Banjhankri is typically described as a dwarf three to nearly five feet tall. His size is not his most unusual aspect, however. Except for his face and palms, he is completely covered with golden or reddish hair, which grows upward rather than downward over his body. In the fashion of Shiva and some Hindu sadhus, Banjhankri’s hair is coiled on top of his head so that it rises into a topknot. His feet are oriented backwards on his legs so that his footprints appear to be headed in the opposite direction from his progress through the forest. He is sometimes depicted with a pail of fresh milk that indicates his clarity and purity as a sacred teacher or guru for the shaman.

In counterpoint to Banjhankri’s light aspect, his wife/consort is an expression of wildness and ferocity. An encounter with the formidable, Banjhankrini is one fraught with danger. Where her husband is small, she is over twelve feet tall. She appears to be part bear, part giant ape, and part human. She is covered in a pelt of long, thick black hair and has long teeth and sharp claws. Banjhankrini also brandishes knives for her work. One is the Nepalese khukuri, a kind of short machete with an inward curing blade made famous by the fierce Gurkha warriors of Nepal. The others are two khurungi. These are small, sharp hand-sickles typically wielded by female deities. These are spiritual versions of the hasiya or small, sharp hand-sickles typically used by women for cutting grass. She also carries iron blacksmith’s tongs for handling hot cooking vessels or coals from the hearth and wears a bamboo gathering basket on her back. As with other spirits, the same figure seen and perceived by one person can be perceived and experienced differently by another.

This fantastic couple operates in unison to teach the initiate in that they represent the two faces of the power found in the natural and spiritual realms. They represent the cosmic dualities of order and chaos, creation and destruction, lawful and taboo, domestic and wild. Without Banjhankrini’s dark aspect, Banjhankri’s light could not be revealed. And without his patient and structured teaching the forces of dismemberment or dissolution would prevail.

The shaman must learn how to tread the line that holds these opposing energies in harmony. When contained and balanced by a skillful and virtuous practitioner, spiritual energies may be used to heal and create harmony. On the other hand, if a shaman is not balanced within herself or himself and power is mishandled, it may sow discord, create strife or illness, and consume the shaman’s mind and/or body. Indeed, any kind of power can be harmful when it is wielded without clarity and integrity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Destiny Books
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1620557940
• ISBN 13: 9781620557945
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360