Shamanic Time Travel

When you can consult tomorrow or yesterday as easily as today, you have a bigger toolkit for solving problems!

Shamanic practitioners have been journeying back in time long before modern fiction made it cool.

Imagine time as a river of consciousness flowing steadily, carrying us from past to future. Now picture a shaman stepping out of that river, able to move at will upstream to the past and downstream to the future. 

Many shamanic cultures understand that time is flexible. Practitioners journey in a trance like state to speak with ancient ancestors or venture into realms where future generations dwell. Linear time does not influence these shamanic journeys. What counts is the wisdom or healing that is sort, regardless of whether it comes from yesterday or tomorrow.

In the spirit world, time isn’t rigid – it might stretch, loop, or stand still while we do our work. Think of it like pausing a video game while the hero gathers special items – except the “game” is reality. Or sort of - we call it non-ordinary reality.

Different Shamanic traditions share similar cosmologies. They all describe three primary realms: often called the Upper Realm, Middle Realm, and Lower Realm. These are spiritual frequency pockets outside of time and space where we can journey to -  in trance.

Each realm has its own characteristics, feelings, inhabitants, and relationship with time:

The Upper World: is often described as a celestial, ethereal realm - sometimes experienced as made of light - where benevolent spirits, ancestors, angels, and enlightened beings are found. Shamanic practitioners journey to this realm seeking guidance, insight, and big-picture wisdom.

Time here can be experienced as dreamy and expansive. It’s not unusual for a practitioner to converse with an ancestor from centuries ago or glean inspiration meant for future generations. The Upper World is sort of like an ancient library and centre for cosmic prophecy.  Both past and future knowledge reside here.

The Middle World: corresponds to our everyday earthly reality. It’s basically our world, but seen with spiritual sight. What is generally hidden to normal eyes is now accessible to a practitioner. We can contact spirits of nature, the collective consciousness of species.  We can hear the thoughts of ancient archetypes like those of rivers, forests, mountains and their guardian spirits.

Tied to our physical world, time in the Middle World flows normally (one minute of journey time roughly equals one minute of real time). However, by shifting into an altered consciousness, a practitioner can see the present with X-ray vision. 

This is useful for finding a lost person, diagnosing illness and finding remedies, or communicating with all kinds of beings, friendly and not-so-friendly.  So training teaches us how to approach with caution and courtesy (much like walking through an unfamiliar neighbourhood at night).

The Lower World: can be experienced as a deep, earthly realm often reached by journeying downward (for example, through a cave or the roots of a tree). It is rich with primal power, nature spirits, and animal guides. It’s a place of ancient wisdom and healing, where we might meet power animals and wise ancestral teachers in animal form.

It's useful to remember that transcendent spirits are shape shifters and will present themselves in the appropriate form for the lesson they wish to convey - or the frequency we need to receive the information they have for us. We do serious healing work – like confronting our shadow self. 

In a soul retrieval, the practitioner can literally go find a lost piece of someone’s soul that fragmented during past trauma, and bring it back for reintegration. To do this, we might have to revisit the moment of trauma in non-ordinary reality: traveling to the past to reclaim the lost portion from the situation that caused the disassociation.

Soul retrieval can be done in any realm as the lost portion is mostly waiting to be reunited with its owner. Soul retrieval is one of the many outcomes of a Soul Cleanse.

All three worlds interconnect like a cosmic web. A giant tree, a pot hole, a cave or other axis mundi are used as common devices for this connection.  For trees the roots tend to be in the Lower World, branches in the Upper, and trunk in the Middle.

Shamans regularly traverse the axis mundi to bring back knowledge from the other worlds.  We are knowledge fetchers across realms: what is learned above or below, from past or future time, can help people here and now.

Shamanic trance is a shift into an altered state of consciousness. Through methods like rhythmic drumming, chanting, dancing, fasting, or ingesting sacred plants, practitioners enter a state often called “the shamanic state of consciousness" - usually 3.5 - 4.5 hz in brain wave cycles. In this state, the normal rules of time and space loosen.

Regular journeyers report that one's perspective of time shifts in non-ordinary reality. We might journey for 15 minutes, yet experience a vivid adventure that felt like hours. Alternatively, we might be “out” for a couple of hours and come back thinking only minutes have passed.

This elasticity of time is part of the mechanism of journeying - the spirit world operates on loose rules of time. Time comes and goes as needed.

Studies of psychedelics show that they can induce profound changes in temporal and spatial perception, including intense time dilation . Under their influence people frequently feel like they’ve gone outside of time or lived a lifetime in a night. This trance “time warp” isn’t limited to entheogen experiences. Deep meditation, breath work, or shamanic journeying can produce the same effect.

Modern shamans use drumming CDs or meditation to enter the shamanic state of consciousness. We visit the same Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds meeting spirit animals and guides. It’s not uncommon for participants to meet helping spirits and receive guiding visions about their life trajectory in a few minutes of journeying. 

Touching the spirit world automatically tunes us to “spirit time,” which doesn’t follow our clocks. Some researchers suggest our brain has special ways of processing time under extreme conditions, but shamans would simply say: of course time is different in the spirit realm.

One of the coolest aspects of transcending time is what you bring back. A shamanic journey isn’t just sight-seeing; it’s usually for a purpose: healing someone, solving a problem, gaining insight, or retrieving a lost soul portion. Accessing past and future knowledge can help in very practical ways.

Think of shamanic practitioners as cosmic detectives or doctors. For example, if a person is ill and it’s believed their soul is fragmented (part of it stuck in a past hurt), a practitioner might go to one of the realms, find that soul piece at the moment it was lost, and bring it back, restoring their vitality.

In psychological terms, this looks like healing past trauma; in shamanic terms, it’s literally time-traveling for a cure. Similarly, a practitioner might journey to meet a wise elder who gives advice for a current community problem. 

Even soul retrieval can have future elements. Some shamans retrieve not only what was lost in the past but also what one might need for the future – like finding a future self who gifts you strength or knowledge to handle what’s ahead.  This is one of the concepts behind my Path of Power Programme. 

Journeying to meet your future self or a future healer of your lineage for guidance is an amazing concept: the idea that the future can send healing to the present. Time, from the shamanic view point, is much more interwoven than our day-to-day mindset enables.

With problem-solving, where logic can’t provide and answer, a shamanic practitioner might perform a divination journey to ask 'what will help our community through this current situation?' In trance, perhaps a spirit from the future shows them a vision of alternative action after a ceremony. The practitioner returns and suggests a course of action based on this otherworldly consultation.

Shamanism is full of fascinating beliefs and practices that play with this concept of time travel. 

• The Drum is a Time Machine: Many Siberian and Central Asian shamans call their drum their “horse.” With it, they ride into the spirit world. A powerful drum rhythm doesn’t just send the shaman into trance; in their mind’s eye, it carries them across the cosmos. Some shamans even have songs said to slow or speed up time; these can also be accompanied by drum beats to stretch a night-long ritual into what feels like days of exploration.
• Visiting Future Generations: In certain Native American vision quests, seekers pray for visions of the future. There are stories of shamans seeing the “roads of iron” (railways) or “spider’s web over the earth” (the internet?) long before they existed. Whether you take it literally or as symbolic prophecy, it shows how shamanic vision can leap ahead in time and bring back guidance.
• Between Lives and Beyond: Tibetan shamans and monks talk of journeying in the bardo, the in-between state after death and before rebirth. Essentially, they explore future lives and the cycle of reincarnation as if strolling through different rooms in a house. It’s a kind of spiritual time travel where one’s next life is just another destination. This practice aims to help souls attain a better rebirth – or even exit the cycle entirely.

Shamanic practice invites us all to loosen our grip on the clock and consider a more magickal view of time. For a new spiritual aspirant, this can be thrilling – imagine you can explore with the right tools (drum beats, chants, meditation) what each of the three worlds can offer your appreciation of realty.

The Upper World shines with eternal wisdom, the Middle World hums with the present moment, and the Lower World holds echoes of the ancient past and the raw power to reshape the future. Practitioners are travellers between these worlds, bringing back gifts for their community and family of healing, knowledge, or hope.

“We are all time travellers, moving at the speed of one second per second. Some just know how to take the scenic route.”

Enjoy the journey – past, present, and future...  Experience the time shifting phenomenon of Shamanic Journeying with my Spirit Communication Workshop.