Shamanism In The New Millennium

by Cate Montana

Shamanism in the New Millennium is an exploration of shamanism through the stories of sixteen individuals revealing how a person is called by Spirit (often reluctantly) to become a shaman/healer, what that journey looks like from multiple perspectives and traditions, what becoming a shaman/healer entails, and how that journey is transforming in the face of rapid cultural changes, loss of traditions, loss of ecosystems, and the loss of interest in "the old ways."

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2018

About the author

Raised on a cattle and thoroughbred horse farm in Virginia outside Washington D.C., I followed society’s happiness formula for the first 30 years, attending prep schools and graduating from university with a bachelor’s degree in English. Instead of pursuing my original career plans as a newspaper journalist, I fell into television (hint: met a guy), and ended up building a highly successful career as a freelance television editor with the global networks including ABC, NBC, CNN, and BBC.
Unfortunately both career success and a socially equitable marriage to Mr. Right failed to lead to happiness or answers to life's perennial questions. At age 30 I took the only other road available in life: within.
While freelancing around the globe from Atlanta, I explored everything from Christian mysticism to Zen Buddhism, yoga to Chi Gung, quantum physics to hands-on healing. Fascinated by the mind and human potential, in 1984 I went back to school, graduating with a Master of Humanistic Psychology Degree from the University of West Georgia in Carrollton.
Soon after graduation and I left television and husband #2 (agh!) to live in the middle of nowhere in a one-room 100-year-old stone cabin in the North Georgia mountains near Gainesville. With no worldly distractions, I spent three years meditating, writing magazine articles nobody wanted to buy, playing the harp and writing music. I also started work as a feature reporter at The Times, a Gannett newspaper in North Atlanta.
Moving near Olympia, Washington in the Pacific Northwest in 1989, I continued working as a freelance journalist for newspapers such as The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Tacoma News Tribune. In 1999 I got hired as the Northwest editor and bureau chief for the national Native American newspaper, Indian Country Today.
Eventually I moved into marketing in 2004, working with the filmmakers of the international indie hit film What the Bleep Do We Know?!, publishing the film’s online newsletter, The Bleeping Herald, writing articles about consciousness and breakthroughs in quantum physics that were leading scientists to a new understanding of mysticism and a unified cosmos.
In 2007 what can only be called a 3-day enlightenment experience occurred, shattering everything. For the second time I dropped career and all my personal endeavors, leaving the US to travel extensively in Central and South America, studying with ayahuasceros deep in the Amazon in Peru and with shamans in the Andes of Ecuador.
In June 2009 I returned to the United States to work with Hollywood filmmaker Betsy Chasse writing the screenplay Killing Buddha. Although disenchanted with spiritual teachers, at this time I also met my guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev from Coimbatore, India. From Sadhguru I learned ancient yogic kriyas (energy processes), traveling to his ashram in South India to study and participate in a yogic alchemical consecration of a lingam dedicated to the Goddess.
Returning to the states in March 2010, I started writing Unearthing Venus - My Search For the Woman Within. I also co-authored the book The Heart of the Matter: Gifts in Strange Wrapping Paper for Hay House Publishing with Dr. Darren Weissman. I currently live in Washington State and am writing a sequel called Unearthing Shadows.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Montana has edited a collection of autobiographical narratives by 16 shamanic practitioners, illustrating the wide range of experiences leading to shamanic practice in today's world. Ranging from very traditional trainings in the heart of Amazonia to the many ways that we moderns have access to contemporary shamanic instruction, the book illustrates the commonalities and the intense and often terrifying challenges that await those who accept this calling. Most importantly, the book illustrates the hope that contemporary shamanism offers for deep healing and access to transcendent consciousness, perhaps our greatest hope for the healing and restoration of our planet.