It is necessary at this point, to make a difference between the magical and religious lines of thoughts. Wicca, paganism or the Anthroposophical directions are of religious or mystical nature even if they contain some magic elements. Reiki and other energetic ways show, after a close analyses of their techniques, a part of shamanic work - the controlling of energies, the contacting of the non-ordinary reality or the divination.
The problem here is, that these ways often come with a strong dogma, which makes a free and unprejudiced approach to other lines of thought very hard. A magical path is only as good as the human who walks it.
The separation between shamanism and magic is artificial. It happened subconsciously at the time, the term shamanism was introduced by Harner and Castaneda and mutated to a fashionable trend. That this separation is in the best of cases a suppression of obvious facts should be clear to anyone, who is seriously studying the shamanistic phenomenon in this world, with the help of the accessible ethnological literature or living shamans.
Within the general consciousness and knowledge magic still has an aura of the forbidden and black magic. This may be caused partly by the almost natural restraint of groups that work with magic to come out in public (it is impossible to make a difference here whether they restrain themselves because of the totally wrong picture that is existing about magic, or whether it is the other way around).
There have been a lot of good attempts the last decades, to make the pragmatic magic more accessible to public, but it seems, that this attempts ended with only little partial successes. There are excellent publications about the practical magic and at the end of this article I will add a small list of literature, which will contain a few very interesting magical publications.
The current terminology differentiates the modern shaman and the hermetic magician as follows: the shaman uses his abilities to make his knowledge of the invisible reality accessible to his society, while the magicians aim is to find his own divine nature, to develop it, to realize it and to live it.
Another, not to be ignored area is, to make everyday life easier with magical means - the so called lower or primitive magic (which also has the worst reputation, even in some magic circles). The most important part of the high magic is the illumination, the realization of the god within us.
Magicians are, if they are members of a magic lodge, always initiated by the lodge. Before the initiation stands a apprenticeship which length differs, depending on the paradigm the lodge stands for. The magical systems of theories give us different models of explanation and matrixes of the non-ordinary reality. A famous example of such a matrix is the tree of life of the Cabala. It is possible, to develop your magical character without any personal contact to a experienced magician, but this is a very hard way and even with the accessible literature about magical knowledge, it still bears incalculable risks. However, if if one attends a basic seminar about shamanistic work and learns the fundamental shamanic techniques, the danger can be neglected for the time being. It stays insignificant, as long as the shamanic student moves within the familiar frame.
The power animal and the spirit-teacher are very strong protection authorities and are more than enough within the norm. Both authorities are important contacts for spiritual questions or to help with the everyday problems. Since the non-ordinary reality is within itself the best source for own rituals, someone who does shamanic work will hardly get the idea to do a magical ritual, that he didn’t develop himself. Usually shamanic rituals, which have been received by the spirits have a magical nature, which shows the absurdity of the opinions, mentioned at the beginning.
The non-ordinary reality is initiating the shaman, or not. In our culture especially this important part of shamanism is not consciously embodied anymore, which leads to the fact that people, who are in an initiatory crisis often are not able to realize it or to deal with it. This is not the same anywhere and for everyone. In the traditional cultures there are years of studying, with focus on the teaching of the mythological matrix, which is enabling the shaman to find his orientation in the no ordinary reality and also enables him to give a correct interpretation of the information he is getting from there. Further subjects are in the magical area, for example, to throw back magic, how to recognize magic, the different classification of the spirits, Rituals as well as the usage of shamanic attributes like healing herbs ....
Some cultures however refrain in the whole from education over years and expect from the Shaman after his calling, that he gets the required information himself from the non-ordinary reality, without any dogmatic crutches (it seems that in such cultures the entities are much more charged up with vital force as in such cultures, which reinforce the education through an older Shaman). The Shaman is always also a magician and a sorcerer. For a lot of small problems it is enough to use magical knowledge, the so-called lower- or success magic. The high magic is only seemingly not present within shamanism. The high magic becomes manifest within shamanism in the course of years of shamanistic practice, but it not to the declared aim of the Shaman
The term 'Shaman' should be substituted by the term 'Zauberer' (in german speaking countries), because the term 'Zauberer' has its roots in the German language, in contrary to the term 'Shaman'. The occupation with magical knowledge gives the interested person a way to a better understanding of the inner system of a shamanic ritual. A well balanced proportion between the teachings of the spirits and the knowledge of traditional magic, free of any dogmatic ballast, opens new horizons to the shamanic working person ... (more ...)