7 minutes read time.
I like to imagine the spiritual lives of humans in prehistory. What were their belief systems? How did they conceptualize the soul? What did their animistic practices entail?
Using the burial site of the Bad Dürrenberg shaman as a doorway, let’s explore the animistic worldview, spirit work, magical tools, and trance practices that continue to shape ecstatic witchcraft today.
Contents
- The Bad Dürrenberg Burial
- Marked for Spirit Work
- Understanding the Animistic Worldview
- The Human Being as a Crossroads for Spirit
- Animistic Magic and Spiritual Tools
- Shapeshifting & Zoomorphic Magic
- What Ecstatic Witches Can Learn from the Bad Dürrenberg Burial
- References & Sources
The Bad Dürrenberg Burial
Found surrounded by plant remnants and animal parts, a 9,000-year-old burial whispers of the animistic magic of earlier humans.
Anthropologists call her a shaman as her prehistoric burial may suggest a special relationship with plants and animals, though we can only speculate about her exact role within her community.
She was found with animal parts and pollen from pine, birch, lady’s mantle, meadowsweet, hops, and other plants with medicinal properties (2). Along with the plant pollens, the woman was buried with aurochs teeth, a roebuck antler headdress, and other animal bones and stone tools (3).
An exhibit for the Bad Dürrenberg Shaman is on display at the Halle State Museum of Prehistory in Germany.
Marked for Spirit Work
While we can’t know exactly what this woman’s life was like or if she practiced shamanism, we can possibly infer some things through her skeletal remains.
Researchers found that her upper vertebrae were malformed, potentially leading to certain abilities that might have marked her for the role of shaman (1). According to researchers her malformed vertebrae could have caused her to be able to partially cut off blood flow.
“Anthropologists suspect that by holding her head in a certain position, she was able to clamp off a blood vessel. This possibly led to an involuntary eye movement, a so-called nystagmus.” (1).
This is interesting to note because altered states of consciousness have long been associated with shamanic practices. While we cannot know how this woman experienced her condition, some researchers have suggested it may have contributed to unique sensory experiences that shaped her role within the community.
It is thought that shamans of the past, and today, are usually marked by some kind of difference. Maybe this woman buried in the distant past was marked out as having access to the spirit world.
Understanding the Animistic Worldview
To understand what significance animal bones and medicinal plants might have had for prehistoric humans as shamanistic tools, we should start by getting our footing in an animistic worldview.
Animism is considered the oldest form of human spiritual practice. It is defined as the awareness of the living essence, spirit, or consciousness in all things material and non-material. Ecstatic witchcraft and other earth-based spiritual practices often have roots in animistic thought.
In animism, everything in the Universe is experienced as a living being. Rocks, plants, and land all house a spiritual essence of living consciousness. But there is some nuance here that I would like to address.
Spirit can be layered into an object. For example, a stone statue carved in the likeness of a god will be carrying the spirit of the stone the statue was made of and can also be housing the spirit of the deity, which is a disembodied aspect of the Divine.
The Human Being as a Crossroads for Spirit
We too are layered spiritual beings. We have a physical form, the body and also conscious soul parts. Some of these parts are connected with the animal and plant consciousness of the Earth while other parts are connected with the transcendent spirit of divinity.
Using ecstatic and trance techniques, we can detach these parts of ourselves temporarily for shamanic journeys, dreams and sleep, or with the support of entheogenic plant medicines.
While we are alive, we can never fully detach from the body, which creates our unique perspective as human beings. It is our special destiny for this lifetime to experience reality through the lens of embodiment as humans.
Ecstatic witchcraft practice is a doorway into exploring the full tapestry of our humanness. We get to push the edges of our potential through explorations out of the body while still being ‘in’ a body.
Animistic Magic and Spiritual Tools
Animal adornments, bone amulets, and mind-altering plants can all be elements of an earth-based, animistic practice. Taking the potentially shamanistic role of the Bad Dürrenberg woman as inspiration, let’s go deeper into animism in ecstatic witchcraft.
In the physical realm, we use material tools, like bones, amulets, and talismans to connect with the spiritual essence of the Otherworld. In my experience, materials will have different amounts of spirit attached to them. This is one explanation for haunted objects, they can become a temporary house for a disembodied spirit.
This can set amulets up as a mediating power between worlds. The more essence it is carrying, the easier it can be for a spirit to cross over into our world and us into theirs.
Well-made magical tools, with powerful crystals, animal parts, metals, and intention can all be potent channels for power to pass through. This is why some magical tools can feel more enchanted than others.
Objects like bones and animal parts can be especially potent when found in a burial site. This is because they carry the powers of both life and death. A bone was once a part of a living being, died, and might be used or revived by a witch or magician and employed in their magic.
Let’s explore how animal talismans support zoomorphic shapeshifting in ecstatic witchcraft.
Shapeshifting & Zoomorphic Magic
Shapeshifting in witchcraft doesn’t mean changing your physical body so much as it means transferring your consciousness into a soul or spirit body. This is usually done to gain perspective from the vantage point of the spirit world.
This shapeshifting can occur in the form of a certain animal, which is sometimes referred to as the fetch-beast. The roebuck antlers buried with the Bad Dürrenberg shaman might point to an animal spirit that was meaningful to her path.
In my experience, many witches have a form or several of animals that we can shift into. Again, this isn’t the physical body changing shape, it’s the spiritual body which changes form and is animated by part of our consciousness.
We might carry amulets, bones, or other magical tools with us to reinforce our understanding of the animal spirits we can shift into. The talisman can create a psychic portal between worlds and support us when journeying, shapeshifting, and tapping the powers of our Fetch-Beast.
Zoomorphic magic is likely something that humans have been doing for millennia. It seems to be something innate to how some people experience the spirit world and may reflect a deep ancestral memory of our relationship with animals.
What Ecstatic Witches Can Learn from the Bad Dürrenberg Burial
What we can learn from the Bad Dürrenberg Burial is that witches today aren’t reinventing the wheel, so much as continuing in the footsteps of those who came before us. When we look to our ancient ancestors, it is clear they were interested in spiritual and magical activities.
We see evidence of their connection to plants, their potential practices of shapeshifting, and likely bonds with the spirit world. Just like we draw spiritual power from animals, wearing their medicine in the form of amulets and symbolic jewelry, so did our ancestors.
While it can feel like many humans have lost touch with this wildness, if we look close enough, it is right here. There have always been people who are tending to the unseen in shamanic ways, ecstatic witches continue in that lineage.
Many of us carry a deep closeness with the medicines of the earth. Sometimes those lineages require rebuilding, they aren’t completely lost; they live in our bones and the spirit of all those who carried these lineages before us.
Cult of the Divine 
Leave a comment