An article by Tim Yearington
Are you interested in learning about "bird shamanism"? Do you often dream of flying? Do you sometimes receive answers from your dreams and visions? Well, perhaps you are a bird shaman.
The word shaman originally comes from old Siberia and means "the one who knows." The shaman learned by flying — like birds — on spirit journeys, which are shamanic drum journeys into the spirit world to meet ancestors and nature spirits for guidance.
The way a bird shaman travels is by flying up toward the north, into the sky realm of the ancestors (the Upper World). Since the spirits are wiser than us, it is they who give the shaman answers. The shaman's spiritual helpers have had a role that reaches far back in the time of humanity.
Anthropologists have found evidence in the form of eagle-claw necklaces showing that Neanderthals practiced ancient bird shamanism more than 130,000 years ago. In addition, swan bones found deep in the earth at other archaeological sites in prehistoric Europe show that bird shamanism may be as old as around 400,000 years.
The Origin of the Bird Shamans
The prehistoric, circumpolar Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) peoples who practiced bird shamanism eventually came to be regarded as "bird shamans." In North America, however, the extremely large birds — as broad as the sky — that were believed capable of creating thunderstorms, lightning and thunder, were naturally called "thunderbirds."
In many indigenous cultural conceptions on Turtle Island (North America), thunderbirds are regarded as the largest and most powerful benevolent birds. In the form of a massive, eagle-like bird, the thunderbird is seen and accepted as a physical manifestation of the Creative Force here on Mother Earth.
Thunderbirds are known to be the "helpers" of the Great Spirit. They bring the good medicine of strong wind, thunder, lightning and rain. As spiritual helpers they bring their medicine to help people change. Sometimes the thunderbirds are called "the Grandfathers," representatives of our ancestors who can still inspire and motivate us today.
The belief that the thunderbirds come to help us as humans arose in animistic and shamanic customs from prehistoric times. It is also believed that the helping spirits of the thunderbirds could exist physically in the form of living people called "thunderbird people." To this day, human thunderbirds are still regarded as assistants to the Great Spirit. In this way, a thunderbird is like, or related to, a bird shaman.
Human thunderbirds practice "thunderbird medicine," which are methods and practices rooted in the ancient school of bird shamanism. They still specialize as bird shamans by embracing the power of thunder and lightning.
In a spiritual way, the natural, electric power of lightning is represented by a snake. The form of a snake symbolizes the zigzag appearance and movement of a lightning bolt — a lightning snake. The old practices of "snake medicine" too were rooted in the customs of bird shamanism that arose in prehistoric Siberia.
Bird shamanism is entirely rooted in the ancient spiritual practices we learned thousands of years ago from our common Paleolithic, human bird shaman ancestors. People moved around, and our ancestors covered enormous distances!
Traditional bird shaman methods are cross-culturally tied to the old circumpolar animism and shamanism that arose among the people of the circumpolar region, in the northern regions of Asia, Siberia, Europe, Alaska and Canada.
As humans migrated eastward from Siberia across the land bridge to the Bering Strait into postglacial North America (after the glaciers had retreated), the spiritual beliefs and practices of bird shamanism came along with them.
Humans also migrated westward to the wild ice-free regions that today make up Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Evidence of this is still found in the old Finno-Ugric language Finnish. In Finnish, the word "kokkolintu" means "giant eagle," and the name "Ukkoslintu" literally means "thunderbird."
It is therefore easy to see why the old bird shamanic faith of our common human ancestors is still found in the blood memory of many people living today. It seems that our natural human bird shaman genes have never disappeared!
The Revitalization of Bird Shamanism
We continue to use the word "shaman" because most Norwegian speakers already know the meaning of the word. But remember that the term and the word shaman really belongs only in Siberia. North European cultures have, and still use, their own names and designations for people who practice methods similar to wilderness shamanism. For example, the Sami in their territory, called Sápmi in Norway and Sweden, use the words "noaide" or "noaidi." In Finland the Finns have their own similar word, "noita," which is also a form of wilderness shamanism.
Let us now explore how birds came to be so highly regarded in shamanism. Because of the birds' ability to be free in the air and to fly high in the sky, birds became a natural way to visualize the living essence of our human spirit. In a spiritual way, bird shaman practice embodies the bird's powers of flight to reach the various levels and worlds that our ancestors believed could be reached through a "spirit journey." This spirit flight is also called a shamanic drum journey today.
The Sky Pole Around 15,000 years ago, bird shamans carried out spiritual journeys, aided by a wooden pole raised toward the sky. This pointed north to the "hole in the sky." This hole is seen high up in the asterism "the Great Bird" or "the Skeleton Bird" — also called Cygnus — overhead among the visible stars in the galaxy of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is still called the "Spirit Path" today. Interestingly, it is also called the "Thunderbird's Path," and in this context a thunderbird is in fact a human bird shaman.
When undertaking a spirit journey, a shamanic drum journey, the bird shaman follows this path northward — a visible path in the sky. The bird shaman travels vertically from the south, the earth below, to the north, the sky above, to the place of the ancestors through the hole in the sky. The ancient ceremony of carrying out a spirit journey by means of the wooden pole (pictured above) with a bird at the top, showing the way — the path — is still practiced in bird shamanism.
Bird shamanism encompasses many types of birds such as songbirds, woodpeckers, ducks, loons, crows, ravens, vultures, eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, geese, cranes, herons and especially swans (Cygnus). It also encompasses the spirits of a wide range of wild animals that live outdoors among all the elements of the land.
That is why we train out in nature, outdoors in untouched wilderness, throughout all eight seasons.
The Bird Shaman's Nest
Old bird shamanic methods involved making and using a "thunderbird nest." There are many mysterious indigenous legends about thunderbird nests. Usually a thunderbird nest was made by a thunderbird, that is, a bird shaman. They were made of large stones.
The thunderbird nest was built by an experienced bird shaman who personally used it for his spiritual purposes. These stone nests are regarded as sacred places and are still used as spiritual power sites today. In olden days the thunderbird nests were built on the tops of mountains. Today, bird shaman nests are still made and used on the tops of hills. To conceal their sacred nature, these stone nests are almost always located in remote areas to maintain privacy and to prevent them from being destroyed.
The stone nest is used by a bird shaman to attain personal power in the form of vision, direction and guidance. They are often used to find, and then bring back to others, the emotional, mental and spiritual answers or the positive medicine that people need to embrace and use for deep personal life transformation. Inside the stone nest the bird shaman experiences a natural, peaceful place that gives great personal power to help oneself and others.
In a bird shaman nest, people also have the opportunity to learn and experience traditional wisdom, directly from the ancestors, about bird shamanism and the ancient ceremonies that were practiced to help the shaman on their spiritual journey.
It is here that people also learn how to access the wisdom of wild animals, the guidance of nature spirits, and the spirits of their own ancestors. They learn about the ancient bird shaman practice of spirit journeys, finding answers, and even details about vision quests for personal guidance.
Bird shaman nests are deep, wild, spiritual power sites where personal enlightenment takes place to encourage and strengthen people on their life path.
Bird Shaman Work
Bird shamans work with the spirits of stones, plants, trees, animals, birds, the elements, the weather and the ancestors in a spiritual way. First, to gain guidance to help themselves, and then, second, to help others in everyday life. The guidance helps people grow, heal and become better by removing unnecessary human negativity.
A bird shaman's primary purpose is to transform a negative situation into a positive one. This is done by improving a person's well-being. It happens simply by helping people remove their "snakes." Snakes represent personal negativity and toxicity, such as bad feelings, mental pain, emotional trauma and mistaken or broken beliefs.
Bird shamans help a person to explore, restore, repair, change, transform and thereby heal with intention their own emotional, physical, spiritual, mental and central worlds on their life path.
They work with ancient human archetypes to strengthen people. For example, the best medicine for an emotional state that is "low as a snake" is a state that is "high as" a "bird" — a spiritual state.
Often, when a person is lost and struggling, they do not believe that they are in a spiritual state strong enough to help or guide them. In such cases it is crucial to help people find and take ownership of their inner spirit — the Great Bird within them — so that they can use it to guide and heal themselves on their own path.
Bird shamans have always had direct access to nature, and thereby to all the spirits of nature — such as stones, plants, trees, wild birds and animals, the elements of nature and the weather.
At spiritual places out in nature, such as in a stone nest, bird shamans can access the helping spirits of our recent or most distant human ancestors — the Old Ones.
A bird shaman is essentially a person who works with the spirits, and these spirits also include cooperating with the spirits of our own human ancestors to obtain answers and guidance that support us in everyday life.
By consciously setting out on a spirit journey — a shamanic drum journey — a bird shaman easily gains access to the various levels of the spirit world in order to acquire knowledge, wisdom and guidance.
Any spiritual guidance attained is then applied directly in normal, everyday reality for the benefit of a person, a family or a community.
A person's strengthened spiritual state — the Great Inner Bird — is used as good medicine to transform their emotional state. A bird shaman helps with all of this, and people soon realize that they themselves are personally responsible for maintaining the living vitality of their own inner spirit, so that personal change can occur.
Bird shamanism helps people change their lives for the better. This shamanic work helps people to see, understand, accept, embrace and regularly use the wonderful power of the Great Bird they already have within them — their own spirit!
Our own spirit is the best guide.
We now live in a very self-centered, greedy and materialistic age. Our dominant, consumer-driven culture suffers from ever-growing problems such as mental stress, fear, emotional disconnection, apathy, depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol addiction, sex addiction, mobile phone addiction, social pressure, lateral violence, technological and social media exhaustion, climate change and even war.
Unfortunately, many people feel a drastic disconnection from nature and the good medicine that Mother Earth so readily gives us — if only we could see it. Today many people are lost, broken and wounded in life. We need to become well, but we are often unaware of this obvious truth. The traditional practices of bird shamanism will definitely help us.
Traditional practices within bird shamanism:
Reverence and respect for the Great Bird/Cygnus asterism.
Contact with ancestors via the Hole in the Sky.
Construction and use of a stone nest for a bird shaman.
Creation and use of the bird shaman's wooden sky pole.
Use of the nest and sky pole for spirit journeys/drum journeys.
Use of the drum and spiritual tools as shamanic aids.
Ceremony to gain access to the spirit world.
Spiritual journeys upward toward the sky and toward the north for visions.
Attaining relevant guidance from forebears.
Interpretation of the guidance that is given.
Integration of the knowledge into life.
Repetition of the exercises as needed.
This article was researched and written by Tim Yearington. Copyright Tim Yearington 2026. Email: timyearington@gmail.com
Translated by Sjamanistisk Forbund
