Introduction

Depossession is an advanced shamanic technique for removing a possessing spirit from the body of a client. It is often mistakenly confused with exorcism, which involves forcibly driving a spirit from a person’s body, causing great torment to both parties. In Core Shamanism, the practice is known as compassionate depossession and involves engaging with the spirit more kindly and negotiating their departure from a client’s body. (1)

In order to understand depossession, we firstly need to grasp the differences between voluntary and involuntary possession. In shamanic traditions, voluntary possession is a customary practice and is viewed as healthy. It is common for practitioners across traditional cultures and in Core Shamanism to call in and be possessed by animal spirits, ancestors, and deities.

During voluntary possession, a spirit is invited into our body and can partake in the sensory experiences we enjoy such as eating, drinking and dancing and can use our voice to deliver messages. In the Brythonic tradition, spirit-workers known as awenyddion ‘people inspired’ were said to be possessed by spirits who provided inspiration for their prophecies. (2)

A similar concept is merging. Herein, we become one with a spirit and act together as a pair for the purposes of providing guidance and healing. Another related concept is shapeshifting. This involves shifting into the form of a  spirit being so that we resemble them and take on their qualities but without merging with them or being possessed by them.

Involuntary possession is a form of possession that occurs without our consent. It can be temporary, for example, at a ceremony that involves voluntary possession by one or more spirit workers, somebody in the audience might have no intention of being possessed, but if they do not set appropriate boundaries or if their energy field is gappy, a spirit or deity might take advantage and come into their body, then leave, or need to be persuaded to leave by a practitioner with more experience.

Involuntary possession can be more long-lasting and can happen without a person knowing it. These are the cases most often encountered by shamanic practitioners who offer depossession. This kind of possession usually happens to people who have considerable gaps in their energy field due to soul loss. This can occur at or around times of crisis or trauma or in their aftermath. 

The possessing spirits are most often souls of the deceased who are lost and confused and may not know they are dead. They are drawn to the comfort and safety of another person’s body, take up residence there, then begin to influence them through their needs, desires, and memories. 

For example, when possessed, a person might experience the desire for food and drink that they have never liked before, the urge to take up a new hobby, or more dangerously, experience strange obsessions or compulsions or be driven to engage in addictive behaviours. They might also find that they are troubled by memories and dreams that are not their own.

Such possessions are not very common. They’re most likely to happen if a person has been unlucky enough to be at the place of a death, such as an accident, a natural disaster, or in hospital where someone near them has died. It’s also possible to be possessed by a wandering spirit if one’s energy field is gappy.

Other spirits that might possess people are land spirits, such as those whose habitats have been damaged, who may be lost or angry. Also, entities from other realms, but it’s unlikely to be possessed by such beings unless you have been engaging with them in a ritual context.

The Depossession Process

Before entering the depossession process, it is firstly important to be aware that what might, at first, present as possession might be something else. It could be an intrusion, an introject, or a thought form that requires extraction. It could also be a rejected or shadow part of the client’s soul or a symptom arising from inner conflict or trauma. It is essential to determine that a possession is indeed a possession before attempting to remove it. If a soul part belonging to the client is removed, its gifts and energy might be lost, or it might simply return and show up in an even more troublesome way.

The practitioner should also screen for schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and any past history of psychosis, hallucinations, or mental breakdowns that might be causing the symptoms or might be reactivated. Things get really tricky here as such persons are those who are likely to be more vulnerable to a spirit entering. In such cases, it would take the know-how of somebody who is both an experienced shamanic practitioner and psychotherapist to discern the difference. It’s worth noting that in Western culture, broadly, a possession would be perceived as a mental illness, whereas in shamanic cultures many mental illnesses might be seen as possessions.

It might be obvious to the practitioner whether a possession is present during the consultation process. If not, the practitioner might undertake a shamanic journey and consult with their guides beforehand. If it still remains unclear, it is possible to discern the nature of the problem during the process, but there is a higher risk of trauma to both the client and the spirit.

During a depossession, the practitioner firstly helps the client to feel safe and comfortable. They might lead a grounding meditation. They then honour the spirits of place, call in the spirit helpers and put in place protection. To help the client get into a shamanic state they might drum, rattle or sing. 

When ready, the client is asked to identify a symptom in their body which they feel is related to the possession. This could be something like a tightness in the chest, a heaviness in a limb, or a tingle in a foot. Once it has been identified, the client is asked to ‘step aside’ and speak from the standpoint of the symptom. If the symptom presents as a lost soul, the practitioner can then begin to ask them questions – what is their name? How old are they? What is their background? How long have they been there? It is important to be aware that they are likely to be traumatised and confused and might not have their faculties or memories intact. They might not realise that they are dead or are possessing another person. It’s thus important to be patient and to help them to reach these realisations gradually and gently.

Once the identity of the lost soul and their possessing nature is established, the next step is to encourage them to move on. This can be done by describing a more pleasant place in the spirit world in accordance with their religious beliefs, or those of their family, if they have them, or by providing a more general description of the Otherworld if they do not. It is often helpful to call upon their ancestors and / or their spirit guides so they have somebody familiar to travel to the spirit realms with. 

Before they leave, the practitioner should check whether they need healing, and, if so, carry out any healing needed with the help of their guides. 

The lost soul can then be moved on. They might be happy to go with their ancestors or spirit guides. If not, the practitioner may need to psychopomp them, with the help of their spirit helpers.

With a possessing land spirit, they and their land might need healing for them to return. If their land is too damaged, they might need psychopomping. If the spirit is from another realm, they should be encouraged to go back there. If the spirit is difficult, a practitioner from the tradition from which the spirit originated might need to be called in to remove them.

The practitioner should then check for any other underlying possessions. Once the process is complete, they should heal and close the energy field. Because removing a possession leaves a gap in the person’s energy field, a further session involving soul retrieval or power retrieval should be considered. In the meantime, the gap should be filled with energy in an appropriate form (light, mist, colours) so the client is not vulnerable to a further spirit possession before the followup work is done. 

The client should be given some time and space to process what has happened, perhaps with some gentle drumming, rattling or singing. They might want to talk things through with the practitioner afterwards. They should be advised to take good care of themselves, to drink plenty of water and eat nourishing foods and informed of measures to prevent a future possession.

Personal Experience

As part of my shamanic training, I went through the depossession process in the role of client with my mentor. I didn’t feel that I was possessed, but I had experienced a voice in my head that told me I was ‘worthless’ and I was not sure of its nature or identity or whether it was coming from within or from without.

When I looked within to find a symptom, I noticed the rapidity of my heartbeat and was drawn to place a finger on my pulse at my carotid artery. At this point, I was working on a novel, which was possessing me, and was losing sleep and finding it difficult to focus on anything else. It came to my mind that ‘the finger on the pulse’ was trying to hold back a ‘green energy’ that I identified as the inspiration for the novel, which was running out of control. 

My mentor and I asserted that these two symptoms were not a spirit possession but represented an imbalance between the inspired and restrictive parts of myself. In this situation, the green energy had got out of control and was depriving me of my ability to be present in my body and to sleep. We worked out that when the finger shuts down my inspiration, I feel low and this is when the voice that tells me I am ‘worthless’ comes in. Thus, what might have been a possession was a symptom resulting from inner conflict.

Role Play 

We also engaged in a role play. I acted as practitioner and my mentor took the role of a client who was presenting with a possession. She had been in a car crash in which several people had died and was struggling with tightness in her chest. Doctors had asserted it had no physical cause. She described a suffocating feeling, as if something was there, and experiencing unusual cravings for salty crisps and for fizzy drinks. It was my intuition that one of the spirits who had died in the accident had moved into her body, so I decided to go ahead with the depossession process.

When I asked the client to speak from the symptom it quickly became clear that there was a spirit present, that it was a lost soul, and that it was scared and confused and had no idea who it was or where it was. It didn’t want to look around and say what it could see because it was too scary. When I asked it questions, it didn’t want to recall its identity or who its relatives were due to fear. It admitted to its desire for salty crisps and fizzy drinks. 

The dialogue went round in circles for a while until I asked whether it had any favourite animals and it said it liked buzzards and I managed to engage Buzzard as its spirit animal. Buzzard then flew, like a drone, over the scene of the car crash and relayed the memory to the soul. She recalled that she was a mother and that her husband and children had died in the accident. That was the memory she had been trying to block out. She then remembered having fled and taken up residence in the client’s body. She wanted to know if she was still a mum and I told her that she was but it would be best for her and her husband and children if she moved on to a safer and more comfortable place in the spirit world. Buzzard then took her. 

After she left, the client said she felt a sadness in the gap the spirit had left. The client’s power animal, giraffe, removed the sadness. I then healed and sealed the client’s energy field and suggested she return for a power or soul retrieval. 

The process, although a role play, was more difficult and intense than I had predicted. There is little literature on depossession and in the one book I had read, Shamanic Depossession: A Compassionate Healing Practice, by Peter Salome, in the example given there were no difficulties in finding out the name, age and background of the soul (3). Of course, I should have expected that the soul might be too traumatised and confused to speak and remember coherently, but I didn’t take this into consideration beforehand. I felt that it was more by luck than judgement that I managed to engage with the lost soul through her power animal and convince her to leave.

This highlighted the risky nature of depossession. If I hadn’t succeeded in finding out the soul’s identity with the help of her power animal and persuaded her to leave, I could have been faced with a situation in which the spirit was agitated and the client was aware it was there, leaving both in crisis.

This made it clear that depossessions where there is clearly a possessing present should only be carried out by an experienced practitioner who has good psychotherapeutic knowledge and knows how to deal with trauma and crisis. 

Case Study

I did one case study with a volunteer client (4) who was curious about going through the process and did not believe that she was possessed. 

When asked to find a symptom she found a numbness in her feet and hands that she asserted belonged to her then dark tunnels in her body that belonged to her too. We asked her guides to run along the tunnels and check for entities and, when they didn’t find any, sent my guides to check too. 

Once it was asserted that there wasn’t a possession present, the client’s guides made it clear they wanted to go out of the tunnels on a shamanic journey. We travelled through the client’s head through a window to a stone circle where the client was gifted a golden light and golden raindrops fell on her. My hounds licked up some of the raindrops. When we returned to the Middle World, my hounds licked the raindrops into the client’s feet and they spread through her body and the dark and empty tunnels were filled with gold. 

Together, we interpreted this to be a healing for power loss signalled by the empty tunnels that might have made the client susceptible to a possession. Also, a remedy for the numbness in her feet and hands. She was advised to continue to call in the golden energy in her evening meditations.

Conclusion 

My introductory experiences with depossession have equipped me with the knowledge and protocols to identify a possession if it comes up in my practice (most likely during extraction if the symptom turns out to be an entity rather than an intrusion) and, if it is within my capacity, to remove it, and if not to know when to refer a client to a more experienced practitioner.

Due to the risky nature of depossession and my lack of experience, I will not be offering it as service to clients for the foreseeable future. I feel, for the purposes, of my shamanic apprenticeship, my training in depossession is complete. Whether I will be led to take this area of shamanic practice any further as I progress in my client work is in the hands of the spirits.

Footnotes

(1) It’s worthy of note here that in some traditional shamanic cultures, shamans do battle with and drive malevolent spirits from a person’s body.
(2) ‘Giraldus Cambrensis and the Awenyddion’, Awen ac Awenydd, https://awenydd.weebly.com/giraldus-cambrensis-and-the-awenyddion.html
(3) “Hello. My name is Peter.” I said. “Would you mind telling me your name?” “Sandro.” “Good to meet you, Sandro. How old you are, Sandro?” “I’m twenty-seven.” “Sandro, can you tell me the last thing you remember doing?” “Me? I was a soldier.” “Where were you a soldier?”  “Lots of places.” “Can you name one place for me?” “It was at Gallipoli.” “What were you doing there?” “I was just standing there in a trench, smoking a cigarette during a break, between mortar bombings.” “And after that…?” “I don’t know.” “So you’re not there, at Gallipoli, anymore…?” “I guess not…”Salome, P. Shamanic Depossession: A Compassionate Healing Practice, (Peter Salome, 2014), p68 – 69
(4) I share this account with her permission.