Spirits vs Archetypes in Shamanism: A Comparative Analysis Including the Dynamics of Power and Energy in Shamanic Healing

Introduction

In shamanic cosmology and depth psychology alike, invisible forces shape the visible world. Yet the way these forces are conceptualized differs radically between traditions. In traditional animistic shamanism, these are understood as spirits which are autonomous, living intelligences dwelling in animals, elements, and ancestors. In Jungian psychology, they appear as archetypes, primordial images or psychic patterns emerging from the collective unconscious.

the distinction between power and energy. Both terms describe movement and agency beyond the ordinary human will, but they belong to distinct ontological grammars. In indigenous shamanic systems, power is the embodied presence of spirit, a gift or alliance that can heal, protect, or transform. In modern energy healing paradigms, energy is an impersonal field or current, a vital essence that can be directed or balanced.

This essay explores how these differences manifest in Mongolian and Siberian shamanism, Harner’s Core Shamanism, and Jung’s archetypal psychology, as well as how clients experience the contrasting phenomena of shamanic power and energetic flow in healing contexts.

1. Archetypes and Spirits: Ontological Foundations

From an animistic perspective, spirits are beings with agency, personality, and relational obligations. They inhabit rivers, mountains, ancestors, and dreams. The shaman’s role is to mediate between these intelligences and the human world through trance, ritual, and offering. Power, in this context, is never self-generated; it is conferred and borrowed through relationship.

Jung’s notion of the archetype differs fundamentally. Archetypes are structural forms of the psyche, impersonal patterns that shape behavior, mythology, and imagination. The Wise Old Man, the Mother, or the Shadow are not entities but psychic potentials that gain expression through images and symbols. When archetypal material enters consciousness, it often personifies itself as if it were an independent being. Jung acknowledged that these figures possess “a certain autonomy,” but he located their origin within the psyche, not in an external spirit world.

Where a Siberian or Mongolian shaman might encounter the Mother of the Waters as a real being, a Jungian analyst would interpret her as a manifestation of the Mother archetype, a projection of the collective unconscious onto visionary experience.

In both cases, however, the practitioner interacts with a numinous presence. The difference is ontological, not experiential: the shaman’s cosmos is alive, while the psychologist’s psyche is interiorized.

2. Power and Energy as Parallel Concepts

To the shaman, power (khuch, sergek, aman) is the lifeblood of the cosmos. Power animates spirits, flows through the drum, and dwells in the bones of the shaman. It can protect or destroy, bless or curse. It is relational, concrete, and personalized.

By contrast, energy in contemporary healing systems (Reiki, qigong, bioenergetics) is impersonal and mechanistic: it circulates in meridians or fields and can be increased, cleared, or harmonized. While both power and energy involve movement, their phenomenology differs. Power is possessed or inhabited; energy is channeled or balanced. Power carries intention from spirit allies; energy carries frequency or resonance from the healer.

In shamanic practice, the practitioner does not own power. Power belongs to the spirits, and humans act as conduits. Which mean it is borrowed! In energy work, the practitioner learns to regulate flow and polarity within a universal energetic matrix. This divergence reflects deep cosmological assumptions: the animist ontology of personhood versus the monistic ontology of vibration.

3. Core Shamanism: Experiential Power and the Neutral Current

Michael Harner’s Core Shamanism distills shamanic technique of drumming, journeying, power retrieval from its indigenous settings, asserting that the spirit world is universally accessible through altered consciousness. Within this model, the practitioner learns to journey into nonordinary reality to meet helping spirits. These spirits confer power through objects, animals, elements or light.

During training, practitioners often report the sensation of a ascending and descending presence. A pressure in the chest, heat in the hands, or a vivid animal form entering their body. Harner described this as “receiving power.”¹ The experience is distinctly personal: one feels chosen, overshadowed, filled.

By contrast, when these same practitioners practice energy balancing, the sensation changes: warmth flows rather than descends, and the focus is on smooth circulation rather than visitation. As one field report notes:

“When power comes, it feels like a being steps into you; when energy flows, it feels like the body begins to hum.”²

This distinction highlights the experiential phenomenology of power vs energy: presence versus flow, agency versus field.

In Core Shamanism, spirits are approached as autonomous helpers; yet Western practitioners often describe their power using energetic metaphors (“vibration,” “frequency”), blending ontologies. Harner himself warned against depersonalizing the spirit world, reminding students that “a spirit is anything you see with your eyes closed.”³

4. Mongolian Shamanism: Lineage, Territory, and the Inheritance of Power

In traditional Mongolian shamanism, power (khuch) is inseparable from ancestry and place. It is not learned but inherited through blood, bones and spirit. Shamans (böö, udgan) are called by ancestral spirits known as ongod, who compel initiation through illness or dreams. The shaman’s capacity to heal derives from her personal pacts with these beings.

Each lineage maintains Lord Spirits and Guardian-Spirits tied to sacred mountains, rivers, mountains or clans. These entities bestow power selectively, often through possession. When the shaman dons ritual garments and the drum begins to sound, the spirit enters her body, conferring strength, sight, and authority.

Power here is a visitation, its arrival may shake the body, alter the voice, or ignite sudden tears or laughter. Energy, in contrast, would be considered inert. Mongolian shamans describe energy as the smoke of power, not its source.⁴

Field accounts show that clients in such rituals often feel a distinct atmospheric shift: air becomes heavier, temperature changes, and emotion surges. Healing occurs through the direct participation of a spirit, not by manipulation of an impersonal current.

Thus, Mongolian cosmology views power as moral and relational, a force governed by reciprocity and ethics. To misuse power invites retribution from the spirits themselves.

5. Siberian Shamanism: The Embodiment of Power

Among Siberian peoples (Evenki, Yakut, Buryat), the shaman’s body is a vessel for spirit infused power. Initiation often involves a vision of dismemberment and reconstruction: bones are forged of iron, eyes replaced with eagle sight. This spiritual anatomy embodies power as a tangible substance, one that can be transferred to heal the sick, to divine and foretell or to battle malevolent forces.

Eliade described the shaman’s ecstatic flight as “a journey through the cosmic layers, each guarded by its spirits.”⁵ During this journey, power is not imagined but experienced somatically: the practitioner’s body trembles, heat surges, heartbeats synchronize with the drum. In my own field observations among Tuvan healers, clients often describe a sense of “something moving through the room, as if the air thickened.” Such reports emphasize the objectivity of shamanic power: it is felt by multiple participants simultaneously. As one Buryat shaman said, “The spirits are the way the wind thinks.”

Modern energy healers working with “vibration” or “frequency” sometimes report similar sensations, tingling, warmth, but the context differs. There is no external agent to appease or honor. The energy responds to intention; it is not a being with will. Siberian shamans, by contrast, say intention means little without permission from the spirits.

In short, power in Siberian tradition is negotiated; energy is directed.

Aspect	Shamanic Power	Energetic Healing
Ontology	Animistic – many persons in one world	Monistic – one field, many expressions
Source	Spirits, ancestors, deities	Universal life force (chi, prana, reiki)
Method	Invocation, possession, offering	Intention, channeling, polarity balancing
Ethics	Reciprocity, taboo, obligation	Alignment, neutrality, compassion
Phenomenology	Presence, density, authority	Flow, luminosity, rhythm
Felt by Client	Descending/Ascending presence, pressure, voice, catharsis	Wave like current, warmth, deep calm
Outcome	Sudden transformation, insight, “reset”	Gradual regulation, coherence, peace

Both aim toward restoration of wholeness but approach it through different metaphysical grammars. Power presupposes relationship; energy presupposes continuity.

7. Jung’s Perspective: Libido, Mana, and the Modern Return of Power

Jung’s work provides a crucial bridge. In his early writings he defined libido as “psychic energy,” a neutral force underlying all psychic phenomena. Yet later he recognized that primitive and religious systems described similar phenomena as mana or spirit power.⁶ The difference was linguistic: psychology internalized what shamanic cultures externalized.

Jung’s Red Book documents encounters with figures like Philemon, who embodied wisdom and transmitted power. Jung initially considered these images subjective, but eventually admitted they had autonomy, “as if they were beings of their own.”⁷ He experienced the return of power within the psyche, mediated by archetypal personae.

Thus, the psychological equivalent of receiving spirit power is the activation of archetypal energy. The analyst or dreamer, like the shaman, must enter dialogue with these forces, acknowledging them as “Thou” rather than “It.”

Jung’s notion of individuation parallels shamanic initiation: descent, dismemberment, confrontation with shadow, and rebirth through integration of opposites. The difference lies only in geography, inner psyche versus cosmic spirit world (cosmology?).

8. Phenomenology: How Clients Experience Power and Energy

Across fieldwork in both Siberian inspired and Western neo-shamanic settings, clients consistently differentiate the feeling of power from that of energy.

When power manifests, there is a sudden change of atmosphere: the air thickens, a wave of awe or fear arises, and the sense of “someone else” entering the space becomes palpable. Clients may tremble, cry, or feel the presence of animals or ancestors. The event is personalized and it feels like a meeting.

When energy is mobilized, the experience is smoother, often pleasant and wave like: warmth spreads, tingling moves through limbs, breathing slows. There is rarely a sense of “other.” Instead, there is coherence, integration, and deep calm.

One can summarize: Power shocks, Energy harmonizes. Both heal, but they touch different strata of being. Power through relationship and confrontation, Energy through regulation and flow.

9. Conclusion: Integrating Spirit, Archetype, Power, and Energy

The dialogue between spirits and archetypes, power and energy, reveals the evolution of human metaphysics. Shamanic traditions externalize agency into a living cosmos of spirits and moral relationships; modern psychological and energetic systems internalize it as patterns or fields within the self.

Neither approach is inherently superior. Each articulates a facet of the same mystery: the movement of the invisible through the visible. For the shaman, that movement is Power, personal, dangerous, sacred. For the healer or analyst, it is Energy, universal, neutral, restorative.

In practical healing, both currents can coexist. Many contemporary shamans begin with energy regulation to prepare the field, then invite their spirit allies to act.

Ultimately, the distinction between spirits and archetypes, power and energy, may reflect not a metaphysical divide but a shift in relationship: whether we meet the unseen as Thou or as It. When we remember to treat all invisible forces with respect, as conscious, alive, and morally responsive, we stand once again in the lineage of those who knew that the universe listens back.

“Mai Chuea, Ya Lop Loo” which means “You do not have to Believe, but be careful not to Mock (the Unseen)”

Footnotes

Michael Harner, Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2013), p. 45.

Field interview,  2023.

Harner, Cave and Cosmos, p. 88.

Sarangerel Odigon, Riding Windhorses: Guide to Mongolian Shamanism (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2001), pp. 102–108.

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 190.

C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Collected Works 6), §201.

C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus (New York: Norton, 2009), p. 199.