The First Shamans of Siberia and the Ancient World

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]How early did shamans use trance, costume, and psychoactive smoke to cross into other realms? Some of the earliest archaeological evidence for recognizable shamanic traditions appears across ancient Siberia and the Eurasian Steppe.

[00:00:13]Burials containing antler headdresses, [music] animal teeth, drums, and ritual attire suggest specialized practitioners who embodied animal spirits [music] during trance ceremonies. Among the Koryak people of northeastern Siberia, some of the earliest well-documented entheogenic shamanic practices involved the ceremonial use of Amanita muscaria mushrooms by shamans to induce visionary trance states associated with spirit communication, healing, divination, and soul journeying. Traditions later recorded by ethnographers and travelers in the 17th [music] through 19th centuries. The practitioner enters altered awareness through rhythm, heat, fasting, chanting, sensory deprivation, or entheogenic plants. Shamanic symbolism also reveals a recurring cosmic structure, including the world tree, celestial ascent, and the solar axis linking heaven, earth, and the underworld. These same ideas later emerge in alchemy, hermeticism, Kabbalah, and initiatory mystery systems throughout the [music] ancient world.

[00:01:07]Later historical accounts, such as Herodotus describing Scythian hemp fumigation rituals, suggest trance induction, spirit mediation, and psychoactive ceremonial practice across the Eurasian Steppe and ancient Siberia.

[00:01:19]For more, watch our full exploration of prehistoric psychedelics on YouTube, Patreon, and Ko-fi at joinseek, and find spiritual books, art, and more at joinseek.org/store.