A couple of people I have spoken with online have looked at my book, website and asked what is Kamitic/Kemetic Shamanism and how did I come up with it? I couldn’t clearly actually sum it up in a few words or sentences because it was something that I just sat down one day and decided to make. It was something that was given to me and at the same time, something that I was initiated into. Let me explain.
Like so many, I had read and studied all sorts of books regarding the Kamitic/Kemetic way of life. The only difference from most is that I am the son of a preacher who was prophesied upon by numerous people that I too was going to be a preacher. This of course is something I staunchly and stubbornly rejected, as if I was the biblical Jonah before being swallowed up by the whale. I refused to follow in my father’s footsteps for a number of reasons; one of the main ones was because I was disgusted with Christianity and God in particular. After undergoing a few episodes of depression because I felt that God didn’t give a hoot about me, a voice spoke and inspired me to study the Ancient Egyptians in order to learn how they used the power of God to build their society. And, every since then, I read and studied about the Kamitic/Kemetic tradition with no true purpose or reason in sight.
It was after years of reading, studying and overcoming a few experiences that I met a priestess of Oshun who did a reading for me. It was through the reading that this priestess told me that I was supposed to be a shaman. Now, I didn’t know what a shaman was supposed to be. My idea of a shaman was a Native American medicine man or woman brewing some bubbly, smelly concoction with peyote mushrooms inside in order to induce a state of trance, like the one Wade Davis claimed to have experienced in the movie Serpent and the Rainbow when he visited the indigenous people of South America.
Naturally I didn’t want to believe what the reading had told me either but it wasn’t until the priestess convinced me to stop running from my calling and accept it; that I decided to read about shamanism. Upon doing so, I learned that the basic understanding of shamanism is that it is a generic term that has been used throughout the world by anthropologists to describe practitioners that communicate with the spirit world in order to resolve problems that exist in the physical realm. Michael Harner author of The Way of the Shaman gives a better understanding of what a shaman is and defines a shaman as “a man or woman who enters an altered state of consciousness, at will, to contact and utilize an ordinarily hidden reality in order to acquire knowledge, power, and to help other persons.”
When I first read this definition it took me a little while for me to truly understand what it meant. Then when I became deathly ill and had my near death experience (twice because I didn’t listen the first time) I began to get a better understanding what shamanism was all about and why the practice was needed.
As I submitted to my calling and allowed the Spirit to lead me, I was reminded of how I watched a number of preachers prepare to give their sermon. It was randomly picked as some may think. Many of them especially from the Pentecostal background that I had observed said a prayer to God and allowed the Spirit to guide their hands and eyes to turn to a page in the bible that the people needed to hear from. This practice is what is known as bibliomancy a form of divination.
As I submitted to my calling another thing that I was shown was that I was quite fond of certain ministers in my childhood church especially the ones that had the ability to lay hands upon individuals.
Another important aspect I saw but didn’t understand at that time was that my experience in the church gave me a unique understanding about Christianity, but my research and study gave me new type of theology. This allowed me to receive messages in my dreams, see omens and be able to explain them.
It was this experience and understanding that convinced me that the reason it was prophesized that I was supposed to be a preacher. Is because the African American preacher is the contemporary shaman of the African American community. The reason I was inspired and instructed to read and study the Kamitic/Kemetic tradition was because the theology of our ancestral ways had been lost or temporarily misplaced due to slavery. As a result, the spirituality of many of our people lies in jeopardy, evidence of the social issues plaguing our families, community and society, as various churches compete to become the next super church for souls. It was through the intervention of my ancestors and guardian spirits that I was able to learn and establish a relationship with God that could not have been established through books. The only purpose the books served in this whole experience was that they helped me to understand the ancient ancestral philosophy behind the experience.
It is for this reason out of respect for the traditions of old that a new general term had to be created to give some idea as to what I had experienced. That term is what I refer to as Kamitic/Kemetic shamanism.
Kamitic/Kemetic shamanism is not a reconstruction or resurrection of the old Kamitic/Kemetic kingdom and the cultural practices of ancient Egypt. It is not dedicated to reviving the old Kamitic/Kemetic religion or religious ways, nor is it a New Age appropriation with pagan and European deities. Kamitic/Kemetic shamanism simply put is an ancestral practice based upon the Afro-American cultural experience that focuses upon attaining and maintaining balance according to the Kamitic/Kemetic philosophy. It is the spiritual practice that helped me to greatly improve my life because our ancestors preserved this knowledge that they acquired as part of our legacy.