Shamanic Cartography: How Ancient Consciousness Maps Encode Neurological Reality
Every civilization creates maps. The question is: maps of what?
Shamanic Cartography: How Ancient Consciousness Maps Encode Neurological Reality
Language: en
Maps of the Invisible
Every civilization creates maps. The question is: maps of what?
Western civilization, from the Age of Exploration onward, has mapped physical geography — coastlines, mountains, rivers, political boundaries, and eventually the surface of the Moon, the topology of Mars, and the large-scale structure of the universe. These maps encode the external world with increasing precision, from Ptolemy’s crude projections to Google Earth’s sub-meter satellite imagery.
Indigenous and shamanic cultures, across every inhabited continent and throughout recorded history, have created a fundamentally different kind of map — maps of consciousness. These maps do not describe the external world. They describe the internal world: the landscape of human awareness, the topology of psychic states, the geography of the soul. And they describe it with a consistency that is, when examined carefully, as striking as the consistency of physical maps.
The three-world model — Lower World, Middle World, Upper World — appears in shamanic traditions from Siberia to South America, from Scandinavia to Australia, from Africa to the Pacific Islands. The axis mundi — the central axis connecting the three worlds — appears as the World Tree (Yggdrasil in Norse tradition, the Ceiba in Mayan, the Bodhi Tree in Buddhist), the World Mountain (Mount Meru in Hindu-Buddhist cosmology, Mount Olympus in Greek, the Black Hills in Lakota), or the World Pillar (the Djed in Egyptian, the Irminsul in Germanic, the Totem Pole in Pacific Northwest).
The consistency of these maps across cultures that had no contact with each other suggests one of two things: either there was a common ancestral culture from which all these traditions derive (possible, but difficult to demonstrate for cultures as geographically and temporally separated as the Australian Aborigines and the Norse Vikings), or these maps describe a common territory — the actual structure of human consciousness — that different cultures explored independently and mapped with convergent results.
The second explanation — that shamanic maps describe neurological and psychological realities encoded in mythic language — is the focus of this article.
The Three Worlds: A Neuroscience of Depth
The most universal feature of shamanic cosmology is the tripartite division of reality into three worlds, stacked vertically:
Lower World. Accessed by journeying “downward” — into the earth, through a cave, down a tunnel, into water. The Lower World is the realm of animal spirits, ancestral wisdom, power, instinct, and the deep roots of being. It is often described as a natural wilderness — forests, caves, rivers, oceans — populated by animals rather than humans. The Lower World is where shamans go to retrieve power, contact helping spirits, find lost soul parts, and access primal knowledge.
Middle World. The ordinary reality we inhabit in waking consciousness. In shamanic cosmology, the Middle World has both an ordinary aspect (the physical world as we experience it daily) and a non-ordinary aspect (the energetic or spiritual dimension of physical reality). The Middle World is where shamans work with the immediate environment — healing the land, communicating with plant and animal spirits, performing divination about present circumstances.
Upper World. Accessed by journeying “upward” — climbing a tree, ascending a mountain, rising through clouds, flying. The Upper World is the realm of celestial beings, spiritual teachers, divine archetypes, cosmic knowledge, and transcendent awareness. It is often described as ethereal, luminous, and vast — populated by beings of light, angelic figures, or enlightened teachers.
This three-world structure maps onto a well-established neurological hierarchy:
Lower World = brainstem and limbic system (the reptilian and mammalian brains). The brainstem and limbic system govern survival instincts, emotional processing, memory formation, and autonomic regulation. They are evolutionarily ancient (the brainstem is essentially the same structure found in reptiles; the limbic system is shared with all mammals). The Lower World’s association with animal spirits, instinct, and primal power corresponds to the brainstem and limbic system’s functions: survival, emotion, instinct, and the deep biological wisdom encoded in our most ancient neural structures.
The experience of “journeying downward” to the Lower World may correspond to a shift in brain activity from cortical (higher-order, conscious) processing to subcortical (limbic and brainstem) processing. This shift is associated with reduced analytical thinking, enhanced emotional and somatic awareness, vivid imagery, and access to memories and behavioral patterns stored in implicit (non-verbal) memory systems.
Middle World = the neocortex in its ordinary waking mode. The Middle World corresponds to everyday conscious awareness — the product of neocortical processing operating in its default mode, generating the familiar experience of self, world, time, and space that constitutes ordinary reality.
Upper World = the neocortex in its enhanced, transcendent mode. The Upper World corresponds to peak states of cortical function — moments of insight, creativity, spiritual experience, and transcendent awareness. These states are associated with increased prefrontal cortex activation (the brain region responsible for executive function, abstract thought, and metacognition), enhanced gamma-wave coherence (40+ Hz oscillations associated with binding, insight, and peak consciousness), and activation of the brain’s “reward” circuits (dopamine and endorphin release producing bliss, awe, and a sense of cosmic connection).
The experience of “journeying upward” to the Upper World may correspond to a shift from default mode processing (self-referential, narrative, time-bound) to a state of enhanced cortical coherence — the same state reported during peak meditation, flow experiences, and certain psychedelic experiences.
The Axis Mundi: The Central Nervous System
The axis mundi — the world axis connecting the three worlds — is universally depicted as a vertical structure: a tree, a mountain, a pillar, a ladder, a rope, a column of light. The shaman travels between worlds by ascending or descending this axis.
The most obvious neurological correlate of the axis mundi is the central nervous system itself — specifically, the spinal cord and brainstem, which form a literal vertical axis connecting the body (Lower World) to the brain (Upper World) through the brainstem and midbrain (Middle World).
The spinal cord carries sensory information upward (from body to brain) and motor commands downward (from brain to body). The brainstem sits at the junction of the spinal cord and brain, mediating between bodily functions and conscious awareness. The reticular activating system (RAS) — a network of neurons in the brainstem that controls arousal, wakefulness, and the transition between conscious and unconscious states — is the literal “gatekeeper” between worlds, determining what information reaches conscious awareness and what remains below the threshold.
The Indian yogic tradition makes this correspondence explicit: the sushumna nadi (central channel) runs along the spinal column, with seven chakras (energy centers) arranged vertically from the base of the spine (Muladhara — earth, survival, instinct = Lower World) through the heart (Anahata — relational, emotional = Middle World) to the crown (Sahasrara — cosmic consciousness, transcendence = Upper World).
The kundalini experience — the awakening of energy that rises through the central channel, activating each chakra in sequence — may describe the progressive activation of neural processing from brainstem through limbic system through cortex, culminating in the full-spectrum cortical coherence associated with mystical experience.
Spirit Animals: Archetypal Intelligence Patterns
In shamanic traditions worldwide, the practitioner encounters animal spirits during journeys to the Lower World. These are not hallucinated pets. They are power animals — sources of specific qualities, abilities, and forms of intelligence. The eagle provides vision and perspective. The bear provides strength and introspection. The snake provides transformation and healing. The wolf provides loyalty and pack intelligence. The deer provides gentleness and sensitivity.
From a neurological perspective, these animal spirits may represent specific evolutionary neural modules — behavioral programs inherited from our animal ancestors that remain encoded in the deeper layers of the brain.
The neuroscientist Paul MacLean proposed the “triune brain” model in the 1960s, describing the human brain as composed of three evolutionary layers: the reptilian brain (brainstem — survival, territory, reproduction), the mammalian brain (limbic system — emotion, bonding, play, memory), and the human brain (neocortex — language, abstract thought, planning). While MacLean’s model has been criticized for oversimplification, the basic insight — that the human brain contains neural structures inherited from earlier evolutionary stages, and that these structures continue to influence behavior — is well established.
When a shaman encounters a snake spirit in the Lower World, they may be engaging with the behavioral repertoire encoded in the brainstem — the reptilian survival programs that govern fight-or-flight responses, territorial behavior, and the cycling between activity and rest. The snake’s association with transformation (shedding its skin) and healing (the caduceus, the serpent of Asclepius) may reflect the brainstem’s role in autonomic regulation, homeostasis, and the body’s self-repair mechanisms.
When a shaman encounters a wolf spirit, they may be engaging with the social-emotional programs encoded in the mammalian limbic system — pack bonding, loyalty, cooperative hunting, and the complex social intelligence that characterizes mammalian life.
When a shaman encounters an eagle spirit, they may be engaging with cortical function at its highest — the capacity for panoramic perspective, pattern recognition across vast spatial and temporal scales, and the integration of multiple information streams into a unified awareness.
The shamanic practice of “shapeshifting” — taking on the perceptual and behavioral qualities of a power animal — may involve a controlled shift in brain activation from cortical to subcortical processing, accessing evolutionary neural modules that are normally subordinated to cortical control. In trance states (theta-dominant brainwave patterns), the cortex’s inhibitory control over subcortical systems relaxes, allowing these ancient programs to express themselves in awareness.
The Medicine Wheel: A Systems Diagnostic Tool
The medicine wheel — a circular diagram divided into four quadrants associated with the four cardinal directions — is a widespread indigenous consciousness map, found in Native American, Celtic, Norse, Hindu, Buddhist, and Aboriginal traditions.
The four directions are associated with specific qualities:
- East — new beginnings, spring, air, mental clarity, vision, the eagle
- South — full expression, summer, fire, passion, emotion, the serpent or coyote
- West — introspection, autumn, water, intuition, the deep unconscious, the bear
- North — wisdom, winter, earth, completion, the ancestors, the buffalo or white owl
As a consciousness map, the medicine wheel describes four fundamental modes of awareness:
East = cognitive/mental awareness. The eastern direction, associated with dawn and new beginnings, corresponds to the prefrontal cortex and its functions: clarity of thought, planning, vision, the ability to see patterns and possibilities. When a shamanic practitioner “works with the East,” they are engaging cognitive resources — setting intentions, clarifying vision, and accessing the analytical and strategic functions of the frontal brain.
South = emotional/somatic awareness. The southern direction, associated with noon heat and full expression, corresponds to the limbic system and its functions: emotional processing, passion, embodiment, the direct felt sense of being alive. Working with the South means engaging emotional intelligence, processing feelings, and connecting with the body’s wisdom.
West = intuitive/unconscious awareness. The western direction, associated with dusk and introspection, corresponds to the default mode network and the unconscious processing that occurs when analytical attention is relaxed. Working with the West means engaging intuition, accessing dreams, processing grief and loss, and entering the deep waters of the unconscious mind.
North = integrative/wisdom awareness. The northern direction, associated with winter and completion, corresponds to the integration of all other modes into mature wisdom. Working with the North means synthesizing the cognitive, emotional, and intuitive dimensions into a unified understanding — the kind of embodied wisdom that comes from a full journey around the wheel.
The medicine wheel is thus a systems diagnostic tool for consciousness. A person who is “stuck in the East” is over-intellectualizing — all analysis and no feeling. A person “stuck in the South” is overwhelmed by emotion — all passion and no perspective. A person “stuck in the West” is lost in the unconscious — all intuition and no grounding. A person “stuck in the North” has become rigid in their wisdom — all tradition and no spontaneity.
Health, in the medicine wheel model, is continuous movement — a dynamic circulation around the wheel, engaging each mode of awareness in appropriate balance. This is remarkably consistent with the neuroscience of mental health: psychological well-being requires the balanced integration of cognitive, emotional, intuitive, and somatic processing. Mental disorders are characterized by the dominance of one mode at the expense of others — anxiety (over-activated cognitive-threat processing), depression (under-activated emotional-reward processing), dissociation (disconnection from somatic awareness), and rigidity (inability to shift between processing modes).
Shamanic Dismemberment: Neural Deconstruction and Reconstruction
One of the most universal and most disturbing themes in shamanic experience is dismemberment — the shaman’s initiatory experience of being torn apart, having their bones stripped of flesh, their organs removed, their body reduced to a skeleton, and then being reassembled in a new, more powerful form.
This experience, reported by shamans from Siberia to South America, from Australia to Africa, has been interpreted as a symbolic death-and-rebirth. But from a neuroscience perspective, it may describe something more specific: the deconstruction and reconstruction of the brain’s body schema.
The body schema is the brain’s internal model of the body — the neural representation that tells you where your arms are, how big you are, where your body ends and the world begins. This representation is constructed by the parietal cortex, particularly the right temporal-parietal junction (TPJ), and it is not fixed. It can be altered by sensory deprivation, meditation, psychedelics, and trance states.
Studies using fMRI and EEG have shown that altered states of consciousness frequently involve disruption of the body schema — experiences of body distortion, dissolution, fragmentation, and reassembly. Psilocybin, for example, disrupts activity in the TPJ and posterior cingulate cortex, producing experiences of ego dissolution, body boundary dissolution, and the sense that the self has been deconstructed and reassembled.
Shamanic dismemberment may describe exactly this process: a controlled disruption of the brain’s body schema during trance, experienced as the literal taking-apart of the physical body, followed by the construction of a new, expanded body schema that includes capacities (spirit vision, healing power, communication with non-ordinary beings) not present in the ordinary body schema.
The reassembled shaman is not merely symbolically different. They are neurologically different — their brain has undergone a reorganization of its self-model, incorporating new perceptual and cognitive capacities that were not available before the dismemberment experience.
The World Tree: Information Architecture
The World Tree — Yggdrasil in Norse tradition, the Ceiba in Mayan, the Ashvattha in Hindu — is perhaps the most widespread symbol in shamanic cosmology. It connects the three worlds, provides a pathway for journeying between them, and serves as the structural backbone of the cosmos.
From an information-architecture perspective, the World Tree is a hierarchical data structure — specifically, a tree structure in the computer science sense: a connected, acyclic graph with a root node (the base of the tree in the Lower World), internal nodes (the trunk and branches in the Middle World), and leaf nodes (the canopy in the Upper World).
Tree structures are the most fundamental data organization principle in computer science. File systems, database indexes, decision trees, neural networks, and evolutionary phylogenies all use tree structures to organize information hierarchically. The human brain itself organizes information in tree-like hierarchies: sensory processing begins with simple features (edges, colors, sounds) at the “roots” and builds toward complex representations (objects, faces, words, concepts) at the “canopy.”
The shamanic World Tree may be a mythic representation of how the brain organizes information: from simple, concrete, body-level data (Lower World/brainstem) through increasingly complex and abstract processing (Middle World/limbic-cortical) to the most abstract, integrative, and universal representations (Upper World/prefrontal-transcendent).
Journeying “up” the World Tree, in this model, is moving toward higher levels of abstraction and integration. Journeying “down” is moving toward more concrete, embodied, instinctual levels of processing. The complete shaman can move fluidly up and down the tree — accessing any level of the information hierarchy as needed, from the most primal survival instinct to the most transcendent cosmic awareness.
The Practical Implications: Why These Maps Still Work
Shamanic consciousness maps are not museum pieces. They are functional tools that continue to produce therapeutic results in modern clinical settings.
Sandra Ingerman’s soul retrieval practice — based on the shamanic model of journeying to the Lower or Upper World to recover lost soul parts — has been used by hundreds of trained practitioners to treat trauma, dissociation, and chronic emotional wounding. While no randomized controlled trials have been conducted specifically on soul retrieval, the underlying mechanism — recovering dissociated parts of the self through guided imagery in an altered state of consciousness — is consistent with established therapeutic approaches including Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic experiencing, and EMDR.
The medicine wheel model is used by therapists, coaches, and counselors as a diagnostic and treatment-planning framework, helping clients identify which aspects of their consciousness are over-developed and which are under-developed, and designing interventions to restore balance.
Shamanic journeying itself — entering a trance state through drumming and traveling through the three-world map — has been studied in clinical settings. A 2019 pilot study published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that shamanic-like practices produced significant reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms in participants with treatment-resistant conditions.
These maps work because they describe real territory. The three worlds are real neurological domains. The axis mundi is a real anatomical structure. The spirit animals are real evolutionary intelligence patterns. The medicine wheel is a real systems model of consciousness.
The shamans did not need neuroscience to discover these realities. They discovered them through direct exploration — through tens of thousands of years of disciplined engagement with the inner landscape of human awareness. Neuroscience is not explaining shamanic maps away. It is confirming that the territory the shamans mapped is real, that their maps are accurate, and that their methods for navigating that territory still work.
The oldest maps are still the most complete.
This article synthesizes shamanic cosmology with neuroscience and clinical psychology. Key references include Michael Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman” (1980), Sandra Ingerman’s “Soul Retrieval” (1991), Paul MacLean’s triune brain model, research on body schema disruption in altered states, the 2019 Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease study on shamanic practices and mental health, and the medicine wheel traditions of multiple indigenous cultures.