We come to the circle, creaking shoeless across the hardwood floor. In the center of the ring of pillows is the only source of light: a candle. Next to the candle there are a hollowed bone with lustrous feathers splaying out of it, a dish of dried herbs, a vase exclaiming deep greens, wheat and bright orange flowers. The air is fragrant with sage. These features invoke a feeling of reverence for simplicity and create a quiet space for reflection.

This centerpiece draws the weighty gaze of mostly harried students in pajama-esque clothing. Their expressions range from peaceful to listless as they pick up instruments and begin to play. It is almost half an hour after the class has begun, and people are still slipping in, elaborating on the rhythm and escaping their academic shells. It is exam week, a time when students justify dipping out of obligations galore, but something about this experience resonates beyond obligation. Something about it is medicine. By 8 p.m., the room is full. Lying somewhere between a religious meeting, a mystical ritual and group therapy is the Shamanism ExCo class.

Kathy Abromeit, Public Services Librarian in the Conservatory Library, has been the teacher of this popular class for nine semesters. There are no tests in her class. With the wisdom of her own experience and knowledge of spiritual practices from varied cultures, she invites twenty-some students each semester to enter a space of embrace and reflection each Monday night.

An Invitation

On October 14, the focus is rock readings. Students have brought in rocks from which they must decipher symbols. Each person must think of a question, pore over craggy surfaces and wait for images to emerge. Whatever appears is meant to provide a device to answer the question. Before the activity, while discussing how to enter a trance state, doubts arise. As always, the class is made of individuals with varied levels of comfort with and openness to experimentation. Kathy suggests rocking the body while focusing on a spot on the stone.

A student opens up about his experience with Tai Chi and the concept of “looking beyond” an object. It is one of the many mentions of other cultures that pepper the class.Abromeit then gauges the cynicism, the skepticism. She goes out on a limb. “Don’t censor yourself,” Abromeit says. She is giving everyone an invitation to climb out on that limb, to experiment, to fail, to believe.

“Cynicism is great. The last thing I want is [for students] not to question,” says Abromeit as she sits with me in the dimly lit hall while Obies are staring at stones. “This is the age of questioning,” she continues, referring to the college years. “It is an age that hasn’t been controlled and manipulated by money. [They are still] somewhat idealistic.”

Abromeit doesn’t simply see her students as unsullied but as ripe for profound experience as well. She sees the end of adolescence as the time when many people “get the calling.” Though religiosity isn’t central to the class, the ritualistic structure is imbued with non-denominational sanctity. In the teacher’s own experiences, Shamanistic practices have been a bright passageway to the self and to the divine.

Surrendering to Intuition

“Shamanism is about returning to what we already know, a whole other invisible universe of intuition,” says Abromeit.

In Abromeit’s life, finding Shamanism wasn’t about looking. She is part Mohawk and comes from a lineage of folk healers. She grew up in rural Idaho with her father and grandmother, who both cultivated intuitive healing powers. Both of them worked with herbal medicine and assisted community members in the “passing over process.” Speaking of the ritualistic practices she grew up with and how they became the basis of the Shamanism ExCo, Abromeit says, “It had always been there, but we never called it Shamanism.”

The death of her father propelled Abromeit toward the practice.

“My father was dying, and I coached him. There was a transmission [when he died]. I had him focus on my eyes — his lungs were filling — he was freaking out. At one point I felt someone grab my arm and say, ‘you can’t go.’ I looked up and saw white fluid coming from his mouth.

“After his death, I had dreams of rituals, conversations with the light, recalled portions of his life review. I thought I was going crazy — promptly went to find a therapist — but  the therapist wasn’t familiar with spiritual crisis.”

Abromeit mentions Roger Walsh, Professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, who compares psychotic breakdowns to Shamanic initiation. In her own life, Abromeit considers suffering to be “key teacher.” Now students come to her class with their worried dreams and inquiries, with the aim to achieve opportunities to search themselves in a safe atmosphere.

Abromeit’s Shamanism

Because Abromeit’s own relationship with Shamanism is so integrated, she does not rely on any one cultural framework from which to draw material. She has done extensive reading on different cultural practices and has attended a workshop given by the Foundation of Shamanic Studies. She mentions her awareness of the fact that some members of the Oberlin community find what she does problematic on the basis of cultural appropriation.

Abromeit responded to questions about where her rituals came from:

“It is really important not to practice cultural appropriation.” Abromeit says. Though the class utilizes iconistic instruments without context, she often makes sure to at least casually attribute ideas to specific cultures when she mentions them during class activities. To design the course, Abromeit relies primarily on her intuition, and teaches by example. Just as she asks students to reverentially consult their subconscious minds, she asks the same of herself. Regarding the inspiration for class activities Abromeit says, “If it comes to me in a dream state, I consider it a gift.”

Spirit Quest or Quiet Space

When we re-enter the room there is a light on and students are scattered in pairs. The previously quiet space is now filled with intermittent laughter. The circle is jagged and people in their loungewear are in various states of sprawl. The enterprise of rock-gazing has left many students energized, although probably for different reasons. Their questions ranged from yes or no, “Should I go to Senegal and France next year?” to heavy and heady, “How can I reach total enlightenment?” Students saw or imagined images that reminded them of what is happening in their lives — beyond papers and tests and rehearsal. Some might have been thrilled by the simple, forgotten act of taking time to focus on themselves. Maybe others were just moved by the chance to speak openly with another student. A bonus of the class: the opportunity it provides to connect with others in a non-academic setting — to listen to another’s voice and experience, free from gossip or a complaint about Ohio weather.

Whether or not people are finding symbols and answers or trusting the source of whatever they find, what is most compelling about the class is that regardless of one’s confidence in the practices, the Shamanism ExCo provides an environment that exists nowhere else on campus. Try to recall one class that has been designed for “accessing gateways in understanding the profound connections with Self, Nature and Spirit.” In its intention alone, the Shamanism ExCo is a bold presence in the skeptical, often God-ignoring social atmosphere of Oberlin.

At the least, the class allows the student to quiet his or her mind and forget about the worries of the day. At most, it offers students a taste of non-denominational spiritual practice, a powerful recognition of the divine in the self.

That the class has been consistently full and popular reveals the hunger in our student body for something other than academia, something more essential than the pervasive Facebook and grades and joints. The Shamanism ExCo is a course on communication with the self, and the way we communicate with the self is a microcosm of how we relate to world around us. The class calls for vision, honesty and trust. But like the hundreds of opportunities we constantly negotiate in college, it is what you make of it. And for the skeptical minds out there who are concerned about what is revealed about their capacities for belief or suspension of imagination or anything in between, Abromeit says with a confident smile: “The only way to own the practice is to test it.”