Was Jesus a shaman? Reclaiming the wild Christ

The sacred mystery of Jesus: Priest, rebel, or shaman?

When you think of Jesus, what do you see?

A wise teacher in flowing robes preaching on a mountainside? A bloodied martyr nailed to a cross? Or perhaps the sanitized figure of Sunday sermons, smiling benignly at his flock?

Now strip away the clichés and stained glass.

What’s left is a man whose life and work bear a striking resemblance to a shaman: a mystic of the wild, a healer, a traveler of unseen realms.

Here’s the thing: shamans and priests are not the same species.

A priest operates within the boundaries of tradition and ritual. A shaman? They dance on the edges of reality. They navigate the spaces between this world and the next, serving as conduits of power, wisdom, and healing.

Let’s look at Jesus’ life with fresh eyes—not through the lens of a church pew, but from the rugged path of a shaman’s journey.

The shaman’s journey: Wilderness and transformation

Every shaman’s initiation begins with crisis, suffering, and an encounter with the unknown.

For Jesus, it was his 40 days in the wilderness, facing the seductive whispers of the devil.

Think about that.

He didn’t retreat to the temple or seek solace in ritual. He went to the wild—alone, hungry, stripped of all comforts.

This is classic shamanic territory: a confrontation with the forces that break you down to rebuild you.

When he emerged, he wasn’t just a carpenter’s son. He was a healer, a mystic, a teacher.

Consider his miracles. Healing the sick with a touch. Casting out demons. Turning water into wine. Feeding thousands with a few loaves and fish.

These aren’t the acts of a priest following prescribed rites; they’re the work of someone deeply attuned to the spiritual forces underpinning reality.

Shamans do this too. They heal with energy, invoke the elements, and work within a realm most of us are too busy—or too scared—to perceive.

And then there’s his teaching style. Jesus spoke in parables, riddles, and metaphors. He didn’t hand out theological bullet points. He planted seeds. He used the world around him—mustard seeds, vineyards, sheep—to reveal truths that weren’t bound by rules but alive with mystery.

This is shamanic wisdom: revealing the sacred by pointing to the natural world.

Priest vs. Shaman: A divine rebellion

If you think Jesus was a priest, think again.

Priests operate within systems. They wear the robes of tradition and uphold the doctrines of institutions. They enforce boundaries.

Jesus smashed boundaries. He flipped tables in the temple, called out the hypocrisy of religious leaders, and broke bread with outcasts and sinners. He wasn’t teaching people to follow the rules of religion; he was showing them how to bypass the gatekeepers altogether.

Shamans are outsiders by nature. They don’t fit into hierarchies because their power doesn’t come from ordination—it comes from direct experience with the divine.

Jesus spoke of his “Father” as an intimate presence, not a distant judge. He didn’t ask for intermediaries. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said.

That’s a shaman’s declaration: divinity is not locked in temples or books. It’s here, now, in the beating of your heart.

The Bible: A man-made text that became a weapon

It’s the year of 1532 in Catarmaca, Peru. The air hums with tension as Francisco Pizarro, clad in gleaming armor and flanked by his conquistadors, confronts Atahualpa, the last emperor of the Inca.

Atahualpa stands tall, adorned in gold and feathers, radiating the embodied divinity of a man whose very existence is intertwined with the sacred rhythms of the earth. For Atahualpa, God is not a theory debated in halls of power; God is the breath in the Andes wind, the pulse in the veins of the earth, the sun’s warmth upon his skin.

Before him, Pizarro’s priest clutches a strange object—a Bible. He gestures toward the sky, claiming it as the ultimate authority, the “Word of God.” Atahualpa’s sharp eyes narrow.

What is this hollow thing that speaks of divinity yet knows nothing of the living cosmos?

Curious, he lifts it to his ear. He listens for a voice, for spirit, for the hum of life. Silence. His hands, so accustomed to the textures of the natural world, feel only dead weight.

What good is a lifeless thing to a man who finds God in every leaf, river, and mountain? With measured calm, he tosses it aside.

The Spaniards erupt. To them, this is not the act of a man unfamiliar with their ways but a deliberate blasphemy against their God. Violence ensues, and the plaza becomes a scene of betrayal.

Atahualpa, who had extended trust in the form of hospitality and treasures—golden masks, intricate jewelry, and vessels shimmering with the Incas’ craftsmanship—finds himself ensnared by the conquistadors’ greed.

In that bloody moment, the Bible ceases to be a spiritual text. It becomes a weapon of conquest, wielded to justify the theft of unimaginable wealth and the destruction of a civilization.

The Spaniards loot not only treasures but the sacred artifacts of a people who had imbued gold with meaning far beyond its material value. To the Incas, gold was the sweat of the sun, a gift from the divine. To the Spaniards, it was currency, power, and empire.

This was no isolated incident. For centuries, the Bible has been wielded in similar ways, stripped of its spiritual essence and twisted into a tool of domination.

Declared the unassailable “truth,” it has been used to validate violence, silence dissent, and serve agendas far removed from the life and teachings of the Christ it claims to represent. It was meant to be a bridge to the divine, but in Cajamarca, it became a chain to bind the conquered.

Here’s the raw truth no one likes to discuss: the Bible wasn’t written by God. It was written by men.  Men like you and me. Men with agendas, egos, and flaws.

The Bible wasn’t handed down as a finished work. It’s a patchwork quilt of stories, letters, and oral traditions stitched together over centuries.

The earliest texts were passed down verbally, shifting and evolving like campfire tales. When they were finally written, they were filtered through the biases, politics, and cultural limitations of their authors.

And the rewriting didn’t stop there. Over time, these texts were copied, edited, translated, and retranslated—each step influenced by the interests of those in power.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, for instance, decided which gospels to include in the canon and which to discard. Think about that: a group of men chose what would be considered “sacred truth” and what would be erased.

How much of Jesus’ true essence was left out in those decisions?

The Bible, once a collection of spiritual teachings and mystical poetry, was transformed into a tool of dogma. Its words, originally fluid and symbolic, became rigid and literal.

Instead of a guide for spiritual exploration, it became a weapon to impose conformity. Instead of sparking questions, it demanded obedience. It became an idol in itself—a book worshiped over the spirit it once sought to reveal.

Here’s the tragic irony: the Bible, a product of human hands, is now used to shut down human curiosity.

To question it is seen as heresy. To interpret it differently is seen as rebellion. But what could be more spiritual—more Christlike—than wrestling with the text, challenging its meanings, and seeking the truth beyond its pages?

After all, wasn’t that exactly what Jesus did with the religious texts of his time?

The rise of religion: From revolution to institution

The irony?

Jesus never intended to start a religion. His message was spiritual liberation, not institutional control.

But humans, being humans, love control.

After Jesus’ death, his followers tried to codify his teachings. They wrote letters, gospels, and creeds. They built communities. And slowly, the living, breathing mysticism of Jesus was replaced by the machinery of Christianity.

The Roman Empire saw its potential. When Constantine converted, the faith of the outsider was co-opted by the very systems of power Jesus had opposed.

Suddenly, Christianity wasn’t about fishermen and tax collectors finding God in the dirt and waves—it was about bishops and emperors declaring dogma from marble halls.

By the Middle Ages, the church had become an empire of its own. It wasn’t healing the sick or embracing the outcasts—it was burning heretics and selling indulgences. The Christ of parables and miracles had been caged in theology and ritual, and the shamanic essence of his message was all but lost.

Enter Francis of Assisi: The wild saint

Every now and then, someone comes along who tears through the veil of religion to find the raw, wild truth.

Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone—better known as Saint Francis—was one of those people. Born into privilege, Francis could have lived a cushy life. Instead, he gave it all up. He lived among lepers. He preached barefoot in the streets. And he saw God not in cathedrals but in the sun, the moon, the birds, and the wolves.

Francis didn’t just talk to animals—he sang with them, danced with the trees, and found divine love in the embrace of nature. His “Canticle of the Sun” isn’t a hymn to the God of organized religion; it’s a love song to creation itself.

He called the sun his brother, the moon his sister, and even death his friend. This is shamanic spirituality at its finest: a recognition that everything is interconnected, that the divine pulses through every leaf, every wing, every breath.

Reclaiming the wild Christ

What if we stopped seeing Jesus as the founder of a religion and started seeing him as a spiritual revolutionary?

A shaman. A mystic. A man who bypassed the hierarchies of his time to bring people face-to-face with the sacred.

What if we stripped away the centuries of dogma and let him speak again—not from a pulpit, but from the wilderness?

Francis of Assisi shows us it’s possible. He broke through the machinery of medieval religion to live a life of radical simplicity and connection. He found God not in rules but in relationship—with the earth, with the poor, with the mystery of life itself.

Maybe it’s time we follow his lead. The Christ who turned water into wine, who walked on waves, who prayed in gardens and deserts—that Christ is still calling.

Not to churches, not to rituals, but to the wild places within and without. The places where we meet ourselves, and the sacred, as they truly are.