Corporate Shamanism: What the Next Era of Business Looks Like

Long before we lived in towers of concrete and glass, before we used machines to stay connected, we lived in tribes.

Each tribe understood that it was not separate from the land. The cave was Mother. The mountain was Ancestor. The eagle was Guide.

And, among these tribes, there was always one who listened differently.

This was the shaman.

The shaman served as an intermediary between the human world and the spirit world. Across many Indigenous and animist traditions, shamans are recognized as healers, guides, and mediators who use altered states of consciousness – through ritual, trance, plant medicines, or other practices – to access spiritual realms for the purpose of healing, divination, or guidance.

The shamanic calling is not a choice.

It’s a divine happening. It chooses you, you do not choose it. And the calling is not glorious. It comes through pain. Tragedy. Crisis. Sickness. A near death experience. Through visions that split the mind. It can come through literal lightning strike or some other initiatory wound.Some of you are here reading this now because you’ve been marked. Others are here to learn. To both, we say – learn from the elders. And learn from within. For the shamanic current is still alive within our DNA.

It’s the hum of the earth, the rhythm of the drum, the pulse of the stars. It’s older than religion. Older than kings. Older than language itself. As you breathe, let this current awaken. Feel the hum in your own body. Understand that these words are less for your thinking mind and more to stir your somatic memory. 

We speak to the part of you that has sat at the fire many times before. We speak to the part of you that has died and returned again. And again. And again. We speak to the part of you that is ready to anchor in a new version of this ancient path.

What is Corporate Shamanism?

When Jumpsuit sent out its signal through The Telepathy Tapes, thousands of people around the world showed up, expressing a similar call: to integrate ancient wisdom with modern technology. And corporate shamanism is one expression of this weaving.We’d define corporate shamanism as this: both the spirit and the art of tending to an organization’s unseen dynamics — the field of meaning, power, timing, and relationship — so that strategy, brand, product, and culture emerge from coherence rather than control. It replaces extraction with reciprocity, speed with rhythm, and centralized power with mycelial intelligence.

Business 3.0 is shamanic.

Our prediction:

• Within 5 years, at least one major management consultancy will start offering “conscious governance” or “ritual design for orgs” under a sanitized label.

  
  

• Within 10 years, the most valuable companies will be those that move energy (attention, trust, capital, creativity) with the least friction. Essentially, shamanic businesses with ritualized governance.

  
  

• By 2035, corporate shamanism will not be fringe. It will be seen the way “design thinking” or “agile” is today: once weird, now table stakes.

  
  

• The first trillion-dollar valuation collapse from unintegrated shadow (think a Tesla or Meta-scale implosion) will make this practice mainstream. And the corporate shamans who can prevent it will become the new McKinseys.
  

But for now, this mantle is being carried by the edge-dwellers: facilitators weaving ritual into offsites, healers sneaking somatic practices into leadership trainings, coaches who talk about energy in one breath and KPIs in the next.Corporate shamanism is being seeded through the underground network of corporate shamans who likely don’t call themselves that. Yet. The corporate shamans are translators holding both worlds at once: business language on the outside, initiatory frameworks on the inside. And while this is not yet branded as a category, corporate shamans are carrying the codes that will become tomorrow’s playbooks (once the Fortune 500 realizes their survival depends on it).

An Eternal Lineage

WE GIVE THANKS to the lineages who have carried the flame without interruption. We give thanks to the keepers of ceremonies and to the elders who show us the way.

WE GIVE THANKS that it continues to flow through those whose lineages were cut off. To the ones who feel the ache of this absence but still hear the call. 

For the shaman is not marked by bloodline alone. They must also be willing, have capacity, and carry the flame with love.

WHO CAN HOLD THE FIRE WITHOUT BEING CONSUMED?

This is why many of you reading this now have walked through suffering and disintegration. These were initiations. They broke you as to remake you into a vessel. They cleared you as to make you into a channel.

Businesses as Tribes

Do not think of businesses as separate from our older version of tribes. They are our modern day version of gathering with others over shared purpose, shared connection, shared resources, and sometimes, shared fate.

What was once wood and flame is now the glow of screens. What was once a ceremony with dancing and rituals are now contracts and launches. What was once shaped by elders and bards is now shaped by boards and executives.

Businesses exist to quench our fear of survival. Businesses exist as a way to create. Businesses exist to create new connections and meaning.

But businesses, especially corporations, have cut themselves off from tribal lineage and shamanic codes. They act in direct opposition, as if they’re separate from the earth. They consume without reciprocity. They avoid initiation, masking shadows with NDAs and spreadsheets. They do not exist to serve the whole, but instead, the narrow profit of a few.

They are sick. And in great denial.

But we see it in the exhaustion of workers. The widening inequality. We see it in the poisoned rivers and the burning forests. And in the emptiness of growth no matter what cost.

This is the turning point. We are at the beginning of the great collapse. For as the old systems die, a new system will arise.

This is not the end of business. It’s the rebirth.

The rise of the corporate shaman

And so, at the exact right time, emerges a role that is both entirely new and deeply ancient: the corporate shaman. They step into organizations not as executives or consultants, but as a type of Seer, Healer, Ritualist, Bridge, and Shadow Worker. Ultimately, the corporate shaman exists to help business remember ceremony.Mark thresholds. Launches are births, pivots are initiations, closures are deaths. Ceremony acknowledges these transitions with reverence instead of denial.

Heal wounds. Burnout, betrayal, and silence are not just HR issues; they are soul injuries. Ceremony allows grief, repair, and release.

Bridge worlds. Business does not exist apart from the earth, community, or the unseen. Ceremony ensures reciprocity flows between all.  And when we gather not just with colleagues but with ancestors, descendants, and the more-than-human world. Name shadows. Exploitation, fear, and imbalance thrive in secrecy. Ceremony brings them into the light where they can be integrated.

Summon futures. Vision is not just strategy; it is invocation. Ceremony aligns the organization with the futures that want to be born.The corporate shaman reintroduces what was once obvious: thresholds must be marked. Wounds must be grieved. Worlds must be integrated. Shadows must be named. Futures must be invoked.

Business as ceremony

We forgot. We forgot that every gathering is a ritual. That every launch is a birth. That every closure is a death. That every deal is a covenant.

We forgot that business is not a machine, but a fire around which people gather. 

And in our forgetting, business lost its soul.

But the corporate shaman comes to wake us.

HOW LONG WILL WE CONTINUE TO PERFORM EMPTY RITUALS?

Without ceremony, we drift. With it, we remember who we are, why we gather, and how to be in service of the whole.

Ceremony teaches us that work is never just transactions. It’s transformation. Every decision ripples across dimensions. When we gather without reverence, we consume. When we gather with reverence, we create.

The corporate shaman is here to reveal that ceremony is the missing architecture of business. 

WE GIVE THANKS TO THOSE WHO HELP US REMEMBER.

1. Every company is a spirit. Treat the organization as a living field, not a machine. Founders are stewards of a relationship with a living breathing entity, not owners of a static entity. Decisions shift from “Does this hit the metric?” to “Does this strengthen the field?”
   

2. Money is energy. Revenue follows resonance. Profit is surplus life-force. The shamanic CFO asks: Where is energy leaking? What wants to live that has been starving? What’s ready to die? Cashflow becomes a measurement of energetic and relational health.
   

3. Brand is a spell. Language creates reality. Audit words for fear, scarcity, blame. Speak from what you are summoning, not what you’re avoiding. Static and dynamic images carry a resonance. Create with intention and do not underestimate vibe, which speaks to vibration.
   

4. Sensing is needed over planning. Tune into the signals already present: what the team, market, or field is showing you. Let energy guide direction. Then, give those signals shape through ritualized experiments and integration: Signal → Story → Experiment → Debrief → Integrate.Signal: Notice what’s arising (a tension, pattern, or opportunity).Story: Frame it so people understand the meaning and stakes.Experiment: Test it quickly with minimal risk.Debrief: Reflect together on what happened.Integrate: Carry forward what worked into the system.
   

5. Power literacy shapes culture. Culture isn’t campaigns or onboarding decks. It’s how power moves in the shadows. Who gets to say yes and no, who pays the cost when they do, and whose refusal is punished. Until those dynamics are surfaced and integrated, culture is just theater. Real culture begins with shadow work: naming what’s hidden, owning the projections, and normalizing consent: I opt in. I opt out. I request to renegotiate.
   

6. Boundaries create flow. Containers allow for safety; safety allows for emergence. Every container needs a purpose, an edge, clear agreements, a timebox, and a release. No container? Expect chaos or coercion.
   

7. Ledger replaces IP. We’re done with gatekeeping and extraction. Credit contribution and do not hoard ownership. Get creative about how you track value (time, introductions, risk, narrative lift) and honor it. Reciprocity isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the new infrastructure of Business 3.0.
   

8. Authenticity is required. Everything hidden eventually comes to light. What you pretend not to feel, you’ll pay to fix. But when you build on what’s real, you gain energy, trust, and connection. Make authenticity legible: Where are we posturing? What are we silencing? What truth would get you fired in practice? Bring it into the circle before it leaks out in exits, scandals, or PR crises and watch how much power is freed up when people can be themselves.
   

9. Conflict is initiation. Ritualize hard conversations. Learn non-violent communication and authentic relating. Develop the ability to separate story (interpretation) from signal (observable facts). Seek repair (what restores trust) not retribution (who we punish).
   

10. Time moves in cycles. Quarterly planning tricks us into thinking growth should always be up and to the right. In reality, every organization moves through seasons: Sow (research and develop), Grow (scale), Harvest (profit and share), Regenerate (compost and re-seed). When you honor that rhythm, you stop fighting nature and start using time as a natural technology for performance.
    

11. Governance is a nervous system. Just like a body, an organization needs ways to sense, interpret, and act. When governance transitions from centralized, hierarchical power to a distributed network, it begins functioning like a nervous system. Then, the organization can actually feel its environment, make sense of it, and respond fast, coherently, and without burning out.
    

12. Death literacy is competitive advantage. We treat launches like births (with press and pizza parties) but neglect the other half of the cycle. Projects get ghosted. Talent lingers past vitality. Teams burn energy propping up what no longer has a pulse. A death-literate organization knows when and how to let things go. How to compost, which frees energy for whatever’s next. Death literacy teaches us how to sunset products with rites of closure, archive with gratitude, and allow brand to shed its skin and evolve into the next expression of itself. It teaches us how to hold space for endings with as much reverence as beginnings helping leaders face loss without shame, guiding teams through grief, and honoring the work that’s complete. 
    

The corporate shaman does not separate spirituality from business. They reveal business as spirituality in action. Shadows & Guardrails

Every path of power has shadows. Even, and especially, this one. Consider these as you sense into your shamanic calling.

The first is the shadow of the thief (appropriation). To lift Indigenous practices without honor, to strip them of context, to take without giving back. These acts breed imbalance. The true corporate shaman knows they are not the source but the steward, and so they move with respect, reciprocity, and acknowledgment of the lineages that carried these medicines through fire and forgetting.

Another shadow arrives as the tyrant (ego). The one who names themselves “shaman” to receive praise, to manipulate, or to climb. But the real markers of this role are not status or superiority. A shaman who crowns themselves will quickly become a ruler without a kingdom.

Also, beware of the mask (performance). Beware of serving others while practicing extraction underneath. Beware of burning incense in rooms and using words like “ritual” or “medicine” without the work of integration and the evidence of transformation. This is not ceremony, it is theatre.

And look out for the exile (isolation). Every true shaman is accountable to elders, to community, and to the unseen. To answer to no one is to fall into delusion. Even the strongest seer must be held by a circle. The corporate shaman is no different, in fact, their legitimacy is woven in relationship.

These are some traps. And there are many. But at the heart of this role is always one simple truth: corporate shamanism is a path of service. The moment humility is lost, the medicine becomes poison. The moment service is abandoned, the role collapses into shadow. The corporate shaman walks between worlds not to be crowned, but to be emptied, so that what moves through them is not theirs alone, but for the whole.

Where is all of this taking us? The machine age is over. The obsession with endless extraction, linear growth, and soulless efficiency has run its course. And it does not go down gracefully. It goes down swinging. For it has forgotten how to die.And yet, in this moment of collapse and possibility, we stand at the threshold of a new world. As Pices cycles into Aquarius, we sense a significant shift in the field. This transition ushers in a new era of innovation, interconnection, and collective awakening. The old hierarchies dissolve. Networks weave. What was centralized begins to distribute. Coherence guides us, not control.

The machine age is over. The obsession with endless extraction, linear growth, and soulless efficiency has run its course. And we're sorry to say it does not go down gracefully. It goes down swinging. For it has forgotten how to die.

And yet in this moment of great collapse and possibility, we stand at a threshold of a new world. And its ours for building. As Pisces cycles into Aquarius, we sense a significant shift in the field. This transition ushers in a new era of innovation, interconnection, and collective awakening. The old hierarchies dissolve. Networks weave. What was once centralized begins to distribute. Coherence becomes our guide, not fear and control. This is a wild and wonderful time to be alive as we're also experiencing the cosmic shift from the Cross of Planning into The Cross of the Sleeping Phoenix. What once brought stability through structures, laws, and systems is ending. The Phoenix rises not to refine the old, but to burn it to ash and call forth something alive. It tells us the era of rigid planning is over and the era of embodied spirit, of living flame, begins. The Phoenix teaches us that nothing survives unchanged. Every system must pass through fire to be reborn.

Business is not exempt. Business is the great temple of our time, the place where most humans give their hours, their energy, and their devotion. For too long, the altar has been fed with offerings of burnout, silence, and disconnection. But as Aquarius flows and the Phoenix ignites, spirituality and business will no longer remain separate. They are here to powerfully and unapologetically re-unite.

In this new world, every gathering is sacred. Meetings are not empty time slots but circles of intention, entered with presence and sealed with clarity. Launches are not just product drops but births, blessed into the world with joy and responsibility. Closures are not quiet abandonments but deaths, honored with gratitude and grief, their essence composted into the soil of what comes next. Deals are not mere transactions but covenants and agreements that ripple through people, communities, and the unseen, binding us in reciprocity.

When business remembers ceremony, money changes form. It becomes recognized as an energetic life force that flows through systems, nourishes what is alive, and starves what is complete. And this brings in new ways to exchange energy, beyond money.

And beyond the walls of business, the impact radiates outward. The economy begins to breathe like an ecosystem, circulating resources where they are needed, composting what is complete, regenerating rather than depleting. Communities feel the shift as reciprocity returns. We seek new and creative ways to be in community. It fundamentally changes the way we live, interact, and co-create.

The corporate shaman is the guide in this remembering. And we do not arrive as savior but as mirror, reflecting back who we are and what we've forgotten.

Aho. Love, Jumpsuit