The Soul Bath: Recovering Shamanic Initiation in an Age of Spiritual Amnesia

Before patriarchy, before organized religion centralized into hierarchies of priests and temples, there was initiation—direct transmission of spiritual power from those who remembered to those who sought. Simon Sanud, founder of the Soul Bath Practice and Integral Men's Initiation, argues that these ancient pathways were not lost; they were merely buried under 6,000 years of patriarchal history.

Sanud's journey through Siddha Yoga, Tantra, and core-shamanism (the latter under Diana Beaulieu in 2020) convinced him that initiation never vanished—it simply went underground. "I take men on these same journeys, helped by my power animals," he explains. "It's ancient and natural." His Soul Bath technique condenses this into a 20-minute daily self-healing practice, a discipline he describes as "unlocking the door to deep emotional release, sexual energy transmutation, and relationship harmony."

The timing of this resurgence is significant. As institutional religion declines across the West, people are increasingly drawn to direct spiritual experience—exactly what initiatory traditions offered. What Sanud calls the Soul Bath may be part of a broader recovery: the return of the shamanic, not as New Age novelty, but as humanity's oldest way of knowing the sacred.