Transformation — What Really Happens When Your Life Turns Over

Transformation is threshold passage — the conscious passage through a layer of life in which an old self is released and a new one received. In its literal sense (Latin trans-formare: to form-through), transformation is not improvement, not optimization, not a 30-day program. In all shamanic and mystical traditions, transformation is described as initiation — as passage through a threshold, with separation from the old, dwelling in the threshold, and reintegration into a new layer. Real transformation is never quick. It is deep.

I'm Dr. Mark Hosak. I earned my PhD at Heidelberg University on Buddhist healing rituals, spent three years researching in Kyoto's temples, practiced on the sacred mountains of Koyasan (Shingon) and Hieizan (Tendai), walked the Shikoku pilgrimage on foot, and in the decades since have had encounters with spiritual masters on travels through Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Over ten years ago I took on the Wolf Shamanism lineage of the Ivory Coast via Baron Samedi — myself through a deep transformation experience I share on this page. Eileen Wiesmann, with whom I work on shamanic-worlds.com, brings the Egyptian tradition with its mystery concepts into the work.

What follows is a journey through what transformation in the ancient traditions actually is — beyond the self-optimization industry.

What Transformation Is Not

The English-language online world on "transformation" is flooded with self-optimization, coaching, and wellness industries. Before going deeper, let's sort out what transformation is not.

Not a lifehack. What's sold as "mindset tweak" or "three-pillar model" is mostly behavioral adjustment — and can be useful. But it isn't transformation. Behavioral adjustment lets you stay the same person, with better tools. Transformation doesn't let you stay the same person.

Not a 30-day program. Anyone promising you'll be a new person in 30 days has misunderstood something. In shamanic traditions, years of preparation are often required for transformation initiation. The actual threshold phase can last days, weeks, or months. The integration afterward years.

Not "a better version of yourself." This formulation is the central self-deception formula of the self-optimization industry. It suggests your current self is deficient and you merely need to spruce it up. Real transformation is different: it doesn't say "become better." It says "recognize what's beneath the layers." What lies beneath isn't a better version — it's another layer.

Not a pain-free experience. In all old traditions there's a transition pain. Something familiar is released. The threshold phase is disorienting. Anyone promising you transformation without pain hasn't taken the process seriously.

Not linear growth. Transformation doesn't run in straight lines. It has jumps, setbacks, long plateaus. Those in the middle of a transformation often see only the stumbling. The line shows itself only in retrospect.

The Three Phases of Transformation — The Threshold Concept

The French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep described in 1909, in his work Les rites de passage, what all initiation traditions worldwide know: transformation runs in three phases.

Phase 1: Separation. The old life is left — consciously or unconsciously. The old roles, old relationships, old identity lose their self-evidence. Sometimes triggered by an external event (death, separation, crisis). Sometimes coming from inner movements. What's characteristic: the old no longer feels right, the new isn't yet here.

Phase 2: Threshold. The critical phase. You're neither what you were nor what you'll be. In shamanic traditions this phase is named with its own terms — liminality, Victor Turner called it in academic religious studies. In my Wolf Shaman lineage the threshold beings are Baron Samedi and the Great Wolf, accompanying this phase. In the Egyptian tradition, Anubis is the threshold guardian. What happens in the threshold can't be understood from outside — only by those who have passed through themselves.

Phase 3: Reintegration. You emerge on the other side. You go back into everyday life — but as someone else. The old relationships must be recalibrated. Some carry the new person, some don't. This phase can last years.

In every authentic initiation tradition, conscious work is done with these three phases. In modern self-optimization programs, the threshold phase is skipped or ignored — which leads to what's sold as transformation often staying mere cosmetic change.

Transformation in Ancient Shamanic Traditions

In the traditions I've worked with over the last thirty years, transformation is never an individual self-optimizing act. It's always embedded in a lineage, in a tradition, in a spiritual relationship.

Wolf Shamanism of the Ivory Coast

In my lineage, taken on via Baron Samedi, transformation happens through encounter with the spirits. Whoever is introduced into the lineage isn't chosen by application — they're recognized by dreams. The two dreams that led me into the lineage (Baron Samedi with the wolf pelt, the wolf pack) were the sign-beginning of my own transformation. What came after — the years-long initiation, the daily practice, the change of the whole life — follows a logic that can't be steered from outside. More on the Wolf Shamanism page and on /en/voodoo.

Mikkyō · Esoteric Buddhism of Japan

In Mikkyō, whose roots I researched at Heidelberg University and practiced in Kyoto and on Koyasan and Hieizan, there's a fully systematized transmutation tantra. The central initiation form is called Kanjō 灌頂 — literally "the pouring," because traditionally water from a consecrated bowl is poured on the initiate's head. What looks like a simple gesture is the transmission of an entire spiritual lineage — with rights and responsibilities, with obligations of practice, with embedding in a transmission lineage running over a thousand years.

A central Mikkyō conception is Sokushin-Jōbutsu 即身成仏 — enlightenment in this body, in this lifetime. Transmutation is not postponed into a distant future, but accomplished in present bodily existence. That's the radical claim of the Shingon tradition: that the human can be transformed here and now through tantric practice. More on Mikkyō tradition on the Aura page and the Japanese Shamanism page.

Inner Alchemy · Neidan in Daoism

The Chinese tradition knows with inner alchemy one of the most systematic self-transformation schools of humanity. Three classical stages: refinement of essence (Jing) into energy (Qi), refinement of energy into spirit (Shen), and return of spirit into emptiness (Xu). Each stage is a threshold phase with its own practices — breath, visualization, meditation, sometimes bodily movement forms. This practice works slowly, over years. It promises no quick transformation. It promises a systematic transmutation of the inner material. More on the Daoist Shamanism page.

West-African Initiation Thresholds

In the Haitian Vodou tradition there's the Kanzo initiation — a ritualized transformation experience in which the initiate is led through a threshold passage. In my lineage from the Ivory Coast the ritual forms are different, but the logic is the same: after the initiation you don't live the same life you lived before. Certain behaviors that were everyday before initiation are no longer neutral. Certain relationship constellations no longer function in the old form.

Egyptian Mysteries

In the ancient Egyptian tradition that Eileen Wiesmann engages with intensively in her historical research, mystery initiations existed staged as symbolic dying and being-reborn. Anubis as threshold guardian led the initiates through the transformation. This tradition is largely lost in today's form — what we know comes from archaeological and religious-studies sources. But the structure of the initiation is documented: separation from the old life, threshold experience, rebirth into a new spiritual identity.

Mark's Transformation Story

I'm telling this here because it belongs to the authenticity of this page: I've gone through several transformation phases myself. Anyone who accompanies shamanically should know that from inside.

Heidelberg studies as first layer. Already as a child I had a fascination with Asian script and the worlds behind the symbols I saw in old films. I knew something was there without being able to name it. Studying Japanology and East Asian art history in Heidelberg was the first conscious answer to this early perception. It wasn't a career decision. It was a following of an inner trace.

Three years in Japan. The research years in Kyoto were a deeper break. I lived in a culture in which the layers that had interested me since childhood were self-evident. Temples of the Shingon, Tendai, and Zen schools. Practice with a Zen monk in calligraphy. Stays on Koyasan and Hieizan. Encounters with Yamabushi in the mountains. What opened there wasn't academically accessible — it was a change in the structure of perception.

Shikoku pilgrimage. 88 temples. 1,200 kilometers. On foot. What happens on such a pilgrimage with a highly sensitive nervous system isn't describable in wellness vocabulary. It's a bodily-spiritual transformation form that has been walked in the Japanese tradition for centuries. Whoever arrives at the end isn't the same as at the beginning.

The two dreams — the central transformation experience. Over ten years ago, two dreams came in quick succession. In the first, a Black man in a suit appeared — later recognized as Baron Samedi — and rubbed me with a wolf pelt before my house. In the second, I was part of a wolf pack. My then Vodou-practitioner friend had searched for five years for a successor for the Wolf Shamanism lineage of the Ivory Coast. My dreams were the sign.

What came after this sign was a transformation in the strict sense of the tradition. Separation from the old self-image (academic researching shamanic practices — but not himself standing in a lineage). Threshold phase over months (initiation, transition rituals, new relationships with spiritual presences). Reintegration over years (daily practice with Baron Samedi and the Great Wolf, slow change of the whole life, new responsibilities).

Today, over ten years later. Daily practice. Accompanying others through their own transformations — in live events, on the Wolf Shaman Master Path, in the communities. Writing on the new Shingon Reiki book with Eileen Wiesmann. What I take from these experiences: transformation can't be planned, but it can be recognized when it comes. And it needs accompaniment — not self-optimization alone.

Mikkyō and Transformation Practice

In Mikkyō, the esoteric Buddhism of Japan, there's a mature transmutation practice that I studied in my Heidelberg research and came to know in the living tradition in Kyoto and on Koyasan.

The central idea: tantric practice is transmutation practice. What's accumulated in the practitioner — emotional, mental, karmic layers — isn't suppressed or fought through the practice but transformed. What appears as anger can be transmuted to clarity. What appears as fear can be transmuted to wakefulness. That's not magic. It's a differentiated spiritual discipline.

The tools of Mikkyō transmutation belong to the existence of this tradition — mantra, mudra, and visualization as the tantric trio. These tools aren't accessible from books. They're passed in direct transmission — through the Kanjō initiation and the long years of practice afterward.

What you experience on a website about Mikkyō is the existence and the frame — not the practice itself. That's no secret-for-secrecy's-sake. It's respect for a tradition whose effect unfolds only in direct transmission.

More on Mikkyō tradition on the Aura page and the Full Moon page (Gachirinkan practice).

Inner Alchemy and Systematic Self-Transmutation

The Daoist tradition knows with inner alchemy 内丹 (Neidan) one of the most systematic self-transformation schools of humanity. What's described as alchemy isn't the changing of lead into gold — it's the changing of the inner material into the next stage of its ripeness.

The classical three stages:

• First stage: refinement of essence to energy. Lian Jing Hua Qi 煉精化氣. The bodily life-force (Jing) is condensed through practice into finer Qi. The tools: breathwork, bodily movement forms (Qigong, Tai Chi, Bagua), meditation in still sitting.
• Second stage: refinement of energy to spirit. Lian Qi Hua Shen 煉氣化神. The Qi is condensed into Shen — spirit, consciousness, clarity. The tools become subtler. Consciousness work, visualization, deep meditative absorption.
• Third stage: return into emptiness. Lian Shen Huan Xu 煉神還虛. The spirit is opened toward the source. This stage isn't completed within single lifetimes.

What inner alchemy teaches transformation seekers: that transmutation happens systematically and slowly. That the tools at each stage are different. That there's no jump skipping a stage. In my own practice I work with Bagua as a moving form of inner alchemy — and with the moon cycles as a frame for cyclic return.

The bridge to the Japanese tradition: the Yamabushi of the mountains (Shugendō) developed related systematic practice paths — bodily-ascetic in the mountains, with breath, voice, and ritual movement. Both traditions, the Daoist and the Yamabushi practice, complement each other.

Vodou and Transformation Initiation

In my Wolf Shaman lineage of the Ivory Coast, initiation is the core of transformation. What essentially happens is a transmission — the lineage, the relationships with the Loa, the responsibility of the practice are passed from predecessor to successor.

This transmission isn't symbolic. It's ritualized, serious, connected with concrete steps — passed within the lineage and not described in public texts. What's publicly describable: what's no longer possible after such an initiation. Certain behaviors that were everyday before initiation aren't neutral after. Certain relationship constellations no longer function in the old form. Certain life options close off because they're no longer in alignment.

In return, new things open. Perception layers change. The relationships to the Loa and to spiritual presences become living daily reality. The protection the lineage offers becomes concretely palpable. The responsibility the lineage carries becomes the own life-center.

Whoever encounters the idea of a Vodou initiation should know: this isn't a weekend step. This is a life decision. Whoever follows the call walks a path that changes the whole life. Whoever doesn't follow still has possibilities in the tradition — as appreciative companion, as guest, as seeker.

More on Vodou tradition and my lineage on the Voodoo page.

Shaman Sickness as Threshold Phenomenon

In the classical shamanic traditions worldwide there's a phenomenon religious anthropology describes as shaman sickness. Young people predestined for the shamanic role often go through a phase of deep crisis in adolescence — bodily and psychologically. Visions break in. Dreams become intense and disturbing. Normal life no longer functions. The young person is perceived as "sick" — but in the tradition this crisis is the sign that the threshold passage into the calling is beginning.

That's anthropologically described — among the Tungus in Siberia, among the Yakuts, in the Korean Mudang traditions, in many tribal cultures of Africa. It isn't romanticization. It's the observation that the calling into the shamanic role doesn't happen through choice but through passage — and that this passage often appears as crisis before it becomes recognizable as calling.

Important: This isn't a statement about your personal crisis. Not every difficult life phase is shaman sickness, and not every crisis needs shamanic interpretation. Anyone in crisis belongs in qualified therapeutic accompaniment. Shamanic accompaniment can open an additional layer — it doesn't replace psychotherapeutic work. Both layers are possible, in parallel and with clarity about their respective strengths.

Transformation for Highly Sensitive People

Anyone highly sensitive (see High Sensitivity page) often experiences transformation phases more intensely than less sensitive people. The threshold phase feels especially turbulent. Perception changes come faster and deeper. Integration often needs more time.

What highly sensitive people need in transformation phases:

Reduced stimulus load. In threshold phases the nervous system is already overburdened. Anyone who continues to enter full trains, loud rooms, intense social situations in such phases risks exhaustion and crisis. Conscious reduction is not weakness — it's wisdom.

Time in nature. In all shamanic traditions, contact with nature is recommended during transformation phases. Forest, water, mountains are spaces in which the highly sensitive system can calibrate itself.

Accompaniment instead of self-optimization alone. What doesn't work in classic self-optimization programs for highly sensitive people: harshness against oneself, forcing, "having to" push through. Transformation for highly sensitive people needs spaces in which the threshold phase is respected — not accelerated.

Shamanic accompaniment as protected space. In my live events and on the Wolf Shaman Master Path, threshold accompaniment is part of the work. The atmosphere of the group carries what individual work often doesn't carry. Anyone who is highly sensitive and in a transformation phase finds here a form that fits the constitution.

Transformation in Relationships

One of the most common questions in accompaniment: what happens with my relationships when I transform?

The honest answer: some relationships carry the transformation, some don't. That's not a moral evaluation of the relationships — it's an observation of reality.

Some partners and friends grow with you. They were in a transmutation process anyway, or they let themselves be stirred by the other's movement. These relationships often deepen through the transformation.

Other partners and friends hold to what was. They want the old person to come back. They don't understand the change or feel threatened by it. These relationships go into crisis.

Some relationships actually have to end. Not because one side became "better" but because the alignment is no longer there. That's painful and in most cases unavoidable.

What helps: honest communication about what's changing. Patience with the partner who isn't yet that far. Clarity about what's no longer negotiable. Acceptance of the fact that not every relationship can carry every transformation.

Karmic connections are especially pronounced in this phase — whoever stands in a karmic relationship often goes through the transformation together with the partner, even if neither would describe it that way. More on the karmic dimension on the Karma page.

Transformation in Anime — What Naruto, Demon Slayer, and Mononoke Show

Whoever grew up with Japanese animation has often seen more precise transformation arcs than in Western films. That's no accident: Japanese storytelling draws from traditions in which transmutation is systematically understood.

Naruto. Sasuke's transformation arc is one of the most differentiated in modern anime — from the wounded boy through the vengeance-seeking searcher to the reflecting adult. Sasuke goes through classical threshold phases: separation from home, dwelling in the threshold (the years with Orochimaru, with Akatsuki), reintegration in changed form. Naruto himself runs through several transformation stages — the encounter with the Kyuubi, the time with Jiraiya, the confrontation with his own lineage.

One Piece. Each main character runs through several transformation arcs over time. What's remarkable: Eichiro Oda shows that transformation often has painful backstories. The characters don't hide what shaped them. Their strength comes from acknowledging their wounds, not from overcoming in the self-optimization sense.

Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba). Tanjirō's threshold passages are classical initiation structures. The loss of family at the beginning is the separation. The accompaniment by Sakonji Urokodaki is the threshold phase with a companion figure. The acceptance into the Demon Slayer Corps is the reintegration in a new form. What makes the series special: in his transformation Tanjirō doesn't lose his original gentleness — it becomes his strength.

Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime). Ashitaka's bodily and soul transformation through the curse of the boar god. He loses his old identity as prince of his people (separation), wanders through a world where he belongs neither to the humans nor the forest Kami (threshold), and finds in the end a new form in which he can mediate between worlds (reintegration). That's classical shamanic transformation in animated form.

Spirited Away. Chihiro's classical hero's journey transformation. An anxious ten-year-old runs through the threshold passage in the bathhouse of the spirits and comes back as someone who knows her own strength. Hayao Miyazaki tells this with a precision rare in Western coming-of-age films.

Mushishi and Natsume's Book of Friends. Both series show how transformation can also happen quietly and slowly — through a series of small encounters that show only retrospectively as a coherent arc.

Why do these stories work so well? Because they come from a culture in which initiation and threshold practice aren't lost. What you recognize while watching is the old transmutation tradition.

Practical Accompaniment in Transformation Phases

What can you do yourself when you feel a threshold approaches?

What to avoid: transformation-forcing through haste, "hero stories" with pressure on quick change, social-media staging of your own transformation experience. Real transformation often happens hidden.

The Wolf Shaman Master Path as Long-Term Transformation Path

For those who have the impression that the transformation phase they stand in isn't a single event but part of a larger life-call — the Wolf Shaman Master Path offers the long-term frame. It's not a program and not an event series — but a path in the Wolf Shamanism lineage of the Ivory Coast via Baron Samedi, with Mikkyō depth from Heidelberg and Koyasan.

What happens on this path (more on The Path page):

• You recognize your true self
• You find your vision and live it
• You free yourself from negative influences and karmic entanglements
• You connect with your true powers
• You develop extrasensory abilities

All of that is transformation in depth — over years. Three tiers — Standard, Premium, VIP. In the VIP tier 1:1 sessions are component. No beginner entrance — for people who sense that this tradition seeks a frame in them that's serious enough.

Practice Entrances for Transformation Seekers

If you've come this far and notice a threshold opens in your life, there are several entrances.

First Step · Newsletter and Perception Quiz

The simplest entrance. Take the short quiz "Are you highly sensitive?" — the ten reflection points from the High Sensitivity focus. Afterward you can subscribe to the Shamanic Worlds newsletter.

Listening and Letting In · Shamanic Worlds Podcast

More on the Podcast page.

Deepening · Japanese Grimoire Society

For English-speaking practitioners, the Japanese Grimoire Society offers the parallel practice community for Kuji Kiri, Mikkyō tools, and the broader esoteric Japanese tradition — including threshold work, protection practices, and bond-dissolution rituals central in transformation phases.

Japanese Grimoire Society Live Events

Depth Path · The Wolf Shaman Master Path

For those who want to take on the lineage itself — Wolf Shamanism of the Ivory Coast via Baron Samedi, with threshold accompaniment as a central tool, embedded in full shamanic practice — the entrance is via the Wolf Shaman Master Path. That's the full path: daily practice, initiation experiences, accompaniment in the lineage, community.

Going Deeper

• /en/karma — how karmic patterns transform
• /en/healing — healing as transformation form
• /en/aura — aura perception and karma body
• /en/wolf-shamanism — Mark's main lineage
• /en/voodoo — Vodou initiation and Wolf Shamanism of the Ivory Coast
• /en/daoist-shamanism — Inner alchemy as transmutation school
• /en/podcast — Shamanic Worlds Podcast
• /en/mark-and-eileen — Mark's path and Eileen's contribution