Johannes Setälaä is a shaman. He is married and the couple has two children.
As a twelve-year-old he won a comics competition. Later he earned money by drawing comic strips and caricatures. He played the drums doing dance music and jazz. In 1980 Shamanism got him interested in art. Setälä did shamanistic meditation rituals and organised courses in shamanism. He was elected guardian of Finnish spiritual heritage and shaman fire (Finno-Ugric and Arctic shamanism) at the Four Winds International Conference of indigenous peoples in 1996.
In addition to his drawings he creates sculptures produced from natural materials, always involving themes of shamanism and Kalevala symbols (Kalevala is the national epic of Finland).