Connections to another order of reality are widely reported by those of us involved in shamanic work. In the culture at large such experiences are often considered coincidental or imaginary. In shamanism the experiences are accepted for what they are; a vision of a holistic order deeper and more complete than the consensual reality of modern cultures.
I was teaching in a small circle in Northern California about ten years ago and as usual was demonstrating a healing ritual called an “extraction.” Extractions are healings in which the shaman looks inside the physical body of a patient and removes what appears to be a spiritual intrusion. An extraction is a high energy process requiring skill on the part of the shaman and support from the community.
In this instance we were meeting in the home of a young nurse. I do not remember her name. I knew basically nothing about her except that she wanted to have the extraction work before she had surgery for some physical problem. It is important to remember that I knew nothing about her history or background. As I remember, she was about 30 years of age.
I saw something in her upper body that looked like an intrusion and I removed it. Then I saw, in her right leg, a beautiful, bright, silver thistle plant. I don’t know the name of this thistle but it is common along roadways, has a beautiful spiny head and is sometimes used for decoration. I was surprised to see the thistle and decided that I should not remove it. After the ritual was completed and the circle was discussing the work I mentioned the thistle to the young woman. She gasped in surprise and said “oh my god!” She then related a story to us about thistles.
When she graduated from her Catholic high school and walked across the stage to receive her diploma she discovered that it was a note saying that when her parents paid her tuition, she would receive a diploma. She then went to a graduation party and proceeded to get drunk with her friends. Later in the evening she rode into the country with her friends and was abandoned by them outside town, in the dark, wearing no shoes. In her attempts to walk back to town she fell into a large patch of thistles and ended up in the local ER to have all the spines removed from her body. She said the pain was excruciating and she still had nightmares about it.
Clearly the young woman had a relationship with the thistle spirit. Unfortunately I was prevented from doing more work with her because she moved away but I have always remembered that extraction as providing a clear window into a field of information far outside consensual reality.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Civilization is like a Jetliner
I love this thing. It is by David Watson. I read it frequently just to stay positive. Stop here if you're planning to fly soon.
Civilization is like a jetliner, noisy, burning up enormous amounts of fuel. Every imaginable and unimaginable crime and pollution had to be committed in order to make it go. Whole species were rendered extinct, whole populations dispersed. Its shadow on the waters resembles an oil slick. Birds are sucked into its jets and vaporized. Every part, as Gus Grissom once nervously remarked about space capsules before he was burned up in one, has been made by the lowest bidder.
Civilization is like a 747, the filtered air, the muzak oozing over the earphones, a phony sense of security, the chemical food, the plastic trays, all the passengers sitting passively in the orderly row of padded seats staring at Death on the movie screen. Civilization is like a jetliner, an idiot savant in the cockpit, manipulating computerized controls built by sullen wage workers, and dependent for his directions on sleepy technicians high on amphetamines with their minds wandering to sports and sex.
Civilization is like a 747, filled beyond capacity with coerced volunteers-some in love with the velocity, most wavering at the abyss of terror and nausea, yet still seduced by advertising and propaganda. It is like a DC-10, so incredibly enclosed that you want to break through the tin can walls and escape, make your own way through the clouds, and leave this rattling, screaming fiend approaching its breaking point. The smallest error or technical failure leads to catastrophe, scattering your sad entrails like belated omens all over the runway, knocks you out of your shoes, breaks all your bones like egg shells.
(Of course civilization is like many other things besides jets - always things - a chemical drainage ditch, a woodland knocked down to lengthen an airstrip or to build a slick new shopping mall where people can buy salad bowls made out of exotic tropical trees which will be extinct next week, or perhaps a graveyard for cars, or a suspension bridge which collapses because a single metal pin has shaken loose. Civilization is a hydra. There is a multitude of styles, colors, and sizes of Death to choose from.)
Civilization is like a Boeing jumbo jet because it transports people who have never experienced their humanity where they were. to places where they shouldn't go. In fact it mainly transports businessmen in suits with briefcases filled with charts, contracts, more mischief - businessmen who are identical everywhere and hence have no reason at all to be ferried about. And it goes faster and faster, turning more and more places into airports, the (un)natural habitat of businessmen.
It is an utter mystery how it gets off the ground. It rolls down the runway, the blinking lights along the ground like electronic scar tissue on the flesh of the earth, picks up speed and somehow grunts raping the air, working its way up along the shimmering waves of heat and the trash blowing about like refugees fleeing the bombing of a city. Yes, it is exciting, a mystery, when life has been evacuated and the very stones have been murdered.
But civilization, like the jetliner, this freak phoenix incapable of rising from its ashes, also collapses across the earth like a million bursting wasps, flames spreading across the runway in tentacles of gasoline, samsonite, and charred flesh. And always the absurd rubbish, Death's confetti, the fragments left to mock us lying along the weary trajectory of the dying bird-the doll's head, the shoes, eyeglasses, a beltbuckle.
Jetliners fall, civilizations fall, this civilization will fall. The gauges will be read wrong on some snowy day (perhaps they will fail). The wings, supposedly defrosted, will be too frozen to beat against the wind and the bird will sink like a millstone, first gratuitously skimming a bridge (because civilization is also like a bridge, from Paradise to Nowhere), a bridge laden, say, with commuters on their way to or from work, which is to say, to or from an airport, packed in their cars (wingless jetliners) like additional votive offerings to a ravenous Medusa.
Then it will dive into the icy waters of a river, the Potomac perhaps, or the River Jordon, or Lethé. And we will be inside, each one of us at our specially assigned porthole, going down for the last time, like dolls' heads encased in plexiglass.
Civilization is like a jetliner, noisy, burning up enormous amounts of fuel. Every imaginable and unimaginable crime and pollution had to be committed in order to make it go. Whole species were rendered extinct, whole populations dispersed. Its shadow on the waters resembles an oil slick. Birds are sucked into its jets and vaporized. Every part, as Gus Grissom once nervously remarked about space capsules before he was burned up in one, has been made by the lowest bidder.
Civilization is like a 747, the filtered air, the muzak oozing over the earphones, a phony sense of security, the chemical food, the plastic trays, all the passengers sitting passively in the orderly row of padded seats staring at Death on the movie screen. Civilization is like a jetliner, an idiot savant in the cockpit, manipulating computerized controls built by sullen wage workers, and dependent for his directions on sleepy technicians high on amphetamines with their minds wandering to sports and sex.
Civilization is like a 747, filled beyond capacity with coerced volunteers-some in love with the velocity, most wavering at the abyss of terror and nausea, yet still seduced by advertising and propaganda. It is like a DC-10, so incredibly enclosed that you want to break through the tin can walls and escape, make your own way through the clouds, and leave this rattling, screaming fiend approaching its breaking point. The smallest error or technical failure leads to catastrophe, scattering your sad entrails like belated omens all over the runway, knocks you out of your shoes, breaks all your bones like egg shells.
(Of course civilization is like many other things besides jets - always things - a chemical drainage ditch, a woodland knocked down to lengthen an airstrip or to build a slick new shopping mall where people can buy salad bowls made out of exotic tropical trees which will be extinct next week, or perhaps a graveyard for cars, or a suspension bridge which collapses because a single metal pin has shaken loose. Civilization is a hydra. There is a multitude of styles, colors, and sizes of Death to choose from.)
Civilization is like a Boeing jumbo jet because it transports people who have never experienced their humanity where they were. to places where they shouldn't go. In fact it mainly transports businessmen in suits with briefcases filled with charts, contracts, more mischief - businessmen who are identical everywhere and hence have no reason at all to be ferried about. And it goes faster and faster, turning more and more places into airports, the (un)natural habitat of businessmen.
It is an utter mystery how it gets off the ground. It rolls down the runway, the blinking lights along the ground like electronic scar tissue on the flesh of the earth, picks up speed and somehow grunts raping the air, working its way up along the shimmering waves of heat and the trash blowing about like refugees fleeing the bombing of a city. Yes, it is exciting, a mystery, when life has been evacuated and the very stones have been murdered.
But civilization, like the jetliner, this freak phoenix incapable of rising from its ashes, also collapses across the earth like a million bursting wasps, flames spreading across the runway in tentacles of gasoline, samsonite, and charred flesh. And always the absurd rubbish, Death's confetti, the fragments left to mock us lying along the weary trajectory of the dying bird-the doll's head, the shoes, eyeglasses, a beltbuckle.
Jetliners fall, civilizations fall, this civilization will fall. The gauges will be read wrong on some snowy day (perhaps they will fail). The wings, supposedly defrosted, will be too frozen to beat against the wind and the bird will sink like a millstone, first gratuitously skimming a bridge (because civilization is also like a bridge, from Paradise to Nowhere), a bridge laden, say, with commuters on their way to or from work, which is to say, to or from an airport, packed in their cars (wingless jetliners) like additional votive offerings to a ravenous Medusa.
Then it will dive into the icy waters of a river, the Potomac perhaps, or the River Jordon, or Lethé. And we will be inside, each one of us at our specially assigned porthole, going down for the last time, like dolls' heads encased in plexiglass.
Shamanism, Anarchy and the End of the World
This is the article that appeared in 5th Estate a few years ago. As you can imagine, several shamanic practitioners I know did not approve. Reading it again at this later date I might change it a bit but in general I still like it. However, there is much more that goes unsaid. I intend to address that here on the blog in the near future.
After twenty years of teaching shamanic practices to small groups in several circles in Washington and California, I found the results to be mixed. In the groups in which I participated there were many moving visionary experiences, but the flabby jargon of the human potential movement left important messages missed amidst incessant psychobabble. Contemporary shamanism, grown out of the human potential movement of Esalen Institute was rapidly becoming subsumed into the new age culture as the latest fad/religion. In two or three decades, aided by workshop leaders, it had become lost into the pop culture. While the permutations were endless, pervasive alienation remained a constant. As always, money, sex and power ruled.
That shamanism has been compromised by the human potential movement is not to say that altered states and working in trance cannot offer us a personal healing direction. I know from experience that lives can be changed through shamanic work. A deep trance, engendered in a variety of ways and entered with intention can be transforming. The value of shamanism as taught in the contemporary culture may be that it provides some level of psychotherapy, some level of energetic balance, some palliative response to stress along with feelings of community, and slightly less alienation. In some cases, shamanic practice may provide actual healing of disease or easing of struggles with death.
My own personal struggle with shamanism centered on skepticism and the understanding that we can fool ourselves into believing almost anything. My training was in agriculture and science. I was not one to accept much on faith. I continued to bounce between shamanic visions as projections of the psyche, and as visitations from a separate spiritual world. By the time I stopped teaching a few years ago, I had come to understand that the distinction probably didn't matter. My work and studies since have convinced me that contemporary, religious and psychological shamanism represent part of a catastrophic human error which took place at the beginning of history, and that contrary to the notion that it has been around for tens of thousands of years, indigenous shamanism is more likely a transitional phase between the consciousness of hunter gatherers and the alienation of contemporary state religions.
Faith healing comes in many costumes and shamanism is one of them. We can wear skins or robes. We can beat drums or play pipe organs, burn sage or incense, sing to the element of water, or submerge ourselves in the river. Both the "laying on" of hands or sleight of hand can be efficacious. We can sing to our bear or sing to Jesus, whirl like a dervish, whip ourselves until we bleed, play with rattlesnakes, dance in the sun for four days, or starve ourselves in caves. Take your pick. Each can make less painful our lives as numb wage slaves. If we can ignore that tiny voice crying for real freedom and calling us back to the circle, our economic and religious subservience will help us pretend to be something more than imprisoned domestic animals.
A large problem remains. Shamanism, or any of the other religious choices as currently practiced, will not turn us from the global abyss. To believe shamanism and religion can bring about some form of planetary healing is much like the notion that more technology will solve our environmental problems. Transference, sexual abuse, misinterpretation of serious pathologies, and lack of ethics, all typical of the human potential movement, combine to further alienate and separate. Benign attempts at healing by unskilled and uninformed devotees, while perhaps not causing serious harm, can impede solid, long-term movement toward better health. To put it plainly, shamanism draws some seriously crazy folks, and many leaders are happy to look the other way as long as the fees are paid.
For those of us arrogant enough to assume we have mastered this reality enough to explore another, our shamanic practice should pull us toward radical anarchistic action. We've been hearing from, and paying huge workshop fees to shamanic leaders for decades about "connecting to spirit," but their message sidesteps industrial capitalism, the religions to which it is connected, and open, public, radical, changes flowing from our spiritual work. The reason for this omission is clear. Contemporary shamanism teaches vertical, hierarchical religion. The focus is on what Mircea Eliade, in Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, described as the "journey," rather than presence in this biological world.
Agriculture, religion and government have not brought us a better life. The price we have paid for these abstractions is far too high. The amusing charm of a small transistor radio hanging from a tree in an upper Amazon village belies the toxicity of the poisonous little gadget. Writings of Morris Berman, Paul Shepard, Joel Kovel, Stanley Diamond, John Zerzan, David Watson, Derrick Jensen, Lewis Mumford and others have led me to conclude that we should not be attaching religious symbolism and meaning to shamanic experience, but instead should seek a practice which takes us to the awareness that preceded the alienating, beginning of agriculture and religion. We should attempt a return to what Berman calls paradox, free of time and language. Even brief experiences of integration might help us build decentralized communities centered on our insight. An intentional use of altered states can obliterate the duality that has led to the domination and destruction of our world, an experience of unity, what Sigmund Freud called the regressive "oceanic experience," what Jung called a progressive return to "primitive wisdom" and what Morris Berman, in Wandering God, termed the "paradox" of hunter-gatherer consciousness, "a diffuse or peripheral awareness," and in his earlier book The Reenchantment of the World, called "participatory consciousness" in which "the sacred, such as it is, simply is the world."
Unfortunately, shamanic practice as taught imbeds us in pathological constructs. Linear, vertical thinking has brought us to disaster. If we leave religion behind, trance practice can lead us to an egalitarian culture of biological integration. We must reject the religious rituals and notions of upper and lower worlds. We must cease our efforts to ascend and return to living completely here, in ourselves, on this earth, as integrated beings. Dominant power structures under which we live are only too happy to have us live in the illusory and impotent condition of duality, and most humans will sit and do nothing during this time of inexorable unraveling. Only a few will work to recover our history as integrated, wild beings. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors are still close. Wiser and healthier than we, they are calling us back from a technological and religious cliff. Small, egalitarian, tribal circles of paradox can return us to the awareness of our ancestors of 10,000 years ago, before they unwittingly brought us religion, and planted the seeds of our destruction.
Rejecting the linear, oppressive, hierarchical and alienating forms of religions that have swept our world, we can begin to live in an archaic, anarchistic, sustained way, and begin to heal our planetary home. We need not travel to other realms. We must learn to step through a barrier, and arrive here. Trance brings us home. School is in the garden, the forest, the prairies, the rivers. The teaching we need will not come from priests, gurus, shamans and scientists. Our circles must be egalitarian and built on a solid mistrust of all power. We must be done with leaders and their overwhelming lusts for money, sex and power, impulses so integral to our culture they routinely go unnoticed. We must find ways to explore our way home without the intervention of individuals and organizations that propose equality on the surface but simply duplicate the power and alienation they've learned in the academic and capitalistic culture.
A Taoist nun once said "There is no practice.” I think she was right, for those who have already merged with the living world around them. For the rest of us, if we sing, dance, eat our plant helpers and there are spirits who care enough to help us return, they will. If we don't impose our notions of sacred, goodness, power and importance on our visions, ourselves, and the other beings we encounter, we may be able finally to rest. The rapture is not a naked ascent into heaven. It is a naked return through a diaphanous membrane to our wild, natural, biological home.
After twenty years of teaching shamanic practices to small groups in several circles in Washington and California, I found the results to be mixed. In the groups in which I participated there were many moving visionary experiences, but the flabby jargon of the human potential movement left important messages missed amidst incessant psychobabble. Contemporary shamanism, grown out of the human potential movement of Esalen Institute was rapidly becoming subsumed into the new age culture as the latest fad/religion. In two or three decades, aided by workshop leaders, it had become lost into the pop culture. While the permutations were endless, pervasive alienation remained a constant. As always, money, sex and power ruled.
That shamanism has been compromised by the human potential movement is not to say that altered states and working in trance cannot offer us a personal healing direction. I know from experience that lives can be changed through shamanic work. A deep trance, engendered in a variety of ways and entered with intention can be transforming. The value of shamanism as taught in the contemporary culture may be that it provides some level of psychotherapy, some level of energetic balance, some palliative response to stress along with feelings of community, and slightly less alienation. In some cases, shamanic practice may provide actual healing of disease or easing of struggles with death.
My own personal struggle with shamanism centered on skepticism and the understanding that we can fool ourselves into believing almost anything. My training was in agriculture and science. I was not one to accept much on faith. I continued to bounce between shamanic visions as projections of the psyche, and as visitations from a separate spiritual world. By the time I stopped teaching a few years ago, I had come to understand that the distinction probably didn't matter. My work and studies since have convinced me that contemporary, religious and psychological shamanism represent part of a catastrophic human error which took place at the beginning of history, and that contrary to the notion that it has been around for tens of thousands of years, indigenous shamanism is more likely a transitional phase between the consciousness of hunter gatherers and the alienation of contemporary state religions.
Faith healing comes in many costumes and shamanism is one of them. We can wear skins or robes. We can beat drums or play pipe organs, burn sage or incense, sing to the element of water, or submerge ourselves in the river. Both the "laying on" of hands or sleight of hand can be efficacious. We can sing to our bear or sing to Jesus, whirl like a dervish, whip ourselves until we bleed, play with rattlesnakes, dance in the sun for four days, or starve ourselves in caves. Take your pick. Each can make less painful our lives as numb wage slaves. If we can ignore that tiny voice crying for real freedom and calling us back to the circle, our economic and religious subservience will help us pretend to be something more than imprisoned domestic animals.
A large problem remains. Shamanism, or any of the other religious choices as currently practiced, will not turn us from the global abyss. To believe shamanism and religion can bring about some form of planetary healing is much like the notion that more technology will solve our environmental problems. Transference, sexual abuse, misinterpretation of serious pathologies, and lack of ethics, all typical of the human potential movement, combine to further alienate and separate. Benign attempts at healing by unskilled and uninformed devotees, while perhaps not causing serious harm, can impede solid, long-term movement toward better health. To put it plainly, shamanism draws some seriously crazy folks, and many leaders are happy to look the other way as long as the fees are paid.
For those of us arrogant enough to assume we have mastered this reality enough to explore another, our shamanic practice should pull us toward radical anarchistic action. We've been hearing from, and paying huge workshop fees to shamanic leaders for decades about "connecting to spirit," but their message sidesteps industrial capitalism, the religions to which it is connected, and open, public, radical, changes flowing from our spiritual work. The reason for this omission is clear. Contemporary shamanism teaches vertical, hierarchical religion. The focus is on what Mircea Eliade, in Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, described as the "journey," rather than presence in this biological world.
Agriculture, religion and government have not brought us a better life. The price we have paid for these abstractions is far too high. The amusing charm of a small transistor radio hanging from a tree in an upper Amazon village belies the toxicity of the poisonous little gadget. Writings of Morris Berman, Paul Shepard, Joel Kovel, Stanley Diamond, John Zerzan, David Watson, Derrick Jensen, Lewis Mumford and others have led me to conclude that we should not be attaching religious symbolism and meaning to shamanic experience, but instead should seek a practice which takes us to the awareness that preceded the alienating, beginning of agriculture and religion. We should attempt a return to what Berman calls paradox, free of time and language. Even brief experiences of integration might help us build decentralized communities centered on our insight. An intentional use of altered states can obliterate the duality that has led to the domination and destruction of our world, an experience of unity, what Sigmund Freud called the regressive "oceanic experience," what Jung called a progressive return to "primitive wisdom" and what Morris Berman, in Wandering God, termed the "paradox" of hunter-gatherer consciousness, "a diffuse or peripheral awareness," and in his earlier book The Reenchantment of the World, called "participatory consciousness" in which "the sacred, such as it is, simply is the world."
Unfortunately, shamanic practice as taught imbeds us in pathological constructs. Linear, vertical thinking has brought us to disaster. If we leave religion behind, trance practice can lead us to an egalitarian culture of biological integration. We must reject the religious rituals and notions of upper and lower worlds. We must cease our efforts to ascend and return to living completely here, in ourselves, on this earth, as integrated beings. Dominant power structures under which we live are only too happy to have us live in the illusory and impotent condition of duality, and most humans will sit and do nothing during this time of inexorable unraveling. Only a few will work to recover our history as integrated, wild beings. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors are still close. Wiser and healthier than we, they are calling us back from a technological and religious cliff. Small, egalitarian, tribal circles of paradox can return us to the awareness of our ancestors of 10,000 years ago, before they unwittingly brought us religion, and planted the seeds of our destruction.
Rejecting the linear, oppressive, hierarchical and alienating forms of religions that have swept our world, we can begin to live in an archaic, anarchistic, sustained way, and begin to heal our planetary home. We need not travel to other realms. We must learn to step through a barrier, and arrive here. Trance brings us home. School is in the garden, the forest, the prairies, the rivers. The teaching we need will not come from priests, gurus, shamans and scientists. Our circles must be egalitarian and built on a solid mistrust of all power. We must be done with leaders and their overwhelming lusts for money, sex and power, impulses so integral to our culture they routinely go unnoticed. We must find ways to explore our way home without the intervention of individuals and organizations that propose equality on the surface but simply duplicate the power and alienation they've learned in the academic and capitalistic culture.
A Taoist nun once said "There is no practice.” I think she was right, for those who have already merged with the living world around them. For the rest of us, if we sing, dance, eat our plant helpers and there are spirits who care enough to help us return, they will. If we don't impose our notions of sacred, goodness, power and importance on our visions, ourselves, and the other beings we encounter, we may be able finally to rest. The rapture is not a naked ascent into heaven. It is a naked return through a diaphanous membrane to our wild, natural, biological home.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Shamanism and Neoshamanism
What follows is a book review I wrote several years ago. While I might not write exactly the same thing now, it does address some issues around neoshamanism that are relevant today....
The review is from: Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing (Paperback)by Jakobsen
This book has two parts. First, it is a description of the beliefs and activities of shamans in Greenland beginning in the 1700's, as reported by missionaries and anthropologists. Secondly it is a description of contemporary neoshamanic activity, particularly in shamanic training workshops conducted by one teacher in Europe. Jakobsen poses a critical distinction between the spiritual worlds of indigenous shamans in Greenland and that of contemporary new age shamans, and concludes that new age shamanism should not be called shamanism at all. Rather, it should be termed "shamanic behavior."
For serious students of shamanism who have read extensively in the anthropological literature, this difference in the beliefs of indigenous and contemporary shamans is not new. Harner's sanitizing of shamanism altered the student/spirit relationship from one of fear, awe and mediation of forces outside of themselves, to one of consorting with one's benevolent teachers and helpers. It is apparent that the reduction of the "fear factor" in shamanism has attracted more workshop attendees.
Jakobsen, unlike neoshamans, reminds us that the spirits of the Greenland shamans did not emanate from their psyche, were not projections of self, did not reside in a collective unconscious. There were no seeds of imaginal shamanism. Today, the neoshaman creates the spirits, thereby imposing order and morality on an otherwise fearsome universe. I heard a respected teacher in the Harner cadre tell a group of beginners that they would have to "teach your power animals how to behave." Such a notion would shock an indigenous shaman.
The origins of imaginal, neoshamanism don't lie in shamanism at all, but rest on the foundation set in the humanistic psychology and human potential movement that emerged at Esalen in the sixties. Harner and Castaneda reap the benefits of the movement. In a framework where all is seen in terms of humanistic psychology, neoshamans master the spirits by not inviting the dangerous ones to the party. Touching upon the origins of neoshamanism would have helped this book. Jakobsen says "here they are and this is what they are doing," but she doesn't say "why."
Jakobsen's reports of her experiences in neoshamanic workshops are good samples of both the rituals and the anecdotal accounts of the participants. The descriptions of the workshops and people in them were all too familiar. She is fair in her reporting. It is interesting that the course leader with whom she studied the most, refused to allow the use of his name. Coercive harmony dominates neoshamanic training.
Jakobsen's book is a valuable addition to a discussion of shamanism. It asks us to consider where we place ourselves in the cosmos. Perhaps it will stimulate more examinations of the many aspects of the neoshamanic movement. More likely it will be seen by neoshamans as negative and critical.
The review is from: Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing (Paperback)by Jakobsen
This book has two parts. First, it is a description of the beliefs and activities of shamans in Greenland beginning in the 1700's, as reported by missionaries and anthropologists. Secondly it is a description of contemporary neoshamanic activity, particularly in shamanic training workshops conducted by one teacher in Europe. Jakobsen poses a critical distinction between the spiritual worlds of indigenous shamans in Greenland and that of contemporary new age shamans, and concludes that new age shamanism should not be called shamanism at all. Rather, it should be termed "shamanic behavior."
For serious students of shamanism who have read extensively in the anthropological literature, this difference in the beliefs of indigenous and contemporary shamans is not new. Harner's sanitizing of shamanism altered the student/spirit relationship from one of fear, awe and mediation of forces outside of themselves, to one of consorting with one's benevolent teachers and helpers. It is apparent that the reduction of the "fear factor" in shamanism has attracted more workshop attendees.
Jakobsen, unlike neoshamans, reminds us that the spirits of the Greenland shamans did not emanate from their psyche, were not projections of self, did not reside in a collective unconscious. There were no seeds of imaginal shamanism. Today, the neoshaman creates the spirits, thereby imposing order and morality on an otherwise fearsome universe. I heard a respected teacher in the Harner cadre tell a group of beginners that they would have to "teach your power animals how to behave." Such a notion would shock an indigenous shaman.
The origins of imaginal, neoshamanism don't lie in shamanism at all, but rest on the foundation set in the humanistic psychology and human potential movement that emerged at Esalen in the sixties. Harner and Castaneda reap the benefits of the movement. In a framework where all is seen in terms of humanistic psychology, neoshamans master the spirits by not inviting the dangerous ones to the party. Touching upon the origins of neoshamanism would have helped this book. Jakobsen says "here they are and this is what they are doing," but she doesn't say "why."
Jakobsen's reports of her experiences in neoshamanic workshops are good samples of both the rituals and the anecdotal accounts of the participants. The descriptions of the workshops and people in them were all too familiar. She is fair in her reporting. It is interesting that the course leader with whom she studied the most, refused to allow the use of his name. Coercive harmony dominates neoshamanic training.
Jakobsen's book is a valuable addition to a discussion of shamanism. It asks us to consider where we place ourselves in the cosmos. Perhaps it will stimulate more examinations of the many aspects of the neoshamanic movement. More likely it will be seen by neoshamans as negative and critical.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Grand Plan, Subject to Countless Revisions
Groups vary. Some people come in with some, or a lot of experience. Others are complete beginners. In the introductory evening I spend a few minutes on definitions, history, contemporary history, my background, and what/how I teach.
Here's my favorite short definition: Shamanism is the attainment of an altered state through the use of monotonous sound (drumming and rattling), singing and dancing for the purposes of healing, insight, and well-being of others. This is done with intention, control and the assistance of helping spirits. These are essential elements in the work. If they aren't there, it isn't shamanism, at least in the early phases.
We meet twice per month, in the evening from 7 to 9:30 in a space that accommodates our circle with room to move around and for everyone to lie on the floor without touching one another. We begin by learning about drumming, singing and dancing and altered states. We learn to go into, and come out of those states with intention and the first basic work is seeking a helping spirit.
People move at different speeds. Part of my job is to help maintain a pace that allows for everyone. People do a lot of work with each other. It is almost all experiential. I introduce some simple rituals that are useful "triggers" for altered states and healing work.
When most people are comfortable with their new relationship with their helping spirit (this can be plant, animal or human, or several) we are ready to move into specific healing work. There are many variations on these but three common ones are power animal retrievals, soul retrievals and extractions. The goal is for each person to work in their own most powerful way.
Participants soon learn to work in more personal ways too. For example, people who are going through something difficult in their ordinary reality life will use a shamanic method to seek answers to a problem. Artists may work to find new inspiration. I even knew someone who found his mate that way. However, it is important to mention that this side of the work can get careless with too much psychological interpretation. Working on behalf of others is much clearer and easier. I should also mention that I am strict about interpretation in general and don't allow much in a circle in which I teach. Of course we have to understand whatever meanings we can get from a shamanic vision but we have to be very careful about interpreting visions for other people. We want each practitioner to find their own meaning in their own shamanic work.
The above usually takes about a year. As the group matures participants begin bringing more of what they want to do. Example: "my mother has cancer; can we all work for her comfort and healing?" Somewhere in the process I bring in sound. My personal shamanic work involves a lot of sound. I think sound is a vital tool in healing work. It is difficult for many people to find their own song, or sound. So, we work with that. This can take several months.
The last phase is experimental. If the group has matured and is comfortable enough I introduce some rituals that are much heavier and more challenging. This final phase might happen late in the second year but probably in the third year. If the circle is strong others want to join and members have to decide if they want to mentor new people or keep it closed. I consider the work successful when we can merge with nature in such a way that we are in and of it, rather than a separate observer. This is an indescribable experience that is probably more like the participatory consciousness of tribal peoples up until about 10 or 12 thousand years ago, before agriculture and city states. This may be where we come from. (and where we’re going?) Something opens to us and our life is changed.
Lastly, I should say that this is not Native American Spirituality. To casual observers it can look like that, but it is vastly different in ways too complicated to mention here.
Here's my favorite short definition: Shamanism is the attainment of an altered state through the use of monotonous sound (drumming and rattling), singing and dancing for the purposes of healing, insight, and well-being of others. This is done with intention, control and the assistance of helping spirits. These are essential elements in the work. If they aren't there, it isn't shamanism, at least in the early phases.
We meet twice per month, in the evening from 7 to 9:30 in a space that accommodates our circle with room to move around and for everyone to lie on the floor without touching one another. We begin by learning about drumming, singing and dancing and altered states. We learn to go into, and come out of those states with intention and the first basic work is seeking a helping spirit.
People move at different speeds. Part of my job is to help maintain a pace that allows for everyone. People do a lot of work with each other. It is almost all experiential. I introduce some simple rituals that are useful "triggers" for altered states and healing work.
When most people are comfortable with their new relationship with their helping spirit (this can be plant, animal or human, or several) we are ready to move into specific healing work. There are many variations on these but three common ones are power animal retrievals, soul retrievals and extractions. The goal is for each person to work in their own most powerful way.
Participants soon learn to work in more personal ways too. For example, people who are going through something difficult in their ordinary reality life will use a shamanic method to seek answers to a problem. Artists may work to find new inspiration. I even knew someone who found his mate that way. However, it is important to mention that this side of the work can get careless with too much psychological interpretation. Working on behalf of others is much clearer and easier. I should also mention that I am strict about interpretation in general and don't allow much in a circle in which I teach. Of course we have to understand whatever meanings we can get from a shamanic vision but we have to be very careful about interpreting visions for other people. We want each practitioner to find their own meaning in their own shamanic work.
The above usually takes about a year. As the group matures participants begin bringing more of what they want to do. Example: "my mother has cancer; can we all work for her comfort and healing?" Somewhere in the process I bring in sound. My personal shamanic work involves a lot of sound. I think sound is a vital tool in healing work. It is difficult for many people to find their own song, or sound. So, we work with that. This can take several months.
The last phase is experimental. If the group has matured and is comfortable enough I introduce some rituals that are much heavier and more challenging. This final phase might happen late in the second year but probably in the third year. If the circle is strong others want to join and members have to decide if they want to mentor new people or keep it closed. I consider the work successful when we can merge with nature in such a way that we are in and of it, rather than a separate observer. This is an indescribable experience that is probably more like the participatory consciousness of tribal peoples up until about 10 or 12 thousand years ago, before agriculture and city states. This may be where we come from. (and where we’re going?) Something opens to us and our life is changed.
Lastly, I should say that this is not Native American Spirituality. To casual observers it can look like that, but it is vastly different in ways too complicated to mention here.
Contemporary History
Until recently shamanism was a relatively obscure subject studied by a small group of anthropologists. Michael Harner, an anthropologist who had done his field work in NW native tribes and the Upper Amazon, popularized the subject by dropping out of academia and teaching shamanic techniques in workshops at Esalen, patterned after the more widespread activities in the human potential movement, also centered at Esalen. Harner wrote several books on the subject.
Meanwhile, Carlos Castaneda, did a graduate thesis on shamanism at UCLA, and wrote a series of wildly popular books on the subject. His work, unlike that of Harner, was highly controversial and there were charges that he made the whole thing up. Nevertheless, both men had a huge influence on moving the subject of shamanism into the popular culture, and into at least part of the practice of humanistic psychology. If one went to Esalen in the early period to study with Harner as I did, the majority of participants were involved in some way with humanistic work or one of its offshoots.
A couple of years ago I wrote a brief essay on how shamanism erupted out of the human potential movement at Esalen and became subsumed into a new age, humanistic culture. (Shamanism, Anarchy & The End of The World) Harner invented “shamanic counseling,” one of his later students, Sandy Ingerman, a masters level counselor, brought a shamanic practice known as “soul retrieval” into the popular domain, etc.
Shamanism not only became a part of humanistic psychology it can also be found in body work, massage, crystal therapy, dance, art, etc. etc., all of which tends to confuse us on the subject. Huge ethical questions are raised by all of this. Today you can go on the internet, pay a fee and receive a soul retrieval from someone in another state or country. You can travel to workshops in far corners of the world and learn techniques from shamans, or others pretending to be shamans. In short, there is now a “shamanic industry.” It is, to put it plainly, a mess.
Or is it? Maybe substance can be expressed in infinite ways and the forms of the expressions are not relevant. …??? More on this later.
Meanwhile, Carlos Castaneda, did a graduate thesis on shamanism at UCLA, and wrote a series of wildly popular books on the subject. His work, unlike that of Harner, was highly controversial and there were charges that he made the whole thing up. Nevertheless, both men had a huge influence on moving the subject of shamanism into the popular culture, and into at least part of the practice of humanistic psychology. If one went to Esalen in the early period to study with Harner as I did, the majority of participants were involved in some way with humanistic work or one of its offshoots.
A couple of years ago I wrote a brief essay on how shamanism erupted out of the human potential movement at Esalen and became subsumed into a new age, humanistic culture. (Shamanism, Anarchy & The End of The World) Harner invented “shamanic counseling,” one of his later students, Sandy Ingerman, a masters level counselor, brought a shamanic practice known as “soul retrieval” into the popular domain, etc.
Shamanism not only became a part of humanistic psychology it can also be found in body work, massage, crystal therapy, dance, art, etc. etc., all of which tends to confuse us on the subject. Huge ethical questions are raised by all of this. Today you can go on the internet, pay a fee and receive a soul retrieval from someone in another state or country. You can travel to workshops in far corners of the world and learn techniques from shamans, or others pretending to be shamans. In short, there is now a “shamanic industry.” It is, to put it plainly, a mess.
Or is it? Maybe substance can be expressed in infinite ways and the forms of the expressions are not relevant. …??? More on this later.
Anthropology and Religion
Anthropologists began studying this strange activity hundreds of years ago. The phenomenon was so widespread it got a lot of attention and the early field studies make for fascinating reading. I recently read a book about Siberian shamanism, written by a British historian which details the complexity of the subject. There are hundreds of language groups involved and considerable confusion as to how much of that which is observed is original, or copied from other groups, or learned from the observers!
Some anthropologists wrote that it was all showmanship, or acting. Others came away awed by what they saw but with no attempt to explain it. Others placed it into a religious context with which they were more familiar. There was a view that shamans were mentally unbalanced. Drums, rattles, rituals of singing and dancing, and the ingestion of different substances were usually part of their reports and their conclusions as to meaning were diverse. There are some rather consistent geographical differences in the reports. For example, there is “possession shamanism” of the Caribbean and “journey shamanism” of Siberia. There is shamanism in which entheogens play a huge part as in the Upper Amazon and there is shamanism with no entheogen involved, at least as noted by observers.
One of the most widely quoted sources on shamanism is Mircea Eliade and his work deserves a comment because it has been so predominant in the discussion of the phenomenon. Eliade ( 1907 – 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His book on shamanism is difficult, boring and important because it places the activity into a religious context. Any serious student of shamanism will read Eliade, or at least try to.
Some academics make a clear distinction between shamanism and religion. Others weave it into religious perspective. Is Animism a religion? To me there are striking differences between shamanism and what we call our “state religions.”
So definitely read some of the anthropological accounts, and remember that we are attempting to place our own meanings and language on a practice that predates much of what forms our own beliefs about the world.
Some anthropologists wrote that it was all showmanship, or acting. Others came away awed by what they saw but with no attempt to explain it. Others placed it into a religious context with which they were more familiar. There was a view that shamans were mentally unbalanced. Drums, rattles, rituals of singing and dancing, and the ingestion of different substances were usually part of their reports and their conclusions as to meaning were diverse. There are some rather consistent geographical differences in the reports. For example, there is “possession shamanism” of the Caribbean and “journey shamanism” of Siberia. There is shamanism in which entheogens play a huge part as in the Upper Amazon and there is shamanism with no entheogen involved, at least as noted by observers.
One of the most widely quoted sources on shamanism is Mircea Eliade and his work deserves a comment because it has been so predominant in the discussion of the phenomenon. Eliade ( 1907 – 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His book on shamanism is difficult, boring and important because it places the activity into a religious context. Any serious student of shamanism will read Eliade, or at least try to.
Some academics make a clear distinction between shamanism and religion. Others weave it into religious perspective. Is Animism a religion? To me there are striking differences between shamanism and what we call our “state religions.”
So definitely read some of the anthropological accounts, and remember that we are attempting to place our own meanings and language on a practice that predates much of what forms our own beliefs about the world.
Definitions
I have almost given up on trying to define shamanism. We know that the word originates with the Tsungus of Siberia but it is now a modern term used to describe a wide variety of activities. Among anthropologists, indigenous healers, psychologists and others who use the term there is no agreement as to a specific meaning. I used to hand out a list of over 12 definitions which did not seem to clarify anything.
I have fallen back on Harner’s definition which, briefly, includes the following:
1. an altered state of consciousness on the part of the shaman
2. the enlistment of aid from “spiritual” helpers
3. the intention to heal or aid others in some fashion
4. control of the activity
This is not his exact definition. It is my summary of it and as you can imagine, each of the elements has its own problems and meanings to consider. For example, what, exactly, is an “altered state of consciousness?” Or, what is a “spiritual helper?” And so on. My personal view is that intention and control are the most important elements in shamanic activity. Broadly used, the word “shamanism” may not include all, or any of those elements, and there is usually, in circles, a “pull” to be more inclusive with the term.
My teaching is almost totally experiential so an academic discussion of the work can be interesting and an important underpinning to personal experiences but such a discussion has little effect in furthering actual shamanic work. Lots of people with anthropology credentials know a lot about shamanism but never do it. I can give you lots of references to their writing.
I have fallen back on Harner’s definition which, briefly, includes the following:
1. an altered state of consciousness on the part of the shaman
2. the enlistment of aid from “spiritual” helpers
3. the intention to heal or aid others in some fashion
4. control of the activity
This is not his exact definition. It is my summary of it and as you can imagine, each of the elements has its own problems and meanings to consider. For example, what, exactly, is an “altered state of consciousness?” Or, what is a “spiritual helper?” And so on. My personal view is that intention and control are the most important elements in shamanic activity. Broadly used, the word “shamanism” may not include all, or any of those elements, and there is usually, in circles, a “pull” to be more inclusive with the term.
My teaching is almost totally experiential so an academic discussion of the work can be interesting and an important underpinning to personal experiences but such a discussion has little effect in furthering actual shamanic work. Lots of people with anthropology credentials know a lot about shamanism but never do it. I can give you lots of references to their writing.
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