it means self and place are one. it was a part of greek philospohy... after all the greeks where native to greece and proud of it, it was a part of their identiy being that place...
its an important word to reintroduce to our vocabularies.

you know when you get down to it... the eytemology of shaman is a pretty funny thing...
it was originaly saman and it meant "one who know", language being fairly practical among animist people ( often their word for themselves just being the people) you could see that the word itself just came from people saying hey we got this problem get the one that knows... or "hey he knows!" " he talks to the spirits he knows!" ect... cracks me up...

the term shaman is much like the word curry, or so my friend pointed out to me the other day... curry just meant sauce, just like chai just meant tea and marsala just meant mix. however chai, marsala and curry are all now specific things based upon linguistic misunderstandings. so now we have a plant called curry, and a dish called curry, and curry just still to this day means sauce... but now because of all the confusion one word means a whole host of things...
with the term shaman its the same thing... but people have used the word so much for some many things its nearly lost its meaning! shamanic is thrown around so much its become moronic... "hi im a shamanic massage therapist, i have you visualize your totem animals while i work on you"... ect... whats that mean? So it seems that we have lost our ability to communicate... sigh... yes we need new words, we need them badly, we also need to rediscover old words that we no longer use any more, like autochton for example seeing how so much of "english" is latin and greek based any way. the idea i had many years ago was to listen to the land to spirit and to allow it to speak of itself through itself ie your mouth lol... the results are very interesting... i recently met a shamanic pracitioner whos teacher was from idaho. this woman told me that her teacher didnt even like using the word shaman any more... that they called themselves ishkahey which to them meant crazy people. i foudn that very interesting, because in trance sessions with entheogens over and over again the word that kept coming to me was shooshkahey which meant power people. when i told her about this she got really excited and said that the word came from the akashic records... no wi dont know about that personally i told her... but my feeling was that it was what the spirit of the land called this part of its self i call me. So i think its even better to commune with spirit, and with the land and see what it calls something or some one rather...


"Do You heal only soul. If so, why?"
you want to tell me whats not soul?
and as far as visible language is concerned... we allready have been doing that for a long time... im doing that right now... im typing...

well it is important for some people... for some people it is important to identify self and the land as one... bioregionalists for example find it important as do both new and traditional animists.


"So that is an curandero, the ishkahey/shooshkahey... Are You a some kind of globetrotter? "

nope... i stay in one place most of the time...

"Akashic records... or synchronicity?"

no clue...

"So You must be deeply rooted in land.
The body.
Yeah, right."

yes I am.

"The term saman actually comes from the language of tunguzi, in Siberia, Central Asia.
The definition of the term shaman comes from the language of Sani, Kenya, Central Africa. "

how does the definition come from africa?

it seems your getting really into the mckenna visible language stuff... interesting but i tend to think its kinda a dead end.
i personally do not think man is imprisoned in language. to me language can be very liberating.

peru, idaho?
what are you talking about?
the akashic records is from india...( actually it was made up by the theosophic society) but those where her words... i dont even care... personally thats not my trip.
and i still dont see how your connecting the definition to the sani shamans...
your not communicating clearly...

SWIMS been to peru and idaho, but thats not was i was talking about. the woman i had talked to her teacher was in idaho.
I was not aware of how the definition of shaman"ism" came from africa... from what i gathered it came from anthropologists.

could you just paraphrase it down a bit? or google books can some times give you a page PDF you can link to...
i just do not see how the definition of shaman comes from africa...
my point is that there really is no actual real working definition of shaman from a western perspective that is applicable as a streched out word that can label indigenous peoples.

The wikipedia article on shamanism gives the origin of the word as coming from central Asian/Siberian languages and origins. That agrees with what I've read elsewhere about the word.

exactly... they used the tungus people as their primordial sterotype and then projected that onto every other animist and indigneous culture in the world.

I remember always reading that the word "shaman" actually only pertains to those from Siberia.
Other than that, it is a word that has been generalized by pop culture over time into the word we now recognize as any medicine man-type of figure in an indigenous people.

Like the Curenderos & Vegallista of Puru & the Amazon area often refereed to as Shamen

Anyway...

WS

exactly! many native american activists will point out that they do not have shamans in their tribes, its just not a part of their tradition... to say that they have the equivalent denies some very important distinctive difference, that indicate that the unique needs and demands of a culture, as well as how we might learn about them as well as conciousness and our speices in general.
Some of the first real debates on this subject surrounded whether the african traditions of trance possession was indeed shamanism, because it was being labeled as such. but what is interesting is that theres really no such thing as shamanism any way( its a bit of an arbitrary humpty dumpty word as well as concept and definition) but what there is, is people doing some thing that humans seem to do but in infinitely varible ways... when we start to look at those ways for what they are and we start instead of labeling these traditional metaphysical practioners under one humpty dumpty word, and listening to them and their definitions and labels themselves we begin to learn some thing amazing.

what it does is direct the question in a way that brings new understanding... if native americans say they do not have shamans... then what do they have, what makes them unique and differant then the siberian people or the mayan people ect... and what are their simularities?

Excellent points!

Some of my friends are now saying I'm a 'shaman' just because I've been telling them about spice and aya experiences, and extractions etc... And my reasons are for knowledge seeking more than anything.
It does make me cringe a bit though as I regard myself as still at the beginning of the shamanic path or whatever you want to call it, and people tend to throw that word around without knowing what it means or where it comes from.

I do think however, it is useful to have a general word to describe those who learn to traverse alternate realities and bring back knowledge and insights. Perhaps we need a new word to describe what people are doing now..? Neo-shamanry? :-P

How about we break it down...
the word shaman just means one who knows in tungus...
So if you break it down linguistically... what we and the tungus are talking about is one who knows something... if people just said one who knows instead of shaman it would be an interesting cognative change in how we relate to this topic...
what do we mean when we say one who knows some thing?
what do they know about?
and what makes them different then other people in other cultures that are say priests that know something? or scientists...
my argument is that what we are talking about are a people who know something from an animist perspective root in place...

Iv e met and talked with Peter hes a very nice man. I am not sure that the term animist-shamanic religious system is altogether too accurate any more however. Its had its place but i think we need to move past that if we are to better understand as well as articulate what we are really getting at when we are talking about it... even though lets work with what dear ol Furst had to say.
if what we are talking about is a animist-shamanic religious system... then what we are talking about when we say that is animist being a relational ontology and shamanic being the way of people who know... those words put together to explain a particular religious system would be those who know about relational ontology.
saying the words with out really understanding them fails to clarify and communicate what it is that is truly being perceived. shamanic is thrown around left and right all the time... "hey i just got this totally shamanic enema the other day like wow man..."
So when some one talks about something being shamanic, it would mean something that is known by those that know relational ontology.

Hi all, I am all totally new here and I really enjoy the conversation.

I was just wondering what is the psychedelic enema and how it is shamanic. I have had enemas with many psychedelics and recreational drugs as a means of shamanistic divination but I found them only borderline shamanistic (with the strict sense of the word). The main problem was the lack of purging and the uncomfortable sexual stimulation due to enema administration.

Do sexuality and shamanism go hand by hand? How about the necessary difficulties a shaman needs to go through to reach divination?

Is it really true? How can I then do it like those shamans? My sincere apologies if i'm asking too much, I just find the topic fascinating!

And as far as the diviniation techniques, what do you mean by I Ching? what is this?

And how dmt is good diviniation technology? Isn't mushrooms or cacti good diviniation technology as well? I asume you mean that "diviniation technology" is something like "diviniation hack"? i.e. instead of medicating for days and days to reach the divine you do it instantly with psychedelics?

But what do you mean by 4th dimension? I assume that this is time and you tell me that I have to look back in the past? Sorry if I want something to be written sometimes in plain simple words, i might be a shaman but i am not super super smart, hihihi