so as not to hijack the original thread i created a new one.
Balaganist---


"This may be vearing more off-topic - but LLB and others, how do you see shamanic healing ceremonies in the context of modern city dwellers? This is a subject i'm becoming more and more interested in; how can we integrate shamanic healing into our mashed up culture full of sceptics and fear-led zombies?

I dream of one day setting up a local centre to hold such ceremonies. "

I think modern city dwellers can cultivate new animist world views, as a matter of fact i know that they can and are actually. the role of shaman is an emergent role from within an animist culture and takes the shape of those forms that the needs of an animist culture dictates.
How can we integrate shamanic healing practices into our mashed up culture? Well from what ive seen life brings people together and those people co-create with the spirit of the land and sky new animist world views and traditions. Roles within new animist traditions are also emergent and some of them are inspired by shamanic healing traditions of indigenous peoples of today and from the past and inspire totally new ways of relating to the animist role of shaman as well as are guided by spirit and the land to form new ways of living in synergy with the land and each other. cities are in dire need of that actually. so in a sense i think that the first step is in working in synergy with the spirit of place as animist people always have and in using our own creative inspiration to form new ways of relating to old ways of being. For example a group can come together and spend some time tuning into the spirit of place, in communion with that spirit and they can allow through that communion new ways to emerge, by allowing the place to move them, guide their thoughts and actions literally.
there is also the notion that in some animist cultures the role of shaman is not hierarchical but instead of it being a center role held by one or a few members of the society it is held or has the potential to be held by every one. the midiwiwin societies of the great lakes for example had medicine societies which every one was encouraged socially to join and learn from. there where three levels of membership, and each man and woman could advance in those levels through out their life if they wished or had the aptitude to do so. certain tribes in the amazon ( even more relevant here) did not have a central role of some one that could be translated as a shaman but instead every one was encouraged to learn and be guided by spirit, to gain spiritual knowledge. in this way every one was their own shaman, many tribes through out the world had this same way. you either new a little or you knew a lot. they would drink ayahuasca or work with different plant teachers to learn from spirit and gain powers that helped them to live well. ceremonies then became more for social cohesion and for the sake of personal and communal growth. healing ceremonies could be done by any one that had the know how and ability but no one was considered a shaman because the role its self was diffused culturally among each of the societies members.
there are always going to be people of a higher aptitude and desire to learn shamanry or spiritual healing, divination and transformation practices. those people in a more egalitarian society would be more prone to be teachers IMHO... I think that this approach is in some ways much more feasible for people today. if the role then though is diffused and not centralized then what becomes of the term shaman? if it is based upon a role which is emergent from animist cultures? what you have then are people who seek to work in synergy with spirit and nature to benefit life around them both human and other than human life, integrated into alternative and sustainable living so that the work is grounded in a synergistic culture and not based in new age self help narcissism. To me there are way to many centers and groups and individual practitioners of shaman"ism" doing that today, out of touch with actual nature and in living in synergy with nature. totally disconnected from a life way that promotes the health and sense of meaning that they seek in altered states.

So a group of people coming together to work with the spirit of the land they live within, to find ways to live a healthier relationship with each other and nature would be very worth while. and its already happening.

Thanks - some really good points there. Dont have time to write much atm but I will just say that I totally agree that closed centres/groups are not the way forward .. it needs to be open to anyone in order to move things forward properly .. not just for an 'elite'.

Great thread dude! Glad to know others have been thinking along similar lines!..society need something..anything!

On a related note - I've just been reading up on Transition Towns: http://transitionnetwork.org/Primer/TransitionInitiativesPrimer.pdf

This is one positive way forward, but IMO is focused too much on Peak Oil and its related subjects... not that they are not relevant, but there are other reasons we need to change - like healing the aspects of society that got us into this mess in the first place.

Personally I have a way to go yet in my personal healing and learning with the plant teachers, but more and more I feel the inclination to help those around me pull out of their respective holes. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic and naive..?

The first hurdle I guess, if one is going the entheogen route, is legality and people's perception. I think that it will take a powerful kicking to get some people to wake up, and certain entheogens would be just what the doctor ordered... I mean I see young kids causing trouble in my area, and I KNOW that they could be helped to see other ways of being with the help of a good medicine. Skunk/weed is not doing it! Something else is needed, and more importantly a structure - not just another drug to get high on or see some crazy shit. I dont know I'm rambling a bit here but this has been on my mind a lot lately.

I was thinking about this earlier, and i think that techno-shamanism is where it's really at..but not excluding the "natural" world in the way technology does now..plants will still be involved.

It's just that when I think about it now, techo based ideologies are the ones(at least in western culture) which seem to really put forth the idea that the way in whcih our culture defines "life", may itself be due for a de-definition..life IS really all around us, but it's SPIRT(energy) behind all of it. That will be the new animistic paradigm i think..

edit..Think about when(and if) computer's develope to the point of computing ability where they can think and make decisions on par with humans, or even apes..and indeed could be called intelligent, concious, or alive...where then did that life come from??is it not valid? Are we than god?(of course not!)...but it does tell us that there is a force out there that can be harnessed to CREATE life..but that force obviousily extends far beyond us, through everything..maybe it is us, but we are certainly not it(not all of it anyway)..These are questions we all need to be asking in the technologically develping times we live in..I think it could bring about a new animistic worldview, and shamansim could most definatily have a role to play, but it wont be any type of hunter/gatherer society free from technolies or city type life...

i think transition towns are really good ideas. theres a lot of fear based motivation with the peak oil movement as well as with the global warming concepts that motivate people towards change. I tend to think that fear based motivation decreases our creative opportunities and that love based motivation increases out creative opportunities, an opening rather then a narrowing of consciousness. trying to work out alternatives because you love your biotic community makes more sense to me honestly.

"Personally I have a way to go yet in my personal healing and learning with the plant teachers, but more and more I feel the inclination to help those around me pull out of their respective holes. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic and naive..?"

I dont think thats overly optimistic or naive at all. it takes courage to feel that way commitment and conviction more power to you.

"The first hurdle I guess, if one is going the entheogen route, is legality and people's perception. I think that it will take a powerful kicking to get some people to wake up, and certain entheogens would be just what the doctor ordered..."

I agree that for some people entheogens are just what the world needs for them to figure out and work with... for others though non-entheogenic routes are even better. vision quests, or wilderness fasts have been employed by soem and have been very successful in helping people on personal levels as well as to cultivate a sense of right action in relationship with their larger biotic community. long dances, sun-moon dances, drum dances and other traditional and new native american based fast dances have also been effective. for some creative groups festival and dance culture, music and community is effective ( of coarse drugs seem to go hand in hand in this too
meditation, and many ways of altering consciousness have been effective. we sort of need to move into a polyphasic culture, meaning a culture that embraces the validity and usefulness of more then one state of consciousness. Entheogens are not the only way for shamanis practice and animism to re-enter the world we live in today, but its a damn good one and to me perrsonally probablly one of the most effective, but there are going to be many people who it is not effective for especially with out proper spiritual practice, discipline and ceremony backing it. This group ha been i feel one of the most amazing groups trying to help people to establish that connection via entheogens.
The Oklevueha Native American Church
http://www.nativeamericanchurch.net/
their goal is to help heal people with the use of plant teachers in general but especially peyote. working in the way they do i think gives people an example of how to work with medicines in a way that is extremely effective. i think we are just new comers to working with entheogens culturally and the cultures that have had the longest continuing relationships with them have a lot to teach us especially in inspiring us to form our own relevant dynamic relationships.
the groups leader hopes to use the Oklevueha Native American Church as an umbrella organization that will all legal groups to form under its name. making it so people of all races can ingest sacred medicines legally and safely.

if i had not sought out the help of traditional practitioners then i would still be relatively lost i think. in that respect i am not sure that technology is really the answer so much as synergy. once we have learned to work in synergy with nature we will begin to see real change, that doesnt exclude technology but redefines the needs that technology fulfills by making synergy with nature the primary drive and focus. synergy is the fundamental basis of both animism and shamanry and its possibly the greatest thing we have to learn from these life ways and practices.

I think whats important now more then ever are just small groups of people getting together and working to aid each other spiritually so that they can establish this synergy in their personal lives as well as their social lives, how ever people feel inspired to do that.

Ayawasqero---"Because the culture, like ours, have developed many different religions among essentialy late paleolithic phenomena of shamanism. What poop? What mistake? Maybe he did all the fails because he was an historian of religion. But still, shamanry? Everybody understants it as a profession, not a skill (the art of healing). And what is so great about animism (another -ism
! Laughing)? I don´t think the belief of spiritized nature is useful anymore. Maybe...

All correct."

they did not develop a relgion called shamanism they developed relational ontologies that we have coome to call animism( and in this I am not referring to the old animism but the new animism as defined by Harvey and his contemporaries http://www.animism.org.uk/ ) you may wish to read some one else... much of eliades work has been harshly criticised and redefined in the light of religious scholars and anthropologists that actually come from cultures that are animist and have shamans. they might now more on the subject and have more to say then a european armchair scholar talking about people he never once visited or studied in person. its a role, which is different then a profession, an important semantic difference IMHO...
what is so great about animism? well shamans emerge from animism... you cannot have one with out the other. people through the word shaman and shamanism around rather flamboyantly all the time and have so little an understanding of what it means any more that they have nearly made it a dead word, and meaningless. and indeed it is meaningless outside of the relational ontology ie animism that it is born from. seriously do some reading in this subject from credible authors publsihed more recenlty. much has changed since indigneous people have started participating in this academic feild as well.

"I don´t think the belief of spiritized nature is useful anymore. Maybe..."
maybe indeed...
for one that is the old and VERY outdated definition of animism brought about by cultural misunderstandings and perpetuated by academics like eliade actually. it was the logic of colonialism to place the "savage" in a lower position so that oppression could be more easily slated out. "animsim was understood and explained as a lower step of human development and the perception misperception that animist people where ignorant and ascribed living qualities to inanimite objects (like chairs) or that it was primitive anthropomorphizing. Animist religious academics today have pointed out the errors of the western understanding of animism and cultivated a new understanding of animism which is being called a relational ontology some what based on personification, not the belief that everything has an animating spirit, because not all animist people have a concept of spirit which is for one a judeo/christian concept we have constantly projected onto the rest of the world instead of listening to what they have to say and finding similarities via a more respectful relationship of mutual learning.
is animism helpful in the world today? well it is if people wish for there to be shamans again because you cannot have one with out the other. the label shaman has been placed on spiritual practitioners around the world who are in no way shape or form even relatively close to resembling shamans, and who may or may not belong to an animist culture either. shamans are exclusive to animist cultures but animist cultures are not exclusive to shamans. there are animists culture and beleive it or not cultures that are spiritual that do not have shamans! not every one needs to fall under that label. at some point academia and new age authors fell in love with the IDEA of the shaman and saw it every where giving that name out like candy to any spiritual role in another culture instead of seeing the diversity that was before them of the spiritual roles of indigenous people and being a little bit more creative in their labeling... people like eliade have actually slowed our understanding of this planets diversity in spiritual and religious relationship dynamics in a time where those traditions are dieing out... he didnt do us many favors and quoting him shows your not up on your current research. i suggest reading some of the new work thats out there... you may find some new conclusions and it might change your perspective on things.

http://books.google.com/...p;ct=result&resnum=4

shamans and shamanry note by Piers Vitebsky... who still at this point had not grasped animism or that there is an actual beleif system other the confusion of a role with a beleif system... the notion that shamans participate in a belief system called animism is still not widely understood because people are not informed...

Http was in there twice.. here it is again: Transition Towns Primer

hey thanks...
New Animism defined
New Animism:

"Arguably the proper label for the type of religion practiced among traditional indigenous people who employ shamans. Rather then being "shamanists" or adherents of "shamanism," these people may be usefully named "animists." While the term was coined by Edward Tylor ( a founder of the discipline of anthropology) to define the essence of religion as 'the belief in spirits" and has played a significant role in theories about the origins of religion, it is used here in a new way. The old theory of animism alleged that indigenous people and the earliest human ancestors had made a mistake in believing in spirits. The new theory, associated with Nurit Bird-David, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Signe Howell, and others, sees animism as a relational ontology- the recognition that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human. In Irving Hallowell's terms, there are human persons and other-then-human-persons, including rock persons, tree persons, cloud persons, and perhaps "spirit persons."
Animist worldviews and lifeways make it necessary for there to be shamans because (1) humans are relatively weak and need to seek help ( in the form of knowledge, healing, or defense) from more powerful other-then-human-persons and (2) humans often offend other-then-human-persons and need mediators in order to restore respectful relationships. In this context, shamans may be defined as those persons trained and skilled at working for their community when it is necessary to seek help from or reconciliation with the wider community of life. In turn, as Graham Harvey has argued, animism makes shamans both possible and necessary because their roles are about dealing with the problems of the living world."

from:Graham Harvey and Robert J Wallis : Historical Dictionary of Shamanism

my definition of shaman is a that it is an emergent role found within animist cultures which is as unique as the relational ontologies itself yet maintains a number of similarities beyond singular cultures. Those being that they are agents which mantian and cultivate relationships within animist or relational ontologies through synergy with the natural surroundings of the animist society.

though some would argue that a definition of shaman is impossible because of the diversity that we attempt to label with such a term, i would say that one can include the ambigous nature of the role in the definition itself, with respect especially to the diversity. i stick with Piers Vitebsky's idea that it is a role, yet expand on that by pointing that it is a role that is exclusive to animist cultures. which the more you explore the concepts of new animism the more that is difficult to debate.

i thank you for challenging me to discuss this in such a way. discussing it furthered my own understanding.
blessings

also, on the point of eliade... take a look at harveys dicitonary onthe history of shamanism, there is an excellent couple of points placed on him, with very very good critisims by other scholars. which before i had even read i had come to similar conculsions.

no i mean the old academic definition of animism, which is being referred to as the "old animism".

Yes Eliade was one of the first to really discuss "shamans"... but here is what Harvey says in the historical dictionary of shamanism.
"In abstracting shamans from their local, political, cultural, social, temporal and other contexts, he both misrepresents shamans ( and their practices, cosmologies, and communities) and points the way towards Michael Harner's "core shamanism" and similar neo-shamanic practices..... [then] As Daniel Noel states, in considering the intimate link between Eliade's fiction writing and his books about religion, especially shamanism, "The core of the soul of the west's idea of shamanism is not factual at all, but fantastic, fictive, a work of imagination."

but Noel doesn't mean this in utter criticism, because there is nothing wrong with imagination at all. So here is where i stand with that "shamanism" as we have been taught about from non-traditional teachers in the west, are really talking about an ideal, and imagined and romaticised role based upon what it is that we in the west need most today. the concept of shaman and indeed the word and definition itself is a manufactured one, it is ambiguous because we have not fully recognized that what we are attempting to describe is western mans unconscious need for a spiritual relationship with the unknown in synthesis with nature, its at once a unconscious need being expressed from the western imagination and a morning for what we feel we must have lost through the process of the modern industrialization of western culture, which if you think about is what J.R.R Tolkien was writing about in the lord of the ring series.

Its there for very important that when we are thinking about shamans and discussing them that we recognize this as well as recognize that we are discussing not a cultural phenomena at all or perhaps even a role, but that we must speak about it specifically in the the terms of the cultures we are discussing or in the case of discussing our own "shamanry" that it is an aspect of our imagination and co-creativity, it is need fulfillment that is being discussed by a culture/society that has lost track of what they truly need collectively and individually.

by the way i am very much enjoying our conversation.

Thats very true, and it made me realise how I've been romanticising shamanism - which to me is about exploring conciousness and learning to navigate different realms, to act as a sense organ for your society that is partly in other worlds/realities/states of conciousness, where there are spirits/entities or facets of ourselves that may help or hinder us.
I see its potential in helping us move forward and learn from different states of being. I have regained fascination and respect for old shamanic traditions, especially due to recent experiences - its almost like learning to walk again, or learning a new language.. or maybe un-learning. I feel like a new aspect of my purpose for existence has opened up... for the last 15 years it has been music; I have never had anything pulling me as much as my new quest for knowledge, apart from music.

right on...
its interesting... especially among people on this forum i feel that there is a real interest in the exploration motive in peoples relationships with entheogens. What i find interesting though is the shaman archetypes relationship to that motive in the western mind. Traditional peoples we have come to label as shamans (whether its an apt label at all) I have not seen as having much of that same motivation. many where there to help as mediators with the spirits of the natural world, maintain ritual customs, preform healing and divination and to bring a cultures cosmology into the public sanctum. now this last part... in maintianing and bringing an animist cultures cosmology into public consciousness, now that is interesting in the light of the motive of exploration.

It could be said that so many are drawn to entheogens with the motive of exploration because they do not have a cosmology, or at least a collective one that has any real depth of meaning. science has replaced myth ( or so it thinks, but what is science but another myth?) and our old cosmologies our understanding of self and our its place int he universe has been striped bare, dissected, and replaced with a sterile meaningless lack of awe, for many... for others its brought about the desire to explore these wonders that science has revealed. but still we are without a cosmology. shamans or those that we have labeled as thus in animist societies... have a cosmology. they know enough and are humble enough to that which they do not know to (KNOW BETTER) to work as agents of change from within that cosmology. I tend to think then that people confuse the shaman as the explorer of consciousness for a given society and leave it at that. its very common... ive read magazine articles about it even recently. people tend to forget that those we have labeled as in traditional animist cultures, where the primary health care providers, the mediators, the law, and much more. but explorer was not really in their job description. they knew their cultures cosmology already exploration only validated it and was thus not as big of a focus. for those in our society though, we lack that cosmology. we need to discover a meaningful cosmology so that we can apply spiritual insight and ability.
So another interesting idea... and one that Eliade prompted ( he wasnt all bad) was that there were shamans before there where gods... I would go a step further and say that before there was a role that we would call shaman there where just sensitive yet strong and intuitive individuals that explored and shared their imaginative insights, they where those that discovered cosmology or at least put it together with the aid of the others in their community that like them had taken notice that they lived in a living world of great depth and meaning.
another and more fascinating way of putting it would be that before there where shamans and gods and cosmologies that there where persons who were apt enough for the intelligence of the whole to express itself through, to explain itself to its self through in ways that where able to aid individuals in perpetuating the whole, the totality of existences knowlegde of itself as well as further cultivate its own sense of purpose and meaning. that to me is just a gourgous way of looking at it.

so to me the interest in shamans as explorers today is slightly missing the point but at the same time, it creates this juxtapose... people go back to this very ancient memory and find inspiration from peoples who have not needed to change their way of life ( ie traditional animsit peoples), so that they can rediscover the the wholes, the totalities, the universes own sense of purpose and self knowledge through their own human experience.
they explore and are inspired by shamans so that they can make a place for shamans again, so that they can co-create emergent cosmologies, so that they can bring about depth of meaning again to a world starving for it, and heal rifts in our understanding of self and the very real wounds and death that that lack of understanding bring about in the world.

in that respect.. one might say that in the exploration of conciousness of todays modern entheogenic explorers, the exploration is at once the discovery of a new cosmology and an act of healing ( very much the work of a shaman in some respects), because what we are healing is the wound that our current social and ecological crisis's have created in our sense of self and its relationship in the universe.

we need shamans again but before that we need a place and a way for shamans to work and be in our society.

years ago i went to peru and met with a college. another plant teacher curandero, a maestro. we sat and just shared with each other about our work, like two freinds. What I was left with after that meeting was that there was a place for him in his society. the role was present and accepted as was a cosmology for him to work within. To me thats where the real work is now, in establishing and protecting that.

bless and be blessed.

the trip was ok, there where lots of brujos that i met, people i would not even want to work with. this one though he was just a regular guy, and humble about his work, and a total tripper too, i liked him right away!
actually vegetalistas are a specific type of curandero, they are curanderos that work with plant spirits to heal and to divine or find lost things. vegetalista is a word thats sort of synonymous with i guess you could say spirit herbalist. THis man was a Hauchumero or a san pedro cactus curandero.

its interesting south american have adopted the word shaman, pronouncing it chaman and have used it to define one of three different practitioners down there. a chaman is one who does both good and bad, heals and harms, they are traditional and usually tribally affiliated. a curandero is JUST a healer, does not do any harm to any one ever. a brujo is one that does specifically just harm, they are immoral and have power to kill, and manipulate others with their will and the aid of the spirits.
these are also i might add all post colonial concepts, they are new to the way of think thus the way of relating, they indicate a change and a possible influence from catholic doctrine, on moral duality.

these terms and their ways of defining themselves and what they do have changed to fulfill the needs of the society.

i tend to think that that shows the plasticity of the role of the spiritual practitioner in and among animist peoples.
what can we learn from that?

can we co-create new ways of relating to spiritual/physical needs in our society in a way that has depth and meaning, that are culturally and temporally relevant to current needs? I see my self as a spirit power man, and a soul healer. the term shaman will do in a pinch but i think its much wiser to co-create new ways of understanding, and even new vocabularies, new languages, and the rediscovery of new words... like Autochthon for example... this word defines me to the tee!

It means something like "indigenous"