'ILLIBERAL' SHAMANISM

I have my boys' evening once a week, where we play bridge. I've been doing that for 12 years now. And we sometimes tease each other, and I like that. And we don't talk personally, but the personal is there, you just have to read it. Most of my friends are women, and it's a different dynamic, and I like that too. But anyway, one of the guys was saying last week that he didn't believe in commenting on other religions, for they were none of his business. Very liberal, and I can feel the moralising around that kind of positioning. It's very common, and I do my best not to take up arms against it. I don't think it is honest. We judge, and judging is part of being human. We can pretend we have gone beyond judging, but it is only a pretence. We do judge, and best be honest about it. There is nothing wrong with judging, in fact it is very necessary. It protects us and defines us. Just don't put others down in the process, don't use it as a way of feeling better than them, that is the difficult bit.

So are you going to stand back and not judge a religion that puts a person being tortured to death - the crucifix - at the centre of its cosmology, that is moreover the British state religion? What does that cosmology do to people? What about another religion, Islam, that is now also part of our culture, that puts its women under pressure to mask themselves in public? I have had two quite heated conversations with liberal friends who overlook the religious pressure and insist I am 'telling women what to wear'. They try to put me in the wrong for defending women. In the liberal PC world, what can appear as religious intolerance, with its racist overtones, over-rides gender discrimination.

Anyway, this is a shamanic blog, so what am I talking about this here for? I try not to put my head in my hands about shamanism, because it has become a religion like any other, and why would it not? It is what human collectives do. And they also buy into the collective values of the day.

Shamanism is part of the wider counter-culture that has been around since the 60s. It tends to buy into the shadow side of that culture, demonising money, authority, the political right-wing, science and rationality. I don't think that traditional shamanism would have demonised any of those things. It was an integral part of its societies, it was not in opposition. And nor would it have had a problem with being critical of philosophies and ways of life which were out of balance. I read an account of some Siberian shamans who were fiercely critical of aspects of 'core' shamanism. No liberal 'non-judgmentalism' for them.

I think we have a duty to critique that which we see to be out of balance. I regularly encounter people who are old enough to know better, who oppose me not for the criticisms I make, but for the fact that I am criticising at all, as though this makes me somehow illiberal and intolerant. If people feel offended by criticism of their religion, that is personal to them, and an interesting problem for them to deal with. If I feel offended, I consider it a gift. Life cannot be spent walking on eggshells, or nothing of import will ever get discussed.

Shamanism is not the same as the big organised monotheisms that have arisen in our recent history. There is much to be critical of in these large collective phenomena, not least the tendencies towards dogmatism and exclusive possession of the truth. It is not illiberal to be critical of such tendencies: in fact, it is our duty to be so. As well as any underlying doctrines that set people apart from the natural world.

Shamanism is different to this; we have something of immense value to offer, that served humanity for tens of millennia before the recent large scale religions arrived, and whose truths persist outside of holy books and teachers with allegedly unique divine missions. We feel our belonging to the natural world, that is maybe the main thing that has been lost, for everything comes out of that. We need to differentiate ourselves - as well as acknowledge common ground - or what we have that is of value will not be heard.