TRANSMISSION and TRADITION

Chaos Shamanism sounds like the opposite of tradition. In fact it's the most traditional of all, because what is tradition? It's a means of fostering, of nourishing, of creating a spirit within the human being in which we're aligned with ourselves, aligned with our own nature, which is the nature of the world. There's no split between us and the world outside. The purpose of any spiritual practice anywhere is becoming aligned with that whole. When I use the term Chaos Shamanism I'm going straight to that alignment.

I talked about transmission before, it is in a sense a sort of osmosis of that deeper alignment from one being to another. One person's open and they receive it: one tree sees the other tree is flowering, covered in beautiful blossoms, and the perfume carries over and inspires the first tree to flower too. I think that’s a much better way of putting it!

There's a book called The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination by Patrick Harpur which I highly recommend. He talks about almost like this sacred tradition, or the perennial tradition, which is about a passing down of this fire from generation to generation. You see it in the culture at large through the western esoteric tradition, which existed, often in secret, alongside Christianity. Magical traditions, astrology, alchemy. You also see it in its own way in the shamanic families out in Mongolia or Siberia or wherever, where there's Spirits belonging to certain families and it's like that fire is passed down, it's shared, it's kind of transpersonal as well as personal, to use our terminology.

That is the real transmission, that is what really keeps a tradition alive, because it IS the tradition in its deepest sense, and it is a universal. A tradition will die with just its outward forms.

So in the modern West, we have no widely accepted traditions, we have no forms that go way back, that have that kind of deep resonance, and sense of being embedded in who we are. You can see people’s longing for it, in the way they will sometimes hang on to every word and every scrap of ritual from a representative of say a Mexican shaman, or pay good money for an online initiation into Mongolian teachings they have to keep secret. Or the attempts to create a ‘Celtic Shamanism’, when all we have is scraps from what was effectively a foreign culture, even if we are genetically related to them.

Be done with it all I say. It’s a poverty mentality. Don’t give your power away to indigenous shamans, we have the power just as much as they do, if we are prepared to put in the work. And don’t scrabble around in Celtic fantasies, in the delusion that you are creating a tradition. Own what you have now, the modern western person that you are. But borrow shamelessly, just like Shakespeare did.

We can borrow forms, like Chaos Magic borrows forms to create their ceremonies. We can borrow forms to help recreate that inner alignment, to help promote it. We can pick and choose, but not in a superficial way, we choose according to where we're genuinely called. We sit with it, we see where we need to go. But it takes time, it's not just of the moment, not just, oh today I feel like this and tomorrow I feel like the other, like you see some people playing around with their identity.

Identity isn’t such a big deal, by the way, it’s a shakey, temporary thing, that is as much decided by other people as it is by us. Indigenous people, who see the self as more relational than we do, would understand this.

So it's deeper than that, these enduring interests. I have an enduring interest and draw towards the Native American Medicine Wheel – for which I have a Chaos idea, but more later - and that speaks to me, so much so that I have written a book on it. So you can be firmly drawn towards certain practices. I'm drawn towards the Far Eastern Shamanism as well, I don't know anything about it but when I see them dancing it's like ah! Because they dance their what we call Journeys, and it's how I work. It's the same kind of inner thing there. Also for me there is astrology, it’s like it is in my bones. And it has a connection with the Medicine Wheel through the 4 elements, which are used in similar ways.

So that's a bit about transmission and the real tradition, the perennial tradition. What we're doing with Chaos Shamanism is we're re-encountering the real, universal tradition. We have the freedom to do so because we're not beholden to all these different ways, valuable as they are, great as it is when a whole community finds its meaning within those forms.

We're somewhere else, and the great opportunity is to seize hold of the essence. We can keep seizing hold of the essence because there's no one stopping us. Well, there's people who attempt to and there always will be, there's people who say you're not allowed to do this practice, you're not allowed to do that, you're not allowed to do the other without this whole list of permissions, or it's deeply disrespectful and cultural appropriation if you even go near it. There's always be these voices going who are you to do this. That keys into our own self-doubt. And of course it plays into the woke guilt, that we are the historical oppressors and we must walk on eggshells around indigenous people and be super-respectful. I am sure a lot of them laugh at us for this. It’s so weak, so life-denying.

So I just say fuck all that, and excuse my French. And my spirit animal says so too, so there! You just have to have the chutzpah, the hubris, the impudence to head out and run a sweatlodge or whatever, when you’ve maybe only been in a sweatlodge once, and you’ve hardly got a clue, but you’ve got a few basics, and you know it did you good. And if you are proper and respectful and go on a twenty-year training instead – and I am not speaking against that – then all those people in your area will not benefit from sweatlodges. Think about it like that. Or Pipe Ceremonies, or Journeying, or Trance Dances or whatever. But for heaven’s sake don’t create an identity out of it, or you’ll do as much harm, without knowing it, as good. A lot of that goes on. Just stay equal to people, and let them see your vulnerabilities, specifically, and that will help keep you in a good place.

The Dalai Lama, he’s known for handing out all these initiations, he'll hand them out to a whole crowd of people. They are initiations into these kinds of inner energies. They have all sorts of different ones in the Tibetan tradition, all these different bodhisattvas, all these different forms that they meditate on.

I heard it said once that you could look at them as frozen spirit guides, which I’m sure a Tibetan Buddhist would love me for saying! But there’s maybe a truth there, like the original yogi in his cave in the mountains has a vision, a powerful figure comes to him, and he passes on that living energy to those who can receive it. But then the tradition gradually gets hold of it and fixes it in words and form and bows down and worships it as the most holy of holies – Tibetan Buddhism loves its sacred superlatives, which they dole out unsparingly on their lamas. So maybe it becomes a bit like through a glass darkly, but there is still some of the original inspiration there if you meditate on it.

So the Dalai Lama has been known to hand out thousands of these initiations, which goes right against the tradition, where people are supposed to be properly prepared, so that they can receive it. And rightly so. But these are exceptional circumstances. These valuable traditions are being lost as his culture is destroyed and dispersed, and some of the initiations may take, some people may be able to really run with them. So good on him, I say!

Not that I don’t have a personal reservation, which is that these Bodhisattva figures lack ordinary humanity, they are transcendent beings. They are beings of light, they are powerful, they have an incredible beauty….. but they lack ordinary humanity. They are full of spirit, but lack soul. That is why I like some of the rough Chan master depictions from China, these shaggy almost beast-like creatures.

Shamanism is immanent not transcendent. It almost seems to be like religion that creates transcendence – which is another way of saying that people get put on pedestals. (I am usually a bit wary when someone says they are a light worker for the same reason. I can feel something missing.)

I think there’s a political agenda when this happens, it is about religions trying to control people by getting them to think that being an ordinary human being isn’t good enough. Well, what have you left if that is taken away, because that is all you are?

But there’s a good point in what the Dalai Lama is doing, and it is similar to our position. We just have to run with these things as best we can.

I don’t want to give the impression that I am laissez faire about this. I am not. I am less so than most, I am quite conservative in many ways. I have lost Facebook friends for saying that people are rarely in a position to be a spiritual teacher of any sort until they are a bit older. They are nearly always creating an identity for themselves out of it, which is obvious to everyone except their followers, instead of stepping back for 10 years and dealing with whatever it is in them that needs to create an identity – which is always at other people’s expense.

But you can run these things without being in the role of teacher. Do it just because people need it, and trust it if it happens, and trust it if it doesn’t happen. Let it be spirit led. It is a great training.