THE BEAUTY OF THE PRIMITIVE

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"Our tribal medicines, our power centers upon this earth, our ancient ceremonies and our spiritual forms of knowledge cry out to be used." So says Medicine Grizzlybear Lake, a guy of Cherokee-Seneca origin who seems like prime fodder for the Indian 'plastic shaman' busters. The quote is from a book called The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imagination by a Russian academic who lives in the US. (Thanks to Jez Hughes for the recommendation).

If you are a serious reader - which is maybe not most of us - then I think this book is required reading. It is scholarly but readable, a combination I like (I'd also put Reindeer People by Piers Vitebsky and The Spears of Twilight by Philippe Descola in that scholarly but readable category).

The book is a history of western interaction with Shamanism, beginning with the 18th century German ethnographers in Siberia (Russia didn't have an educated class that could do this work), that takes us right up to modern neo-shamanism and the various perspectives on that. The Enlightenment anthropologists considered Shamans to be mentally ill; 19th century Romanticism, with its valuing of the Imagination and the non-rational, was willing to give them more credit. But the view of Shamans as ill or neurotic still persisted overall, so that in the 1930s the Freudians were having a field day: it is astonishing the amount of nonsense that psychoanalysis can spout from behind its front of technical and professional competence. Equally crazy were the Procrustean class-based interpretations of Shamans manufactured by the Soviet Communists (who pretty successfully wiped it out.)

It was only with the rise of postmodernism, and its insistence on there being no absolute certainties, and that cultures need to be considered from their own point of view as coherent systems of their own, that some real understanding was able to enter academia. More than that, there has also been a view for some time in academia that to truly understand you have to go native, you have to live the culture. This is, of course, profoundly true. And it represents a deep cultural reversal of the ruling academic conceit that it understands more truly through the 'objectivity' that comes from standing outside. This is now understood by some to be a product of the colonial mindset.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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Some academics go a bit further, and use the term 'Shamanisms'. Their point is that the singular term refers to Shamanism as a universal phenomenon - as used by eg Michael Harner and Mercia Eliade - and such an overarching idea contradicts the postmodern position of different perspectives and cultures, each of which needs considering in its own right. 

 

I like this idea of Shamanisms, because it is anti-fundamentalist. There becomes no right or wrong way of doing it, and that enables our creativity, which I think is vital. At the same time, I think there ARE some universal themes, such as the ideas that the earth is alive, that we are part of her, that there is a 'Spirit' aspect to existence woven into the material and that aligning with that Spirit in whatever way is what makes our lives work. This sense of universality is also important to me.

Incidentally, Shamanism as a term to describe more than just Siberian ways - in this case, Northwestern American ways also - goes back in academia to 1908. Shamanism is a term of western invention anyway, and it sets the lie to the position of some of the western fundamentalists that the broader use of the term is recent and New Age and needs to be fought.

Znamenski's position is open rather than fundamentalist, which I appreciate. The opening quote of this review is indicative of his feeling. At the same time, he is an academic, and he does justice to all the different positions and shades in the modern neo-shamanic world. So Carlos Castaneda is well-known to have invented his spirit adventures with Don Juan, yet presented them as fact. This was fraudulent, and Znamenski does not hold back from saying so. Yet he gives Castaneda a lot of credit for inspiring many people towards Shamanism, and crucially also for opening it up to the use of Story and the Imagination. 

Carlos Castaneda

As maybe a slightly spikey academic, he does occasionally have a swipe - describing William Burroughs as a 'spoiled bohemian' - whatever 'spoiled' means (probably just class-envy) - but he is always willing to give credit, even in stuff we might want to dismiss as flakey New Age stuff. And I appreciate this, for I think people are generally trying to do something that is real even when there is a lot of nonsense around it. It is easy to be dismissive and judging - and we get something unwholesome for ourselves when we do that - and much harder sometimes to see the good.

He doesn't, however, have much respect for the Indian fundamentalists, the proponents of the idea of 'cultural appropriation'. He considers culture to be a living thing that is always changing, and that these fundamentalists are attempting to freeze Indian culture somewhere in the 19th century. This is a conclusion I have come to myself.

Incidentally, as I have said elsewhere, if you find someone on the newage frauds and plastic shamans website, they may be worth looking at: they may be open-minded and generous people doing some worthwile work.

I found this book very stimulating. I have been on the lookout for something like it for a while. The only problem is its price-tag: about £45. In the end I though dammit, it's probably worth it and got it.There is, however, a free pdf version here.