A MYTHOLOGICAL THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT

Christianity gave us the mythology of the Garden of Eden, the Fall, Original Sin, and the world itself as a creation of the Devil. And it gave us Armageddon. Even though we may no longer ascribe to that religion, its mythology continues to live through us. The Unconscious, Spirit, the Imagination needs a mythology to live by.

You can see how it easily carries over into Shamanism. The Garden of Eden is the way indigenous people live. The Fall is how we live, modern humans who, in our alleged baseness, have destroyed the indigenous peoples. The world we have created is a bad place - just look at what we have done to the planet, and look at our terrible corrupt, self-interested governments. (Or so it is said.) It is the work of the Devil. Of course we ourselves are idealistic and conscious, it is humanity collectively that is venal and greedy, especially our corporate and political leaders, they are the worst of all, and not to be trusted. Armageddon is the climate-based extinction which (it is alleged) we face because of our own sinful natures.

I'm thinking out loud. Shamanism is life-affirming, it is about biting life to the bone and savouring it. People, life, the planet are all beautiful, soulful things. It is a rare opportunity just to have a body for a while. Shamanism can be used to build the opposite of this self-flaggellatory, pessimistic view of the world. Or it can be used to perpetuate it. I recommend the former.

Indigenous people are always giving thanks for the good things in their lives. In the modern West, we have so much that is good, and have had for many decades now. Keep giving thanks for it, instead of feeling guilty, and ignore the news. It can change that awful doom-laden cynicism about everything human and modern, that is like an epidemic nowadays. Remember the unconscious Christian mythology that is fuelling it.

I think humanity and the natural world will get through this huge transition that we are undergoing, and we will learn to live in a hi-tech but balanced way with nature.

THE MYTHOLOGICAL TASK OF OUR TIMES

I've never felt entirely comfortable with the mythology behind Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. His idea was to complete what Milton left unfinished, as he saw it, in the failed rebellion of the rebel angels, led by Lucifer, against God. In Pullman's trilogy, the tyrannical God is indeed overthrown, but he says nothing about what replaces him. Pullman's basic message is anti-religion, end of story, as though religion has to be tyrannical because it is primitive nonsense, and whatever replaces it must be an improvement.

But if you get rid of one tyranny - or at least what you see as a tyranny - without being sufficiently thoughtful, you are liable to replace it with an even worse tyranny. That is what happened in Communist Russia and China. 

 We do not have a political tyranny in the modern West, but our scientific materialism tends to be metaphysically tyrannical. In other words, we got rid of a tyrannical God, and the replacement has been tyrannical Reason. They are/were tyrannical to the extent that they actively persecute any other perspectives. 

Lucifer was thrown out of Heaven because he rebelled. He embodied Reason. Up until then he had stood at the right hand of God, his honoured servant, but now wanted to usurp him. It tells us much about the potentially overweening nature of Reason that this occurred. It also tells us much about our times. Throwing him out was maybe not the best solution, and maybe God and Lucifer were as bad as each other in some ways. Lucifer/Satan fell for 3 days and nights when he was cast out, a striking image. 

 Pullman's solution is wrong. God - Spirit, Imagination, the Divine - needs to be reconciled with his servant Reason, rather than being defeated by him, which is just another imbalance. That is the mythological task of our times. 

At the moment, I am writing a shamanic fantasy trilogy. It is partly a how-to guide for being and working with the spirits, particularly for shapeshifting into them, embodying them, which is not generally our emphasis. But it is also about a society ruled by tyrannical Reason, in which shapeshifters are treated as mentally ill. The overarching theme - I realised today, 74000 words in - is a new reconciliation between Spirit and Reason, God and Lucifer, rather than just the overthrow of tyrannical Reason. 

Our shamanism often has the opposite imbalance: we distrust, even dismiss, reason and facts. That is a natural push-back on a collective level, but it is not very conscious. Sometimes it drives me to despair 🤣 I think we have our own reconciliation to make. 

 PS In June, myself and Emma Edgington are running a 5 day event in glorious Snowdonia on Embodying the Spirits. Here's the link.