SHAMANISM IS MUCH MORE THAN TALKING TO SPIRIT GUIDES

I have this instinct that a traditional shaman was someone who worked from a broader base than spirits who turned up while in altered states of consciousness and gave advice, or who did what we might call energetic work. Would any of you confine what you have to offer in this way? No, I'll bet you don't, and I'll bet it was no different for them, because we are all fundamentally the same. Indigenous cultures are not as 'other' as our projections might lead us to believe.

I have, furthermore, a hunch that this narrow description is a creation of western academics, caged within a one-sidedly rationalist framework, and enamoured by that which bust open the bars of that cage. What is so special about Siberian indigenous traditions that does not apply to the rest of the world? I don't believe it. Indigenous ways are fundamentally the same, wherever you look. That is what gives me faith in them: they all tell me the same story about what it is to be a human being. 

 

Eliade's foundational book, 'Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy' gives the game away by its title. As any of us who have done this work know, the ecstasy is a side effect, it is incidental to what this work is really about, which involves healing and meaning in the lives of individual people. Ecstasy is exactly what tame academics do not experience, and it misses the point.

There are also linguistic/metaphysical differences. Our notion of the self emphasises autonomy - with its concomitant language of rights and freedoms - whereas an indigenous notion of the self is more relational, and would think more in terms of collective responsibilities. So where a shaman would speak the language of spirits telling them things, we might talk about the intuition. My personal preference is for the indigenous framework, but I won't let that stand in the way of standing up for what we call 'intuition'.

If the Shaman didn't know the stories, the wisdom traditions, the ceremonies, of his or her people, then who did? If you didn't go to them for advice, then who would you go to? When I am responding to people who come to me, I draw on my knowledge of our culture, I draw on my hard-earned experience, and I draw on that which presses on me to be said. Where this world ends and the Otherworld starts, I cannot say, and it does not interest me because I do not make that distinction.

Like the Two-Spirits in the Native American tradition, who are really One-Spirit like the rest of us, but call themselves Two-Spirits to help us muggles understand them, so are Shamans less of a separate, narrow category than they maybe describe themselves, or as the anthropologists would have us believe. They - we - function along the broad range of human experience, in which what we call the Otherworld is not so separate or remote or exotic as modern rationalism projects.

So let us be done with this tussle about the meaning of Shamanism, which sometimes vitiates our attempts to reignite indigenous ways of experiencing the world, in a culture that has forgotten its belonging to Mother Earth. Yes, Shamans, formally speaking, intercede on our behalf with the Spirit world for our benefit. But that is just part of who they are, and it is speaking a particular language. It is a definition and an emphasis created by a very narrow specialism, namely western academia, of which Michael Harner was a fully paid-up member. We are, and always were, something much broader than this.

OF BOOKS, WOLVES AND OVERTURNING THE GOD OF REASON

January through to March this year I was writing a book on the Medicine Wheel (for which I think I’ve found a publisher.) Then April and May I was writing a book on astrology. Both books took me by surprise, but were in a way straightforward, because all the thoughts were there in my head waiting to be set down. Half way through the astrology book, a wolf turned up, an alpha male, who wanted to be written about. But in the form of a fantasy novel. Not so straightforward. I think I will take time over it. I want to be true to my shapeshifting experience. I want to take up where Philip Pullman left off, and overturn the successor to the God of the Old Testament, the God of Reason (who I think Pullman has too much regard for), and free the Spirit of the Earth. And I want people to know that your daemons don’t get fixed when you grow up (as Pullman indicated), in fact the opposite is hopefully the case.

The wolf doesn’t just want to be written about. Operating in conjunction with Sophia, an inner lady who turned up a couple of years ago after appearing in dreams for some years, I think he is giving me the wherewithal to go and get a physical place that people can come to. I’ve been getting quite out of sorts for some days, and today I realised it was about insufficient purpose, now that the main book-writing is over. My foot is still in plaster, but nevertheless I walked 5 miles on Dartmoor today. It is so good after 4 months not being able to walk far. And then I did some press-ups and pull-ups. I cannot be stopped! I am starting to feel fit as a butcher’s dog. Tomorrow I will massage a rhinoceros…..

So yes, this thing I have written about occasionally for some years, buying a place with a bit of land that people can come to. It was always not the right time. But now I think it almost is. The financial hurdles that appeared are almost gone, and I am in a better position than I was. And I may have a book or two published that will make people want to come.

And seriously, I am not ambitious. It is some years since I stopped caring very much about how the world saw me. I was never very good at it anyway. This is just something I want to do, and I will trust whatever does and does not happen. Ambition has been replaced by trust. But I’m good at what I do. For now, it’s me heading off as a lone wolf to do this. But as an Aquarian with Moon-Saturn in the 4th, the sense of home and community in strong in me (and in wolves) and I’m sure that will happen too in its own good time. And it would be great to have some sort of summer shamanic gathering under canvas, mainly based on just being together and allowing things to happen, rather than too much in the way of programmes and teachers. It is time to shine 😊

WHY SHAMANS ARE NOT HEALERS

I don't believe in healing people. My instinct, even my passion, is to help people to do that themselves. I will shunt energy if it is really necessary, and that has its place. I shapeshift in order to do that, but the animal presence which does it has been reluctant for at least 15 years now. I think it was partly to do with our 'quickfix' culture, as well as not taking agency from people.

I think it makes Shamanism narrow, and even counter-productive, when we think of ourselves as 'healers'. We are not. We are something much broader than that. We understand the earth as a living presence, and matter as spirit, and to some degree we embody that perspective.

People come to us because we stand for something they are reaching for themselves. Their woundings are often the way in. And we are only any use to people if we don't believe the pedestals they may put us on, but can stay at that point of humility and ordinariness, where we are always beginners, surrounded by the mystery of Spirit. We have names, but really we are no-one. The individual self is just a convenience, a temporary locus, while we have bodies.

ON WORTHY OPPONENTS

There's nothing like the 'worthy opponent' to get you to sort who you are. And it pushes me quite hard when I find it is the respected teachers within our shamanic world who are my worthy opponents. The ones who buy into the conspiracy nonsense, who claim there are unnamed people secretly controlling us (in fact, no-one is in control, not fundamentally, and certainly not in the way the conspiracists fantasise). Or who ask us to take sides in the war of good versus evil, which usually means left versus right, or environmentalists vs capitalists.

 I blocked a well-known shamanic teacher on Facebook today for that reason. I refused to go there any more. Believe me, I did it with regret, because the person also has good things to say. All the same, I probably took longer than I should have: I was being criticised at every turn, it seemed, and had been for some months. You have to live and let live, especially when you disagree, and this person couldn't.

If you are a medicine person, if you are allowing something greater than your ordinary self to influence who you are and what you do, then you cannot afford to get caught up in these worldly winds, these vast collective thought-forms, that press so strongly on us, through the news and through social media.

Energetically, we need to be hermits. It is never 'us and them', it is always 'us and us'. We love everyone. We do not believe in the 'them' of the shadowy controllers, or the 'them' who run corporations or who have political power. We are beyond such crude categories, 'beyond good and evil', as Nietzsche put it.

This will only ever be a minority realisation. Religion, which divides into good and bad, will always be for the majority. The impetus to judge, particularly to make 'left 'good' and right 'bad' politically, is deep-seated in the counter-culture within which shamanism generally seem to place itself.

This post is a bit of a cry from something deep within me, for I cannot find my home with many of the people who are looked to as shamanic teachers, even some I have learnt from. They are still on the side of what they see as good in the world against what they see as evil.

I cannot do that. If you are honest with yourself, if you can live at that coalface, you will see all those things that you attribute to the other side as existing within you, and almost certainly they have something that needs to be listened to. And if you stay at that coalface of honesty with yourself for long enough, you will become an Elder. Not that one thinks of oneself in those terms: if you are honest with yourself, any need for an identity falls away.

That is all an Elder is - not someone who has mysterious access to some higher state of consciousness that you have not reached, but someone who has been prepared for some years to be honest with themselves, to not judge themselves, to make friends with all those bits that we are told to judge. It is very simple, but also seems to be quite difficult for most of us. But it is something we can all do. It is the only teaching you will ever need - just be honest with yourself.

This is who I am, this is what I stand for. I come from a place where I have the same fears, self-doubts, anger, confusions as the rest of us. I try not to project it out onto the world or onto other people, and I do not always succeed. But I do know that if I take care of that, if I can be honest with myself in that simple yet difficult way, everything else will take care of itself.

THINGS ARE A LOT BETTER THAN THEY ARE MADE OUT TO BE

I've spent my whole adult life living under an apocalyptic, pessimistic narrative about the future of the world, which has only intensified in recent years. It seems that humans are hard-wired to take more note of bad possibilities, and there's probably some evolutionary reason for this. Anyway, a book has recently come out, based on freely available data, and thoroughly researched, that gives a much more optimistic prognosis. Below is a long interview with author Marian Tupy. I feel like an existential weight is lifting from me.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIANLddo-ec

 

Points made include: We're richer by far in terms of productivity and quality of products; absolute poverty has declined precipitously; commodity prices have fallen; we're not going to overpopulate the world in any cataclysmic sense; everyone has increasingly more than enough to eat; there's more land for nature, and that trend seems upward; more people are moving to urban areas and that’s advantageous rather than disadvantageous; there are more democracies and so we’re better governed; we’re more peaceful; and we’re less likely to die from catastrophes. And we're not about to be burnt to a cinder: Tupy condemns that narrative as untrue and irresponsible.

THE KINGDOM OF WOMEN

The Mosuo, who live in a remote part of western China, have a matrilineal social structure. Their ways are being rapidly superseded as modern China moves in: they have become a tourist attraction. The author has lived with the Mosuo part-time for some years. She grew up in the Chinese patriarchal system, which is much more extreme than anything we have in the West. So the Mosuo have been a deeply welcome arrival in her life.

The head of the family is always a woman, usually a grandmother, and with her live her brothers, sons, daughters and the grandchildren by her daughters. Any children her sons may have live with their mothers' families. It can take a bit of getting your head around. People do not get married. Women have lovers, and there may be a number of them - they are called 'walking marriages'. But they do not usually live with their lovers. Any children that result are raised by the mother, and the father does not play a part. It is the uncles, the woman's brothers, who live in the family home, who play the father role.

There is a chapter called 'How the Mosuo Women Rock' that shows just how confident these women are. It is a natural confidence, it is not about being combative. They live very simply, they are not sophisticated in the modern sense, yet taken to the big city, they are noticeably more confident and at ease with who they are than most women. They will, for example, go up to a group of men in a bar, in a way that could be seen as 'forward', and engage with them in a natural and lively way.

There is also a chapter called 'The Men Rock Too'. The men put a lot into looking and behaving in a way that will attract the women, they are 'peacocks'. Good looks and brawn are highly rated by the women. It is a simple and straightforward mating game. The men also hunt and play and hang out together.

None of this is perhaps easily translatable into the ways our society works. The key virtue, it seems to me, is that both men and women are confident in who and what they are, and there is no sense of either putting the other down. There is a centrality to the women's place, as the bearers of life, in the scheme of things. Men do the heavy physical work, and will represent the family in its public affairs. But at the home, around which all else revolves, it is the women who have the say.

You do not get the sense of couples who are hugely caught up with each other, in the way that we encourage with our ideas of romantic love and marriage. So nor does there seem to be the devastation and mess you get when a relationship comes to an end. For them, your relationships with your lovers are only a part, and certainly not a central part, of who you are. This feels like freedom and sanity to me.

I think that what is structurally key to this system is that men and women have their own worlds and parts to play, that are clearly defined, and which reflect their different natures and biological roles.

This is a difficult issue for us. Any suggestion that men and women are different can be felt by women as an attempt to put them back into their old, low-status roles, which they rightly rebel against. We often find ourselves in places of confrontation, alongside an ideological commitment to sameness. In our society, men and women no longer know who they are. There is a big adjustment going on, particularly as women have joined the workplace, which was traditionally the men's world. It is not easy for either gender. But here, maybe uniquely, and fast disappearing, is a traditional arrangement under which both men and women can know who they are and hold their heads high.

CALLING ALL SHAPESHIFTERS

So here is something. I've just written a book on the Medicine Wheel, and I'm in the middle of writing a book on Astrology. They are both things I've thought about and written about for years, though as books they have come as a surprise to me in the last few months. It has all seemed to be there, waiting to be written. But it is fresh, I am writing as if for the first time.

And then there is this other thing. This animal presence within me, she is visceral, she snarls, she has wolf form at the moment. She has natural and spontaneous vitality. She can do magic. And she is not in either of those books. She has been around for over 20 years, usually as a Bear, and was good at doing healing work, soul retrievals and all the rest, could really shunt the energy around. She takes no prisoners, is ruthless in the service of healing, and her ferocity got dogs in the vicinity barking at her.

But then she didn't want to do that any more, and that was 15 years ago. This enormous, vital presence in me, this protector that you hold outside of your regular interactions with people, that would probably get you medicated if you displayed it in the street. Yet which is entirely natural.

We fear that which is natural, in exactly the same way that the medieval Church proscribed dancing within its precincts. That which is truly of nature cannot be controlled, the certainties we like to live by are not respected. Have you ever gone out of control in a trance dance? It is like that, yet having that fierce presence always with you. I love it.

So what am I to do with her? All these years? She does not want to be a 'shamanic healer', not very much anyway. Why should there be anything to 'do' with her, that is just our way of thinking? Certainly she does not want to be talked about too much, but I feel I can do so here. I am feeling she wants to be written into a fantasy novel, to give expression to her vitality and fierceness that way.That will be a challenge for me, it is not 'all there' to be written down. Maybe I will do this, maybe I won't. There are fairy tales to be imbibed first, and I will have to teach myself to write fiction. I hope she will forgive the image above :)