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We glamourise 'The Shaman' far too much. Given that SO many, amongst their lineage have wielded those powers of curiosity..intrigue..and FEAR.. not only towards healing and wholeness, but often dark prayer to control and have power over the tribe and other ppls.. Realistically, the several second hand stories I have of personal experience with 'true lineage' are basically just lil egoic powermongers who do what they want, making money, stashing goods and taking advantage of seekers. Im sure there are excpetions.

I feel that there does need to be a word which reveals the mysteries we've further cloaked with dogma.. and one that reclaims a direct connection with universal consciousness through trance-ritual..

so that the healing, the spirits.. the goodness and the worldview can be experienced by many. By all.

Similar to Regardies work in revealing the Golden Dawn.. or Chia's mission to share the ancient alchemies.. or even Bandlers effort to bust his own baby right open- and empower ppl to empower themselves..

the time has come. lol. We are entitled. So we better adopt

title : )

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Maybe a word which suggests that every person who is 'one' is only trying to achieve something unattainable. Sort of like enlightenment. But you can't be 'enlightened', only 'more enlightened than last time'.

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Apparently.. native american language reflects process.

It's all about transition. Movement. Impermanence.

The 6 chinese elements recognise changing cycling forces, unlike the static fixed

5 element system.

But the wording is most important.

'Enlightened' is semantically false. By definition, we've created an 'object'. A fixed point. A reference.

And with insidious, mind cloaking power- the western dialogue, English in its world-dominating glory

has automatically fooled us, constrained and entrained us into only a small possibility of what is, or what could be.

Howvever..

to embody.. or be embodying..

but more accurately, if one were to 'being.. embodying..'

then perhaps, the actual process and a far more realistic description of Gods creative process could be understood for what it is and how it works. That is, a kind of co-creative conscious interplay of self with Self and 'you' with every one and everything else. Hyper spatial viewing.

Thing is, we've got the tools and technology to rebuild and design the easiest and coolest and most powerful of all paradigms..

but im not sure

whether it should hijack and reframe the old

or simply and completely ignore it.

Dont re-invent the wheel.. or anyways..

Here, id like to use the word 'Shaman' in a away that ruffles the most possible feathers first.. that breaks massive rapport..

and then gently paces and leads it in a new direction.

I see rad photoshopped images of headressed indigenous snorting cocaine next to comparitive stastistics of heart disease or stress and anxiety. A kind of cold fish slap in the face, that awakens one to the fish..the stream..the divinity..and the sacredness that you have so been longing to feel in your everyday life. Meaning.. purpose..harmony with things as they are.. with life as it is.. natural, awakened and integrated here-now mind in body.

Alive. living.

n

fuck it,

better than a new title wold be a new image. A new picture. Yes. Let em make up their own words, and spontaneously create authentic language in tongue talking guttural abstracts that might actually refelct it..

Let what we are,

be seen as a flag.

Vivid and real. An icon. As simple as the cross, but as fractal as the snowflake.

Let it show an immediate, and inextricable connection between Earth, its plants and people

and let the audacity of those who would unerrinlgy follow that path toward a wholly realised now

be the spontaneous warrior caste that revolution has born-

a stickfigure picking and smelling a flowr,

standing upon a swirling vortex of energy.

Smiling a rainbow and hearthrobbing a peace sign.

Its could be as simple and easy as that.

Or also, as sticky and laden as 'shaman'.

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A shaman is someone who sees into the veil between worlds. Or who is able to exist in the veil in-between.

Everyone's personal experience or belief around the meaning of being Shaman is different, but none more credible than another as it is personal and depends on variations in life and ones own individual experiences.

I believe that some people reach a point where they are able to relax and allow what comes without effort to just happen, rather than seek with invested energy/conscious effort.

This is just my own opinion and I find that my most profound experiences now come more naturally as I grow older. What used to take a lot of effort and energy will now come when I am least expecting it.

These experiences are the most amazing I have ever had.

Happy dreaming everyone.

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very thought provoking discussion, everyones opinions are fantastic and just as valid, it seems the word shaman simply is someone who manipulates unknown forces and can be used in many ways. It is interesting how one thinks of a shaman as a helper of the comunity but like mentioned there are records of "bad/evil shamans" that do not help.

Simply saying "shamans are councilers who manipulate unknown forces" seems to fit....

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mud... thanks... brilliant.

unknown forces is quite open to interpretation...

within the order of the gnostic sacrament there are three levels of "initiation" or states of being within the order...

priori... is before perfection and is the starting level without true control over the zelf...

exemplar... are full members and are the equals of priests...

posteriori are beings who due to age or sicknes have passed beyond emeplar and are the responsibility of the community...

exemplars = shamans

essentially....

i am glad thistopic is continuing...

concice formattting to follow...

bless ya'll...

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Both the Albatross & the Pelican are powerful talismen to my form of shamanism, the ying & yang of exploratory journeys into the centre of human void. The Island of Pelicans is our open-air church & sacrament grounds, and the Australian Jaguar is not of feline form, but majestic, noble, vulning Pelekys, natures sharpened axe, and her throated pouch (metphorically) offered as a vessel for the blood eucharist.

 

img010.jpg

 

 

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I've always worshiped the Albatross

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An excerpt from a paper I'm currently writing.

Like the terms ‘taboo’ and ‘totem’, ‘shaman’ is a word that has been imported from a particular ethnographic context — the Siberian Tungus saman — and is now used to describe a much wider focus of academic inquiry and cultural identity. Traditionally in anthropology, ‘shaman’ is a label given to different types of magico-religious practitioners who traverse otherworldly landscapes, aided by spirit-helpers and powers, and perform various types of divination for the benefit of community, including healing, soul retrieval and prophecy (Bourguignon 1973, Winkleman 1989, DuBois 2009). In response to this type of universalising and the wide variety of ethnographic characterisations of shamans, several anthropologists in the mid 1960s argued that shamanism as a field of critical research was ‘meaningless’ and ‘dead’, including Geertz (1973:122) who labelled it a convenient abstraction invented by anthropologists to sort their material. However, shamanism as a field of study did not finish, despite Geertz' prediction. But what precipitated from postcolonial research were more nuanced understandings of the complexity of shamanism—or what Atkinson (1991) and others call 'shamanisms', emphasising plurality and variety. In parallel, studies of shamanism were implicated in the reflexive turn in anthropology, as indicated in Wallis' claim that shamanism represents an ‘academic construct and a word for the West, its meaning inevitably universalized, repeatedly re-fabricated, its definition contested’ (1999:4). As noted above, while for many anthropologists the terms ‘shaman’ and ‘shamanism’ have come to resemble slippery constructs of the academic and historical European imagination, outside academic quarters the terms have been adopted by several identity groups—providing existential meaning in different fringe social fields mainly among the post-industrial countries of Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand (Wallis 2003, Znamenski 2007, Mayer 2008, Stuckrad forthcoming-b 2012).

In the 1960s and 70s certain revolutionary cultural movements in these post-industrial societies challenged core societal values of ‘progress, rationality and materialism’ and opened to various denominations of the sacred in what several scholars call a ‘novel resurgence of romanticism’ (Znamenski 2007:210, Alexander 2003, Stuckrad 2002, 2012-B). ‘Shamanism’ or ‘neo-shamanism’ gained currency in these movements offering, in contrast to institutionalised Christian-based religions and political orders, certain alternative ‘spiritualities’ that were heavily informed by the 1960s and 70s psychedelic/entheogenic culture, the human potential movement, environmentalism, and within these threads various anthropological and academic figures (Atkinson 1992:322, Znamenski 2007:233, Stuckrad 2012-a).

Specifically entheogenic shamanism or neo-shamanism in these movements was socialised and commoditised largely with the help of two anthropologists Carlos Castaneda and Michael Harner (Znamenski 2007). Hanegraaff suggests that the cosmological orders and entheogenic themes in these authors’ works have had a considerable impact on the New-Age movement and counter-cultural spirituality at large (2012). However, given that in the 1970s a widespread move from drugs to meditation-like techniques occurred in the context of New Religious Movements—accredited partly to the prohibition of entheogenic substances—entheogenic spirituality evolved into a ‘private and discrete, individualistic practice’ (Hanegraaff 2012). This underground movement re-emerged in the public sphere with the 1980s and 90s rave culture (Jenks 1997). Then with the advent of internet communication technologies entheogenic groups and networks have ‘overwhelmingly... exploded exponentially’ over the last decade leading Hanegraaff to conclude:

 

Whether we like it or not, we are dealing here with a vital a vibrant dimension of popular Western spirituality that has been with us for more than half a century now, and shows no signs of disappearing (Hanegraaff 2012).

If, according to Geertz, shamanism was dying in postcolonial anthropology, it nonetheless was reborn in the cultural milieu of late twentieth century new entheogenic movements.

Inseparable from this narrative is the older history of shamans and shamanism in European thought that extends to the seventeenth century (Flaherty 1992, Hamayon 1998, Stuckrad 2002, 2012-a). The earlier history of shamanism in the European imagination provides rich perspectives on contemporary examples of the phenomena. Scholar of religion Kocku von Stuckrad (2012-a) details dominant constructions of shamanism in the thoughts of key intellectuals, philosophers and enlightened monarchs of late eighteenth century Europe. The author exposes an ambivalence—conceptualised as ‘refutation and desire’—in influential eighteenth century attitudes towards shamanism which, he argues, reveals an ‘intrinsic tension of the European project of modernity’ (Stuckrad 2012:103-a). Interpreting these late eighteenth century European attitudes toward and constructions of shamanism, Stuckrad concludes that in this context:

 

The shaman is a projection screen for European fantasies, fears, and desires. Lovers and haters of the irrational could fill in the details, whether these details were concerned with a re-invention of pre-Christian Greek philosophy—with Orpheus as a key figure—or with fantasies about the East.

The previously noted deconstruction of ‘shamanism’ as a category of anthropological research fits neatly with Stuckrad’s interpretation of eighteenth century European constructions of shamanism. Geertz, Wallis and Stuckrad analysed academic, poetic, and popular characterisations of shamanism and concluded that the characterisations tend to say more about the persons characterising than those labelled shamans. To extend Stuckrad's observation, it seem that contemporary self-defined shamans may have become their own 'projection screen... for fantasies, fears, and desires', and this process appears to demonstrate a significant example of the practice of historicity and cultural construction—i.e. the contemporary invention and becoming of certain figures resourced from the edge of the historical imagination.

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we are all shamans.

with our thoughts we make the world & with our words we have the power to shape worlds.

the right words at the right time can be very powerful.

they can comfort the sick, cheer the sad, condemn the innocent or guilty, be hurtful etc.

Aldolf Hitler knew the power ov words.....

Reality is the line where rival gangs of shamans fought to a standstill

Robert Anton Wilson

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"contemporary self-defined shamans may have become their own 'projection screen... for fantasies, fears, and desires',"

In the sense that we are largely exploring the mythology and transformations of mind made clusters of identifiers, become personalised and projected as characters over which we lay claim... and smalley as unconciouisly subject to the imaginations of matrixes manifest as memories constantly mutating towards an ever more complex expression of interdependence... indeed the word shaman provides the perfectly undefinied substrate upon which to define oneself...

and now... as we explore this meaningless word filled with infinite possibility... i am suggesting it be concretised so as to allow for fundamental underpinnings of an industry of human evolution may emerge.

intuitively a person knows what a shaman is and yet in the describing would narrowly illuminate a sector of qualities and characterisitics... it is this sector we are attempting to explore.

how does one validate the shaman as a cultuyral icon in the face of such western projections upon it?

to say that - such and sucha study on cognitive therapy plus such and sucha study on the role of archetypes in personality formation plus such and sucha study in the field of memory formation, neuron density in clinical pharamcology plus brain frequency states effecting conciousness and hypnotic suggestion plus various studies on muscle memory and massage and the role of rites of passage and the fullfillment of roleplaying in learning based on sthe study of anthropoligy and the history of our species - illuminates exactly what a shaman is may be better than defining it as such in terms of wordy roundabout definitions of where it may lay in how we understand it...

it is possible that a curriculum would better define a shaman than a short sentence... though both indeed are one and the same...

so...

how about this...

please post links to or copies of studies and research both medical, chemical, sociological etc etc etc. which you feel play an important role in defining what a shaman is

and

give a brief description of how the information base required for proper comprehension of siad research influences the comprehendability and social relevance of a shaman...

do you thihnk that having a scientific foundation would in some way validate the shaman? or destroy what they are?

is it the intuitive mystery knowing that makes a shaman? or makes them dangerous?

can a person still have whelming spirituyal beliefs after being suvbject to "modern" scientific beliefs? or is "knowing" a timless art beyond the scope of current cultural information?

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how does one validate the shaman as a cultuyral icon in the face of such western projections upon it?

 

A shaman who becomes culturally validated stops being a shaman and becomes a priest.

Then we need real shamans to show the people the mistakes wrought by the priesthood.

On and on the circle flows..

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how does one validate the shaman as a cultuyral icon in the face of such western projections upon it?

 

The politics of authenticity or validity in relation to defining shamans is a really interesting question. "Is he a shaman, or a charlatan, a plastic-psuedo-shaman, or..?" It appears to me that while the character 'shaman' and shamanism is inextricable tied to notions of European history and modernity (ie. is a 'projection' of the west), it nonetheless is today personally being taken up by various indigenous folks.

So despite being an invention of the 'western' imagination and steeped in the cultural complexes of European secular and religious history, the 'shaman' today may also act as a platform for political and spiritual mediums and processes of intercultural communication and translation. The self-proclaimed shipibo ayahuasca 'shaman' draws on the historical imagination of western culture in his proclaimed identity in order to speak to the 'white man' and create the possibility for hybrid worldviews to emerge. Personally I think that the authenticity of a shaman should be measured not by some absolute definition in terminology (such as adhering to a 'worldwide logics of shamanism', as if something even exists) but by the moral and political (read spiritual) impact of the person on the world.

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Shaman

As a Native American Indian (Blackfoot), I have a perception of life and death including ways of living and ways of dying. Also, however in between the space of birth and death there are ways of things...

I have come across many in the Rainbow who claim to be Shaman. In a world so full of people it would be no suprise to me for there to be many Shaman, but I do find the quantity of persons claiming to be Shaman in the Rainbow to be suspect.

I have witnessed some alleged (self proclaimed) Shaman doing things such as lying and stealing from good people (as if it makes a difference). I have seen worthless hocus pocus medicines supposedly extracted from the herbs and healing roots supplied by Mother Earth, however, these methods did not work. Why?

I know why, does the self proclaimed Shaman know why?

We have heard the white mans words of warning not to be mislead by false prophets.

Can these Shaman see the spirit world? Can they control natural events? Do they have the ability to heal through faith alone...I suspect not.

Reading a lot of books, listening to old wives tales, and watching TV does not make one a Shaman.

For instance, I have died and returned to life when I was shot back in 1991. While I was "dead" I did see things that I cannot explain. Does this make me a Shaman?

I have visions and have had visions for over 30 years. All of my visions have come to pass with the exclusion of one involving a Rainbow Warrior in KC Missouri. Does this make me a prophet?

I am not saying that I am, or am not Shaman. I am saying there are those who want to be, who proclaim to be but simply are not!

And for these ones who are not valid in the realm of Shamanism to stand up and proclaim to be, is a danger to any soul who listens to their babble.

Granted there are Shaman and you know who you are. Ho!

I guess what I am saying is, that a great injustice is served when a phony gives advice. The direction the listener may be, and probably is being sent, could very well be in the wrong direction.

I know that being important, and being known for your deeds is important, but make sure that your claims are justifiable, because delusions of grandeur cannot only deceive and hurt, but also can leave ones spirit lost and unretrievable.

Source: http://yellowhand.tripod.com/Stories.html

:bong:

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i consider that last comment a giant spanner and you just threw it into the works...

n e one for hogwarts? platofrm 33 1/3... get ure stuff on diagon alley and meet me in dumbledores office at hmmm lets say 27 oklock.

does reiki even work for elves?

kineseology for diagnostics?

hypnosis for placebo addicts?

CBT for add

auto suggestion and NLP for manic depression

cocaine for OCD

maois for everything??

homoeopathy for homosexuality?

i was trying to make sense of this system here alright and u have to go and throw old crow foots black tiger green indian medicine into the couldron.

ignor the previous comment... nothing to see here...

just conitnue on with the physiologicals... key word logicals...

with an alpha state drum beat, a purificatory smoke signal and intentionalty n e one can heal themselves on faith alone. most people arent willing to go through the 'father' though and rely on mans medicine. u can only heal a healthyn person. healing the sick is antithetical.

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Thank You drugo for your paper excerpt. I tend to the anthro/historical considerations. Where did the word originate? What culture co-opted and generalized the term? What family of tribal patterns does it describe? Why is the term so extremely popular for the West?

It is interesting to me that in just one token image, all fall silent. That is power.

I view the waves of social adaptation (evolution) away from the characteristics identified by the idea of shamanism as a pursuit of authority. This is both ancient chronology and current, since there are still peoples unconquered by the newer ways. The shaman figure's ability to see patterns, particularly in weather and medicine was, I believe, perceived as powerful by a sky-god elite that transferred the authority from experience to arbitrary (thus authority is "handed down" from the sky god to the king, unquestioned.) The modern trend is, I believe, a liberation from the king's authority and now spread out - democratized. Egalitarian arbitrary authority.

One, in a shamanic culture, seeks out the Shaman for her experience and knowledge. One in a non-shamanic culture can't simply want it and adorn himself with the plants and solemnity that feels shamanic. Is the extreme popularity of shamanism in the west analogous to the bizarre outhumbling sessions of abramites (that is, a pursuit of power?) Or, after a mere 5000-year hiatus, are we calling on our deep ancestors's ways of seeing and connection that have been in our bones for millions of years?

I am skeptical and hopeful of the latter.

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REALITY IS A SHARED HALLUCINATION

Howerd Bloom.

][/u]

The stored experience language carries can tweak the difference between life and death. It's been reported that one unnamed tribe used to lose starving mothers, fathers and children by the droves each time famine struck, despite the fact that a river flowed near them filled with fish. The problem: they didn't define fish as food. We could easily suffer the same fate if stranded in their wilderness, simply because our culture tells us that a rich source of nutrients is inedible too - insects.

The influence of the mob of those who've gone before and those who stand around us now can be mind-boggling. During the middle ages when universities first arose, a local barber/surgeon was called into the lecture chamber year after year to dissect a corpse for medical students gathered from the width and breadth of Europe. A scholar on a raised platform discoursed about the revelations unfolding before the students' eyes. The learned doctor would invariably describe a network of cranial blood vessels that were nowhere to be found. He'd report a shape for the liver radically different from the form of the organ sliding around on the surgeon's blood-stained hands. He'd verbally portray jaw joints which had no relation to those being displayed on the trestle below him. But he never changed his narrative to fit the actualities. Nor did the students or the surgeon ever stop to correct the book-steeped authority. Why? The scholar was reciting the "facts" as found in volumes over 1,000 years old - the works of the Roman master Galen, founder of "modern" medicine.

Alas, Galen had drawn his conclusions, not from dissecting humans, but from probing the bodies of pigs and monkeys. Pigs and monkeys do have the strange features Galen described. Humans, however, do not. But that didn't stop the medieval professors from seeing what wasn't there. For no more were they ruggedly individualistic observers than are you and I. Their sensory pathways echoed with voices gathered for a millennium, the murmurings of a mob composed of both the living and the dead. The world experts of those days and ours conjured up assemblies of mirage. Like ours, their perceptual faculties were unrecognized extensions of a collective brain.

 

http://www.heise.de/...l/2/2227/1.html

we are all shamans w/the power to change the group hallucination.

Edited by nabraxas
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reptyle

I believe white people cannot be shamans.

So, in my book, if you see someone shouting I am a shaman, chances are he is not.

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Would you not judge a professional of any kind by the value they offer the customer, rather than by skin colour?

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I believe white people cannot be shamans.

 

Is this a bit like saying brown people cannot be scientists?

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I believe white people cannot be shamans.

 

Does that mean only 'black' people can be shamans? What about brown people? What about a 'white' person raised 100% by 'black' people, or partly raised, or even simply initiated by the 'black' person? What about the bogan white aussies who spend 50 years on Bondi beach and become brown?

 

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The modern trend is, I believe, a liberation from the king's authority and now spread out - democratized. Egalitarian arbitrary authority.

 

Interesting thoughts! Authority and authorizing the world is politically sensitive stuff, though not always a bad thing of course. But, yeah, I'm totally with you. Authority is often a grotesque beast harassing many decent folk.

Also, I think that in some ways the democratisation of authority in modern society is exaggerated. Michel Foucault's thoughts on the notion of power showcase how modern people have 'internalised' the authority of elites and therefore the range of possibilities of freedom for the average person is still within the defined laws (cultural and legal) of the elites --- the criminalisation of drugs over the last 100 years exemplifies this.

F. says that we have swallowed the shackles of society, the rules have gone underground and become implicit to our choices and perspectives. We no longer are beaten into submission with fists and bats but are cajoled or persuaded into being zombies with indoctrinating audio/visual/symbol electronic-boxes in our living rooms. Sneaky, subvertive, and totalitarian or common.

Having said all that, I am impressed by those people I meet who are 'self-shamanzing' in their own ways, sometimes without any entheogens, sigils, magical language, or even spirituality, but with a sense of engaging in the co-creation of reality, say through music, art, socialising, or simply exploring the journey.

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reptyle

I believe white people cannot be shamans.

So, in my book, if you see someone shouting I am a shaman, chances are he is not.

 

everyone is shaman.

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