What IS a SHAMAN?

[cosmosuperball]

I believe it is the easiest term to describe some one who wants to help people, spiritually and mentally. To try and ask any one who professes or claims to be one or on that level to adhere to the qualities of a tribes man from the amazon is ludicrous, because their template is not going to have any relevance to a person on that path trying to help people in our culture. The people i have met that in my mind I would recognize as shamans have not claimed to be so, but have delivered such a profound experience that it is impossible for me to think otherwise. Though the understanding of the word is as individual as anything thing is. We all have unique prospective's/ understandings and prejudice. I think mystics is a better way of describing some on the interesting characters that you will meet now days in the new age culture.

[The Dude]

A shaman to me is somebody who can transcend their limiting programming to intuit something beyond: An irrational and illogical nonsensical information that makes perfect sense. It is subtle and within everything therefore pertaining to everything/everyone, so one is able to use this insight to benefit the tribe. To use said information in any other way is sorcery and definitely not for healing. (what a shaman really is = medicine man/woman)

[drugo]

Willis, R. J (1999) "Altered States, Conflicting Cultures: Shamans, Neo-Shamans and Academics". Anthropology of Consciousness. 10(2):41-49

"Origins of neo-shamanism stem from use of the term shamanism in 18th century ethnographic and antiquarian texts. The saman were originally Siberian Tungas practitioners of alered states of consciousness encountered by German, Russian and Polish explorers. But, by the end of the 18th century, shamanism had become the generic term used to describe similar forms of ecstatic religion. Essentiall then, shamanism is an academic construct and a word for he West, its meaning inevitably universalised, repeatedly re-fabricated, its definition contested" (pp.41).

Language, disciplines, discourses, thinkers and people in general have a common history of obscuring highly complex things to reductive categories fit for understanding. As Willis said, by creating a term Shaman, complexities of phenomena become squashed into one universal understanding. Fortunately the universal drama is a little bit more complicated and exciting than that. Appreciating the particularities of different 'shamans' elucidates a more honest description of a 'shaman', which essentially deconstructs them from a universal categorical identity. There are definitely threads which connect through these different identities, however i recon we need to consider the cultural and historical dimensions of each 'shaman' more than is generally appreciated.

words are only words.

Edited March 31, 2009 by mooksha

[gilligan]

small hijack... and maybe completely offtopic, but i've always wondered...

from the scientific/belief side...

does a shaman need to know what the substance will do to him (chemical interaction perspective) for it to work better, or is belief in the substance being able to provide the mindstate required enough?

I guess then it poses the question, are there chemical and then belief shaman out there?

[mr b.caapi]

small hijack... and maybe completely offtopic, but i've always wondered...

from the scientific/belief side...

does a shaman need to know what the substance will do to him (chemical interaction perspective) for it to work better, or is belief in the substance being able to provide the mindstate required enough?

I guess then it poses the question, are there chemical and then belief shaman out there?

I reckon it would have started of as chemical way back when, then as the skills and knowledge were passed down through the generations it would have turned into belief.

[Gunter]

does a shaman need to know what the substance will do to him (chemical interaction perspective) for it to work better, or is belief in the substance being able to provide the mindstate required enough?

The chemical interaction stuff of western science is still full of missing links and speculation. How psychedelics work is not fully known and often the theories that are used to explain them are rejected over time. Arguably the so called shaman who takes these things understands how they work far better than a neurobiologist who has given them to various in-vitro cultures and tested for different reactions.

The truth is that nobody at all knows the complete truth about the chemical interactions, the plant technology using shaman has more knowledge relative to this that any western scientist because the shaman knows how to obtain a specific effect via methodology. Ayahuasca is the perfect example of this, the interactions involved have been studied a long time, but merely breaking things down in a so called scientific manner cannot explain the full range of effects in terms of chemical interactions. The shaman in essence knows better what ayahuasca does than the man who studies it in the lab for years.

The conclusions of the science often fail to match reality, take for example the fact that people who take ayahuasca (legally of course) do not pre-dose with beta-carbolines and then take the DMT but ingest the alkaloids together and report effects in about 5 minutes, this defies the speculation that the oral activation of DMT requires MAO inhibition before it can take place. As a point of fact people who tried taking the betacarbolines first reported it less effective, see the gracie and zarkov stuff for that, they found that a failure to boil the alkaloids together resulted in less effects. In otherwords they found predosing with the MAOI exhibiting betacarbolines adversely affected potency. This relates to poor studies of compounds/molecules where people pre-dosed with betacarbolines and then took the compound and found no activity and thus concluded that the compound/molecule they were testing was inactive, yet according to gracie and zarkov this same approach failed to allow DMT to be active. Clearly the science here is underdeveloped and inconclusive, we should be cautious so as to tell the difference between what we know and what we believe, the shaman knows what the aya does through experience, the scientist believes things about aya, but does not know in the way the Shaman does.

What motivates the two? A shaman is motivated by cultural context the same as the scientist, both are under pressure or have incentive to develop and utilize their available resources to procure and obtain a desired effect. How they do this is different but at the end of the day for both of them they know very little but what works for them and what doesn't, and they both seek to use their art as a source of income or sustenance.

Arguable the terms shaman and scientist pertain to vocation only and not philosophy or approach anyway. In this outsiders who are neither shamans or scientists can use shamanic and scientific techniques, but it will not make them a shaman or a scientist anymore than kicking a football makes one a pro-footballer player.

Edited March 31, 2009 by Archaea

[mutant]

Ayahuasca tourism vs tradition (MUST SEE!!): http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=a...emb=0&aq=f#

excellent video... it says it all

[ThunderIdeal]

before the sidetrack, i think mooksha makes a very good point. in this new light our use of the word shaman seems akin to calling any clergymen by the name priest, or even any spiritual leader by the name priest. the topic of this thread has reached a new level of complication for me.

after the sidetrack, is it really true that a maoi and dmt must be consumed together? how closely together?

[t st tantra]

not if you smoke them.......many take it separately and it works ok......there are things about this we obviously dont understand yet..........2hours is the usually accepted window of intereaction[after about 30mins for maoi to work][archea oviously has had exp which contradict this?]

t s t .

Edited April 1, 2009 by t st tantra

[Gunter]

In ayahuasca effects start in under 10 minutes, no time for MAOI to get fully inhibited first.

Taking them separate can be unpredictable, it can but doesn't always work and is not the way it has been done for centuries if not millenia by the tribes who use the vine as a part of their own culture.

Smoking is different, a little of the vine goes a long way for this and potentiation can be had with surprisingly low doses, but that is not the same as oral activation.

But as a generality it is not true that the tryptamine and the beta-carboline must be taken together, of course many traditional users report using the vine without any additives that contain for example DMT, but those who do use additives ingest them together in most cases. The vine has maoi properties but has many other properties, it is taken for reasons aside from just the MAOI effects.

I have always been offended when western users call themselves shamans, i remember one guy called me up and kept calling himself "the master shaman" when he was asking me cactus dose questions. It made me wonder how insensitive some people are to the cultural values of others. If we re-define the word shaman then why not change it all together? People now use the term for themselves when they have had no training or initiation into any traditional shamanic ontology, to me this is the psychedelic equivalent of calling yourself a doctor because of a diploma from the internet that required no medical training or education whatsoever. When we use words like shaman and doctor in this fashion we ruin their meaning, it is like calling an automobile a tree, it is just silly and bears no relationship with reality.

So then we have shamans who know nothing of shamanism, they cannot teach it or do it, because they are not shamans but are instead people who just use the word shaman. I can call myself an astronaut but that won't make me one, so then why not redefine astronaut? Because we don't employ words to be changed whenever they don't fit what we want them too, rather we should seek to use different words.

The term psychonaut is close to my heart though.

[cosmosuperball]

i was listening to t mac not too long after i posted up on this topic, and he explained perfectly as he always does. Something like this, a shaman is a person who makes spiritual advances through the exploration of alternate realities using psychedelics. It was off light of the 3rd millennium i think so check it out everyone, im sure you already have. I think people that are using these drugs to better themselves would be more prone to wanting that title.

Edited April 3, 2009 by cosmosuperball

[Gunter]

I think people that are using these drugs to better themselves would be more prone to wanting that title.

That has been the exact opposite of my experiences with people and Shamanic techniques which in many cases employ no drugs whatsoever. Also even in traditions shamans are not healers in all cases, they also perform curses and magical attacks, things that hurt instead of heal.

So shaman in a traditional sense does not always mean drug use, many types of shamanism employ other means to attain trance and likewise is does not mean healer either as that a shaman is trained to do many things, not just heal. Remember that for indigenous people being a shaman was not something that one could claim or volunteer, it was a calling as much as a career that served specific social roles. For example in Malay shamanism the shaman was the resolver of conflicts and the orchestrator of resource management in regional areas where there was no government oversight.

But then I have had some college classes that allowed me to explore what shamanism is in many regions of the world so I have a different opinion of it than drug users seeking to employ the label as a justification for their habits. I can enjoy benefits of psychoactive without need to pretend I am doing so out of some continuation of an archaic tradition that i actually have no relation to or with.

In my experience those who don the name shaman are often your garden variety psychedelic megalomaniacs, it isn't like they were called by the spirits to be shamans. They just think that using the term shaman makes them one, most shamans I have spoken with who had real training avoided the term shaman altogether because of it being co-opted and re-defined.

[mutant]

One calling himself a shaman IMO is not a disrespect for some other people's cultural values, espcially if this person is situated in an urban center like a big fucking ugly city.... and if it is [a disgrace, as you want to present it] who gives a fuck - about holiness of words and symbols.

One calling himself a shaman is propably some form or another of stupidity, maybe parted with some grandiose ideas...

Shamans have always been carriers of authority... And there are good reasons to believe they weren't so willing to give this authority up. That's the reason I will always see shamans suspiciously, whether they are the 'real' thing, or the millions of self-called phony ones...

[drugo]

i think the term shaman needs to be scraped or at least every time someone uses it they need to describe specifically what they mean.

As i said earlier the term is essentially an academic construct, put together by thinkers in the West. The word has accumulated heavy amounts of obscure and romantic baggage over the last coupla' hundred years. Furthermore, shamanism seems to create an imaginary divide between the 'West' and 'non-West'. I will deconstruct it a little for those interested, some thinkers have done a lot of work critiquing the term, i can offer sources if anyone wants to check further into the debate.

So, a few of the general understandings for what a 'shaman' is: someone who enters an ASC (altered state of consciousness) and communicates with a spirit world. Someone who diagnosis and cures illness, someone who offers help for mental health, and amongst other things such as determining weather, game movement. However, i want to focus on the first three in particular.

By referring to a practicioner who diagnosis and cures the ill as a 'shaman', essentially a distinciton is being created between the non-West and the West. The word 'shaman' tends to create responses associated with 'witch doctors', 'medicine men' etc. These terms feed a romantic sensation which is distinctly separate from how Westerners commonly think of their respected doctor, GP or local physician. GP's and physicians are generally not called 'healers', or 'potion mixing medicine men'. In this sense, the same distinction applies to the understanding of a psychologist compared to a 'shaman'.

There is generally a distinction made between the terms 'shaman' and 'priest'. The former commonly understood as someone who communicates directly with the spirit world, and latter is characterised as not needing this direct contact. The priest learns their expertise from group ritual through formal training. However, Lowie (1963:179) discusses that in her study of the Pawnee 'shamans', the 'medicine men' derive their expertise of the 'thunder spirits' and 'animal protectors' through other 'medicine men'. Therefore, in this sense, the Pawnee shamans ritualised system is no different than the priest learning from the church of God.

A distinction between priest and shaman furthers this dillusion of a marked difference between Judeo-Christian and non-Judeo-Christian, or put more crudely, West and non-West.

Also i wanted to add, Klein (2002:392) suggests that the ambiguity or vagueness of the term shamanism is why it is so attractive to many ‘scholars, lay people, advertisers, tour guides, museum curators, and nation-states’. She further explains that 'Shamanism feeds a romantic nostalgia for a supposedly more spiritual, less materialistic and rational past ... Some recognise it is as a modern type of primitivism, a myth that, as we have seen, today appeals as much to academics working in urban universities as it does to New Age gurus and "wannabe" shamans.

Throwing around the term shaman without rigorous detail to what specifically is being discussed essentially perpetuates the West's shameless romanticisation of the indigenous past. Furthermore, it continues an imaginary divide between the 'West' and 'non-Western'.

The term 'shaman' tends to box the worlds diversities of medical, and spirtual practicioners into one neat category. However, in this process each particular case (or 'shaman') is disengaged and trivialised from their cultural, political, historical and geographical context. As i said before, fortunately the universal drama is a little bit more complicated and exciting than what the reductive and romantic term 'shaman' refers to.

I'm working on a detailed paper of this argument at the moment, only a coupla' thousand words, or a few pages. If anyones interested in these arguments in more detail i can post it up later this week when its finalised.

Open for criticism.

Much love.

Edited April 5, 2009 by mooksha

[ThunderIdeal]

i was already convinced by your post previous to this (although what i'm saying will partially sully your points).

what i get from this: if i was to give myself some title, the least i can do is be a bit specific about my role. to call oneself a shaman might be fair if you're a versatile mystic who believes himself capable in several mystical capacities (everything mentioned in this thread).

please add some titles to this thread! for instance torsten's profile says 'inatulet', which i think is a medicinal/herbal specialist, it makes no real claim of communing with spirits etc. copy my list, make some additions or improve it, and then post the modified list. if some of you help we can get a bit of a definitive list happening.

seer/soothsayer/diviner (oracle, prophet, vaticinator, visionary, forecastor, prognosticator, predictor) - these guys attempt to pluck knowledge from the ethers, for instance knowledge of the future, and this is by no means all of the words that describe this role.

herbalist, inatulet - healing and other use of herbs (i think this is the category most of us have some claim to)

curandero (?)- is it fair to say these guys are just healers of medical and spiritual malady?

sorcerer, magician, wizard, thaumaturge (rainmaker) - these guys can (supposedly) bring about some change in the world (which could include healing and prophecy) through various occult practices.

Edited April 5, 2009 by ThunderIdeal

[drugo]

what i get from this: if i was to give myself some title, the least i can do is be a bit specific about my role. to call oneself a shaman might be fair if you're a versatile mystic who believes himself capable in several mystical capacities (everything mentioned in this thread).

'To call oneself a shaman' without a very specific definition leaves your claim highly obscure, and nearly meaningless. Actually it leaves it full of meaning, just not the meaning i think you'd intend, instead, probably without you realising, it means or perpetuates ignorance. The term essentially fills a vacuum of ignorance.

Your claim about justly calling yourself a shaman 'if you're a versatile mystic...' doesn't sully the argument, it supports it. Your description of a shaman is not the general understanding of a shaman. It's pilling together as many things as you could think a 'shaman' represents. Why reduce so many rich diversities of different things and then place them in a category which separates itself from different things in the West? I tend to feel that it's all meat on the same bone brother

Instead of listing a series of fixed definitions i recon it's better to simply define specifically what you're talking about, when you're talking about it. Consider also that life changes, language changes and so do definitions.

What is a shaman? Must they exhibits all the qualities you mentioned? plus those qualities you're hoping people will add?

What are the limits of qualities a shaman can have? What is shaman? What isn't a shaman? Doesn't it seem obvious that the term is flawed???

If you want to bring the West down from its imaginary pedestal, stop using words which romantacise and perpetuate a deluded difference between 'West' and 'non-West'. By ditching the word shaman you will stop reducing huge amounts of cultural complexities to an obscure label. You'll also be treating these complex practices in their own accord, paralleled with doctors, psychologists, priests etc.

If you must continue to romanticise over the colonial 'Other' then i suggests that you should at least offer an in depth description of what you mean by 'shaman' in the context of your particular conversation, idea, argument, utterance.

Sorry if i'm repeating my self, it's hard to judge with forum discussions if people are understanding what your saying

Edited April 5, 2009 by mooksha