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Old world shamans, for the most part, took the roll of both preacher and doctor... since science as we know it had not yet been invented and the people of the time did not see any difference between either field. Now we do. Would you want a Catholic priest to give you a vasectomy?

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b0red5tiff said:    Quote:
  these days a psychologist is a shaman. the old goddesses and gods have been turned into archetypes and inner selves. i have seen a lot of people on these boards looking for an "authentic" image of a shamanic session. this is a pitfall of absurdity imo, there is no authentic shamanism. shamanism has never been a school or a course, it's been a spontaneous event taking place on different places on the globe without each others aid.
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daytripper23 said:

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Kickle said:
Does it merely take someone telling us what we're seeing, or should be seeing, in order for us to see it?

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That is a psychological study I would be interested in seeing.

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OrgoneConclusion said:
Shamans were never in touch with the Spirit World, they were just adept at selling that idea to the populace.

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I think the concept of the *Spirit World* is attached to certain cultural definitions and literal interpretations more than it should be.  We can only speculate on the spectrum of infinite possible experiences a shaman has and relates to his tribe--from fraud to psychosis to an encounter with a legitimate plane of reality.  To accurately define the subjective experience of another being is impossible and to believe that one has done so is simply egotistical.  Maybe shamans ARE schizoid and that *malformed* state of awareness IS the *spirit world*?

To me your quote is akin to claiming that a wise person who had a dream about someone is his community never really went to sleep and had that dream, but only was good at convincing that person he did.  Or like saying that the philosopher who experiences ego death and information exchange with psilocybin mushrooms did not really have that experience yet untruthfully told his book club all about it.

I do not know what the *spirit world* is. I only know of the realms I have been to and find useful to accomplish my goals...

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There is much that the subconscious can do and be aware of that lies far outside our normal experience of officially-sanctioned 2004 American reality. These, I’ll put into the category of psychic abilities or the parapsychological/paranormal interface with the exterior cosmos. However, that is not the subject of this discussion, for those activities are notoriously hard to pin down, perhaps by Design. What is the subject of this paper has already been determined by the intrinsic trajectory (aforementioned) of symbols themselves – that is, of reversion, reflection, the precession of simulacra: symbols unmask the essential fraud of the real in deference to the barebones machinery that renders our experience (of the real) to us, namely the brain-body complex. Symbols are the broomsticks of the child magician Mickey Mouse, getting out of hand by virtue of their ease of replication under the influence of the undisciplined mind, coping not with its tumultuous, overwhelming potentials. There are so many cultures, with their gods, so many ways of parsing the world, such a mesh (read: mess) of languages within languages, dialects, intonations and timbres of being, that it beckons the wizard’s return to tranquilize the din, and show the simple way to the markedly unmysterious mysteries of shamanism.

Before embarking on what ways a shaman achieves his magic, let us explore why anyone would ever want to be one of these fellows, and how the role came about. In some ways, it’s like the role of a director of motion pictures: when it comes down to it, everyone else’s job on a movie set takes care of every possible responsibility, so a director really has no job, no role. Yet, he is the single most important voice and vision in most pictures. He is not actually literally in the picture, but influences every part of it; he is like the wind that can’t itself be seen except through the leaves it blows about. He is the vision that actively if invisibly manifests itself by virtue of inherent magnetism, the surrounding community like iron filings, drawing into place magically. He is a manifester, a mediator. He stands alone. He takes the risk, and the blame. He sees visions, and uses the grammar of dreams to formulate a transmissible myth. He is a storyteller, of the tale that wags the dog (his community). He is the messenger that is the message. He gains power only through the tacit consensus of his people, and yet he has thereby ultimate power over them. He probes his subconscious so they don’t have to (only thing is, in delivering the performance, he’s probing and influencing theirs). The magicians of cinema wield a wand made of holly wood (it’s true, look it up), and in so many ways, they are the precise correlate, in quite different trappings, of the prototypical, primal madman shaman.

So again, why would a man want to be no man, the outsider, the in-betweener, the dreamer and fallguy? Who would want all the responsibility and risk, with no commitment of loyalty from anyone outside himself? Well, of course, he can’t help but to not be anything but exactly that. He is chosen by his own neurology, aka the spirits.

The shaman hallucinates outward his own traumas and self-image. He projects and relives universal birth traumas and that of his own death by ‘shamanic illness’ during the period of his ‘calling’ as a process of healing the other. He is the resurrected ‘wounded healer’, having suffered severe hysteria, epilepsy or schizophrenia, followed by psychological reintegration as one variation on the general theme of taking ill and undergoing the ordeal of self-healing. This process is echoed in the shaman’s astral journey of consciousness – employed for spiritual insight into the universe or for healing or divination – where death, dismemberment and devouring by spirits; subsequent reassembling, recharging and revivification by same; and rebirth into a renewed superself are experienced as a prodigious drama. The shamanic call process may, in a case like this, continue as increased internal anxiety followed by erratic behavior and social withdrawal, or it may consist of dreams, visions, or inner voices (Wright 4). In any case, seizure-like behaviors or periods of deep trance or unconsciousness may also be part of the awakening metamorphosis of the shaman.

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So, the first, and most divine call of the shaman is spontaneous epilepsy that forms the neurological substrate for cultivated shamanic trance skill. This ‘shamanic illness’, cropping up maybe at age 9 or very likely around 20, even 45 in some cases, but usually in youth, is the most blatant, cut and dried indicator to the community that this person has a destiny. And, sure enough, epileptics tend to have the personality traits that draw them into the role. In fact, by reputation, a shamanic session generally looks like he’s having a fit, right down to frothing at the mouth, violently striking out at unknown assailants, speaking in tongues, and finally collapsing unconscious only to be aroused moments later with total amnesia (to the amazement of his tribesfolk, keen to hear of his amazing ‘journey’). If no epileptics are available, schizophrenics, the unstably overly-anxious, hysterics, and any other clinical weirdoes will suffice. The shaman must be an outsider, for the realm outside of which he sees is the reality box that sits squarely over his regional culture, of which it is largely unaware. His shaman’s legs are spring-loaded to clear leap over the pseudo-walls of their linguistic, symbolic social mouse maze.

No wonder he discerns his own sacred language. They call it the language of the birds (what else?). Often it will be gifted by an elder shaman, if it is the type of lineage or tradition that emphasizes apprenticeship. Other times, it will spontaneously erupt as glossolalia during ecstasy or seizure, in which case it is the dreamtime spurging out through his loose mouth in gross vocables. Likewise, his hallucinations (aka visions) slice and ramble onto the carefully manicured, crystallized through habit, comfortable and reliable realities of the rank and file members of his group. A prisoner to his loneliness, he is the freest of men. He has no real friends, but feels intimately the cosmic fibers that feed him and bind him to the infinite brotherhood. He is outside of time, while trudging through it. He is the only one kicking and screaming, because everyone else seems to take it so calmly in stride.

Again, who would want this role? For it is true some who aren’t explicitly selected genetically by the gods do choose it and inquire about the study of its mysteries. A shaman’s magic functions largely on the power of his reputation (This speaks volumes about the nature of the magic employed, most by implication and power of suggestion, group field effects.). He is a frustrated, temperamental ‘über-reflection’ of his society at large. He is the mocking exaggeration of their zeitgeist in which he is embroiled (only less so than the rest of the human herd). He is the transgression into the universal, eternal humanness, stripped of all bearings and headings of culture. He simulates the artificial structures of his people: anything solid is his to dissolve into seething dream, his dance a crazy mimic. He breaks unseen boundaries like language, taboo, and, legend has it, gravity. Yes, he is the free fool. And the power in this free fool who is the simulation itself (of both physical and cultural trappings) is that he is physically a constant reminder of the body-machine and culturally the tail that wags the dog. By rearranging and reordering and subverting the symbols and roles and expectations of his particular culture, he dispenses through his charisma a magical social lubricant which, because it’s so patently insane, reinforces the coherency and integrity of the group. He is the sounding board echoing from the fringe that reminds everyone of their living identity.

He can play his culture like a game, and his intuition is perked to sense the nearest sore nexus of social stagnation or repression, an excessive element begging to be slapped back into place, the node from which huge cultural pivots can be made, time and place; he can turn the tide. He is a leader among men. Some would want this role. Some would rather be shaman than chief, for the shaman is anointed by the higher authority of nature, crowned by fate, obvious to all in his airs, aura, and actions. The chief or king relies on clear symbols like headdress or crown and scepter, a throne. He dares not tinker with the accepted illusional vestments of power. The shaman clown on the other hand adroitly specializes in exactly this tinkering and tweaking of the social fabric. He is often at the same time rival to and right-hand-man of the chief. His bread and butter is an artistic and cosmic knowledge of the field of social constructs that the chief re-invokes daily, administratively.

Given this, how does the shaman literally manifest magical effects and perform miracles? The keyword is ‘effects’, and the answer is: any way he can. Placebo, hypnotic, suggestive, implicative, shocking, no matter, the effect is primary, and his target is the nervous system. In contrast to the western doctor who, pinned under this thoroughly modern (again invisible) edifice of the dogma of science, does not recognize much effect his own experience, mindset, languageing, and social behavior has on the healing proceedings, the shaman uses his own nervous system to assert change in that of his onlookers. It is well established that many if most shamans use a degree of illusionary magic, trickery, or outright fraud in their performances and healings. The general anthropological consensus is that this makes them fakes, and invalidates shamanism. However, in light of modern science telling us that a placebo works 8 times out of 10 as often as an aspirin in providing relief, it really seems it’s the lack of standardization, centralization, replicability, and, well, hygiene in shamanism that offends western, science-based mentalities.

Two case examples will elucidate the suggestive mechanism at work in a shaman’s magic. But first, a note on framing the experience. As Claude Levi-Strauss has said, “the efficacy of magic implies a belief in magic.” The magic must be framed with three components that play off each other: 1. the shaman’s belief in the efficacy of his magic, 2. the patient’s belief in the shaman’s power, and 3. the faith and expectations of the group that recognizes the shaman’s role in relation to those he works his magic on, which validates, defines, and locates the relationships therein (24). I carefully note that essentially this ‘group’ need not even exist, for it only functions by implication perceived in both the mind of the shaman and that of the patient. It includes all generalized preconceived fantasy ideals the patient may bring of the powers of shamans from legend as well as a sense of this particular shaman’s reputation (i.e. he has merely ‘heard’ that this shaman is highly respected by his people). All this boils down to the bypassing of the patient’s protective mechanisms so as to create a state of high suggestibility. The virtues of this state are the untapped powers of the subconscious for spontaneous remission of many types of diseases, which is covered at length in Dr. Andrew Weil’s Spontaneous Healing.

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b0red5tiff said: As Claude Levi-Strauss has said, �the efficacy of magic implies a belief in magic.� The magic must be framed with three components that play off each other: 1. the shaman�s belief in the efficacy of his magic, 2. the patient�s belief in the shaman�s power, and 3. the faith and expectations of the group that recognizes the shaman�s role in relation to those he works his magic on, which validates, defines, and locates the relationships therein (24).

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mad_cow said:
I would be closer to a curandero than a shaman.

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It's all about being a brujo.