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Monday, June 25, 2007

Neo-Shaman"ism" as western psychotherapy in disguise.

I want to ask the members of this community is, do you feel that bio regional animism is giving you a stronger, more grounded and integrated point of view in regards to shamanic practice?
The whole point of this work for me at first was to find a way to address and assist in creating Effective ways for us to rekindle shamanic practice in our communities. I found without a grounded in place, integrated in ecology and community animist cosmology we could not have effective shamans or effective shamanic healing...
And I have found that shaman"ism" does not exist... the shaman is a role not a belief system, and its a role that emerges only within animist belief systems or life way systems... the word shamanism is a silly as the word therapistism, or doctorism, healerism...
The problem with the term shamanism is that it perpetuates this idea that we can have shamans with out directly addressing the way we live our lives and relate to life itself... we can have a westernized Neo-Shaman"ism" psychotherapy with out having to De-colonise first, or at the very least have an animist cosmology... that's the issue honestly... with out the cosmology, with out the foundation and the groundedness in an animist cosmology, how can we have shamans?
Another question is is what we are seeing in westernised Neo-Shaman"ism" actually the work of shamans or Jungian psychotherapists playing Indian, if they do not have a grounded in place integrated in community and ecology animist cosmology?
Because from what I can tell... every shaman that has ever lived has had a grounded in place integrated in community and ecology animist cosmology, every single one...

to quote Graham Harvey...
" I am suggesting that the claim to be a shaman would be more convincing if claimants were changed by their experinces in ways dissimular to changes in duced in Western psychotherapies. Shamans might be expected to criticise the individualism and anonymity of modernity, rather than to re-affirm thier self-centeredness. Shamanic Journeies could be expected to change peoples beleifs and not merely be an additional life style accesory."
" Few New Age shamans inhabit or even visit the profoundly animated world that most Shamans of traditional societies live in. When spirits Become archetypes or parts of the "self," Shamans become people who talk to themselves."
Contemporary Paganism, Harvey 1997.

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