What can we learn from shamanism?
Shamanism is an ancient spiritual tradition and a sort of universal proto-religion. The fundamental aspects are more or less constant across cultures - shamans deliberately enter altered states of consciousness in order to benefit their communities. However, the specifics differ from culture to culture. Some shamans seek useful information, such as knowledge of fertile hunting grounds, while others help their clients more directly by healing them physically or mentally. Shamanic traditions also differ in how altered states of consciousness are accessed - some shamans use hallucinogenic plants, while others dance or drum or meditate or fast or drive themselves to the point of exhaustion by spending long periods of time alone in the wilderness.
Can shamanism have any relevance to modern life in the West? I believe it can, though possibly in a slightly roundabout way.
Before discussing what we might learn from shamanism, I want to mention a couple of caveats. Firstly, although shamans perform their roles with a view to benefiting others, nevertheless, almost all shamanic traditions also have a dark side. Some shamans contrast themselves with the more occult practitioners and refer to the latter as ‘sorcerers’ or ‘black shamans’; however, the line is often blurred. I think that is why shamanic traditions place such emphasis on a long and arduous period of initiation, always involving various privations and forms of abstinence (from sex, alcohol, sugar, salt, human society). If an individual has the self-discipline and self-control to complete such an initiation, then they will hopefully be less susceptible to the temptation to make use of their power for selfish or immoral purposes. Nevertheless, the original caveat still holds: it would be naive to engage with shamanism without being prepared to encounter a dark side, whether that dark side is inside or outside of oneself.
Secondly, in shamanic societies, shamans tend to play a liminal role. They are both a part of society, as well as being outside of it. They are often people who have suffered from a near fatal illness or accident - perhaps they have looked death in the face and have survived the encounter. Again, these are not things which we would necessarily choose for ourselves or for those close to us.
In the Amazon, even the most exemplary shamans tend to have a very negative worldview. When someone is in pain and consults a shaman, the shaman will ‘diagnose’ the malady during the course of an ayahuasca ceremony. However, the diagnosis usually indicates that someone else is responsible for your suffering - for instance, a jealous neighbour has placed a curse on you, or he has paid a sorcerer to blow magic darts into your body. In the Amazonian shamanic worldview, there is almost always some human foul play at work.
If you relate to people with an attitude of suspicion and fear, you create a negative climate which means that those people are more likely to behave in the undesirable ways that you are imputing to them. However, the opposite also holds true: treat people well and they will, for the most part, respond in kind. So the dark motives which colour the Amazonian shaman’s view of the world may indeed be a truthful reflection of his reality, though again, this is probably not something that we would wish to emulate.
So far I have described the aspects of shamanism which ought to make us wary. However, what are the positives? What can we learn from shamanism? Well, firstly I think that there is actually something valuable in the shamanic ‘diagnosis’ of suffering. From a Western scientific perspective, we might doubt the efficacy of curses or magic darts, but what really counts is the fact that they give the patient a reason for their pain. As soon as we can make sense of suffering, then the suffering diminishes. Even a Western medical diagnosis can be helpful, albeit on a more superficial level (my stomach hurts because I have cancer… but why do I have cancer?) However, undoubtedly the worst agony is to suffer and not to know why.
Shamanic diagnosis is only one part of what I see as the ‘meaning making’ function of shamanism. Shamanism makes sense of the world: the hunt has failed because a taboo was broken (Caribou Eskimos), the daily task of humans is to help our Great Father the Sun to cross the sky (Taos Pueblo Indians of New Mexico), you are in pain because your enemy has blown magic darts into you (Amazonian Shuar), etc. Now, I don’t think that Western society could or should adopt these aspects of shamanic thinking - we cannot unlearn what we already know. However, the general lesson is the importance of a sense of meaning. Personally, it seems to me that a lot of human suffering, and a lot of mental illness, derives from the absence of this sense of meaning. So what does this meaning consist of? I think everyone has to discover that for themselves. But an interest in such questions may lead one towards existential philosophy and psychology, which seem to me to be amongst the few Western disciplines to take these questions seriously.
Another idea which plays an important role in shamanic thought is the interconnectedness of all things. That is also something that we, as Westerners, could learn from. Too often we see ourselves as opposed to nature, rather than as a part of it. Sustainability and ecological sensitivity naturally follow from this realisation. From a shamanic point of view, harming the environment is nonsensical, like chopping off your own arm. Why would you harm something which is indistinguishable from yourself?
Interconnectedness can itself be a source of meaning. One role of the shaman is to provide a bridge to connect daily life with the mythic dimension. The shaman is the repository of the history and mythology of the tribe, and a conduit to the realm of the ancestors. That is also important - the mythic dimension has the capacity to touch us and ground us at the deepest level, and yet it plays so little part in contemporary Western life.
The shamanic approach to unusual experiences might also be something we can learn from. In the West, when someone has experiences to which other people cannot relate, we say they are psychotic and we put them in an asylum. The isolation, and the sense that they are freaks, exacerbates their problems. In shamanic cultures, by contrast, an attempt is made to integrate unusual experiences. If someone hears voices, they are not just written off as psychotic, and carted away. Rather, such experiences are interpreted as signs of having special sensitivity, or communicating with the dead, or as being in some other way related to an intelligible cosmological or mythical matrix. This may have no basis in scientific fact, but if shamans can make meaning of these experiences, then individuals are less likely to slip into the atomised and isolated anguish which underlies so much mental illness in the West.
Shamanism seems to me to lead naturally to an interest in meditative Eastern traditions. Firstly, the shamanic sense of interconnectedness leads to a questioning of the Western concept of the isolated, iron-clad, individual ego. Eastern traditions suggest that this concept has no basis in reality and lies at the root of all human suffering. Secondly, many aspects of shamanism demonstrate the extraordinary power of the mind over the body. Western science grudgingly acknowledges this as the placebo effect, but cannot explain it. By training the power of the mind, Eastern traditions offer the opportunity to explore this phenomenon in a systematic and experiential way.
Shamanism is a fascinating subject in itself. However, I believe that the meaning-making function of shamanism, and the notion of interconnectedness, are the aspects with the greatest relevance to modern life in the West.
