Shamanism

[Jees]

...I'm not sure in the west we need shamans, plant spirits, animal guides or people who shapeshift. I think that psychedelics themselves are more important.

For that purpose I like to broaden the term out of its original context. Just definitions though.

 

[ganesh]

I'm not sure in the west we need shamans, plant spirits, animal guides or people who shapeshift. I think that psychedelics themselves are more important.

Of course, because most Westerners who do the Jungle thing are only doing so to 'trip', but they can do that at home with a variety of Entheogens.

But those that are sick with stuff like Cancer, who choose Ayahuasca, will need a trained Curandero to help diagnose and treat the illness with the right plants, etc.

 

[anne halonium]

still not buying into the medical hype.

you guys can play the spirit and love card,
and the fellowship card, and even to a degree a mental health/ therapy card.
but , im seriously disappointed about the medical card.
IMO its promoting medicine show quackery by definition.
very disturbing.

ive seen TV infomercials at 3 am for weight loss machines that have a greater respect for medical data.......
my gawd, do surgery with a ginsu next?

the logical extension is to eat psil, round up anyone from mexico city,
and declare them a divine aztec heart surgeon.
and do that triple bypass right at the pyramid of the sun!......
seriously?
same reasoning IMO.
i mean why stop at non invasive measures?
obsidian is plentiful.


also, dont confuse the shot out insurance system with actual scientific medicine.
tarring actual doctors, with the soil of an investment culture,
is not genuine argument for anything but social revolt.
its poor endorsement for aya tourism.
if your too broke to afford proper medical care,
my last thought would be to guzzle aya with indians.

if you guys are all caught up in miracles and religion,
you need to do fatima / or the vatican
for the whole divine medicine show, the catholics have it down.
im not even catholic and i was impressed.

^fantastic show, and they dont even need snakes or drugs........

for a long time i saw the spanish conquest and extermination of SA culture as a bad thing.
now im starting to think if they were anti quackery, it might have made sense!

and once again for the record........
anne halonium DOES NOT promote soaring off to the jungle,
to guzzle aya and cure your cancer........or whatever..........

history shows these cure all fads and crazes fade into others.......unfortunately.
this incarnation is aya indians.
next incarnation has to be mongolian yak offal tea and yurt meditation in silly hats.

i would offer, when faced with a terminal patient of any sort,
the best shaman would say " die gracefully"
anything less would be flat out shaman hubris.

 

[inaniel]

And yet you healed your gut using non conventional means...
Using nutrition in a way no first world doctor would recommend

Someone else put it perfectly, you use a lot of words without actually saying anything

 

[anne halonium]

my good nutrition is the best excuse to defend quackery.
at least best one yet.

^did it without a SA shaman or aya.......
physician heal thyself.

 

[Jees]

Don't fear the competition anne, sex industry will always be quack #1.

Meanwhile, Xacklagho Bntam is rather sad today, someone told him about your post.

he can't sleep bothering over some numbers in western data statistics not favoring him.
I only hope he get over it.

 

[anne halonium]

seriously, thats your best ?

i think i could argue for shaman quackery better than that.

 

[DmnStr8]

seriously, thats your best ?

i think i could argue for shaman quackery better than that.

Are you arguing for the sake of arguing? Maybe you like making it the Annie show?! lol

 

[ganesh]

Maybe you like making it the Annie show?! lol

:twisted: :twisted:

 

[dreamer042]

A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of an idealized indigene, outsider, or "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness.

I'll start by saying I have absolutely seen miraculous healings take place within the context of ceremony. I have been honored to spend time with healers of many different cultural backgrounds and traditions, and I've been witness their techniques and treatments first hand. I know well the experiential meaning of words like magic and medicine as they are implemented around the sacred fire.

I have met more than my fair share of conmen and charlatans as well, those people playing shaman with guru complexes and easy payment plans. I have also discovered that the line between the two may not be as clear cut as you would expect. At the end of the day we are all humans with our own agendas and ideals, frailties and foibles. We are all working off incomplete information and making it up as we go along. As Jerry put it "Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." Keep in mind that the fictional shaman Don Juan Matus has a better track record of turning the world on to the wisdom traditions than any authentic curer or medicine person living today.

I have found some consistencies between those who I would deem authentic practitioners however. The first is that they despise the term "shaman" or even the softer terms such as "medicine man", "curer", or "healer" and would never refer to themselves in that way. Every one I've met that is authentically the 'real deal' has always stressed that they are just ordinary people, not special in any way. So, that's criteria #1 in my book, humility. Next is kinda along the same lines, none would ever make any of the kind of claims I see in this thread either of the "I can heal you" type or the "I can't heal you" type, they will simply wait for you to ask for help and get to work without any promises or expectations. That is criteria #2, integrity. Lastly, of course they would never ask for or expect any kind of compensation for their work, they will never turn anyone away, nor will they turn down any offering given them in gratitude. Criteria #3, no price tags.

In many ways the technology of tradition is still far ahead of anything we can measure in the laboratory. There is real wisdom to be found in the footprints of our ancestors. That said, those nuggets of gold are buried in mountains of quaint superstitious baggage. As an example, while any self respecting cactiphile would be quick to espouse the value of eating peyote and drumming in the tipi all night long, most would be hard pressed to also adopt the belief, traditional amongst the Dine, that a living cactus should NEVER be kept indoors and to do so is seriously bad juju. No sustaining the work with hydro loph teks in a Navajo household.

This segways nicely into my next topic. Let's talk about bloodlines, birthrights, and the oh so politically incorrect act of cultural appropriation. I ask the question does your blood dictate your birthright? Or does your environment? Does a child born of Lakota parents in Iquitos have the right to perform the Sun Dance? Does a child born of Peruvian parents in Tulsa, Oklahoma have the right to drink ayahuasca? Should a caucasian born in Farmington, AZ only be expected to tell Norse myths around the campfire and be forbidden from telling the story of the formation of Shiprock? If a Caucasian man burns palo santo and drinks ayahuasca in his backyard is that cultural appropriation? How about if a Latino man drinks Budweiser and watches football in his recliner?

At this point ALL cultures are threatened. Disillusioned first worlders are seeking traditional roots in small villages in droves hastening the encroachment of capitalist values into these places. In response, droves of third worlders are seeking iPhones and energy drinks in the big cities further perpetuating the loss of the languages, myths, songs, and stories that sustained these cultures as unique and sovereign. If the diversity of these cultures is to be preserved, it's going to take a cooperative effort that goes beyond selling the medicine show to health tourists from half a world away. It requires making it as worthwhile for young people to learn their grandmothers language as it would be for them to learn Java. Even with a concerted attempt to create such a movement, it's likely already too late to archive anything but the faintest bastardized glimmer of the rich and complex cosmologies that gave life to these traditions.

Which brings us to what I believe it is Annie has been speaking to all along, practicality. What good is it for the Amazonian shaman to be able to predict the movements of the game when their migration route has been fenced off and bulldozed into a soy farm to feed cattle to supply the Mcdonalds going in downriver? Do you honestly believe there is a single person in the jungle who would not glady trade their pounding rock and decaying aluminum pot for a for a Vitamix and an All-American stainless steel pressure cooker? Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily buy the idea that this kind of "progress" is really a good thing, but I do think we need to step back and take a realistic view of what is happening here and work from where we actually are, rather than some kind of idealized noble savage fantasy about how things used to be or how things should be.

Culture is not your friend, all this work to preserve the very thing that keeps us divided is simply working against us working together to stop the ongoing devastation of our collective life support systems. There is no room for saying this is only for indians and this only for asians and this only for africans and this is only for whites. Now is the time for us to bring everything we got to the table and try to create some kind of synthesis between all our advanced technological knowledge and all our ancient wisdom into a working model to stop this psychopathic kamakazi dive into species extinction.

I think we are catching a glimpse of the possibilities available to us in the festival movement. Take the ritual of dancing to a drum beat and blow it up to 100,000 watts. Take the pilgrimage of the pow wow or tribal meetup and blow it up half a million people strong. Take a disenfranchised youth culture, give them all night ceremonies and psychoactive chemicals and do you not find that the rave is but the future reflection of the antiquated religion?

Who says we can't use FMRI to verify what the curandero sees when he drinks the medicine and looks into your body? Isn't it much moar effective to do a plant dieta with an electric juicer than an old pot and polluted river water? Isn't the placebo effect just what we would call magic being demonstrated under controlled experimental conditions? Is there really a conflict at the level of the evidence, or is it all ideological? Can't we have the best of both worlds and create healing on every level of this fractal universe?

 

[Jees]

seriously, thats your best ?

With less irony then:

* nobody ever argued that there are no quacks out there in huts. You will always hit home saying quack-alert. They're humans race, just like you. Quack is everywhere. There goes that argument.

* For the genuine one, they care not about your stats-that-proof.

Peace.

 

[DmnStr8]

A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of an idealized indigene, outsider, or "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness.

I'll start by saying I have absolutely seen miraculous healings take place within the context of ceremony. I have been honored to spend time with healers of many different cultural backgrounds and traditions, and I've been witness their techniques and treatments first hand. I know well the experiential meaning of words like magic and medicine as they are implemented around the sacred fire.

I have met more than my fair share of conmen and charlatans as well, those people playing shaman with guru complexes and easy payment plans. I have also discovered that the line between the two may not be as clear cut as you would expect. At the end of the day we are all humans with our own agendas and ideals, frailties and foibles. We are all working off incomplete information and making it up as we go along. As Jerry put it "Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." Keep in mind that the fictional shaman Don Juan Matus has a better track record of turning the world on to the wisdom traditions than any authentic curer or medicine person living today.

I have found some consistencies between those who I would deem authentic practitioners however. The first is that they despise the term "shaman" or even the softer terms such as "medicine man", "curer", or "healer" and would never refer to themselves in that way. Every one I've met that is authentically the 'real deal' has always stressed that they are just ordinary people, not special in any way. So, that's criteria #1 in my book, humility. Next is kinda along the same lines, none would ever make any of the kind of claims I see in this thread either of the "I can heal you" type or the "I can't heal you" type, they will simply wait for you to ask for help and get to work without any promises or expectations. That is criteria #2, integrity. Lastly, of course they would never ask for or expect any kind of compensation for their work, they will never turn anyone away, nor will they turn down any offering given them in gratitude. Criteria #3, no price tags.

In many ways the technology of tradition is still far ahead of anything we can measure in the laboratory. There is real wisdom to be found in the footprints of our ancestors. That said, those nuggets of gold are buried in mountains of quaint superstitious baggage. As an example, while any self respecting cactiphile would be quick to espouse the value of eating peyote and drumming in the tipi all night long, most would be hard pressed to also adopt the belief, traditional amongst the Dine, that a living cactus should NEVER be kept indoors and to do so is seriously bad juju. No sustaining the work with hydro loph teks in a Navajo household.

This segways nicely into my next topic. Let's talk about bloodlines, birthrights, and the oh so politically incorrect act of cultural appropriation. I ask the question does your blood dictate your birthright? Or does your environment? Does a child born of Lakota parents in Iquitos have the right to perform the Sun Dance? Does a child born of Peruvian parents in Tulsa, Oklahoma have the right to drink ayahuasca? Should a caucasian born in Farmington, AZ only be expected to tell Norse myths around the campfire and be forbidden from telling the story of the formation of Shiprock? If a Caucasian man burns palo santo and drinks ayahuasca in his backyard is that cultural appropriation? How about if a Latino man drinks Budweiser and watches football in his recliner?

At this point ALL cultures are threatened. Disillusioned first worlders are seeking traditional roots in small villages in droves hastening the encroachment of capitalist values into these places. In response, droves of third worlders are seeking iPhones and energy drinks in the big cities further perpetuating the loss of the languages, myths, songs, and stories that sustained these cultures as unique and sovereign. If the diversity of these cultures is to be preserved, it's going to take a cooperative effort that goes beyond selling the medicine show to health tourists from half a world away. It requires making it as worthwhile for young people to learn their grandmothers language as it would be for them to learn Java. Even with a concerted attempt to create such a movement, it's likely already too late to archive anything but the faintest bastardized glimmer of the rich and complex cosmologies that gave life to these traditions.

Which brings us to what I believe it is Annie has been speaking to all along, practicality. What good is it for the Amazonian shaman to be able to predict the movements of the game when their migration route has been fenced off and bulldozed into a soy farm to feed cattle to supply the Mcdonalds going in downriver? Do you honestly believe there is a single person in the jungle who would not glady trade their pounding rock and decaying aluminum pot for a for a Vitamix and an All-American stainless steel pressure cooker? Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily buy the idea that this kind of "progress" is really a good thing, but I do think we need to step back and take a realistic view of what is happening here and work from where we actually are, rather than some kind of idealized noble savage fantasy about how things used to be or how things should be.

Culture is not your friend, all this work to preserve the very thing that keeps us divided is simply working against us working together to stop the ongoing devastation of our collective life support systems. There is no room for saying this is only for indians and this only for asians and this only for africans and this is only for whites. Now is the time for us to bring everything we got to the table and try to create some kind of synthesis between all our advanced technological knowledge and all our ancient wisdom into a working model to stop this psychopathic kamakazi dive into species extinction.

I think we are catching a glimpse of the possibilities available to us in the festival movement. Take the ritual of dancing to a drum beat and blow it up to 100,000 watts. Take the pilgrimage of the pow wow or tribal meetup and blow it up half a million people strong. Take a disenfranchised youth culture, give them all night ceremonies and psychoactive chemicals and do you not find that the rave is but the future reflection of the antiquated religion?

Who says we can't use FMRI to verify what the curandero sees when he drinks the medicine and looks into your body? Isn't it much moar effective to do a plant dieta with an electric juicer than an old pot and polluted river water? Isn't the placebo effect just what we would call magic being demonstrated under controlled experimental conditions? Is there really a conflict at the level of the evidence, or is it all ideological? Can't we have the best of both worlds and create healing on every level of this fractal universe?

:thumb_up: :thumb_up: :thumb_up: :thumb_up: :thumb_up:

 

[anne halonium]

* For the genuine one, they care not about your stats-that-proof.

of course not.
all facts go out the window.
a hallmark of jim jones style medicine show.

i wonder about the attraction of aya,
i suspect its cuz its to hard to grow shrooms or cacti.
but its easy to get ladled a buzz from a native?

i find it odd ,
that open source, decentralized answers exist.
and yet you follow the indian with the kool aid W/O question?.

cant help but see co dependency here.
everyone of you can grow at home and see any god you want direct.
if you dare......or are able.

 

[inaniel]

my good nutrition is the best excuse to defend quackery.
at least best one yet.

^did it without a SA shaman or aya.......
physician heal thyself.

Yeah, that's cool. But you said 1st world medicine would lead to progress. Yet healed yourself using techniques not endorsed by 1st world doctors. In fact it's not difficult to find many people calling holistic practitioners who use diet and nutrition to heal quacks. I fail to see how this is so confusing..

for a long time i saw the spanish conquest and extermination of SA culture as a bad thing.
now im starting to think if they were anti quackery, it might have made sense!

Anti quackery in that they were unhealthy with all their first world medicine and brought over a host of diseases including syphilis and smallpox, killing eighty to ninety percent of the population. I hope you're just trolling, for the sake of your mental health.

 

[Jees]

...and yet you follow the indian with the kool aid W/O question?...

I don't follow that indian you have in mind. To me shamanism is not located in region or time frame, nor skin color nor type medicine, would be a pity to bound it, but we are free to pick a definition, you have yours.

W/O question? Absolutely not, it seems Peru is chronically worsening, more quack and "arrows" than ever, I hear so from a friend living there half time. I'm with you on the quack level, its bad, too bad for the uninformed one in search of a local hero.

Shamans I see them as artists creating a strong vibe to like or not. If it resonates, some dynamic might trigger a thing, or two. The quack cant do that.

For me its back to basics: Shaman = he/she who knows.
Know what? Keys to intensities, managing of patterns/psychological energy, ...
How? By any means serving the artist way.

Vibrations are not that mystical, it just does stuff, probably quantum stuff.
I think everyone is at least some % shaman, able to affect self and people.
Can be cultivated, some have talents like in any art. Some are would-be's.

I am really pro de-mystification.

 

[pitubo]

for a long time i saw the spanish conquest and extermination of SA culture as a bad thing.
now im starting to think if they were anti quackery, it might have made sense!

Anti quackery in that they were unhealthy with all their first world medicine and brought over a host of diseases including syphilis and smallpox, killing eighty to ninety percent of the population. I hope you're just trolling, for the sake of your mental health.

The conquistadores believed in priests and prayer over medicine. Next, bloodletting became fashionable. For a while, western medicine fed people mercury preparations as a cure for syphilis.

Today's medicine is tomorrow's quackery.

Instead of praising or criticizing the medicine men, whether they be doctors or shamans, I'd like to focus away from the receivers of authority and onto the givers: the people who have eagerly invested in the mirage of panacea dispensing supermen. They create the market for grifters and con men. You can't blame the flies for being all over a steaming pile of dung.

 

[Intezam]

They create the market for grifters and con men

Did you forget by chance con-woman?

 

[pitubo]

Did you forget by chance con-woman?

No more than I forgot sha-woman. I was obviously referring to con-mankind, not introducing personal gender issues.

 

[Jees]

LOL pitubo about the flies. It's nature I guess, the herd and the alpha figure?

...I'd like to focus away from the receivers of authority and onto the givers...

Without blinking eyes we give authority to a mechanic we never met for fixing expensive cars and our health to doctor: "Well if this doesn't seem to work then come back in a week, it is 30 euro please."
IMO, the word authority is not this dirty if representing "ability".
Indeed external authority is prone to deceit and manipulation, but self-authority is as well.
Inner and outer being mirrors of same human condition?
What people do to themselves :shock:

-----

* For the genuine one, they care not about your stats-that-proof.

of course not.
all facts go out the window...

So the testimonies here were lies?

Ayurveda:The Art of Being
How about this? The odd ways of diagnosing, the working with plants, traditions,...
I wonder where exactly your line for quackery lies and where it ends, if ever. I could easily claim that the gods one possibly see/create/meet with own grow plants, are self-quack too.

I'm with you that knowledge should not be hostaged under any flag.

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

In many cases a shaman might not know whether the person will die or not.... Often times it is a close thing.

But every shaman I have met so far would at least offer their service in a effort to help ease their dying.

A good example of this is the documentary The Sacred Science (free on youtube). There is a terminal patient who dies during the documentary and you can tell he died very happy and peacefully after his ceremonies.

Your shaman may be different..... But I sit with a lot of different healers, and all of them do their best to help people, even if the only help they can give is helping them die.

I know you are very knowledgeable in this area, and likely know exactly what your talking about, again, I'm only speaking from my experiance...

And again, even in the Amazon, shamanism can vary drastically from village to village, even though they are only miles apart...

Then you have shamanism as a part of nearly every culture on the globe, and every shamanic tradition is unique, so to flatly define shamanism may be a mistake...

This one is pretty good as well, I can vaguely remember the film you mentioned, and will look into it.

These practices and medicines are not for everybody, they don't work for everybody and they don't work fir everything...

It's every shamans job to know the limits and parameters of his abilities as well as his specific specialties...

If every patient with a particular ailment has not been able to be helped since this guy's great gtandfather, and all his attempts have failed, he will know there's nothing he can do...

Not to say he would not help them transition through death, but if their death is years out and he knows he is powerless, he will say so, he may even refuse to shamanize.

This guy is grumpy and reclusive and not fond of people in general, specially white people (though I have heard him refer to Americans and first worlders of every race as "white" )...

He was very reluctant to offer his services or his knowledge...

I had to work with him for a good time before he would "open up"

He is compassionate as a healer, but he is not doing it for money, if he helps you it's simply because he thinks he can.

My teacher's 3rd language is English, but I'm fairly sure he described it as a type of clairvoyance, similar to as if the gods showed him every possible outcome, which he then weighs the options, and decides what's best.

He will help anybody he thinks he can...but he will only do it because he thinks he can...

Again, this is simply the shaman I know, actually I know his whole family, and am learning all that I can, there's also my research and anecdotes from others.

I would rather listen to what you have to say and incorporate it into my field of knowledge, rather than dispute differences, and I appreciate your point of view on the topic, though I still can't help but want to share my experiance, even if it's conflicting with another's.
I'm not disagreeing, just explaining my experiences.

-eg