Shamans don't know everything

[endlessness]

I'd just like to bring up a subject that I find relevant given the fact that often people in the psychonautic community tend to idealize shamans and traditional knowledge.

Often people will go on about how shaman medicine is very good, and how we must stop using our own western categories to interpret things, and how all diseases have a spiritual root and what not. People will go very far to defend indigenous medicine and to go against western medicine, saying how it is flawed and so on.

I do think there are plenty of cases of bad practice in western medicine, as well as interesting aspects in traditional knowledge and things we can learn from them, but only through critical thinking and questioning both sides impartially this can be done.

I was just reading about one of the many interesting cases where shamanic knowledge is lacking and where we see the importance of western medicine: Onchocerciasis, or river blindness. This is a disease resulting from a certain parasite that is transmitted by a black fly. The adult worms live in nodes in the body, and the small larvae, called microfilaria, walk through the body creating some weird marks (pic below) and eventually can end up in the eyes of the infected person and make them blind. 500.000 people have already become blind from this disease, and it is present specially in africa, but also in the amazon area where different indigenous tribes like the yanomami live.

Here's a pic of the butt of a yanomami affected by the disease:

So the yanomami would first think that this is actually caused by black magic from an enemy shaman, they even 'diagnosed' that its made by a potion from a certain night moth. So this clearly wrong diagnosis could turn many blind if they don't end up taking a specific antiparasitic medicine ivermectine. They even claim that the blindness is caused by the sun god. Thankfully in many places there are doctors that are willing to go through these very isolated areas and treat these people, with the help of other yanomamis who have realized the western medicine can actually cure them.

So please, before trusting your life on a shaman if you have a serious disease, consider other options that might be proven to work instead.. Or try working with both in conjunction, if it's a possibility. But dont idealize anybody just because they are from an exotic culture, we've seem to much damage resulting from this already.

 

[Pandora]

Thank you for this post.

So many told Nemo Amicus (my husband) to eat this, don't eat that, do a juice fast, forget medical treatments, change diet, etc. He followed all the doctor's orders and beat cancer. What if he hadn't? Well his tumor would be huge now, impinging on his jaw, with his tongue and nose being next and the metastases would have spread up to his brain and down to his lungs and liver. His immediate future would be pain killers plus a nine mm to the soft palette.

Good thing we didn't listen to the psychonauts.

 

[SKA]

I'd just like to bring up a subject that I find relevant given the fact that often people in the psychonautic community tend to idealize shamans and traditional knowledge.

Often people will go on about how shaman medicine is very good, and how we must stop using our own western categories to interpret things, and how all diseases have a spiritual root and what not. People will go very far to defend indigenous medicine and to go against western medicine, saying how it is flawed and so on.

I do think there are plenty of cases of bad practice in western medicine, as well as interesting aspects in traditional knowledge and things we can learn from them, but only through critical thinking and questioning both sides impartially this can be done.

I was just reading about one of the many interesting cases where shamanic knowledge is lacking and where we see the importance of western medicine: Onchocerciasis, or river blindness. This is a disease resulting from a certain parasite that is transmitted by a black fly. The adult worms live in nodes in the body, and the small larvae, called microfilaria, walk through the body creating some weird marks (pic below) and eventually can end up in the eyes of the infected person and make them blind. 500.000 people have already become blind from this disease, and it is present specially in africa, but also in the amazon area where different indigenous tribes like the yanomami live.

Here's a pic of the butt of a yanomami affected by the disease:

So the yanomami would first think that this is actually caused by black magic from an enemy shaman, they even 'diagnosed' that its made by a potion from a certain night moth. So this clearly wrong diagnosis could turn many blind if they don't end up taking a specific antiparasitic medicine ivermectine. They even claim that the blindness is caused by the sun god. Thankfully in many places there are doctors that are willing to go through these very isolated areas and treat these people, with the help of other yanomamis who have realized the western medicine can actually cure them.

So please, before trusting your life on a shaman if you have a serious disease, consider other options that might be proven to work instead.. Or try working with both in conjunction, if it's a possibility. But dont idealize anybody just because they are from an exotic culture, we've seem to much damage resulting from this already.

Amen. I'm so glad you brought this up. I am getting increasingly tired of the overidealising and deifying of Shamans. Off course there were SOME very bright shamans; Like those that discovered the magical combination of Banistireopsis Caapi vines & Psychotria Viridis leaves, out of millions of different plant species in the amazon. Those indeed were highly inspired, wise and insightfull individuals and they have left treasures of wisdom and knowledge for us.

But there are an equal, probably even greater amount of bad, deceptive & incapable shamans.
Even the great Shamans are certainly not the Super humans that many Psychonauts believe them to be. They make mistakes, they misdiagnose & they apply wrong medicines quite often, just like we see in Western Psychology.

The "Ancient, Natural & Traditional = Good & Western, Scientific & modern = Bad"-Logic is one I once suffered of too. But in time I came to realise more and more that this is a falacy and that things aren't so black and white, but more shades of grey.
However cliché that may sound, it's true.

Please, people, stop overidealising & romanticising Shamans.
I know they can be pretty inspiring, but they aren't Gods.
They are human and they make mistakes.

At the same time I would like people to realise that, despite it's many blunders & common, widespread, corporatocracy driven malpractices, it is simply not true that all
of Western Psychology & Philosophy is corrupted by greed, shallow & by defenition a-spiritual.

There is plenty of briliant wisdom in Western Psychology that I find to be amazingly true &
accurate descriptions of many people's disorders & resulting harmfull behaviour.

Classical Diagnosises like Paranoya, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Borderline Syndrome,
Narcissism, Inferiority complexes, Autism....etc..Amazingly accurate descriptions of common mental/behavioural disorders. I find those to be fine observations.

You can't discredit that and denie that that is wisdom.




That is why I take some inspiration from Western Psychology, but thee's plenty of garbage in Western Psychology that I leave behind. I extract the best of each ideology, but I poop back out the nonsense I do not find sensible.

Why should we not apply that same criticism to Shamanic traditions?
I know I do. I adopt what is usefull in aiding in my intentions with Psychedelics:
To heal, to learn, to grow. To, on a bigger scale, bring peace, unity, compassion & order.

There are plenty of dogmas & ideas in Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity,
Amazonian Shamanism, Meso-American Shamanism & Andean Shamanism that I feel do
not serve that purpose well. So I reject them. Also it reminds me of that they
are merely human, as I once too was under the impression that Shamans must be much more than just human.

I must add that reading Carlos Castaneda did fuel that belief. After a while I just
felt awefull reading his experiences and beliefs. I was actually repulsed by
reading any more of this man's thoughs & beliefs. All his books are a swred attempt
to mythologise himself; To convince himself as well as others that he too, was more than human.
The sum of his books is this Message:
-Don Juan is a mystical man, so spiritual wise & powerfull, he is beyond human.
-I am Don Juan's Pupil & he finds me worthy enough to teach me all his spiritual knowledge.
-Don Juan doesn't die, but decides to magically "leave this world for the next", but
whataya know: he left me in charge! I now may take his place. I am beyond human.

This is so obviously the writings of a Narcissist that seeks to convince others of his superior nature. And he used smoke & mirrors to attrack people and mask his true intent.
It's sickening.

Once someone gets enough people in the Megalomaniac delusion with them,
that gives them an amazing amount of power over these people. And he sure was known
to generously abuse this power.

I think Señor Castañeda lead alot of young, spiritually seeking people on the wrong
foot with logbooks of his paranoid delusions that are his books. I think, for a great
part, he is responsible for bringing the idea, that Shamans are beyond human, into circulation.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

There are many people (otherwise sane, rational individuals) who are convinced that their highly-specific and tailored diet is the cure to all the evils in the world. Many times I have been informed that depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, autism, schizophrenia and any number of other things could all be solved by going gluten-free/vegan/paleolithic-whatever.

Now, I don't discount the need for good health, it is extremely important to eat well and treat your body right, but when I see people tell other people "oh no, don't go to a therapist and get an SSRI, that's supporting Big Pharma, just go gluten-free instead, it'll work, I promise," I want to hit them.

Even if it worked for you, unless you have access to earth-shattering studies that no one else does or a deep understanding of psychopharmacology, don't tell people what's best for them. Leave that to someone with 8 years of medical schooling. It's the same as anti-vaccine crusaders, or those people who say "Ayahuasca will cure every mental problem you have." Dangerous and stupid.

Treat your body however you want, but don't start telling people how to treat theirs.

Blessings
~ND

 

[bub]

The shaman I know, although he probably doesn't know everything, knows better songs then my doctor.

 

[Jees]

It struck me how much 'shamans' are involved in warfare between each other, both in books like Castaneda's and anthropological results. All humans after all, I would rather choose them like you choose a friend.

Another thing that shines trough lately is that "the medicine" is just a potential magnifier without an agenda of it's own. It becomes activated with the human-intend whether for good or bad purpose.

Merging the best of different worlds sounds cute.

 

[adam]

As someone who has personally gone through the ringer when it comes to healthcare and sickness, there is no one paradigm that is "the best". People will say this work best and that works best, but you really need to examine the cards in your hand and feel whats best for you. Sure antibiotics can be wicked and gnarly, but say can bacterial infections. Honestly I am all for holistic cures, I am hoping to go and become and naturopathic doctor. I still see the value of the western paradigm in this day and age though.

Doctors like shamans should not be the final arbiter, you should be and this is done best imo by staying educated and open minded, simple as that. Awareness is key.

 

[obliguhl]

With all due respect, BUT ... creating these dichotomies isn't really helpful.
It makes no sense to favour one style of healing over the other. Many indigenous groups have discovered, that western style medicine can be powerful, including the Shipibo-Conibo.
There are also a ton of people in the West who are constantly discovering, that more symbolic healing can be powerful as well.

The "Placebo effect" is a derogatory term coined to belittle the power of the body to heal itself. Symbols directly penetrate the psyche and are able to facilitate powerful healing: The strength of the placebo effect DEPENDS on the setting. On what we believe holds value.

It's not like "the" yanomami are stupid, SOME of them might be ignorant of possible alternatives to healing, just like SOME of us are blind to symbolic healing.

There are many people (otherwise sane, rational individuals) who are convinced that their highly-specific and tailored diet is the cure to all the evils in the world.

The "natural healing" movement seems to be to the US what Homoepathy is to Europe or Shamanism is to South America (for example). It is totally legit in the sense that it helps to provide a context of self-healing and meaning. It does not instantly CURE every disease, but it can be very helpful.

 

[The Neural]

The "Placebo effect" is a derogatory term coined to belittle the power of the body to heal itself.

It is when you phrase it like this. I could just as subjectively place it as "...to belittle the power of the mind to trick the body that it's healing". I would be as wrong.

The placebo effect is legitimate when one believes his symptoms went away (and maybe indeed went consciously away), but after a certain amount of time return vigorously. The participant did not have his symptoms return because he was informed that he took placebo, no (because he was not informed at all). It is because the sugar pill, and/or his belief that he was healing, did not work. This effect cannot be helpful, since in most cases, people become depressed and give up on fighting when the placebo effects subside.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

It's also worth point that, for all it's flaws, Western (that is to say: science-based) Medicine has a remarkably good track record.

There are many people alive and living productive lives today because they had access to modern medicine. Antibiotics and vaccines have saved more people then it is feasible to count, and pharmaceutical drugs are (despite the bottomless well of evil that is the pharmaceutical industry) incredibly useful. High functioning schizophrenics have a chance at a normal life now, thanks to antipsychotic medication. We can help heart-attack patients thanks to aspirin and modern anesthesia and pain-killers have made life-saving surgeries possible.

The Placebo Effect is absolutely fascinating, and in some cases, it does indeed appear to work. But if my body is failing, I'm not entirely sure I'd trust it to fix itself. It failed once already right?

Now, this isn't to discount the legitimacy of faith, shamanism and psychedelics, but I feel like those things should be studied in a rigorous, scientific context, using the scientific method, and then folded into the rest of modern healthcare, as a compliment, not an alternative.

Blessings
~ND

 

[moniker]

I must add that reading Carlos Castaneda did fuel that belief. After a while I just
felt awefull reading his experiences and beliefs. I was actually repulsed by
reading any more of this man's thoughs & beliefs. All his books are a swred attempt
to mythologise himself; To convince himself as well as others that he too, was more than human.
The sum of his books is this Message:
-Don Juan is a mystical man, so spiritual wise & powerfull, he is beyond human.
-I am Don Juan's Pupil & he finds me worthy enough to teach me all his spiritual knowledge.
-Don Juan doesn't die, but decides to magically "leave this world for the next", but
whataya know: he left me in charge! I now may take his place. I am beyond human.

This is so obviously the writings of a Narcissist that seeks to convince others of his superior nature. And he used smoke & mirrors to attrack people and mask his true intent.
It's sickening.

Once someone gets enough people in the Megalomaniac delusion with them,
that gives them an amazing amount of power over these people. And he sure was known
to generously abuse this power.

I think Señor Castañeda lead alot of young, spiritually seeking people on the wrong
foot with logbooks of his paranoid delusions that are his books. I think, for a great
part, he is responsible for bringing the idea, that Shamans are beyond human, into circulation.

I mean no offense but I think your interpretation of his intentions are pretty far off base.. especially the part about the mirror.
Tripping in front of a mirror doesn't make you a narcissist, it makes you trip out...

I actually always got the impression that Don Juan was very Humble and Carlos even more so,(have you ever heard carlos speak? he is actually quite shy and soft spoken.) I really don't see any ego trip there.
I understand there are a lot of negative feelings towards Castaneda but I believe that he inspired many people in a positive way.

To think that every shaman would be a super human don Juan type character is just naive and is not really the fault of some writer who romanticized shamanism.
-- Even Don Juan makes it clear that there are hardly any shamans like him, that most sorcerers are dark "brujos" and not to be trusted because they follow the ways of the "old sorcerers"

My apologies for derailing the thread slightly ......

 

[tizoc4u]

Shamanic wisdom is not by all means to cure the physical body. But rather cu4e rather the spiritual be8ng and on its path the physical body becomes strong and through what scientists call the plecebo effect the body becomes healed. Sometimes depression could cause your body to weaken and ur immunities to fall. But by no means are shamans to replece common sense.

 

[jamie]

"Even Don Juan makes it clear that there are hardly any shamans like him"

There is nothing in those books that would indicate Don Juan was a shaman, or a healer/medicine man etc.. he never did any kind of healing work in the books from what I recall.

 

[Fungaai]

Hey Guys!

Interesting topic, and one I have to say I agree with.

Although I think one unquestionably can learn a lot from these shamans, we of the west don't have much in common with their cultures. We have no shamanic tradition of our own, as what remnants of knowledge we had thousands of years ago was all but wiped out by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Europe as almost happened in South America and other places too.

We need to find a balance of new and old that fits in with our western ways and formulate a new tradition. Taking what works in other cultures and applying it as-is to ourselves in a completely foreign set and setting might not be the way...

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Well...

I don't know anyone who thinks shaman are gods. No one I know blindly follows anything, and I see so little of that here on the Nexus that I wonder to whom you are talking.

Personally, I see that pointing out that many indigenous people are superstituos and have poor health, trust in charlatans and black magicians, and wind up suffering for their ignorance says absolutely nothing about the rare but real masters that exist. I could just as easily point to Western morons like Honey Boo Boo's mom or anyone on any reality TV show, and say 'look how stupid and unhealthy they are, western medicine must be a farce.'

I don't know anyone who dismisses all of western medicine. Everyone knows that they are rather good at certain things like triage. Europeans had a lot of gunshots, arrow wounds, sword slashes and the like to deal with, and as such, have a pretty good handle on surgery. I know that the one time in the last 25 years that I was unable to heal myself, I went to a hospital and got some antibiotics.

But dismissing the wisdom of shamanism due to people in cultures where shamanism is practiced not being able to cure themselves of every single parasite that afflicts them is somewhat absurd. It is cherry picking at the very least.

I know you don't mean to fully discredit shamanism endlessness and are yourself very open to some of the ideas and concepts that come down from the indigenous people, so don't feel slighted.

I see no problem with people being eclectic or syncretic and picking and choosing bits of different things that appeal to them. I do this all the time. However, I think there are a lot of people who dabble a bit with some shamanic ideas, never actually train with authentic master shaman, and still feel entitled to call themselves shaman. This is wrong. More often than I hear people idolize shaman, I hear people who have taken a few shamanic practices that they learned somewhere (often from a book) and then feel like they can call themselves shaman. People all over the web are calling themselves by these titles when they have done absolutely no training in any lineage or system of shamanism.

This is akin to someone who watched Law & Order calling himself a lawyer or a detective. A mild syncretic interest in something does not make you a professional or an expert.

I have an interest in chemistry, and can perform perfect extractions... but I don't go around calling myself a chemist.

I find that this self-aggrandizement and the idea that anyone who takes a psychedelic is a shaman is far more common and at least as dangerous as the occasional shamanic groupie you find.

It is also a mistake to lump all forms of indigenous belief, animism, spiritual practice, occult belief and herbal wisdom into the catch all term shamanism. It is a product of western egocentricism that we must use the same word for Siberian shamans (where the word originated), mescaleros, brujos, ayahuasceros, curanderos, witch doctors, condomblé ritualists, medicine men, hoodoo priests, and African herbal witches among the thousand or so other types of people who practice non-western indigenous wisdom.

For every case of a tribe being misled by a poor local healer, we can find plenty of cases of western people being led astray by equally poor diagnoses and practices. Iatrogenic deaths are calculated at between 700k and 1 million annually. (Deaths induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures) Inadvertent Medical Deaths in U.S.A.

I find that far more people I know think of doctors and scientist as "gods" and infallible. So let's keep that in mind as well. Every system of healing I know of (having studied Chinese, Shamanic, Ayurvedic, Natural, Nutritional, and Physiotherapeutic methods among others) has its strong points and its weak points.

I will wrap up my post by saying that shamanism is not necessarily about healing people. People like to think that it is all about curing people... and it certainly is a big part of being a curandero. But the real mystics and spiritual heavyweights tend to do no healing at all. They do, in fact, tend to be a lot more like Don Juan than your village herbal healer. I tend to think that labels are irrelevant. You can learn from people whatever it is they have to teach. If you are lucky, you may run across some real authentic masters.

 

[endlessness]

Those are good points and I certainly don't feel offended, HF, I'm almost happier when people disagree than when people agree with me since it means an opportunity to learn more

But let me tell you that this thread came exactly because I recently read some comments in the Nexus that did fall under the category of 'idealizing shamans, totally denying western medicine', and I did not read any of the opposite opinion.

Western medicine practitioners are certainly fallible, and we've seen plenty of problems resulting from that. I do feel an advantage, though, that they are at least subject to scrutiny from the established organizations and hence at least in theory cannot go far astray for too long. Malpractice in medicine means lost of practicing rights (and jail), while in shamanism, a charlatan can keep doing whatever he does even after things go wrong, just move on to the next town (or not even, if they are already isolated enough). And they even have the potential excuse of the 'failure' being a spiritual issue that it wasn't their fault, even if it was their fault.

Indeed shamans are not just medicine men, this is merely a small part of their function, im focusing on it because it seems that, consindering the different 'uses' westerners find for shamans, being cured of different ailments is one of the main ones, and this is where the danger comes.

I understand there are much more appropriate shamans out there that don't fall into the category of direct charlatans, but unfortunately I do not know the directions to any that could cure diseases, but I could more easily give out the address of good doctors. So when it comes to directly helping people here with health issues, we need to find a way.

One possibility is if you can directly give the address of a good shaman, which i doubt is going to be possible even if you know any, as it would probably not be a good thing for floods of people going there after reading a post on an internet forum. The other possibility is that we make a thread, or use this thread for making notes on how to find good shamans, or in other words, what criteria or aspects we must pay attention to when trying to find a good shaman.

That being said, I think we still definitely should not advise people to trust shamans with curing very serious diseases if they can find a reliable cure in western medicine. If people just want complementary practice being done together with the western treatment, or if it's not a very serious issue and they first want to see if they can get help without resorting to western medicine and pharmaceutical companies, or if it's a completely uncurable disease, then it sounds reasonable to me to look for alternatives.

 

[SKA]

I must add that reading Carlos Castaneda did fuel that belief. After a while I just
felt awefull reading his experiences and beliefs. I was actually repulsed by
reading any more of this man's thoughs & beliefs. All his books are a swred attempt
to mythologise himself; To convince himself as well as others that he too, was more than human.
The sum of his books is this Message:
-Don Juan is a mystical man, so spiritual wise & powerfull, he is beyond human.
-I am Don Juan's Pupil & he finds me worthy enough to teach me all his spiritual knowledge.
-Don Juan doesn't die, but decides to magically "leave this world for the next", but
whataya know: he left me in charge! I now may take his place. I am beyond human.

This is so obviously the writings of a Narcissist that seeks to convince others of his superior nature. And he used smoke & mirrors to attrack people and mask his true intent.
It's sickening.

Once someone gets enough people in the Megalomaniac delusion with them,
that gives them an amazing amount of power over these people. And he sure was known
to generously abuse this power.

I think Señor Castañeda lead alot of young, spiritually seeking people on the wrong
foot with logbooks of his paranoid delusions that are his books. I think, for a great
part, he is responsible for bringing the idea, that Shamans are beyond human, into circulation.

I mean no offense but I think your interpretation of his intentions are pretty far off base.. especially the part about the mirror.
Tripping in front of a mirror doesn't make you a narcissist, it makes you trip out...

I actually always got the impression that Don Juan was very Humble and Carlos even more so,(have you ever heard carlos speak? he is actually quite shy and soft spoken.) I really don't see any ego trip there.
I understand there are a lot of negative feelings towards Castaneda but I believe that he inspired many people in a positive way.

To think that every shaman would be a super human don Juan type character is just naive and is not really the fault of some writer who romanticized shamanism.
-- Even Don Juan makes it clear that there are hardly any shamans like him, that most sorcerers are dark "brujos" and not to be trusted because they follow the ways of the "old sorcerers"

My apologies for derailing the thread slightly ......

Yes I have tripped out in front of mirrors and enjoyed it deerly, but that's ENTIRE besides the point I was making in my previous post.

With the expression "smoke & mirrors" I meant to say Castañeda used bells & whistles, culturally inaccurate hocus pocus stories about Shamanism to make his books Sensational, rather than Truthfull about Shamanism. Castañeda's fictive Don Juan & his ficticious tradition couldn't be further from the truth about Yaqui Shamanism. He mixed traditions from completely different cultures into it.

It's fine to write a book of fiction about Shamanism, but I think it's wrong to present it as a truthfull observation of Yaqui shamanism. It's misleading.

And you'd be wrong to think Castañeda is humble. Here are some facts about señor Castañeda that made ME doubt his credibility. You judge for yourself, but I find this rather sketchy;

Castaneda withdrew from public view in 1973 to work further on his inner development, living in a large house with three women ("Fellow Travellers of Awareness") who were ready to cut their ties to family and changed their names. He founded Cleargreen, an organization that promoted tensegrity, purportedly a traditional Toltec regimen of spiritually powerful exercises.[2]

What I made bold was Castañeda's clear attempt at raising his own little cult, to have absolute power of it's members. A humble soul wouldn't do those type of things. It takes
a megalomaniac.

Furthermore he represents his Tensegrity, which seems quite Tai Chi inspired, as a traditional TOLTEC spiritual practice. Quite dubious too.

And something else to ponder about:

In the late 1990s Castaneda was living in secrecy and he required the same from his students. One of the prominent students, Patricia Partin, went missing shortly after Castaneda's death in 1998. Her whereabouts were not known for certain until her remains were discovered in Death Valley National Park in 2003 and positively identified by DNA testing in 2006. The cause of death could not be determined.[3]

The man died, but his poisonous ideas live on. I'm no sherlock, but somehow it
seemed like Patricia Partin jumped into that valley, but what drove her to it?
What could have inspired her to jump into an abyss? Uhm...I don't know...

Maybe this?:

In 1974 his fourth book, Tales of Power, was published. This book ended with Castaneda leaping from a cliff into an abyss, and signaled the end of his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Matus.

I vaguely remember reading this. Wasn't Carlos instructed to jump into that abyss after
Don Juan had "left this world" and promised that instead of plunging to his death something magical would happen, which I can't quite remember, but had something to do with Carlos upgrading into Don Juan's freed up position as Nagual?

Perhaps poor Patricia Patin had been made to believe that , now that her "Nagual" Carlos Castañeda had died, she was to follow him up as Nagual by doing the same thing?
Ponder on that one.

For me, one after another embarrassing, dubious fact about him popping up left and right, has dramatically lowered Castañeda's credibility & respectability.

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Those are good points and I certainly don't feel offended, HF, I'm almost happier when people disagree than when people agree with me since it means an opportunity to learn more

But let me tell you that this thread came exactly because I recently read some comments in the Nexus that did fall under the category of 'idealizing shamans, totally denying western medicine', and I did not read any of the opposite opinion.

Interesting. I don't read all the posts that come through, and certainly not all that many in the Welcome Area, so I will take your word for it... as a mod you certainly are better in a position to see such posts.

I can only say that even the shaman I know don't hold such positions, and most of them do not feel it is their job to cure people. The kinds of shaman that my friends seek out tend to be the entheogen specialists (ayahuasceros, mescaleros, bwiti etc.) and not the local curanderos. And even there, among the entheo-tourists who go south seeking yaje or peyote ceremonies... to eat mushrooms with the locals etc., I never met one who considered the shaman infallible or would consider such things to be cures for cancer.

Western medicine practitioners are certainly fallible, and we've seen plenty of problems resulting from that. I do feel an advantage, though, that they are at least subject to scrutiny from the established organizations and hence at least in theory cannot go far astray for too long. Malpractice in medicine means lost of practicing rights (and jail), while in shamanism, a charlatan can keep doing whatever he does even after things go wrong, just move on to the next town (or not even, if they are already isolated enough). And they even have the potential excuse of the 'failure' being a spiritual issue that it wasn't their fault, even if it was their fault.

This is only partly true. Olympus Mons posted this What Dr.'s dont know about the meds they prescribe, 12 min TED talk. - Science - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus with a link to a TED Talk you may want to watch. It describes just how doctors and scientists responsible for testing the drugs we use are pretty much free to lie and fabricate data... to hide the results of their studies when they don't give the proper results. It is only 12 minutes long, and I heartily suggest anyone who has any faith in western medicine watch it.

On that thread I mention how the double blind placebo testing really works. The fact that there are absolutely no regulations on what is in a placebo, and the corporations (anxious to recoup their investments) have been shown to use non-inert and harmful placebos so they can get their drugs approved. Placebo fraud rocks the very foundation of modern medical science; thousands of clinical trials invalidated - NaturalNews.com This article cites a 2010 study that showed 92% of clinical studies never detailed what they used for a placebo. To get up to 5% better than placebo, many commercially funded studies have done despicable things like use sugar pills as a placebo in a diabetes drug test and hydrogenated fat as the placebo in a heart medicine test. In such cases, literally any inert ingredient would be 5% better.

Could it be that this is why prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death in the US?

These "physicians" have shown time and again that they are willing to actually kill their patients in order to make money for their employers. This combined with the 10 to 20 year shorter life spans that western doctors are said to have than their patients does give one pause. At least every study I have seen shows that shaman live longer than the indigenous people of their region.

I understand there are much more appropriate shamans out there that don't fall into the category of direct charlatans, but unfortunately I do not know the directions to any that could cure diseases, but I could more easily give out the address of good doctors. So when it comes to directly helping people here with health issues, we need to find a way.

I agree. I don't think people should go randomly seeking healers. If they know people who have been helped by someone, or have knowledge of the treatment they seek (i.e. Heroin addicts seeking Iboga from Bwiti shaman) than do your research and go right ahead.

I know a number of authentic shaman from many regions of the world, but I would not advise anyone with a serious illness to forgo medical treatment and rely on shamanism for a cure. That is not what shamanism is for IMHO. Shaman are masters at dealing with spirit beings and understanding non-physical realities. If the root of your physical problem is from some spiritual parasites (as many are) then a shaman might be able to "cure" you. But if your problem is that you live in a radioactive area or are exposed to virulent pathogens and parasites, you will need more than a few journeys and rituals to save you.

Ayahuasca and other plants are effective anti-parasite and anti-fungal medicines, and I am convinced that regular use of aya will help with quite a few physical ailments... but I certainly don't recommend that people throw the baby out with the bathwater and condemn all western medicine just because there is a lot of corruption and our doctors tend to have rather short life spans.

 

[jamie]

Until you have really been sick, to the point where you feel like it is ruining your life and see first hand how western medicine often does not just fail, but it seems to fail without really giving a shit, it is probly hard for some people to understand why there is such a mistrust of it.

I don't blame people for mistrusting western medicine often, and indigenous healing practices are much much older, and I think they speak to many, and call to us on a level of ancestral remembrance. Of course people idealize it, generalize it..just as they have done with western medicinal practices.

Despite all the claims of people being quacks, being frauds, being pseudoscientists etc, I still got far more help(and was shown FAR more compassion) from the alternative health care community full of naturopaths and holistic nutritionists etc..those people are not shamans..although I have gotten far more out of my own shamanic sort of work on my own than I ever did seeing a counsellor.

I have also in the last 2 years seen first hand how much more effective traditional Chinese medicine can be over western medicine. Those people are tapping into something western medicine currently cant touch.

 

[Psychelectric]

Ignoring the faux conflict between indigenous medicine and "Western" medicine, we should all look at the ultimate goal in healthcare in general. And that is very simple. We want healthy people. In being specific we want people with cancer to not have cancer, people who hear voices of the devil coming from their dryer vent to not hear such voices and people who have itchy rashes to not have itchy rashes. So now the issue is how to treat such ailments. What is the best medicine? Well that is kind of a work in progress and its nowhere near perfect, though we have good people trying to figure this out.

So Hypothetically lets say we have a new medication that makes a particular rash go away, which is great, but that medication is a steroid that causes some immunosuppression in 5% of the people who take it, and in 2% of cases the medication is uneffective and in 0.007 percent of cases someone died from a complication of the medicine which resulted in a lawsuit that sent the cost of healthcare up slightly and 0.009 percent of people with a particular healthcare plan and significant medical issues who lost some healthcare coverage died as a result of the cost of healthcare going up. Also this hypothetical rash is not fatal but it really really sucks. Also the people who bought the medicine lost 15$ which could have gone to a DVD of the special edition Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Okay now lets say that people in the indigenous Amazon have such a rash and they rub a particular tree moss on the rash to treat it, it stings like a bitch, but the rash goes away in 3 days.

Who has the best medicine?

If you answered, "I don't fucking know" pat yourself on the back, that is probably the best answer.

So lets continue this thought experiment and say that really cool pharmacist-explorers go to the Amazon and find this tree moss and take it to a lab. They discover that the "active ingredient" that treats the rash is some funky cyclo-hexa-benzene-whatchamacallit fancy new chemical. They then go to their boss the "evil" big pharma and turn this into a new better drug to treat the rash which they call Muppetex which sounds like "Muppet sex" which the R and D team said was a good move and they spend 5 years researching Muppetex, the FDA approves it and it goes on the market for 30$.

Who has the best medicine?

The point I'm trying to make with all if this is that medicine is really fucking complicated, and yes it has some problems but figuring out the best treatment requires a lot of detail, not just in analyzing the particular medication bit also the patients physiology and how they will tolerate the medication, if the risks outweigh the benefits, if the patient can afford it, etc. etc.

What we need to look at is getting rid of the flaws that hold back the healthcare system. What we need to do is integrate multiple healthcare approaches to create the best patient outcome. Such as Shamanic medicine in some cases (see Ibogaine) has a better track record for treating heroin addiction, so if society wants to better treat that ailment they should embrace Ibogaine and study it to determine how it can best be used. The flaws with the "Western healthcare model" is not necessarily the medications or the doctors it's the model that strives for profit margins over patient care and that will always be a problem provided we live in a society that runs on the movement of green pieces of paper (both actual and digital). In some cases knowledge gets suppressed and people suffer, likewise cowardly doctors can fuck up healthcare for everyone, such as prescribing antibiotics to treat a cold (all this does is increase rates of antibiotic resistant bacteria, thus putting more people's health at risk). Ect etc

Essentially it all boils down to this . . .

what is the best medicine?

The truth is, we don't have all the information on this, but good people on all fronts are trying to figure this out. Sure there are greedy bastards and stupidity that hinder this progress, but in the long run the truth will set us free. And lets face it there always is progress, would you rather have cancer now or in 1940? If you answered 1940 you are probably suicidal and should consult a Dr or shaman or priest or psychiatrist or bartender, it's up to you.