Neoshamanism is Masturbation
by Jason GodeskyThe shaman is an ambiguous figure in any tribe. He is touched by the numinous “Other.” The power to heal is also the power to kill, and the benevolent shaman is also the malevolent sorcerer. He wields a power that is frightening. In a tribal society where everyone belongs, it is the shaman’s burden to be the only one that is marginal–the only one that is shunned, alienated, and forever on the outside. The shamanic journey is very often described as a terrifying experience. The Ju/’Hoansi describe n!um as a burning liquid at the base of the spine; the trance dance allows it to boil up the spine, until it explodes out of the head. It is described as searing hot, as burning the spine; the explosion is described as immensely painful. Ayahuasca is the “Little Death,” and many experiences recounted with that particular brew are more vivid than my most terrible nightmares. This is the ordeal that the shaman undertakes for his community. Why would anyone choose such a life? They don’t; they are chosen. The shamanic sickness leaves them with a stark choice: become a shaman, or die.
How, then, do we explain this?
I share these stories to point out that it is a tricky endeavor to travel to a third world country and ask a total stranger for a spiritual experience. While many shamans undoubtedly come to their profession to help others, be aware that ayahuasca tourism is a thriving business in Peru, and that you will likely be treated as just that - a tourist.
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge reintroduced shamanism to the West, and began the trend of “neoshamanism.” Carlos Castenada’s ethneogenic tutelage to the Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan, provided a mythic framework for the drug culture of the 1960s. The Teachings of Don Juan became an enormous success; and Castenada became a celebrity. In the popular mind, this association has continued–the shaman has been denigrated to some kind of sacred addict. In fact, even in Castenada’s own corpus, this error is corrected–though few pursue his work all the way to the last volume, Journey to Ixtlan, where he reflects:
My insistence on holding on to my standard version of reality, rendered me almost deaf and blind to don Juan’s aims. Therefore, it was simply my lack of sensitivity which had fostered [the use of the power plants].
The role of ethnogens was relegated to its proper perspective by the work of Michael Harner, an anthropologist who sat on Castenada’s disseration committee–where he recieved a Ph.D. for Journey to Ixtlan under the title of “Sorcery: A Description of the World.”–before “going native” with the Conibo in Peru, and becoming a “white shaman.” It is with Harner’s accounts of his experiences with ayahuasca that the current trend of tourists has its roots. Harner’s The Way of the Shaman was a “how-to” guide for Westerners to achieve the shamanic state of consciousness, or SSC. With the publication of Harner’s first such guide (many more would follow), and the founding of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, “neoshamanism” began.
Daniel Noel’s The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities charts the history of neoshamanism, beginning with Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. He discusses how Eliade unconsciously skewed that evidence away from the infernal and towards the celestial by putting together the biases revealed in his novels. He discusses in detail how Carlos Castenada made up the whole experience with “Don Juan”, and how that was revealed. He shows conclusively that “neoshamanism” is a fabrication of Western fantasies–the work of “shamanovelists” like Mircea Eliade and Carlos Castenada, and “shamanthropologists” like Joan Halifax and Michael Harner.
Today, “neoshamans” sell their services to strangers as “alternative medicine practitioners”–for a fee. They often operate alone. Shamans heal, but they never seek payment for it. They refuse to accept any gifts if the healing is not successful. And most importantly, shamans never work with strangers–they heal the members of their community. The community is essential: without a tribe, there is no shaman.
The Foundation for Shamanic Studies sells books and seminars to help their customers become shamans themselves. Shamans learn, first and foremost, from the spirits themselves. Neoshamans learn from audio tapes paid with shipping and handling.
Shamans undertake a perilous ordeal on behalf of their communities. Neoshamans commit the most cardinal sin of shamanism: to abuse the spirit world for a spiritual joyride, or worse still–for nothing more than their personal enlightenment.
A real shaman never journeys for himself; he journeys for others. “Neoshamans” become nothing more than ecstatic tourists, and the ancient traditions of shamanism become, in their hands, nothing more than the latest spiritual fad, another bullet point in “neopaganism” or “the New Age.”
Shamanism is profound. It is the original religion; it is hard-wired into the human brain. “Neoshamanism,” though, is nothing more than spiritual masturbation–it puts on the pretense of profundity, but in the end, it is nothing but a nest of hucksters and charlatans pretending to titles they have never earned.
Native peoples are often deeply insulted by “neoshamanism,” and with good reason. Castenada couldn’t even be bothered to make sure his fictive account of “a Yaqui way of knowledge” mesh with Yaqui beliefs. Neoshamans strike native peoples as hucksters, charlatans and frauds who, having stolen all their material possessions, are now set to rob their culture, as well. Neoshamans desecrate the last thing they have left–their beliefs.
We, trapped inside civilization, have lost something vital. The shamanic sickness strikes as many of us as it ever has; only its cure is gone from us. The specific traditions of specific cultures are specifically adapted to their situations. We have no right to simply steal them. But we can learn from them.
First, we must build our communities. Without a tribe, there can be no shaman. Once there is a tribe, the shaman’s quest can begin.
Michael Harner was on the right track with his idea of “core shamanism,” though. We cannot simply steal from other cultures, but we can learn from them. A study of all of them and what they all share in common can create a base for us to work from. That base should prove sufficient for Second Shaman to learn the rest–from the spirits themselves.
There was probably only one First Shaman; but each of our tribes will have their own Second Shaman. It will be that individual in each tribe who works from a solid anthropological base, and from that foundation, reaches out into the realm of the spirit to help his community form their own, unique tradition.
In revealing the fictive, often deceptive origins of “neoshamanism,” Noel’s Soul of Shamanism is not being entirely negative. In these fictions, “shamanovelists” and “shamanthropologists” are engaging in the same kind of “imaginal realities” as shamans themselves. The important element is to be conscious of that. As he explained in an interview.
Neoshamanism is built on a cross-cultural fantasy that we can borrow eclectically and then homogenize the borrowings into an option Westerners can practice safely, quickly, and simply. Of course, the kind of neoshamanism I want to see develop is one that is less acquisitive toward “alien” cultures and more focused on possible Western resources, drawn on deliberately from an imaginal perspective growing out of Jung’s Western psychology.
We cannot simply take what we want from various cultures, trying to pick and choose the elements we prefer as at some kind of buffet. The intersection of those beliefs, though, echoes back to a common heritage of all mankind–a heritage we lost, and must desperately regain. We need to lay down the academic foundations, but it must be an honest academic foundation–something that assiduously avoids the exaggerations and deceptions of “shamanovelists” and “shamanthropologists.”
Once that base is established, our own shamans can begin the great, ongoing work that awaits them: that of learning the rest from the spirits themselves, and learning how the visions of each tribe and each individual can coexist absolutely within their imaginal realities.
Two great, relevant pieces from Tim Boucher: “The Shamanic Sickness,” and “How to Spot a Fake Shaman.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 October 2005 @ 8:51 PM
Tony Z. will not be pleased
Comment by Nutzzack — 18 October 2005 @ 10:13 AM
I’ve masturbated for decades - and I’m not even neoshamanistic.
Comment by JCamasto — 18 October 2005 @ 12:01 PM
As I told a friend of mine last night who’d read this–all neoshamanism is masturbation, but not all masturbation is neoshamanism.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 October 2005 @ 12:05 PM
TonyZ is most definetely not displeased.
I am pretty annoyed with a lot of the Casteneda-types, although the neoshamanism that is real threat to the credibility of the ability of humans showing other humsn the doors to perception are the Northern Native American types that really misuse, misappropriate, and string together a falsely coherent message.
Oh and they charge, too.
Personally, myself, as someone who is heavily involved in the Amanita Culture, I actually consider my use of the word shaman a direct derivitive of the word in it’s actual sense.
If i say let’s have a shaminic ritual, you better believe you’ll be drinking your our urine…
just like many of the other rituals I have partaken in. they keep their cultural and spiritual meanings intact so that the original spirit of the ritual is not lost, the history isn’t trampled on, and our human brother/elders are not forgotten.
Love,
TonyZ
Comment by Tonyz — 19 October 2005 @ 11:52 PM
i agree, neo-shamanism is nothing more than new age dogma. i’ve been to authentic shamans who gave me experiences. although i did not seek them out with the intention of getting an experience, so i could later talk about with friends, or brag as some people do. these experiences helped me at a certain level. shamanism is a wonderful tool for a certain level of existence. it was a wonderful oral tradition, past down over the ages. the art was spoken in stories mostly, so true wisdom could be understood by the masses. unfortunately, the essence of the art was lost and the story teller began to believe the story and forget the origin and meaning of the story. eventually the story was altered again and again by those who tried to understand the meaning, but could not. one by one, they intentionally changed the story to fit with what made sense to them at the time. wars, conquest and obliteration of culture left a lot of this wonderful oral history to the ramparts of time. unfortunately this lost knowledge cannot be found through collaboration. there is hope however. it’s just not in the place where you have been looking. when you stop looking, you will find it. when no path will lead you, when no structure can contain you, when no belief system will appease your questioning mind, when you’ve given up on spiritual teachers and deities, you can begin Life for the first time.
Comment by 42 — 23 October 2005 @ 10:08 PM
I’m going to put my dick on the line here and probably get it smacked.
I’m second shaman for my little group out here and it’s a hell of a frightening thing to be. And exhilirating. Did I mention frightening?
It’s frightening because there are no solid tools to deal with shamanism in my culture, because I’m still caught in a civilization which -really- pisses off the forces around me, and because, in the end, it’s only the spirits themselves which assure me of the position I’m in.
Crap. I hate stating this stuff on-line because it will always come out strange.
Listen, to whoever going to try at being second shaman for your tribe (or whatever other tribe is reading this), one of the key things for us to study is how the tribal practices changed when people came here, to the Americas.
At the time, they were entering a new land - I hesitate to use the word ‘hostile (too loaded a word) but perhaps relatively unfriendly would be good term to use on an alpha predator invading a new biome.
We need to see what they did to make that transition from their home environments to here. That will aid in the transition from our civilization to what’s next.
Enough ranting for the moment. I do have to say one thing… when you do become this thing, someone who talks and listens to the world, the feeling are amazing. Everything is so beautifully, magnificently alive…
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 24 October 2005 @ 3:20 AM
It’s funny. I chose to put the preceding article under neo-shamanism. As it is, it’s a great invite to try and file me under that heading as well. “The Great White Wanna-be”
So, a quick poke at neo-shamans. I ran into this woman as a festival out in SoCal. She claims to be a “Shamanic Practioner” (has a book -and- a course) thanks to her ‘deep Cherokee heritage’ and her ‘intimate’ connection to the Earth.
I have rarely seen people so thoroughly slaughter their beliefs so grandly. From drawing cards out of the “Animal Totems” deck to giving the instructions in meditation to “find your animal guides in the underworld, where all animals are”, she was a true piece of work.
I have Choctaw blood in me. Do I practice their religion? Um… no! I’m not of their tribe!
I’ve got Celtic blood in me. Hey! Maybe I should be a druid! Hm. Nope. Not a lot of practicing druids in my past.
I study the ways of the local people (Tongva, Tataviam, Chumash) to understand what forces they ran into when they came to this place. However, I don’t simply adopt and practice their beliefs. To do so, -especially- without permission from the tribe, would be disrespectful.
So, I simply follow the spirits and learn from elder brother and hope for the best.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 24 October 2005 @ 3:28 AM
Tell me about it. I’ve noticed that those of us genuinely in this boat (;-) yes, I said it) tend not to discuss these things publicly very easily. As it should be, I think. It’s a matter between us and our tribes, not for the intarwebs to know and judge.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 October 2005 @ 10:09 AM
Case in point.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my head is about to explode….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 October 2005 @ 12:34 PM
re: corporate shaman
Dear gods… I think my teeth rattled at that one.
One note of amusement though. Anyone who claims animals are always “compassionate and healing guides” has never watched a cat ‘play’ with a rat.
I just love the idea of a ‘corporate shaman’ suddenly possessed by an insect spirit and looking for a bite to eat. (sorry… read too many horror novels recently)
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 24 October 2005 @ 12:43 PM
“All rights reserved” but available for the right price…
Comment by JCamasto — 24 October 2005 @ 1:00 PM
I think I’m going to be sick….
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 24 October 2005 @ 2:34 PM
Just because someone is from a third world country, and lives in a grass hut doesn’t make them the only ones who have a right to explore spirituality with ethnogens. Considering that most of these people have IQ’s barely higher than a monkey’s, I’d think that folks from more advanced civilizations would have a better chance at understanding what is experienced.
Comment by I don't need no stinking shaman — 17 November 2005 @ 2:32 PM
1.) IQ is the same across the world, in every population. Claims have been made otherwise, but only by idiots, and never with any evidence. There is, on the other hand, a great deal of evidence that IQ’s are the same across every population.
2.) Has nothing to do with “living in a grass hut.” It has to do with the motivation. Shamanic ecstasy should always be undertaken for others–not simply as a spiritual pasttime, a psychedelic joy ride, a way to “party,” or simply for you own spiritual enlightenment.
3.) “Folks from advanced civlizations” live in ways utterly maladapted to human nature. While they have IQ’s no less than anywhere else, their experiences are generally so cripplingly myopic (a product of specializaton), to say nothing of personally traumatic, that their spiritual experiences are usually “dark nights of the soul,” where they stop hiding from the horrible trauma they’ve endured, simply from spending their entire lives utterly disconnected from the most basic emotional and psychological needs of human existence. Profound, yes, but also deeply disturbing. This is why so much of our spirituality suffers on sin, suffering, sacrifice and the need for redemption. This limits their experience, spiritually, in a significant manner. I would say they are far less likely to understand what is experienced, because their experience is so limitied, and so monopolized by suffering.
4.) Your tone is disgustingly racist. I almost deleted it, but kept it only because, beneath your supremacist rhetoric, you raise a valid point, that shamanic experience is not exclusive to primitive societies. Of course, neither did I ever say it was. That said, your implied categorizations based on “race” are utterly fallacious, since “race” does not exist. A “race” is a subspecies, and subspecies breed true. If we had “races,” then the child of a white and a black would be either white or black; the one thing it would never be is a mixture of both parents’ traits. Which is precisely what we see in all cases, isn’t it? Nor do they even exist as useful–or even valid–statistical groups, because there’s greater variety within the groups than between them. So your implied divisions of humanity based on “race” could not possibly have less grounding in fact. Their basis is solely in nationalistic mythology and propaganda.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 November 2005 @ 2:49 PM
All men are not created equal. I can see proof of this looking no further than next door, as my neighbor spends most of his days in a drunken stupor beating his girlfriend. When I speak to him he understands hardly anything I talk about.
What have these primitive cultures done to better the world? All they have done is merely survived without evolving. I understand in may ways how messed up modern society is, and my earliest of shamanic type experiences were indeed “dark nights of the soul”. But, if I’m having a heart attack I would feel much safer in a hospital than having a person who has no idea what’s really going on holding a bunch of burning weeds over me and chanting.
Please excuse me if I sound racist that’s not my intention. “The shamanic experience is not exclusive to primitive societies” was my only point, if I were better at communicating that’s how I would have put it. I don’t consider myself part of any race and will help anyone I can.
I take the use of these substances very seriously and get pissed off when I see them in the hands of thrill seekers. But, using them for my own enlightenment is my only choice. The most any shaman can do for me is point me in the direction where they are growing. Just as he had no choice in being a shaman, I too have no choice in having an unquentable thirst for understanding the nature of our existance.
Comment by I don't need no stinking shaman — 17 November 2005 @ 4:54 PM
No, all men are not created equal. That would have been a very stupid statement for me to make, had I made it. Good thing I didn’t. What I said was that IQ is evenly distributed. Every group has idiots and geniuses; no culture can claim a monopoly on either one. Average IQ in every population is roughly the same.
What have these primitive cultures done to better the world? Who says the world needs “bettering”? They, like me, tend to see the world as a pretty good place. What kind of hubris does it take to posit oneself as some kind of god whose place it is to remake creation in our own image? Our civilization has not made the world a better place–it took a near paradisal, primitive state of existence and turned it into endless war and strife. It introduced disease and want into a world where such things were virtually unknown. It gave us genocides and suicides and all manner of psychoses never before known. It’s kicked off the single worst mass extinction in the planet’s history.
The ways in which primitive societies have “made the world a better place” are the same ways we have. Art like the cave paintings of Lasceux, using depth and three dimensions in brilliant ways that make the European masters look like scrawling infants. The Pygmies sang songs for millennia with the kind of polytonal complexity that our “advanced civilizaton” took seven thousand years to match. In the Mesolithic, they were successfully performing brain surgery.
I would rather have someone who knows how to help me–regardless of what he understands about my condition. For that, shamans do as well as our doctors.
I suspect that on one level, biomedicine is entirely correct. I suspect on another level, shamanism is. Consider psychology. Drugs or therapy will both cure you equally well. Why? Because the problem cuts across several levels of existence, and thus, can be addressed at any of those levels.
As westerners, we think our ethnomedical practitoners know what’s really going on and everyone else is just spouting superstition. They think the same thing as us. Who’s right? Does it matter, so long as the patient makes it through? And when it comes to efficacy, doctors and shamans are neck-and-neck.
Then you’re not doing it for anything more than your personal edification. That makes it pointless masturbaton. Without a community, it’s just selfish navel-gazing. Without a point or purpose, don’t be too surprised if it’s all just meaningless, self-obsessed delusion.
At least you make no claim to shamanism, though. It’s the addicts with delusions of grandeur that really get me going. You’re just in it for your own selfish reasons, but at least you’re honest about it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 November 2005 @ 5:11 PM
I wonder how one would construct an IQ test which eliminates civilization bias.
As far as I know, all IQ tests have an inbuilt civilization bias, which will guarantee a lower IQ for uncivilized people taking it.
If human races have no meaning, and you know it, maybe you should reconsider using the word racist.
I know, that it is very conveniently describing xenophobia and tribal superiority writ large, and everybody understands you when you say it, but its unfortunate ethymology keeps propagating the concept of human races as real things even though you know they are not.
Comment by _Gi — 18 November 2005 @ 3:24 PM
True enough.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 November 2005 @ 5:32 PM
Is Tamarack Song a neo shamanic masturbator?
http://astheteachingdrumturns.blogspot.com
Anyone got experience with him here?
Comment by gunnix — 30 January 2006 @ 10:04 AM
Never met him, but the answer to that question is the inverse of the question, “Does he have a tribe?” If he’s doing it for his tribe, no. If he’s doing it for his own aggrandizement and wealth, without the context of a community, then yes.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 January 2006 @ 10:10 AM
That is really weird. I am on his email list. Why would anyone have a blog devoted to making fun of a wilderness survival school. Weird.
Comment by planetwarming — 30 January 2006 @ 12:57 PM
Yes, Tamarack Song is a “Twinkie” - the word American Indians at New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans have coined to describe white people whose spirituality is the junk-food equivalent of a Twinkie.
I am one of a team who runs the blog “As The Teaching Drum Turns” set up to expose this fraud for engaging in theft of Native American spiritual practices.
Please check out our site when you have the time.
Comment by Dragonessa — 30 January 2006 @ 2:36 PM
Excellent and highly-recommended guidelines from NAFPS on how to spot a New Age fraud who steals aspects of Native spiritual practices for her/his own gain:
http://users.pandora.be/gohiyuhi/nafps/
Planet Warming, if this is the first you have heard of our blog outing Tamarack Song as a fraud, it is because Tamarack banned all of us from the list you are on.
Just like a cult leader to do such a thing don’t cha think?
Comment by Dragonessa — 30 January 2006 @ 2:46 PM
I’ve long had misgivings about Tamarack, but they’ve never been the equal to my concerns over cries of “cultural appropriation.” Take, for example, this one, from your link:
Granted, but I’ve heard similar complaints about the Qu’ran in translation. I can listen to a traditional teacher tell me something, and then write it down. It’s called ethnography, and granted it’s no substitute for the real thing, but since we’re pasty white people cut off from our own traditions by a few thousand years of civilization, that’s as close as we’re ever likely to get–pasting together the common elements from many different ethnographic accounts and trying to figure out our own way. I’m not Cherokee, or Hopi, or Ojibway. I can’t just do what they’re doing. The way of my people was killed off so long ago we have no name for it. I can only ever rediscover a fraction of that, and my best way of doing that is by learning from ethnographical accounts, and filling in the gaps with my own journeys.
Overall, there are plenty of New Age hucksters out there,and I can understand everything that goes into the cries of “cultural appropriation,” but there’s a world of difference between a phoney “shaman” and someone in our generation, cut-off from our best hope for survival, forced down the same road as First Shaman, to rediscover all of it for the first time. All too often, we get lumped in the same category. I’m not pretending this is authentically this tribe or that; I’m trying to discover the tradition of my own tribe, something that’s been lost for thousands of years. My best hints for that are to look around at those traditions that have survived.
I don’t know what to think about Tamarack Song, but I know that all too often, “cultural appropriation” has been invoked to try to keep me and others like me from ever finding our own tradition. Shamanism is the common birthright of all mankind, and no “race” can claim a monopoly over it.
Not if you were trolling his message lists. Then it sounds more like a good moderator. But I wan’t there, so I can’t really say–it’s just your protest rings like a grade schooler complaining that the teacher doesn’t like him. Maybe that’s so, but that’s not nearly as common as the excuse is invoked.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 January 2006 @ 3:06 PM
The first line of defense of Twinkie entitlement is “this heritage is all our heritage.”
No you were not there, but you can join the list and review the entire episode for yourself.
Neither can you have possibly grasped the nature of the protest in one quick review of the Drum blog or the NAFPS forum. Spend a few days at the least. Get yourself educated on the issues and then come back with a better critique of the “protest”.
Otherwise, you just look like another intellectually lazy Twink who wants it quick.
We pasty whites are not cut off from our traditions by thousands of years. At best most euro-immigrants are cut off by a few hundred and many of these traditions are in the process of being recovered. However, it is a long and arduous process. Most Twinks want it quick and wuss out of the complexity of the process by calling their heritage “too corrupted” by agriculture or some bullshit like that.
In any event, it is not American Indians’ problem to solve our dilemma of deculturation. They are busy defending their own cultures from white male entitlement. And believe us, they know the difference between whites with their hands stuck out for a gimme-gimme and those who are genuinely concerned with standing in alliance with them to stop Twink appropriation.
Comment by Dragonessa — 30 January 2006 @ 4:40 PM
I don’t really care if you consider me a “Twinkie” or not. I’m much more concerned with developing a sustainable vision and way of life for my tribe. I don’t think Native Americans can realistically claim ownership of a cultural trend that’s carved in cave walls in Europe, practiced by !Kung in the Kalahari, Bushmen in the Austrlian Outback, and tribes in Siberia. My ancestors practiced some kind of shamanism once upon a time, too, it’s just been far too long for any of us to remember what that was.
I have a degree in anthropology. I’ve been reading about these issues for years. You didn’t introduce me to NAFPS–I first found it, literally, years ago. This is not the first I’ve dealt with the problem of cultural appropriation.
Druids are just another farmers’ religion. To find the last time there was a “white” shaman in a real tribe was over 10,000 years ago–right before the Indo-Europeans killed them. All we have are archaeological sites and cave paintings to go by. David Lewis-Williams’ Mind in the Cave illustrates how we need to compare notes with the !Kung and the Shoshoni just to understand what the paintings were for, much less what they meant to their painters.
I agree, it’s a long and arduous process, and I’m not looking for, or expecting, any kind of shortcut. But if I’m not allowed to “compare notes,” so to speak, with those few shamans we haven’t killed off, then it’s no longer “long and arduous”–it’s simply impossible.
Going around pretending you’re Ojibwe isn’t acceptable … but I don’t see anything wrong with learning Ojibwe traditions, and !Kung traditons, and Australian Aborigine traditions, in trying to find the commonalities, and piece together a minimalist “core” to start our own traditions with.
Didn’t say it was, and never expected them to do so. I’m doing this for my own tribe, and I don’t expect anyone but my own tribe to help me. I’ll ask them what they do, as clues to see what piece of the puzzle each of them might hold, but if they want to withhold that, that’s their decision. In the end, we’re the ones who have to put the puzzle together. Even after all the genocide and slaughter, there’s still a culture there. Our genocide and slaughter happened long, long ago, and nothing has survived. What do we have left? We have to puzzle out where we’re going to start, and begin something wholly new.
But if I learn how to dance n/om from the San, and I use it to heal a sick member of my tribe, what damage have I done to the n/om? Or should I simply let my tribe suffer, because otherwise I would be a “Twinkie”?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 January 2006 @ 5:06 PM
From NAFPS on “Shame-On ism” - which you may have seen years ago, but you have not learned a thing.
Your tribe? Oh, Twink I’m really laughing now. And no, my euro-immigrant ancestors traditions have not disappeared. But thanks for trying to kill it off and make yourself the oh-so-all-knowing expert. I will consult my own heritage, thank you very much, not some white anthro who wants his own bloody “tribe”. Sounds like another Twink cult to me. You and Tamarack would get along just fine.
From NAFPS:
“Shamanism” as a term used by anthropologists means any tribal or earth-based religion, or any that are not part of the world’s “major” religions. But shamanism as used by the New Age is a troubling mix of marketing angles, cultural biases, and outright fraud. That’s why anyone calling himself a “shaman” is commonly referred to as a Shame-on by American Indians.
The modern movement of would-be “shamans” got their start in 1980 when Michael Harner published The Way of a Shaman. Harner was seeking to avoid many of the pitfalls the New Age movement had fallen into such as exploitative leaders, unclear and unrealistic goals, incoherent, contradictory, or nonsensical beliefs that were widely mocked by most of the public, blatant abuse and exploitation of tribal peoples and beliefs, and a complete lack of credibility with either academia or the public. In all of these goals, Harner and the rest of the “shamanism” movement have utterly failed. Many of the most disreputable New Age leaders such as Lynn Andrews and Ed McGaa sensed the marketing potential and simply adopted the “shaman” pose. Harner’s methods were little different from the New Age in his assumptions that one could easily learn methods that take decades to master among tribal traditionalists in a short time. Even his “advanced” seminars only last three days and he is clearly engaged in a highly profitable enterprise as much as an attempt to form a new spirituality, exactly the same as the New Age.
Harner and the other would-be “shamans” also make the same mistakes of the New Age in trying to homogenize tribal traditions worldwide and deny their diversity and important differences by lumping several thousand belief systems together. Harner pretends one can master elements that are supposedly common or universal (”core” shamanism in his lingo) to all. The supposed commonalities of “shamanism” are largely superficial or even self-delusion. For example, many would-be “shamans” falsely claim the sweat lodges used by some American Indian groups are allegedly a “core universal shamanic” practice. They allege the Romans and Celts also used sweat lodges. In fact, both those groups used saunas with no spiritual aim or practice involved. Not even all American Indian groups use the sweat lodge.
Finally, Harner and the rest of the would-be “shamans” are no different in exploiting both tribal peoples and western seekers of spiritual truths. To the former, shame-ons deceptively misrepresent their traditional beliefs and try to subjugate native community-oriented beliefs to western egoistic individual needs. The latter group, shame-on leaders use for cash, to boost their own egos, and in some cases sex. Anyone seeking to understand the beliefs of tribal peoples would be far better off reading the writings of respected native authors such as Vine Deloria, Jr. and Wilma Mankiller rather than opportunists.
For Further Reading
Oyate: Books to Avoid
Cubbins, Elaine: Native Web Site Evaluation
Smith, Andy: Readings on Cultural Respect
Lisa Aldred: Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality
Comment by dragonessa — 30 January 2006 @ 5:31 PM
Yes, the Tribe of Anthropik. Originally picked up in the Quinnian sense, but more recently moved towards more of a primitivist group.
There are traditions, sure. They’re the traditions of murdering, civilized psychopaths, but traditions, nonetheless.
That’s not something I want to perpetuate. We used to be as harmless as a lion or a wolf or a shark, but then we picked up those traditions, and went around the world killing everything that stood in our way. And now, our society is imploding for it. Those who remain true to those traditions will die with it. Those who find other traditions to live by will survive.
So, there’s the challenge before us: to create a community, a set of traditions, a tribe. That’s what the Tribe of Anthropik is trying to do. An important part of that is being honest with ourselves about where we come from, but more important than that is being willing to do it at all, and not being suckered into some warped kind of cultural monopoly based on some myth of “race.”
That’s the one I’m referring to. It’s a useful category, much like “Big Man,” not because it’s the term used by all cultures in all languages, but because it describes a wide-spread cultural phenomenon.
You’ll note that the article you’re commenting on has a long, detailed history of Neoshamanism, including a much more accurate treatment of Castenada, Harner and Eliade than you’ve provided.
Usually, those decrying “cultural appropriation” are shrill fools conned into an idea of “race” and some bizarre concept that sharing ideas somehow diminishes them. Your reactions have certainly done nothing to shake this trend in my mind. But I have read one good book on the subject, but I notice it is lacking in your list. I’ve read all of your books, though none of them impressed me much, but I would recommend you read Daniel Noel’s he Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities. Noel summed up my attitude in the passage I quoted in the original article:
I have no problem learning from others, and I’m still not clear what the objection is. So long as we’re honest with ourselves about where we stand, I fail to see the problem, or how the Ojibwe are diminished if I study their culture and learn what they believe–even if I use that knowledge to help my own tribe–so long as I do not represent myself as one of them.
Knowledge is not diminished by the sharing; it is only in sharing that knowledge has any value at all.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 January 2006 @ 5:49 PM
Did I miss something? I was under the impression that “Twinkie” was a derogatory term for Asians who were “yellow on the outside, white on the inside.” Kind of in the same vein as banana or Oreo or coconut or apple. I suppose it would be more accurate to call neoshamans apples, but they’re not actual Indians, so they’re not even red on the outside. Hmmm… What’s a food that’s white all the way through? Maybe vanilla ice cream? And then a neoshaman could be, like, vanilla ice cream with raspberry syrup on top?
Damn, I’m hungry.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 30 January 2006 @ 6:00 PM
Nice to see my question turned up these replies.
I do get your point Dragonessa. It seems indeed wrong to teach the native american lifeway if you don’t have the approval of the very native americans you try to immitate.
But suppose if the teacher just doesn’t call it “the native american lifeway” then it’s fine for you?
After all there can’t be much wrong with immitating these lifestyles or taking out the the parts you like to put them in your own life. I don’t believe in these so called races and cultures which are staticly defined and it would be impossible to mix them… That’s just the same point nazis make. Or extreme fundamentalists. (I’m not accusing you of this!)
Learning to live in balance with nature can be difficult if you don’t have any examples to go by. Native indians are one of those examples.
Also I want to make clear that I always see it when someone does neglect the obvious massacre of the native americans and I try to make others aware of that as well (at the right time ofcourse).
I did ask Teaching Drum why there were no native americans teaching there, and how there relations were with them. The answer was they had good relations with some and bad relations with others. And that Tamarack Song had learned the native lifeway from native americans. But that I should ask the natives themselves to get a good answer.
To me it seems right that people can become “native americans” by living with them and learning their ways. Just as I think foreigners can become Belgian (whatever that means! -In the end we’re all just people) without a problem. What do you think of that?
PS: the NAFPS website is on a belgian server. Are you belgian?
Comment by gunnix — 30 January 2006 @ 7:07 PM
Dragonessa, I was on that list when you were.
People repeatedly attempted to engage you in conversation about your feelings on genocide and cultural appropriation, but all we received back were lengthy diatribes full of self-righteous judgment. You were banned from the list not because you wished to speak of your feelings on the subjects of genocide and cultural appropriation, but because you could not engage in conversation without being respectful and understanding of where other people were coming from. I personally felt abused by your posts, and that is something that does not occur very often. You will recall the email I sent out in response to the group, I’m sure, since I think it was one of the only replies that you made an attempt to sound respectful in responding to.
I have read your blog, or attempted to — I am not one to censor anyone, and the sheer amount of passion you had in what you were saying made me think that you might actually have something constructive to say in a different environment. However, the first post was an incredibly lengthy rant about Tamarack Song, where there were very few salient points I could discern from all the vitriol. You claimed that you did not have a vendetta against Tamarack Song, however the evidence points clearly in the opposite direction.
If you are here to further your crusade against cultural appropriation, rather than engage in compassionate dialogue, you are wasting your time. I too would like to explore these issues of genocide and cultural appropriation — in fact just the other day I got angry when I felt like my attempt to explore these issues was undermined (read this comment and the next few after it) — but if you are not capable of expressing yourself without resorting to personal attacs and abuse then I do not wish to explore these issues with you. For example, calling Jason a Twinkie and laughing at him is not my idea of respectful dialogue.
Now, if you have something to say that is not laden with contempt and self-righteous judgment, I would be more than glad to hear it.
- Devin
Comment by Devin — 30 January 2006 @ 7:46 PM
Anthro-Twinkie:
You claim to be an anthropologist. Can I find your work in the INDEX of CITATIONS? How many peer-reviewed journals have you appeared in?
Naturally, you want to eliminate the concept of race so you don’t have to look at your white male privilege and how it is predicated on the oppression of people of color. No races, no racism. Bloody hands washed clean. You try to set yourself up as a victim of genocide to hide your own complicity in it. Wah, wah, wah my ancestors were victims, too. Sniffle, sniffle, pout. Oh my god, a BLOG is your tribe? Gee dude, that’s like sad.
Devin: Tamarack told you not to have anything further to do with anyone associated with the anti-Drum blog. You had your chance to debate already and bailed. You wussed big time. You could not take being called-out on your white male privilege, so don’t pretend like you are ready for another round. You are way too-thinned skin for the debate and sat silent while Tamarack banned counter-voices from his little online cult. You are just too lazy to do the reading necessary to engage in thoughtful debate. You always take the whiney out, “You called me a name - wah, wah, wah - pout - so now I am not going to engage with you. You are a lying sack a crap Devin.
The shoe fits. You got something else to say to me? Go say it on the anti-Drum blog.
Anthro-Twinkie, if you really are academically trained, then dude, you know you gotta cite your sources for your assertions.
You know so much about primitivism, then let’s see if you can answer the one question no primitivist I know has ever been able to answer: WHY 10,000 years ago in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley did agriculture begin? Huh?
Comment by Dragonessa — 30 January 2006 @ 9:15 PM
No, my claim was:
Not that I make a living with it. I wish I could, but the market isn’t exactly great these days. But I did graduate from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Anthropology, cum laude. Straight A’s in the anthro courses, but some of those comp. sci. classes were killer, hence no magna like my brother.
As such, I haven’t submitted any of my articles for peer review. Nonetheless, my Thirty Theses (which I’m now turning into a book) has made its rounds, including as a citation in Dr. Bednarz’s “Public health in a post-petroleum world,” presented at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
I’m somewhat taken aback at your ability to combine an utter ignorance of my well-publicized activites on the one hand, and your quickness to condemn me on the other. One would expect a reasonable person to occasionally commit one or the other, but both together seems a particularly potent combination. For instance, you threw in this little snark:
Suggesting that you never even took the time to read our “about” page before passing judgment on us, where we clearly differentiate between the blog (something that is created by our tribe), and the tribe itself (which is a close-knit group here in Pittsburgh, where we’re working to free ourselves of our dependence on civilization, for all the reasons detailed in the Thirty Theses, linked above, which you apparently also did not read). To confuse the Tribe of Anthropik with this blog is the same as for me to conclude that you are, in fact, a small corner of Blogger.com. You are not your writings; neither are we.
You’re not your fucking khakis.
Now, your statements on race are especially disappointing, particularly in light of the fact that I provided a link for you to read up on what science has to say about race. There is greater diversity within races than between them; statistically, they are nonsensical categorizations. Biologically, a “race” is a sub-species. Races breed true, like the yellow-rumped warbler. Individuals of two races can still breed, but their children will either possess all the traits of the first race or the second. The one thing they will never do is mix traits from the two. Yet, in humans, that is all we ever see. We have clines, and we have geographical correlations, but the last time that there were races of Homo sapiens was 40,000 years ago–and then, only if you accept the categorization of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (I don’t–they were an obviously superior species in many ways, but the morphological evidence–to say nothing of the DNA evidence–suggests that interbreeding was probably impossible).
I never said a word about racism, though. Racism exists, because people still believe that “race” exists as anything other than a construction in their own head. Race exists only as a social construct, and that only because we believe that it exists. It has utterly no biological basis. The cure for racism is to repeat this evidence, over and over again, at every opportunity, until everyone understands that we are not dealing with anything related in any way to biology.
My ancestors did terrible, terrible things. And the whims of history have given me great advantages because of those crimes. They are unforgiveable. They are also already done. The world as it is now is all I have to live by. I don’t see why I should live my life in guilt, or apologize to you or anyone else for crimes I had no part in and no opportunity to oppose. In my own life (as if any other life mattered in a fair judgement of me), I have campaigned against drilling in ANWR, and for the environmental concerns that are pushing the Inuit into the ocean. I contribute annually to Cultural Survival, as much as I can afford.
And my all-consuming goal at the moment is to separate myself from our current civilization, so that I will no longer be party to its crimes.
I am not a native to this place I live. Europeans are not native to any place–not even Europe. To be native to a place, if it means anything, must mean to be a part of that place, to be part of its ecology. Otherwise, what makes the Europeans so special? Only that they invaded most recently? Didn’t the Clovis do the same, only 10,000 years before? If we are to survive, we must become native–we must learn to stop being invaders, and instead become part of the ecologies we inhabit. Native Americans are my template for how that can be done: they, too, came here as invaders, and they, too, became native.
We don’t have much time. We must become native now. That doesn’t mean dressing up and pretending you’re an Indian. You’re not. And you should never forget the tragic, horrific tale of how it all came to be. But if that is not the next step, then it will be the last step.
If that offends you, I can offer little in the way of apology. My sensitivity does not go so far as to roll over and die for the sake of politeness.
Marvin Harris was the first to tackle this in a really convincing way, I think. Jared Diamond does a nice summary of the prevailing view of co-evolution in Guns, Germs & Steel, but those answer the question how. The question of why has always fascinated me, leading me to write no less than half a dozen different, long essays on the subject over the past five years. It’s really what this site is best known for, so your question strikes me with all the absurdity of walking into a McDonald’s and shouting, “Yeah, but can you do FAST FOOD?”
My most recent address of that question came in thesis #9 and thesis #10.
I really can’t say that I do–the hate you’ve already spewed here is more than sufficient, thank you. Further conversation with you would be redundant. But I would hate for the casual lurker to get the wrong impression and mistake your ramblings above as having resembled some kind of point.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 January 2006 @ 9:54 PM
As far as the tribe’s thoughts on cultural appropriation, this whole incident has led me to conclude a full-blown article is in order. We have some articles on the subject already published, particularly the article under discussion, and Giuli’s “Fabrication of Little Tree.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 January 2006 @ 10:36 PM
Jason:
I never accused you of having personally committed the genocide that your ancestors did. My point is that you benefit from it. I agree that race is a construct. What I wish to emphasize is that race as it is constructed in AmeriKKKa has genocidal consequences for those in the violently oppressed, white-male-assigned lower castes. You cannot escape “civilization” as it is organized now without confronting and breaking down that apartheid reality.
How can you “compare notes” with extant native cultures if the notes of your ancestors were disappeared long ago when all the “white shamans” were killed off? You have no cultural records (written or oral) of your own with which to even do a comparative genocide study, let alone anything that might help us all achieve common ground. Native American heritages apparently are useful to you as cribbed notes, but would not, say for example, Irish heritage also be useful? Or is that that heritage is verbotten in your quest for primitive purity because the Irish, like, committed farming and had Druids?
If your answer is yes, then in one fell swoop you cut yourself off from the wisdom of a people who have endured in that place for millenia, deftly allowing you to go on cribbing off the notes of the cultures of darker-skinned peoples without doing the arduous work of sifting thru the wreckage of your own heritage for the ancient wisdom that does remain.
Again, since your anarcho-philosophy kills off all your ancestors you have no notes with which to do a comparative study.
You have set up “10,000 years ago” as The Fall and agriculture as Original Sin. Naturally, you are going to be hard pressed to find any face-to-face examples of a pure enough people NEARBY for your comparative shamanism study, so you can hang out with other “whites” and play mental primitive.
Sure there may be some pure-enough, hunter-gatherer tribe 10,000 miles away by internet connection, but you ain’t stepping up to put an end to the ongoing genocide of Native Americans in this land, nearby, which is the bedrock upon which rests the current civilizational prison you find yourself locked into today.
Clever way to preserve privilege (and feel good about it) but still Twink as hell.
And my ultimate point for engaging with you still remains: Tamarack Song is a fraud.
Comment by dragonessa — 31 January 2006 @ 2:00 AM
On the subject of religions, both new and old, I stumbled across