I have a question which came out of the fly agaric thread.
More or less, tribal man lived in tribes or bands. He lived mainly outside, he didn’t have science as we know it or mobile phones or toasters. He had word of mouth and fire and the elements and fear, lots of fear and trees and animals that could kill him and insects that gave him illnesses. People died young and all over the place and slowly and for myriad reasons and often horribly. They had toothache, broke bones they went blind and women grew and children were born and children died and at night everyone lived in the dark. They knew of their own lands and maybe those of their neighbours. They lived in a world populated by plants, natural events, rocks, humans and critters various and maybe spirits too. Many things would have been frightening and many, for us normal and down to earth things, would have provoked questions. What is death, thunder, what are the stars, where does the moon go, is the earth really that big why does my tooth hurt? All sorts of questions which we know the real answers to but they didn’t. Then along came the shaman (or similar) and simplifying it a bit, sniffed a bit of substance, had a trance and came up with some answers.
My question. Do you think living in our comfortable homes with street lighting and doctors and penicillin, most of us never experiencing real darkness or real cold or real fear and having libraries and computers at our finger tips to gain almost instant answers to any question we might have, that the shamanic chappies and chappesses were really interested in the same things we are? That their job descriptions matched ours? Or did they really have what is now a lost knowledge of which we know nothing making them better and more advance than us? What do you think?

Interesting question. The thing is we can't really do a comparision between ourselves in the 21st century and the shaman of the early tribes since society, beliefs, they way they view the world, etc., are different. Obviously.

There are some things that may be the same - healing for instance. And some people, although not all, are interested in the same things - or maybe the same questions: who are we, where did we come from, what happens if I do this, and so on.

I suspect they did have a knowledge that is now lost to us but the questions is: is that lost knowledge of any relevence to us now? Some pieces of knowledge, not matter how interesting, are no longer useful or necessary since society and technology have moved on. Ideas and concepts move on, they evolve and change as time passes.

There is a fairly popular idea that because some information/ideas/beliefs are ancient (or seemingly ancient) that they are somehow more "real", more relevent. I think this is the wrong way of looking at things. People were just as wrong in those days as they are today about some things. They may have been more connected to nature and the natural cycle (which didn't stop them destroying their environment anyway) but it doesn't necessarily imply they had the answers either.

i think to a certen extent yes it is a lot knowalge that is far superior to us living now. They had a connection to the earth in a way tha we only wish for. their instinct was heightened by the way they lived, they could read the earth and feel when things were about to change. bordering on ESP. im probably sounding really loopy by saying all this but i think that their instinct was a pure animal like instinct, lik ehow dogs can sentce earthquakes. The way they lived contributed to this closeness to nature and ectra sencery abilaty they had.


i think we have lost that in our digital age.

I agree with Wulfric

Ancient shamans had a knowledge appropriate to that time. Today we must subtract some of that knowledge with modern versions.

To ignore modern society and technology only makes us less attuned to the World as a whole

Shamanism is still practised today by many tribal cultures, obviously we dont live in the same world or want for the basics of life in the way they would have done.
Shamanism or any ancient traditions are not always a good way of living our lives by, eg 'in Siberria a herd of Reindeer swim across a river every year on their migration, every year gangs of hunters in boats, shoot and kill them ALL! Why? Most of the meat is not used and just rots! its an old Shamanic Belief, if they let any of the Reindeer live they will tell their friends what happened and find another way to cross!'
So no not all beleifs are worthwhile in the current world, that is why we can adapt and change, evolve even!
However much of what was called Shamanism is now called Pyschology, it evolved!
The sniffing of substances only played a small part though!
In the past Religion played a practical part of life, it helped them to find cures for their toothache, it taught them about fire, so it wasnt dark, it was a practical tradition, if it served no purpose it was abandoned, they didnt have the tie for fluffy stuff!
Celebrations, raised moral and aided in fertility, funerals aided in group bonding and provided safe space to grieve as well as the practical function, of who was going to do Ugs job now!
Much of what was spoken about then was what we would called Ecology, when it comes to the Natural world.
I dont realy beleive in the Supernatural, I think that is just the Natural we have forgotten about!
Ive no doubt those peoples senses were far more finely tuned than ours are! They needed to be just to stay alive!
Much of what we do today is about numbing our senses, otherwise we would overload with all the stimuli they receive, we dont tune in much, we tune out!
Except in Ritual etc.
As for do we have the same roles?
I practise Shamanism, I am a Qualified Healer, Ive Qualified in Conservation and studied Ecology, my beleifs are practical, they earn me money in various ways, I try not to get overloaded, but I do try and tune in, when in the woods etc.
Where I differ mainly is that to me my beleifs are fun, not life or death!
Though when it comes to Pyschological development, overcoming Trauma, dealing with my own and others pain and hurt, that can be pretty dark at times!

Really good bunch of replies. i enjoyed reading them and though only four, they have put my mind at rest on several points.

Another thing to consider....people will turn to what works best and what allows them more time to do other stuff. Tradition for the sake of tradition whilst ignoring developments and new insights becomes an obstacle rather than something good. But to make the developments and understanding an effective replacement for what was traditionally practiced, you'd need to understand the purpose of the tradition first.

Modern western shaman embrace science and modern knowledge having spent time developing an understanding of traditional shamanic practice.... See CornishShamans response for more on that.

BB

Mike

Dear Wulfric,





Best Wishes,

John Macintyre

John, I've been meaning to ask someone for ages - what are these 3 rabbit things at the bottom of your post?

They are a round of applause using the Claps emoticon.

In the course of a conversation, a friend of mine remarked, "It's wonderful how cows know about the weather."
(Very impolitely, I now realise) I replied "If you spend twenty-four hours a day in a field you'd know about the weather too."

That's what it amounts to, really.



Those emoticons look more like stroking than clapping.

I haven't always thought this way, but mopre and more recently, I've thought that trying to recreate the religious beliefs and practices of earlier cultures is absolute twoddle. Shamanism is a path that is about yourself and your community around you, so unless you live in an iron age, or native american society, there's no point trying to recreate the religous practices of that culture, which also brings me on to the cultural thing. Shamanism is very geographical, and correspondences vary across the world. You've got to look at the area around you when dealing with spirit (and in this respect I think it's very much like heathenism?)

If I had to pigeonhole myself, I'd say I'm an urban shaman. I live in an urban area (ok, so maybe now I'm in norfolk, maybe I'm a bit more out in the sticks). I interact with the world and the otherworld that is immediately around me. I think there's a great over exuberance of the sacred and divine only being in special places, and if the spirit worl, or however you decide to call it, is connected to all parts of the here and now, but they never actually touch (except in a few places) that means that spirit is all around us. There's no point me being a celtic shaman, as I don't live in the iron age, How could I properly serve my community by holding on to outdated ideals, and different things, we live in a world our ancestors could not even have begun to envisage. Don't get me wrong, I don't disrespect it, I still honour ancestors, after all, I am the end result of all who have come before me.

The world has evolved, spirit has evolved (for example no technology-type spirits in the stone age) so therefor beliefs must evolve.


We are not perfect, and never will be. Our ancestors didn't live in a utopian fairytale, their societies were just as bad as ours; Take Punishment burials, driving entire herds off cliff tops as an easy form of hunting. I think alot of people live in cloud cuckoo land in this respect. The ancient world was brutal and savage, yet through it we evolved and survived, and will continue to evolve and survive, I hope.

There are people who try to recreate the old ways of doing things (and there are several in heathenry) but this is a mistake in my opinion for several reasons.

We don't know enough about their spiritual ideas to be able to do this effectively.

We know very little about the actual rituals they conducted.

We do not have their world-view. Our world has shrunk as information and ideas spread globally and with the creation of the modern media and the internet. We can never, never see the world as they saw it. Their world view was a product of their society and the environment they lived in. These have changed. We have changed.

We cannot be sure how they really saw the gods, wights, etc., since most of the information we have is from after the Christian conversions. And such views would have differed from tribe to tribe, even from family to family perhaps.

For me the past and what our ancestors did are a convenient spring-board for exploring concepts and worlds, but I can't do things the way they did.

Another point to consider in this rather rambling post (for which I apologise) is that our ancestors used the latest technological tools - whether it be a sword or ploughshare. I'm sure they had people who insisted that only the "old ways" would do. The Vikings, for instance, were a forward thinking people - for sure the ancestors and the past was important to them but they were facing the future with the weight of the past as a support.

Dear Woozle,



They're animal-totem symbols. Because I'm a Wiccan, other people sometimes set animal-spirits in the form of fluffy bunnies to follow me around and embarrass me .

BB,

John Macintyre

SpiralShaman - top post

Fear is an interesting element. I'm not sure, proportionately, whether people then would have felt any more or less of an emotional range than we do. It's speculation, of course, but shamanism gave some control over life/surroundings/death/illness and this perhaps even the alleviation of fear. The majority of people here have no running water, electricity, TV, radio, social security, access to medical care and they just get on with life. If I had all that and you took it away - I'd be afraid, but never to have had it...I don't think life is so full of fear. You're comfortable and at home with your environment. We'd see it as something to fear because it would be alien to us.

Anyway, I think there are some things we ponder that are universal (birth, death, love, entheogens, dreams) but life and spirit, as SS said, moves on and so much we. Your world and your community. I think there's a lot to learn from current shamanic practices and from history, a lot of it is still relevant, people are people after all, but it also has to adapt and incorporate what's relevant to your reality now.

Thanks. i thought it was funny that the rabbits didn't have any eyes.

modified to add:
3 Blind rabbit totems John. The basis for a whole new branch of paganism

Woozle, it seems that the void between my world and yours is almost insurmountable, and the energy created between the bridging is usually negative. But I will try, not as a great magus, lol, or shaman, I am neither.

This is an essay I wrote and never finished, I also have the notes from it and will put the time to it again this weekend if this post goes any where productive:

It is only between about 7000 and 10000 years ago that man was wandering the landscape as a hunter-gatherer, before the times of farming and of cities. The seasons were the deciding factor in movement and in survival. Wandering the liminal, the coastline, riverbanks and such fertile areas for food was the constant process. Three or four hundred generations of people, families and tribes from then until now. It is not that long ago in our evolution and growth.

We have made many seeming advances in technology since then. It was a period of flint working, bone and skin working, some basic textiles and nets, the weaving of reeds and wicker. Mankind needed only what he could carry. Even pottery was not created. Now we send satellites to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond.

We have learnt much about manipulating our world and its resources but we have not progressed far in emotional, spiritual or psychological matters. Some would say that we have regressed. Our emotional reactions to our lives, our world and our social connections are fluid energies partly driven by instinctive behaviour, the biological/chemical feedback and response to our perception of our place, value and position. Also, mood reactions, modalities conceived as rewards and penalties that then dictate action and change in our behaviour. Sometimes these changes are automatic, or originated in the subconscious, sometimes they are shaped after conscious mentation.

We believe we are sophisticated beings, advanced, refined and indeed in some areas of life we are. Language, written language, recorded knowledge, communications, all lend to this belief. Any individual born at the present moment, (whenever that moment is), can suggest such a state by the synthesis of deemed factual knowledge and contemporary social placement.

As witches we explore the liminal, all our boundaries, more than most, and we use the power and energy of self knowledge to change ourselves and the world we perceive. Can we really understand the pagan world, where the liminal was the landscape and the threshhold of consciousness that pertained to survival? Or do we merely approximate in our explorations? Memes may be passed on but can they be re-found or do we, each individual, create our own?

I sometimes emphasise that the experiences we have need not be constrained to words and logic. Flashes of vision, perception of peripheral sounds or movement, even smells and out of place emotions and feelings are possible signs of the transition. Sometimes they are all that we remember, sometimes they are all that we achieve in any attempt to pass through the veil. Our bodies and our senses are used to being in this realm and our consciousness takes cues from that and then attempts to interpret experiences through the normal modality.

Consider how words can fix us into a concept and from that prevent understanding when they were devised to enhance and share understanding and communication.

Imagination: the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses
(wordnet database ©Princeton University 2005)

We accept that is what the word means and the derivation is self explanatory, image –ination. In common usage though, the word has other connotations, of fantasy, unreality. The last is not pertinent when we are experiencing the liminal.

I really like this phrase and agree with your whole post. I always thought that my opinion on recreationism was a major stumbling block to being a "Heathen proper". Is this view common amongst other Heathens ?

IMO the Gods and wights are relevant and accessible today in totally different ways to the past, which is how the tradition has survived at all. I think of the Celtic story of Taliesin when he turns into all the different creatures to evade Cerridwen. The wisdom we have has survived in many forms - stories retold by Christians, cheap, mass produced Rune sets - whatever it took. I see it as a thread sometimes stretched almost to breaking but still sustaining. I think it's up to us to preserve what we know of the past but also to make it strong for the future.

Different heathens hold different views, it will come as no surprise to learn! My own opinion is that it is hopeless trying to recreate something from over a thousand years ago. That society died a long time ago. We need to do things that are relevent to our society and lives now.

Also it is important to stress that there is no such thing as a "heathen proper" now - or then. Our approach to these things is personal.



Indeed, the thread can fray, it can unravel, strands can be added to it. Obviously this is no lineage thing we are talking about but the ideas can survive (and mutate) over time - it is a fluidic process. The gods themselves, I believe, evolve over time and how they interact with us also evolves. They and the wights are just as relevent now (maybe more so with the seeming chaos the world is in) as then.

Totally agree, the power/energy/spirit/deity (whatever you call it) out there isn't static. Everything grows and evolves, it has to, or it's replaced by the next evolutioniary step. Just because its non-tangiable energy that is percieved as different things by many, doesn't put it outside of this context.

Indeed, everything evolves (and in some cases mutates) over time. The evolutionary processes effect everything in all levels of reality. Trying to preserve an idea or ritual is like King Knut trying to stop the sea.

Too true. It's a pity becuase i enjoyed reading some of your older posts. I just can't handle this holier than thou stuff.

And by doing so we all may as well stop now.

Though sometimes I feel, the further we move away from the past the more we devolve with certain things. Modern lifestyles seem to remove us more and more from the natural order of things, and by removing ourselves from the batural order of things we damage not only the world around us, but ourselves.

It's a very tough call to make. But we can't stop progress. It's having not only the common sense, but the responsibility to be able to differentiate between what gets left behind, what we take with us, what stays the same, and what changes for the better.

It's recognising mistakes, and even identifying when we're downright wrong about something, and that's when the responsibility of change becomes all the more important, it's far harder to discard old ideas and thoughts, far harder to think "I've made a mistake here" or "I'm wrong there". It's far, far easier to believe what you are told by others, than to question those beliefs and seek answers yourself.

Think I may have lost the point and am rambling now.

Yes, we have been slowly removing ourselves from the natural order - but this has been happening for centuries although it has accelerated in the last century or two. We loose the balance that is, I think, necessary to the ourselves and the world - hence global warming which is the planets response to our so called dominion over nature!



Nah, your thought processes have just evolved

Good point, well made!

*Aronwy sticks her 2 penneth in albeit rather dubiously

Nobody seems to have mentioned, what I thought was a fundamental part of being a Shaman, the Near Death Experience. I was under the impression that it was impossible to be a Shaman without having had this experience

In traditional cultures, I think it was usual, but I'm not sure it was compulsory. In any case, a lot of things which happen to us in more modern society could be potentially life-threatening, if it were not for the intervention of modern medicine. I think it still holds true though that most who do feel drawn to shamanism have had to cope with some hardship; some kind of physical, emotional or spiritual challenges before they were ready to begin. I think the same is true for a lot of us, if life was all hunky-dory, and everything was all flowers, fairies and fluff, then most would probably not bestir themselves to seek the hidden knowledge of our respective paths.

As Hedgerose points out in some cultures that may be true. For northern shamanism I'm not sure, to be honest. Many shamans report a symbolic death or near death experience which transforms the person and makes them able to deal with journeying, or things of that nature.

I dont think an NDE is necessary to become a Shaman.
Though Ive often heard it said that to ignore the Shamanic Calling could result in Death or at least Insanity!
It could be as Hedgerose already said that Modern Medicine plays a part in this.
I think most Shaman usually have something like an intense Breakdown of some sort, following some fairly major life altering situation, which is forced upon them, resulting in a form of 'Temporary Insanity'.
This seems to be the most common entry into Shamanic and usually Healing Practices, Ive heard of.
Speaking for myself Ive certainly experienced this sort of Breakdown, though Ive never had what Id call an NDE.
I have had 3 Out of Body Experiences, 2 of which Im convinced saved my life, due to me no longer being inside and as a result totally relaxed, thus greatly reducing any physical damage to my body, I was knocked over and hit 5 vehicles, 2 of which were moving at speed, one was slowing, 2 were parked, I received only a few bruises and no one else was hurt.
The first occassion I was drowning, not sure how that worked, but again no damage.

I had a NDE when I was five and in hospital after being blinded by a pair of scissors. Don't remember anything about it but I contracted some infection or bug or something apparently. It's funny when I think about the path I follow (Heathenry) and some things that happened in the past - like being blinded in the eye. Coincidence or a subconscious thing or was it just the wyrd in action?

I had a near death experince when I was rather young. The NDE is supposed to leave the mark of the spirit world upon you, as a shaman is kinda supposed to be of both worlds at once (the spirit, and the here and now).

Also shamanism isn't one you really choose, it gets kinda chosen for you. How far I agree with this I'm not sure, but maybe the other has a way of pushing you in the right direction.

Perhaps I'm seeing this from the wrong angle, but I always saw the "death" as not being literal(sp?). More that you have stepped from, ascended beyond perhaps, the "life" that went before, into the next stage i.e. that of Shaman.

The concept of a breakdown before the development is ringing bells so close to home that its kind of scary. I have always held the belief that we step onto our paths because of events that push open the boundaries we usually maintain. Be they with others, life, ourselves or nature. Once the boundaries have been breached, it becomes almost as if awareness has hit a level that cannot be ignored.

Awareness being more than merely seeing, hearing etc, you truly experience, as if for the first time the complete package as it were. But this requires an acknowledgement of ALL that is, both within and without. The continuation of old ways should be moved forward into the here and now. Shamanism does not teach that we should remain static, the very concept is of motion within all worlds, to develop grow and to KNOW.

In order to know, you must come to a complete and full understanding of something in real time, the observer is so involved they become part of the observed. You cannot do this if you are stuck in the past. You must be in the Here and Now, fully integrated, experiencing all.

I think it depends on the culture. However, near death experiences can bring out the "shaman" in you, so to speak. But often I think that, yes, that "death" is more symbolic than actual.

From what i've heard being killed and remade in journeys or meditations aren't exactly uncommon

Indeed, it seems to be quite common. Different things for different people - some are eaten, some are dismembered and reassembled by dwarfish smiths, and so on.

Not sure if it could really be described as killed. Being taken to pieces, closely examined and put back together again with a little spark of something added... but all along you are able to observe the process.... a bit like astral projection. I'd had a vaguely similar experience in terms of the ultimate psychological effects when working through a certain part of the tree of life though. I found that to be a LOT harder to work through than simply being torn apart and being put back together again. maybe that is because it was the first time for that kind of experience when working on the tree though.

BB

Mike

I had the Symbolic Death Journey, quite early into my path, I found it interesting, but having been through so much actual Emotional & Mental pain, it was just that interesting!
Being torn apart and reassembled with crystals and things placed inside me, to make me a better receiver / channeller I assume.
However I was having a sort of OBE during the Journey, so wasnt actually in my body at the time of dismemberment, just hovering above it, watching, I was also very aware that I would return to the Normal World, after this experience, without any ill effects!

Thats a much better description of what happens