Subject: Have You Ever Seen A Shaman? April 18, 2008.
Here we have a person who claims to be a Shaman
explaining what a Shaman is.
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What is a Shaman?
Introduction
I am using the word shaman because of its
popularity: shamans have their own names for
themselves depending on their background and
location.
I call myself kupua, which is a Hawaiian
word for a shaman found among the traditions
of Polynesia. A kupua focuses on the essence
of a tool rather than it's ritual.
There are many definitions of shamanism,
but few mention the core of shamanistic belief
that I learned from my teachers. Most
definitions describe what shamans do rather
than what shamans believe.
Shamans use whatever tools they know that
seem appropriate for the cir***stances. A
listing of these tools doesn't constitute
a precise meaning of the limits and
uniqueness of shamanism.
Almost all books on shamanism, both
scholarly works and popular books written
by "shamans", are about shaman tools and
descriptions of so-called shamanistic
ideas are presented in a very
unshamanistic way: shaman ideas are
described as if shamans believed them.
This limited view of shamanism is
understandable since shamans, when talking
to non-shamans and beginning students,
avoid frustrating attempts to discuss the
unreality of reality.
Much nonsense has been written about
shamanism. To quote just a few of many
examples: "The basis of shamanism is an
animistic view of nature"; "The main
principle of shamanism is the attempt
to control physical nature"; "A shaman
uses symbolic m-gic and a form of
feti****sm [where power rests in the
power of the shaman and rather than the
object]".
Observations like these are based on a
confusion between what a shaman "believes"
and what a shaman decides will be
effective in a certain cir***stance in
one particular moment. Animism, used in
the sense of the belief that "s-irits"
are everywhere is different than using
a useful tool where the shaman is merely
acting as if everything has a sp-ritual
nature.
A warrior shaman may act as if he is
controlling "physical nature" (whatever that
is), but to a shaman who is more than an
apprentice, that is only a game: the belief
is unim****tant only the results are im****tant.
And finally, to a shaman, symbolic ma-ic
and fetishes are only tools, not statements
about reality.
A popular scholarly viewpoint is, "A shaman
enters altered states of consciousness and
travels to other realms." A shaman may even
actually say this if he is using the terms
of a scholar's view of reality: "altered
states" and "other realms" appear to be
reasonable terms to a person who believes
that "ordinary" reality is one thing and
"non-ordinary" reality is another; and that
each can be described as an absolute thing. A
shaman's world is filled with a sense of the
actuality of that world, but in a way that is
both the same and the opposite of a dictionary
definition of the word "reality".
Philosophers have struggled with questions of
reality throughout history. And every time
someone fancied he was getting close, there have
been other philosophers lurking in the shadows,
ready to gleefully discover assumptions beneath
the original assumptions: philosophy had an
informal "peer-review" thousands of years
before it became fa****onable in science (with
all its virtues and faults), although a
scientific peer-review is never concerned with
basic assumptions about reality after
centuries of labor even philosophers seldom
find that a worthwhile path.
Some shamanic ideas are found in expected
and unexpected places. Some of these ideas
make sense to many people the ideas sometimes
"feel" right and they sometimes seem to agree
with experience. I have often read that a
"kahuna" is a "Hawaiian shaman". (JW I once
had an o****tunity to go the Hawaii on a vacation.
I had previously read a lot about the Kahunas
of Hawaii. The first thing I did while over there
was to go to a M-taphysical Book Store and ask
how I might come in contact with a Kahuna. The
people running the store didn't think I would be
able to accomplish this on a short notice but
did give me the area where Kahunas were said to
have been seen. I went out to the area by car
with my friends but they didn't want to get
out, so I didn't meet any Kahuna.) There are
and were kahuna shamans, but they are two
distinct traditions. There were Druids
also that were shamans, but in both cases
they were rare. And, as might be guessed,
there were (and are) shamans in Polynesia
and Celtic areas that are not kahuna or
druids. A shaman is a healer but there are
few shamans among healers; today and even
in the distant past.
Collections of ideas like "huna", or
whatever anyone prefers to call the Hawaiian
esoteric tradition, have some shamanistic
ideas, but like similar traditions around
the world, are not shamanism. Shamanic ideas
are found in works like the B-ble, the
Kalevala, some Star Trek Television episodes,
among many other works. What separates these
works from shamanism is that the ideas are
perceived and presented as The Way Things Are,
while a shaman views All ideas as simply
useful or interesting. A shaman treats
beliefs as tools.
In this discussion, I describe shaman tools
only as they relate to shaman ideas. I have
chosen to present shaman ideas in an
unshamanistic way since I am trying to define
shamanism, not write about how to become a
shaman. Definitions are all made up. That
should be obvious to everybody, yet some
people imagine they have solved a problem
when they've stuck a label on something or
someone ("Understanding is the key.").
Definitions are not statements of reality,
they are tools of communication.
If I were writing a formal article on
philosophy, I would have defined some
statements more precisely. But since I am
writing a definition of shamanism, I didn't
want to obscure their general meaning by
adding hundreds of words of explanation.
Other statements I have added for their
emotional effect: I describe shaman ideas
by choosing words that will offend as many
people as possible a reaction to words
can start a person thinking through a
desire to prove the author is talking
obvious nonsense.
Yet, behind the words, the ideas
themselves are the fundamental core of
shamanism, I just hope shamans from other
traditions will still be able to recognize
their own ideas after I have reduced them
to their essential meaning! If you ask a
bunch of shamans what a shaman is, you will
get a bunch of answers. I am trying to
condense the essence all of those answers to
a common core.
I also hope to show you a way of looking
at things that you may find helpful. A
viewpoint that is not just a way of looking
at shamanism, but one that may increase the
peace and effectiveness in your life.
I worked as a systems analyst for over 25
years. During most of that time I called
myself a shaman. I became aware of how
close and related the study of the nature of
systems is to the study of shaman ideas. That's
why I have chosen this peculiar approach.
However, shamanism isn't an intellectual
exercise: it's a game involving body, mind,
and heart. We base our world on what we have
experienced; it isn't created by logic.
Years ago, Napoleon Hill wrote a book read
by millions called "Think and Grow Rich".
(JW I read that book many years ago and enjoyed
it very much.) If he had known, he would
have written a more useful book called "Feel
and Grow Rich".
Many shamans play a game of developing
power and insight through conflict and control
of personified things (the so-called way of the
warrior). Other shamans act as if power and
insight can best be achieved through love and
cooperation. These shamans de-personify things
and work with the effects of things and
conditions (what I call the way of harmony).
If a person tries to learn about shamanism
by studying what a shaman does, many things
will seem to be inconsistent and illogical,
especially if the person is a product of
Western thought. On the other hand, I have met
shamans (who may or may not call themselves
that) who do not have a clear conscious idea
of the core beliefs of a shaman, but are
successful at applying their own unconscious
core beliefs. Calling yourself a shaman doesn't
make you one. A shaman isn't created by some
sort of "initiation" or recognition or
acknowledgment, or by experiencing some "state
of consciousness".
"Shaman" isn't a title or a state of being, it
is a skill.
What is a Shaman?
Exploration
Thousands of years ago someone looked at his
or her beliefs and reduced them to a few
"self-evident" core beliefs about the world. A
person's world view is the collection of all
the logical (and illogical) extensions of these
self-evident "facts". Mathematicians call this
an "axiomatic system".
The vast majority of these axioms and
extensions are taught to us: some by other
people, some by the "world" we perceive
around us. Some are our own ideas. The
extensions are ideas "about" things, not
"what is".
But in every case we made a choice along
the way to accept or reject them: we are
responsible for who we are.
No one can prove their own axioms to anyone
else if the other person has a different set of
axioms.
With an axiomatic system, by its very nature,
the best that we can hope for is to make it
"internally" consistent and "internally"
complete. In practice, this only works for
relatively limited systems.
When we try to make inferences "external" to
the system, we are no longer in the realm of
logic. This is a frequent problem, since it is
difficult to notice when we are crossing the
edge, we then start questioning the
intelligence of someone who disagrees with us.
Part 1.
John Winston. johnfw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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