Why Shamanism and Why Now?
The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching…
—Joseph Campbell
The world of shamanism is awakening. After long being demonized by clergy, diagnosed by psychiatrists, and dismissed by academics, interest in shamanism is thriving.
How could this be? How could a tradition many times older than the pyramids survive in an era of space ships and superconductors? How could humankind’s most ancient healing discipline coexist with modern medicine? And how could spiritual practices that preceded the Bible, Buddha, and Lao Tsu by thousands of years become popular in our Western scientific culture?
Yet such is the case. Once there was serious concern that these ancient practices might be lost forever. Now academic texts pour from printing presses, and there are waiting lists for workshops offering introductions to these “archaic techniques of ecstasy.” What has happened, and why? This explosion of Western interest reflects many factors. Some are cultural, some academic, while others reflect the nature of shamanism and its techniques.
The Opening of the Western Mind
One factor is that Western culture has changed. In our global village, with cultures sloshing into one another, there is widespread interest in non-Western healing and spiritual practices such as yoga and meditation. This love affair with spiritual practices now encompasses traditions from all parts of our shrinking globe. Jewish Kaballah, Christian contemplation, Sufi zikr, and Hindu and Taoist yoga all have their Western devotees. It was surely only a matter of time before this newfound fascination would encompass shamanism.
Another powerful and controversial factor in the opening of the Western mind was psychedelics. Their widespread use in the sixties unleashed experiences of such intensity and impact that they shook the very foundations of society. Suddenly millions of people found themselves blasted into types of experiences and states of consciousness that were, quite literally, beyond their wildest dreams. A Pandora’s box of heavens and hells, highs and lows, trivia and transcendence poured into minds and societies utterly unprepared for any of them. For perhaps the first time in 2,000 years since the Greek Eleusinian mysteries, a significant proportion of a Western culture experienced powerful alternate states of consciousness.
Some of these states were obviously painful and pathological, and they filled blaring newspaper headlines. Yet others were clearly transcendent states that demonstrated to an unsuspecting world the remarkable plasticity of consciousness and the extraordinary range of alternate states available to us. What to make of these states and the drugs that induce them is still an unresolved puzzle for the Western world. However, it was surely inevitable that they would fuel fascination with tribal practitioners who use them in systematic, sacred ways for spirituality and healing.
The Opening of the Academic Mind
Anthropologists have studied shamanism since the birth of their discipline. As we will see, some of those studies were initially ethnocentric and dismissive, but over time became more sympathetic and balanced. Most research was done from a safe academic distance as observers rather than as practitioners. However, beginning in the 1960s, something novel happened; something that would change certain anthropologists, their profession, and their culture in ways none of them could have guessed.
Some anthropologists—such as Barbara Tedlock, Michael Harner, and Larry Peters, together with a few psychologists such as Bradford Keeney—began not just to observe but to learn and practice shamanism themselves. In doing so they began to appreciate the power of its practices, the impact of its experiences, and the potentials of altered states in ways they had not even suspected. For some of them, shamanism went from being an interesting academic study to a compelling personal practice, a practice they sought to share. They did this not only through academic reports but also through popular writings and workshops. This choice immediately consigned them to academic controversy, since a mere whiff of popularization is enough to make many academics sniff in suspicion. So powerful has Michael Harner’s impact been, that he is widely credited with being the prime mover behind the Western popularity of shamanic practices and the birth of so-called “core shamanism” and “neoshamanism.” Personal accounts of his transformation from traditional academic to nontraditional shaman can be found in books such as The Way of the Shaman152 and Higher Wisdom.396
Academia both leads and follows popular trends. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before anthropologists began to sit up, puzzle, and worry over the rising tide of neoshamanism. That puzzlement continues to this day, and we will return to it later. But one clear effect was a born-again interest in researching shamanism.
Other intellectual fields were also affected not only by shamanism but also by the waves of interest in topics such as meditation, yoga, spirituality, and consciousness. Transpersonal psychology was the first new field specifically devoted to the study of such phenomena, and it rapidly spawned transpersonal anthropology and sociology.399 The term transpersonal was chosen to reflect the central importance of experiences in which the sense of self or identity extends beyond (trans) the personality or personal to encompass wider aspects of community, culture, and even cosmos. Such experiences have been highly valued across cultures and centuries. Other fields, such as consciousness studies, the anthropology of consciousness, and research on dreams, visualization, and meditation quickly followed. Consciousness and consciousness-altering disciplines had finally attained academic respectability, and in turn they fostered further interest in shamanism.
There was another academic event, and a very curious one at that, which sparked interest in shamanism. Beginning in 1968, a young anthropology graduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) published a wildly popular series of books claiming to report his years of intensive training under a Yaqui Indian “man of knowledge.”46–48; 67 The student was Carlos Castaneda, soon to be one of the world’s most famous, or infamous, anthropologists. The early books received much acclaim, both popular and professional, and a thesis based on his “research” was awarded a Ph.D. The award has been called UCLA’s worst mistake, because as successive books flowed from the presses, they became increasingly improbable, and their authenticity was definitively skewered by Richard DeMille66; 67 in his books Castaneda’s Journey and The Don Juan Papers. This minor difficulty did little to diminish their popularity, and they continued to provide valued teaching stories for thousands of readers.397 They also continued to inspire interest in shamanism, even though the world and practices Castaneda portrayed have precious little in common with it.
Castaneda remained a reclusive and enigmatic figure till the end. I had the opportunity of meeting him twice, and I even took the training offered by his “witches”—the women who were supposedly his fellow sorcerers and students.74 I found Castaneda to be a powerful and charismatic figure, but the witches’ training offered a curious mélange of body movements that had virtually nothing to do with shamanism.
The Availability of Shamanic Techniques
A final factor contributing to its popularity concerns the availability and nature of some shamanic practices. Interested Westerners no longer have to climb Nepalese mountains or brave Amazon jungles, although surprising numbers do. Most, however, happily settle for a comfortable, nearby hotel where they can enroll in one of the many available neoshamanic workshops.
The speed of some shamanic techniques helps. Disciplines such as meditation or yoga may be powerful but can require weeks or months of practice to induce palpable effects. Not so for shamanism. Some people with no prior training can walk into a workshop and, within minutes of listening to shamanic drumming, experience meaningful visions and insights.
Of course, initial workshop experiences are very different from traditional mastery that can require many years of arduous training and testing. In fact, there is debate about whether brief workshops for Westerners should even be called “shamanic training.” Nevertheless, the net result of these cultural, academic, and shamanic currents is that the West’s newfound fascination with shamanism continues to grow.