Plastic Witch Doctor

Methinks some folks are following another popular faith called MONEY

Every so often I will search the great deserts of the Web seeking like minds, and maybe I will come across some page or other involving shamanic or animistic practices, and I will think, "Ah, perhaps something promising here" and then I see the advert for the $600 seminar on some sort of exotic foreign "shamanism" with a picture of a gaudily appareled person with a bunch of mystic geegaws of some sort in front of them, and I lose all faith in humanity. The "shaman" in question was no doubt a former investment banker, judging from their business acumen.

Just so everybody knows up front how I feel: people who teach shamanic practices who charge more than the average working stiff could face parting with, are probably looking at a future incarnation as a Slimy Hellbender if there is any justice in the world. If you do it for the money, I don't want to know what you have to teach because anything you teach is no good. It's like a fat guy teaching a yoga class. There is a very tiny tiny minority of people who are so much in demand that they do have to charge something: for everyone else, if you charge anyone anything for what you know, I hope you get a socially embarrassing and contagious disease.

Also, I understand that people who actually are themselves from a native tradition of some sort maybe should learn their own traditions from their own people.... white suburban people, you don't have that effing tradition.  

This is like rule one: Animism is always rooted in a particular place. If you're not living in the Peruvian jungle, you are not going to be practicing Peruvian jungle ways when you go back home and so probably learning much more than a few basic things from some medicine man chugging Ayuhuasca in the Peruvian jungle isn't going to do you a whole lot of good. There are all sorts of rich New-Age type people trying to learn some mongrelized version of Native American shamanism or Siberian shamanism or something by way of some expensive retreats or whatever - GUESS WHAT, YOU ARE NOT IN EFFING SIBERIA! 

You can try to get in touch with the caribou spirits all you want to in New York City, but it's just not going to work because there ain't no effing caribou in New York City.

Fundamentally, I think that animist practices and ideas should be as freely and as widely disseminated as humanly possible. I don't believe that the basics are that hard, and I don't think you need to or ought to learn these things primarily in an alien tradition. Sure, you can learn all sorts of things from what native and tribal peoples have historically done, borrowing is A-OK in my book as long as you make it local. I hate to tell you, there are no naturally-occurring jaguars or anacondas in Central Park, so an indigenous animism for Manhattan Island is going to look different than an indigenous animism for the Amazon River. Animism is an extremely local thing, it is very much involved with the biological and inanimate community that is actually right there in front of you.

Also fundamentally, if anyone tries to pawn off any form of animism or shamanism on you as some sort of personal development, psychological enhancement or empowerment scheme, run the other way. This is important, so I am going to put little stars around it:
 

 ****No real shaman imagines that he is working for you,

working for your ego, or even working for himself.****

He's not primarily interested in building a bigger better you. If he is interested at all, he is interested in helping you get beyond you. Helping you get over yourself and become a conscious part of the Earth. If you are looking for your own personal development, psychological enhancement or empowerment through this sort of thing, you almost certainly can't handle the truth and should leave this sort of thing alone until you can. 

And what is the truth? That you are very small. Me too. That real progress is dependent on you putting your ego and selfish concerns back in their box and trying to feel the living things around you and what they need. That meaning in life is not something that lives in your head, but in your caring relationships with other living things, many of whom are non-human. That even your own mind is a transpersonal event, in the same way as a local breeze is not separate from the whole atmosphere but a part of it. That any strength you can hope to have in this is not even remotely yours, but comes through the help of your network of "friends", who will not hesitate to take it back the minute you start using it selfishly.

The plastic witch doctors are trying to sell you the same thing that the rest of this plastic society is trying to sell you, a consumer product, a prop for your ego and lifestyle. Don't let anyone sell you this, it was your birthright. Get it back.