Neo-shamanism usually means the modern Western revival of shamanic practice, much of it eclectic, blending elements from different traditions with other beliefs; some scholars also use the word for new forms of shamanism arising within traditionally shamanic cultures. Traditional shamanism is rooted in a particular people, place and lineage, and practised by someone their own community recognises as a shaman. Therapeutic Shamanism is openly a new, adapted shamanism, but not the eclectic kind, since it borrows no culture’s practices and is grounded in original animism.
What does ‘neo-shamanism’ mean? #
The word has more than one meaning. The shamanic teacher and writer Christina Pratt notes that its definition is in flux. Most often it refers to contemporary Westerners blending elements of different shamanic traditions with elements of other belief systems, to make a new set of beliefs, rituals and practices; the shaman becomes an idealised metaphor rather than a practising shaman, and practitioners do not try to avoid appropriating rituals from existing shamanic cultures. In that sense, she argues, neo-shamanism is not really part of contemporary shamanism at all, because it does not involve a shaman. Some scholars use the same word for the revival of shamanism inside traditionally shamanic cultures, where it takes new forms; in that sense it is part of contemporary shamanism, since it is the nature of shamanic practices to change over time.1
The researcher Robert Boyle, writing from inside Western shamanic practice, credits the anthropologist Piers Vitebsky with the term and describes neo-shamanism as a movement grown out of environmentalism, popular anthropology and a wish for more open, non-institutional forms of spirituality, in which each person is thought capable of becoming their own shaman, and which has been influenced by popularised Native American ideas such as spirit helpers and helping animals.2
How is core shamanism different? #
Core shamanism, developed by the anthropologist Michael Harner, sets out to use only what is common to shamanic cultures worldwide: the journey, the drum that carries it, and the helping spirits met there. Pratt describes it as a conservative approach, not bound to any one culture, whose responsible practitioners consciously avoid taking or mixing rituals from existing shamanic cultures, and which does not set out to train shamans. She adds that, being an abstraction, it lacks the richness of a traditional practice with its own ritual, costume and mythology.3 Therapeutic Shamanism grew out of core shamanism. See Who was Michael Harner, and what is core shamanism?
What makes shamanism ‘traditional’? #
Roots in a particular people, place and lineage, and recognition by a community. Becoming a shaman in such a culture usually means long, arduous training beginning early in life, and in some tribal cultures it is a hereditary role; a true shaman lives shamanically, in a culture that wholly supports it. ‘Shaman’ is generally not a title someone gives themselves but one bestowed by their tribe or community. Following Harner, Therapeutic Shamanism therefore keeps the word ‘shaman’, as a mark of respect, for people in indigenous cultures, and calls Westerners shamanic practitioners.4
‘Traditional’ does not automatically mean healthy, though. Many of the shamanic cultures that survive are farming or herding peoples, changed to some degree by hierarchy and the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer, though how far varies with how long ago agriculture arrived.5 This is why Therapeutic Shamanism also sorts shamanism by era rather than by age. That teaching is set out in What are pre-Fallen, Fallen and post-Fallen shamanism?
Is Therapeutic Shamanism a form of neo-shamanism? #
In the broad sense, yes, and openly so. Shamans have always taken the core principles and practices of shamanism and adapted them to the environment and times in which they lived, which is why shamanic practice varies so much across the world. Developing a shamanism for the modern world means doing the same thing our ancestors always did, though the challenge now is unprecedented, since most of us live in largely artificial, domesticated surroundings.6 Therapeutic Shamanism is a new shamanism for the present time, offered as suggestions to try, not dogma, under the old shamanic test, “Does it grow corn?”, meaning, in the end, does it work?7
The practices have to keep shifting, or they become an irrelevance with no useful application to the times we live in. Shamanism has no sacred text, no dogma and no creed, so it has never got stuck in that way; like the nature it is rooted in, it keeps evolving and changing. Therapeutic Shamanism owns its newness proudly, as a post-Fallen shamanism that looks back to the Original Instructions and applies them to very changed times. See What are pre-Fallen, Fallen and post-Fallen shamanism?
In the narrower, eclectic sense, no. Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this do not teach techniques that belong only to specific human cultures, and Therapeutic Shamanism adopts no particular people’s ceremonies or regalia.8 It is also critical of the way most Westerners ‘bolt on’ shamanism to their existing beliefs, whether New Age ideas, theism, Celtic or Norse mythology, Druidry or yoga, without questioning the Taker thinking underneath,9 and of practices that are top-heavy, overly ‘light’ and ‘fluffy’, as much New-Age shamanism is.10 Its groundingGrounding. Returning fully into the body and physical reality; the bedrock of safe practice, and how every journey ends. More about this is the animism beneath shamanism, Core AnimismCore Animism. The culture-neutral core of animism: the aspects of animist teaching that are (near-)universal rather than specific to any one culture: the Original Instructions, fierce egalitarianism, respectful right relationship with the other-than-human people, equal respect for the masculine and the feminine, treating all as sacred, living as a Leaver rather than a Taker. The parallel of Michael Harner’s ‘core shamanism’, and its necessary root: shamanism is a branch of animism, so a culture-neutral shamanism has to be grounded in a culture-neutral animism, with no borrowed regalia required. More about this, and not a mixture of borrowed parts. See How is Therapeutic Shamanism different from traditional and core shamanism?
How can a new practice be judged? #
Not by its tradition. A story from an online discussion amongst shamanic practitioners makes the point. One person in it, known for a narrow and rigid definition of shamanism, insisted, “Without a drum, it’s not shamanism.” Another, who had studied with Aboriginal Australians (hunter-gatherers until colonisation, though few live wholly that way now), pointed out that they tend to use the didgeridoo, if anything. The first allowed that a sacred didgeridoo was probably acceptable. The second then described a day with a group of shamans who had no didgeridoo with them and simply drove to a general store ten miles away to buy vacuum-cleaner tubes to use instead. Shamans are highly irreverent in this way. What matters is whether something works and helps, not lineages, traditions, paraphernalia or fixed rituals, which belong to Fallen, hierarchical thinking; shamanic ancestors were always adapting their practice, and a shamanism emerging again today should do the same.
So tradition is not the test of whether a practice is genuine, and being old does not make something authentic: a tradition can be old and still very much a product of the Fall. The test is the old one, “Does it grow corn?”, and an even better question is what kind of corn a practice grows. Fallen shamanic work can still bring real healing, through soul retrieval for example; but if it stays hierarchical, disconnected from nature and the other-than-human, and puts humans at the centre, that is not the corn Therapeutic Shamanism sets out to grow.
Why is neo-shamanism criticised, and how is that answered? #
The main criticism is appropriation. As Boyle reports, the scholar Robert Wallis has called core shamanism ‘Harnerism’, a Western view of what shamanism should be, and so a kind of neo-colonial practice, and the Native American writer Wendy Rose has used the term ‘whiteshamanism’ pejoratively for this kind of practice.11 On the other side, Pratt points out that responsible core practitioners deliberately avoid taking existing cultures’ rituals,3 and that it is in the nature of shamanic practices to change over time.1
Therapeutic Shamanism’s own answer is that calling all modern practice ‘plastic’ confuses ‘traditional’ with ‘authentic’. Many so-called traditions are far younger than people think, what worked in the past may not work now, and in a Spirit-led practice being taught directly by Spirit counts for more than human lineage.12 See What is plastic shamanism? and Is Western shamanism cultural appropriation?
