Animism is non-hierarchical: no being, species or realm stands above another, and difference is not rank. Hunter-gatherers lived this socially too, with no permanent leaders and an equality they actively protected, and with a relationship to power based on power-from-withinPower-from-within. Starhawk’s term for the healthy mode of power, as against power-over. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands held power this way; practising shamanism from power-over is ‘just more Fall’. More about this rather than power over others. In Therapeutic Shamanism, permanent, institutional hierarchy is seen as a product of domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the Fall: the urge to dominate is older, but for hundreds of thousands of years hunter-gatherers kept it in check.
Is animism hierarchical? #
No. Animism is “a spiritual ‘round table’ where all beings are equal and treated with respect”, and this goes all the way: “Shamanism is an entirely non-hierarchical spirituality and way of looking at the world. It is entirely free of the idea that up is good and down is bad. In shamanism, the Upper-World is not a better place than the Lower-World. God is not superior to Goddess. Humans are not superior to animals. Animals are not superior to plants and stones.”1
Non-hierarchy reaches even to consciousness. Different beings have different kinds of consciousness, not more or less of it, and grading them, with human self-awareness at the top, is “part of our arrogance as humans and the myth of our supremacy.”2 Hierarchical thinking is so deeply ingrained in modern culture that it creeps in without people noticing, and unlearning it takes most people years. See What is animism?
If there is no hierarchy, are all beings the same? #
No. Non-hierarchy does not erase difference. The PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer are very different from one another, in their natures, their gifts and their kinds of consciousness. There is even an order among them, by age: the Stone People are the oldest and wisest, then the Plant People, then the Animal People, with humans last. But that order is family, not rank: “This is not about hierarchy, but about family. It means that we are the children. We are the youngest and least wise of the Peoples, and like children, we need regular guidance and have a lot to learn.”3
Are the gods, the Guides or the larger beings above us? #
Not in the sense of a ruler above a subject. Hunter-gatherers knew of vast beings, but they were not worshipped: “They were to be respected and honoured, but there was no need to worship them. For our ancestors understood that the gods were so far beyond human that they had little if any interest in us.”4
The Guides are wiser than us, and we learn from them, but the relationship is not one of command and obedience. Guides are not “the parking-spot fairy. Nor are they some parent-like figure who makes all the decisions in life for you.” See Is Therapeutic Shamanism a religion or belief system?
Are shamanic lineages and traditions above other ways of learning? #
No, and nor are they below them. Lineages and traditions are human-made, and recent. A lineage reaching back five hundred years is “a recent flash in the pan” for a species some three hundred thousand years old.5 Human teachers and traditions deserve respect, but humans are one People amongst many, and much of what is learnt in shamanic practice comes from the Animal, Plant and Stone People. Knocking traditions off a pedestal and setting them lower would only be hierarchy again; in animism nothing human is put on a pedestal, and nothing human is looked down on either.
How did hunter-gatherers organise themselves without hierarchy? #
By consensus. “There were no permanent leaders or followers in hunter-gatherer communities. Instead, people temporarily took the initiative, or were temporarily assigned authority, by consensus and according to the task at hand.”6 Decisions were reached through respectful discussion amongst Adults, guided by EldersElder (True Elder). The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. More about this. An Elder is someone who once held the Adult role and has stepped back into an advisory and supportive one: “Adults decide and Elders advise.” Age alone did not make someone an Elder, and the powerful matriarch or patriarch who demands respect is coming from “a Taker cult power-over perspective”.7
Many people fear that a society without rulers must be chaotic, but anarchy and anarchism are not the same: “Anarchy is chaos, whereas anarchism is order without top-down government. It is government, but government through the cooperation of people who are truly equal, without the need for hierarchy.” Hunter-gatherer life depended on a high degree of cooperation and order, and it was achieved from the bottom up, not imposed from above.
Was hunter-gatherer equality simply natural, or was it protected? #
It was protected. “Hunter-gatherers did not just practise and embody genuine equality, they fiercely protected it, too.” The anthropologist Christopher Boehm described the “reverse dominance hierarchies” that kept anyone from taking power: first teasing anyone who tried to dominate, then ridicule and shaming, then refusing to cooperate, and ultimately casting the person out.8 This is not to sanitise them: “Although they were not warlike, hunter-gatherers were not pacifists, either.” Any attempt to dominate threatened the cooperation on which everyone’s lives depended, and was treated as an attack.
Were there exceptions? #
Very few, and they are revealing. Many people picture tribes ruled by chiefs because they are thinking of agricultural tribal societies, which are very different from hunter-gatherer ones. The anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon presented the Yanomami of the Amazon as typical violent hunter-gatherers, although most of their food came from agriculture and had done for the last few hundred years.9 Hierarchical hunter-gatherer cultures did exist, such as the settled communities of the Pacific North-West coast of America, but they were “very much the exception that proves the rule. Which is why, when anthropologists use the term ‘hunter-gatherers’ unmodified, they are referring to the egalitarian, band varieties.”
What is power-from-within? #
It is the healthy relationship to power on which hunter-gatherer life rested. The term comes from the writer Starhawk, who contrasted modern ‘power-over’ and ‘powerlessness’ with ‘power-from-within’. Someone who has power-from-within has no wish to have power over others, nor are they willing to hand their power to others.10
It was grown from childhood. Hunter-gatherer children were raised without physical punishment, with trust, respect and kindness, and adults showed great respect for one another’s autonomy: “They did not tell other people what to do, and rarely would offer unsolicited advice.”
Why does power-over matter in shamanic healing? #
Because it repeats the problem it is meant to heal. Psychotherapy has learnt much about healthy power dynamics, and in Therapeutic Shamanism “when doing any kind of healing work for anyone else, the aim is always to seek to help empower the other person, and never to disempower them.”11 Practitioners should resist the temptation to be the expert and tell people how to live: “doing that is just more Fall! It keeps people in a disempowered place.”12
Where did hierarchy come from? #
Permanent hierarchy came with domestication and the Fall. The urge to dominate is far older, which is why hunter-gatherers had to protect their equality so fiercely, but it was kept in check for hundreds of thousands of years. The break from the animist way of life began with domestication and the Neolithic, from around 11,000 to 10,000 BC, and accelerated with the rise of the first city-states from around 4000 BC (see What is the Fall?). With them came the sky religionsSky-religion. The vertical, hierarchical reordering of the sacred that the Fall installed, governed by the spell ‘up is good, down is bad’: transcend the body, escape matter, purify upward. The conditioning Therapeutic Shamanism works to undo. More about this, which “are deeply rooted in a hierarchical world view”, with God at the top of the pyramid and the emperor as God’s living embodiment.13 For the first time, “we not only hand power to the psychopaths, but give them free rein”.14 Today’s dominant Taker society “is a hierarchy run by charismatic leaders (often by narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths).”15 Hierarchical institutions disempower most of the people in them, and that “is not good for the Soul.”
Is the “Power” in Power-loss the same as power over others? #
No. In shamanic usage, “By ‘power’, here, what shamans mean is essentially ‘life-force’.” Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer “is caused by disconnecting from the natural world; by cutting oneself off from Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this.”16 It is not the same thing as the loss of personal power. A Power Animal is so called because it reconnects us to that life-force, not because it gives us power over anything. See What is Power-loss?
Is the ego the problem? #
No, not in itself. In Therapeutic Shamanism the ego is the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer, the part that tells us and others stories about who we are, and it has its rightful place.17 The problem is an ego that has put itself above nature. The Fall is characterised by the rise of egocentricity, and wetiko, the spirit at the heart of Taker culture, works the same way: “Wetiko tells the host that they are above nature, not part of nature. It elevates the ego.”18 Animists, by contrast, “experience themselves as being part of nature, not in any way separate from it.”19
