Since 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, hierarchical religion has been used again and again to justify the power of kings and emperors, patriarchy, the persecution of heretics, witches and shamans, the exploitation of the living world, and the conquest and ‘civilising’ of indigenous peoples. In Therapeutic Shamanism this is seen as the fruit of hierarchical thinking, the idea that ‘up is good and down is bad’, which animism, being non-hierarchical, does not share.
How has spirituality been used to justify domination? #
In many ways, beginning with the Fall. As the first city-states, from around 4000 BC, gave way to empires, “with massive wealth inequality, patriarchy, slavery, huge armies”, they brought with them “the birth of organised religions – 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 – to justify and organise all of this.”1 The messages of these religions suited the new order: “that Father Sun (God) is good and 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 is bad; that spirit is good and that matter is corrupt; that men are good and that women are dirty, unclean, inferior and not to be trusted; that God gave humans (basically, men) the world (including women) to use as they see fit.”2
Their hierarchy in heaven matched the hierarchy on earth. With God at the top of the pyramid and the emperor as God’s living embodiment, “To question the emperor then becomes to question the word of God himself.” So, for the first time in human history, the idea of heresy was born, and with it what followed: “six thousand years of bigotry, intolerance, fanaticism, torture, wars, inquisitions, crusades and terror.”2
Why did domination need a spiritual story? #
Because domination has to be made to seem right, to those who do it and to those it is done to. When we turned away from shamanism, we adopted hierarchical thinking and came to see the 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 as lesser, tainted and even evil, and “We did this in order to justify abandoning hunter-gathering, with its respectful and non-hierarchical relationship with nature, and replacing it with totalitarian agriculture, which is based on dominating, plundering and exploiting the natural world.” The new culture “needed to subjugate, tame and domesticate not just animals and plants but, most importantly, humans”, and the wild, free Lower-World Soul in each of us was a threat to that.3
The idea that ‘up is good and down is bad’ did the work. It is “at the heart of the sky religions”, which “promote, maintain and police” it, and “Adopting this hierarchical thinking then also allows (and justifies) things like mass social inequality, the oppression of sections of society, and the Anthropocene extinction itself.”4 Fear helped too. Ordinary people could no longer be in direct communication with Spirit but had to go through priests, and were told that if they did not do as they were told they would burn in hell, “in order to control people, a major function of the sky religions in the new city-state cultures.”5
How was it used against women? #
As the foundation of patriarchy. With the Fall came “the rise of patriarchy, and the subjugation of women, of half of the human population, justified by the sky-religions’ elevation of ‘god’ and the masculine and denigration of ‘goddess’ and the feminine.”6 The same story of up and down runs underneath it, for from it “flows patriarchy”, which tells us that God is good and Goddess is bad, “and so, that men are good and women are bad.”7 Other groups suffered from the same thinking. In hunter-gatherer cultures homosexuality was usually not an issue, whereas in the warlike city-state cultures, with only a few exceptions, it was ruthlessly persecuted.8 See What are the sacred Masculine and sacred Feminine (Father Sky and Mother Earth)?
How was it used against the living world? #
By putting humans above it. The sky religions “tell us that God is good, and that Goddess is bad; that we can do what we like with the earth; that earthly existence is something to be ‘transcended’.”9 They tell us that animals are further from God than we are, and that to get close to God we must transcend our animal nature and the Earth itself.10 What passes for spirituality in our culture is still “full of stories about how we humans are special”: more spiritually ‘evolved’ than animals, closest to God and made in his image. This “is, from a shamanic point of view, complete and utter nonsense.”11 See What is the myth of human supremacy?
How was it used against shamans and animists? #
By turning the Lower-World into hell and its knowledge into a crime. As the sky religions grew, they told people to cut off from the Lower-World, and Christian priests, for example, taught that the Lower-World was Hell: “It is a terrible lie, one that has caused huge damage not just to us, but has damaged our relationship with the natural world.”12 We are told that the Lower-World “is full of demons and pain, to scare us off from ever venturing there”, and anyone seeking out the Goddess was persecuted, tortured and even murdered (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”, Exodus 22:18), “all in the name of saving them, of course.” Knowledge of how to reach the Lower-World, such as journeying, power-plants, the drum and the rattle and ecstatic dancing, was rooted out, until shamanism in the West was effectively eradicated, “leaving us with a broken lineage that we are only just now beginning to try and repair.”13 See Why have shamans been persecuted, and what happened to shamanism under states and world religions?
How was it used against indigenous peoples? #
As the reason to ‘save’ and ‘civilise’ them. The Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands still live as hunter-gatherers, and Indian law forbids anyone to go within five nautical miles of their island, partly to protect them from diseases to which they have no immunity. In 2018 John Allen Chau, a young American missionary, paid local fishermen to take him there anyway, writing beforehand: “Lord, is this island Satan’s last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?” He was killed on the beach. Afterwards some people argued that the ban on contact should be lifted, so that the Sentinelese could be shown the benefits of the modern world: “This is Taker cult thinking.”14
Usually it has been the indigenous people who died. Across the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Siberia and many other places, colonisation brought massacre, disease and the loss of land on an enormous scale, and ‘civilising’ indigenous people has usually meant killing them and taking their land. Nor is it only history, for such genocide “is still being waged right now.”15
Is religion itself the problem? #
Not in itself. Religious and political beliefs “are not necessarily bad in themselves of course. Many aspects of them can be a positive force in people’s lives.” They can also have a darker side, such as the misogyny, homophobia and persecution of heretics and disbelievers found within most religions, and the same is true of political ideologies, which have led to fascism and political terrorism.16 There are some healthy examples of spirituality and religion in the modern world, although much of it is caught up in “politics, power and money.”17
What does the damage is hierarchical thinking, wherever it appears. The notion that ‘up is good and down is bad’ “is in many ways a spell, a curse even”, reinforced by religions and other social institutions, and breaking it begins with noticing it: “Our recovery can begin with being aware of it and realising that it is simply not true.”18 See How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
Does it still shape us today? #
Yes, often without our noticing. The value judgements of the sky religions are so deeply soaked into our language that most people take them for granted. We speak of a ‘higher’ state of consciousness, of ‘raising’ our vibration, of ‘ascent’ as better than ‘descent’, and of other animals as ‘lower’. “Notice the language here (most people do not).”19 The same stories still shape how we treat the other Peoples, women and anyone who does not fit. Freeing ourselves from them is what deprogrammingDeprogramming. The active work of shaking off Taker-culture conditioning; the companion of rewilding. More about this is for. See What is deprogramming?
