Is mediumship healthy, from a shamanic point of view?

How are shamanism and mediumship alike, and how are they different? #

They share one thing, in that both accept “the reality of the presence of souls of the dead”. In what they do with the dead, “shamanism and mediumship are very different.”¹

In mediumship “the desire is to converse with the souls of the dead, and maybe even to voluntarily be possessed by them in terms of acting as a channel for them.” In shamanism the aim is the opposite. In hunter-gatherer times “the only interaction with the dead was to make sure they moved over to the afterlife as soon as possible and left the living alone.” A shaman would speak with one of the dead only to help them on, to persuade them to leave the living person they had attached themselves to, or to reassure them on the way to the Land of the DeadLand of the Dead. The middle-world human place where the middle-world self belongs after death. Not the Lower-World, and not hell. More about this. “But shamans do not see the dead as helpful spirits to work with. They are not taken on as guides and teachers. Nor are they kept around.”¹ See What is psychopomping?

Why should the dead move on? #

Because the dead and the living are not good for each other. The aim in shamanism “is always to make sure the dead move on and leave the living alone, because even if there is no malicious intent, the energy of the dead is simply not good for the living to be around.”² So the rule holds for a kindly grandmother as much as for anyone. It is not a verdict on the person who died.

It matters for the dead as well. At death the body returns to the Stone People, and Spirit and Soul are unchanged; 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 everyday identity woven from our stories, roles and beliefs, should pass over to the Land of the Dead and, like every middle-world thing, in time fade away. The unquiet deadUnquiet dead. The middle-world self become ghost: the ego that, having no body left to anchor it, lingers among the living instead of moving on to the Land of the Dead. Unhealthy for the living, and moved on by psychopomping. More about this are middle-world selves that have not passed over.³ One of the reasons they stay is that someone living will not let them go, which “highlights the importance of the living being able to move through the grieving process and then be able to let the dead go.”⁴ See How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand death and what happens when we die?

Are the dead who linger safe to be around? #

Not reliably. In their nature and intentions, the unquiet dead “are as much of a mixed bag as the living are.” Some are lost or frightened and need help. Some are trying to help, though even then they do harm without meaning to. Some are selfish, and some are dangerous and looking for a living body to take over. That is why most of the intelligent spirits involved in possessions are the unquiet dead.⁵ See Who are the unquiet dead, and are ghosts real?

Is talking with the dead the same as working with the Ancestors? #

No, and the difference is central. The ancestors with a small “a” are our individual biological ancestors who have died, our great-grandparents and so on. The AncestorsAncestors. The human Oversoul: the whole of humanity held as one Lower-World being. Distinct from individual dead ancestors (small a), who are not worked with in this approach. Read the full answer with a capital “A” are “something bigger”, not a single twig on the great tree of life but a whole branch, and in the end the Human Oversoul.⁶ A Human Lower-World GuideHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer is the Human OversoulOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this with a human face we can relate to, not an individual who once lived. So Therapeutic Shamanism works with the Ancestors, in the Lower-World, and makes sure the individual dead move on. See What is the difference between an ancestor and an Ancestor?

Where does voluntary possession fit in? #

It sits on the line between the two practices, and people draw that line in different places. In some cultures shamans invite a helpful spirit to take them over for a while, and some people see this as a defining mark of shamanism; some anthropologists, on the other hand, call voluntary possession, especially where the shaman loses all sense of self, “mediumship and not shamanism.”⁷

Therapeutic Shamanism reads it historically. The anthropologist Michael Winkelman found that hunter-gatherer societies generally do not experience possession, and the anthropologists Erika Bourguignon and Thomas Evascu found possession experiences mainly in agricultural societies marked by rank and hierarchy.⁸ So any kind of possession, helpful or not, is taken as “a sign and symptom of a culture being both based on agriculture and hierarchical in nature.”⁷ Hunter-gatherer shamans worked with their guides “but were rarely, if ever, possessed by them”.⁸ See What is possession, and what is de-possession? and Why does Manvir Singh think shamanism is universal?

Is channelling the same thing? #

Not quite, though it raises a similar question. Receiving long passages of words from a spirit is channelling, not Lower-World journeying, because Lower-World journeys are more metaphorical, carried in imagery rather than words. “Channelling has its uses. However, it is much more of a middle-world practice”, and like most middle-world things it usually has “some erroneous thinking mixed in” with whatever is useful, so it needs discernment and “a more critical eye”. That “does not mean there is anything wrong with channelling.”⁹

Why did people start holding on to the dead? #

Because of the Fall. As shamanic cultures began to adopt agriculture and Taker ideas about death, they lost the understanding of why the dead must move on, and the knowledge of how to make sure they did; “we begin to actively try and hold onto the dead, and keep them close to us.” “In turning our back on shamanism, we lost our psychopomps.”¹⁰ At the same time 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 filled people’s heads with fears of hell and damnation, so the dying became afraid of what lay ahead and reluctant to move on. The result is a world filling up with unquiet dead, at the very time 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 had left the living full of the soul-loss and Power-loss that make possession possible. See What did the Fall do to us?

If someone chooses mediumship, is that their business? #

Yes. “If people wish to converse with the souls of the dead, then that is their business and not mine.” The shamanic task is a different one, to meet the dead from “a grounded, assured and calm place”, neither frightened of them nor fascinated by their stories, and to keep the aim of seeing them escorted on. “In short, no ‘woo-woo’!”¹¹ Nobody has to work with the dead at all, either. “Being aware of something, and being the person who deals with it, are not necessarily the same thing at all!”¹²