No. In animism the spiritual and the everyday were never two separate worlds, and shamans did not withdraw from society, because part of their role was to keep their tribe healthy and in right relationship, with one another and with the rest of the living world. In Therapeutic Shamanism the idea that being spiritual means standing above the world is seen as a product of the culture that replaced animism, and withdrawing from the world in the name of spirituality as an avoidance of responsibility.
Is spirituality separate from politics? #
Not in animism. Shamans “knew that Spirit and matter are not separate, and that everything is sacred”, and so they did not withdraw from the physical world or renounce human society: “For the role of the shaman was, and still is, to be of service.” Part of that service concerned the life of the tribe as a whole. The shaman stood far enough from the tribe to see its stories for what they are, and close enough to it to help when needed, and “part of the role of the shaman was to shape the stories that make a culture what it is, and in doing so, keep the tribe healthy and on the right path.”1
That bears directly on how a society is run. How a society shares what it has, whether it cares for its weakest members and how it treats the other Peoples all follow from the stories it lives by: “Shamans say that things are as they are because of the stories they tell themselves. Societies are the same. What a society is like is determined by its stories.”2 A spiritual path whose task includes shaping those stories cannot also stand aside from the question of how people live together.
Where does the idea of a spirituality above the world come from? #
From the culture that replaced animism. Wanting to withdraw from the pain of the world is understandable, but “as our dominant culture arose, alongside it (indeed, intrinsic to it) emerged the idea that withdrawing from the world is ‘spiritual’, a more ‘highly evolved’ thing to do.” Nobody in shamanic cultures did this. From a shamanic point of view, telling yourself that the world does not matter and withdrawing from it to concentrate on your own spiritual development is not spiritual at all, but “a psychologically unhealthy avoidance strategy, and a narcissistic avoidance of responsibility.”3
The familiar picture of the spiritual person as someone above everyday concerns comes from the same place. Imagining that shamans kept their distance because ordinary life was beneath them “is a very Taker way of viewing ‘spiritual’ people and their relationship to society”, a sign of how we have been programmed to see Spirit and matter as separate.4 See What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
Have religion and state power always gone together? #
No. They were joined with 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, from around 4000 BC, when the first city-states and then empires arose; the break from animism had begun earlier, with 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 Neolithic. In the new city-states most people lost any meaningful say in how their society was run, and power was kept “by oppression, torture, organised religion and terror”. 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 arose “to both justify and enforce this madness”, with a hierarchy in heaven to match the one on earth: “At the top of the pyramid is God, and the emperor is the living embodiment of God, and so the emperor’s word is the word of God.”5
People became subjects of monarchs and emperors “who rule with the help of the new hierarchical, organised religions”, and ordinary people could no longer be in direct communication with Spirit, but had to go through priests.6 There is more on this in How has spirituality been used to justify domination?
What was the shaman’s place in the life of the tribe? #
Close to the heart of it. “More than anyone else in a tribe, it was the role of the shaman to be the wisdom keeper; to be the person who could keep the tribe on the right path and in right-relationship and advise and guide the tribe when it had strayed from what was healthy.” Losing that role has had a cost: “It really is no coincidence that when we killed off all our shamans, we lost our way.”7
The shaman also spoke for those who have no voice in human affairs. “Part of the role of the shaman was to be the champion and voice of the other Peoples, and to make sure that the humans lived in right relationship with them.”8 And when a society goes astray, the shaman’s task is to see it and say so: “it is, and always has been, the role of the shaman to wake people up, to heal their wounds, and to provide the healthy stories that help people come back to right-relationship.”9
What does animism have to say about how a society is run? #
A lot, because animism is non-hierarchical. Hunter-gatherer bands had no permanent leaders. Decisions were reached by respectful discussion and consensus, and authority was given for a time, according to the task in hand. Many people assume that a society without rulers must be chaotic, but “despite the Taker cult wishing us to believe otherwise, there is a difference between anarchy and anarchism. Anarchy is chaos, whereas anarchism is order without top-down government.”10 Anarchy here is the word in its popular sense; anarchism is order that comes from the bottom up, among people who are truly equal. The fuller account is in How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
The cost of hierarchy is spiritual as well as social. “Hierarchical institutions disempower the majority of the people in them, and there is a wealth of evidence that feeling disempowered leads to things like low self-esteem, anger, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. It is not good for the Soul.”11 There are honourable exceptions, but on the whole, “things like political parties, banks, companies and corporations, organised religions, schools” and the rest of our institutions “are usually based on these unhealthy Taker society thoughts and values.”12 So in Therapeutic Shamanism, looking at how a society is organised is part of understanding why so many of its people are unwell.
Can a political idea possess people? #
In shamanic terms, yes. Some thought-formsThought-form. A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. More about this grow so large and complex that they possess whole communities or sections of society, and “they include things like religions, political ideologies, nationalism, conspiracy theories, and so on.” Politicians sometimes create them without knowing what they are doing in shamanic terms, for example by blaming immigrants or another minority group in order to win votes, and once such a thought-form takes hold it spreads “like a virus, spreading and infecting more and more people.”13
Religious and political beliefs are not necessarily bad in themselves, and many aspects of them can be a positive force in people’s lives. They can also have a darker side, and political ideologies have led to destructive possessions such as fascism and political terrorism. When we turned our backs on shamanism, we lost the people who knew how to deal with possessions on this scale.14 See What is possession, and what is de-possession?
Does Therapeutic Shamanism have a political programme? #
Not a party-political one: the books offer templates and values, not a manifesto. The method is to look back to how healthy hunter-gatherer cultures lived: “If I think, ‘What would the ancestors do?’ or ‘How would this have worked in a hunter-gatherer tribe?’, then things usually fall into place.” The answer is usually there as a healthy template, and “It is then just a question of working out how to apply whatever it is to modern day life.”15 How each person acts on that is for them to find. The ways of being an activist are many, and not all of them are obviously spiritual: “they can include everything from lifestyle choices to campaigning and volunteering.”16
Outer change also needs inner change. Campaigning and changes to how we live will not be enough on their own, because “you cannot have a healthy society if it is full of sick people.” The way we are destroying other species is, from a shamanic point of view, “a spiritual sickness, a sickness of the soul”, so the inner work of healing and the outer work of changing how we live belong together.17 See How does animism respond to eco-despair, and why is activism part of the path?
