Western shamanism can involve cultural appropriation, but practising shamanism is not in itself the appropriation of another culture. Therapeutic Shamanism distinguishes the shared animist inheritance of all humans from the particular ceremonies, objects and teachings of individual cultures. Recovering the first does not give us permission to take the second.
What does cultural appropriation mean here? #
Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of another. It is generally regarded as particularly unacceptable when a dominant culture appropriates elements of a minority culture without that culture’s permission. The history of colonial exploitation is part of what makes the issue sensitive.
The concern is a serious one. Appropriation needs to be addressed when it happens, and the issue is highly sensitive, rightly so. Therapeutic Shamanism does not answer the concern by saying that anything spiritual is available for anyone to take. It asks what belongs to a particular culture, and what is part of the deeper inheritance that all humans share.1
Does shamanism belong to one culture? #
Particular practices and beliefs can belong to particular cultures. Shamanism as a whole does not belong exclusively to any one of them. Therapeutic Shamanism understands animism as our shared ancestral inheritance, and shamanism as its practical application. Returning to that inheritance is different from claiming someone else’s ceremonies as our own.
The starting point is core shamanism, developed by the anthropologist Michael Harner from practices that are common or nearly universal across shamanic cultures. The intention is to work with what is shared, without presenting the practice as the tradition of one particular people. This is the foundation on which Therapeutic Shamanism develops its own approach.
The distinction needs both halves. If we only say that particular cultures have their own practices, we can lose sight of the common human inheritance. If we only say that shamanism belongs to everyone, we can lose sight of what has been taken from living cultures. Neither gives a faithful account of the approach.2
Why does Therapeutic Shamanism keep its practice culturally non-specific? #
The approach deliberately avoids basing itself on one indigenous culture. This keeps the practice ‘culture-lite’. It does not mean having no cultural influences at all. The work inevitably has something of a Western European flavour, because that is Paul Francis’s own background.
Instead, the aim is a practice that is relatively culturally non-specific, uncluttered, flexible and adaptable to modern life. Its development comes from practice, experience and teaching from the 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, rather than an attempt to reproduce a particular people’s way of life.
This also means that Therapeutic Shamanism presents itself as a contemporary approach. It is not a claim to teach an indigenous tradition in its entirety. The work is intended to be of practical use in dealing with the challenges we now face.3
Is a Human Lower-World Guide a person from another culture? #
In Therapeutic Shamanism, 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 a face through which we relate to Human, the Human Oversoul. Human is all humans. The Guide is not an individual human being who once lived.
The Guide must have an appearance if we are to relate to them. That appearance may suggest a particular region or culture, because those are the images available to us. Different tribes may have different 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, different branches, but the branches belong to one tree.
Think of the branches of a tree. Individual people are like the twig tips. Following them back brings us to the branch they share. A Human Lower-World Guide is a way of relating to that shared Human, with a face we can recognise and form a relationship with.
So a Guide’s appearance does not establish a cultural lineage. Nor does it turn teaching received in a journey into permission to adopt a living people’s identity, clothing or ceremonies. See What are Human Guides?4
Where would the line be crossed? #
Take a hypothetical practitioner who claims that a Guide comes from a particular region, then adopts that region’s clothing and ritual objects and offers workshops in its shamanism. Learning from books and a journey does not establish that the practitioner has learned the living tradition from its own teachers.
The problem is both appropriation and a misunderstanding of the Guide. A face put on Human is being treated as proof of a specific cultural identity. From there, the practitioner claims authority to teach something they have not actually learned from the people whose practice it is.
By contrast, the Human Lower-World Guide teaches Shamanism, rather than a shamanism owned by one middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer culture: “this teaching from Human belongs to all humans”. That is the basis of the appropriation distinction, rather than a general claim that whatever happens in a journey makes any subsequent borrowing acceptable.5
Does avoiding appropriation mean recreating an ancient culture? #
No. Therapeutic Shamanism seeks a relationship with the animist inheritance of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whilst recognising that we live under very different conditions. The intention is to recover what helps us live in right relationship, rather than copy every outward form of ancestral life.
Nor does it require everyone to follow the same path. There are many approaches, and the teaching here is offered as suggestions to test through experience. The question of cultural appropriation remains part of that work, alongside the question of whether a practice actually helps.
Therapeutic Shamanism explicitly acknowledges the debt owed to indigenous peoples who kept shamanic and animist knowledge alive through the dark times 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 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, and calls them wisdom-keepers. Recovering a shared inheritance includes gratitude for that preservation, rather than treating the knowledge as though no one had kept it alive.6
The concern about appropriation is also different from the charge that a practice is plastic or inauthentic, which is sometimes thrown at people simply for coming to shamanism in a modern way. The concern about taking a living people’s ceremonies is a real one, answered above; being told by others that one’s own direct practice is not proper shamanism does not, and there is no need to give them that power. See What is ‘plastic shamanism’?
Respect for another culture and recovery of our own deep inheritance can belong together. A contemporary practice can acknowledge what it has received and develop a relationship with the living world in the place and time in which it is practised.7
