The Wild Mind is our original human nature: the way of being that humans lived for most of our history as hunter-gatherers, free, sensitive, and part of the living world. The Domesticated Mind is what we became when we tamed ourselves to fit the crowded, settled and hierarchical cultures that came with agriculture 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. Therapeutic Shamanism teaches that the Wild Mind is not lost: it is still in us, underneath the layers 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.
Where do these ideas come from? #
From Paul Francis’s teaching on domestication. The Wild Mind and the Domesticated Mind are the main names Therapeutic Shamanism uses for the two. Other words are used too, such as neurowild, for the undomesticated mind, and neurodomesticated or neurotamed, for what passes for normal today. The question is this: what if, instead, we are neurowild, and what passes for normal is neurodomesticated, or neurotamed, or neuromaladaptive, an illness that is the result of domesticating and the Fall?
The idea underneath runs right through Therapeutic Shamanism: “For in order to practice agriculture, there was one species we had to domesticate more than any other. That species is, of course, ourselves.”1 See What is neurodiversity, and how does Therapeutic Shamanism see it?
What is the Wild Mind? #
The part of us that was never tamed. The part of us that is wild and untamed is 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 Soul, our true identity: “a wild, untamed, free and undomesticated being.”2 “It is the untamed and undiminished part of us, free of Taker cult domestication.”3
For most of human history, this was simply how people lived. Hunter-gatherers were like other wild animals: “In the wild, bears live and do what they were evolved to do, and wolves live and do what they were evolved to do too. In the same way, hunter-gatherer humans lived and did what they were evolved to do.”4 Living from the Wild Mind does not mean living without rules or without a social self. Even then, “people in hunter-gatherer tribes had 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 personas too.” The difference was how far the persona had moved away from the real self. See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
What is the Domesticated Mind? #
The mind that has learnt to fit in, at the cost of its wildness. Agriculture brought larger and larger settlements, and with them more rules, laws and ways of keeping order. “The result was we turned ourselves from wild and free hunter-gatherers, into domesticated and tamed beings.”5
That taming asks a great deal of us: “To fit in to our current civilisation we suppress our individuality and curtail our freedom to a degree that is unprecedented in the previous hundreds of thousands of years of human history.”6 It shows in ordinary life: “By contrast, modern humans spend over a dozen years in school being told to sit down and shut up, suppressing the natural instincts of being a child.”7 And it shows in the self we come to believe we are. The persona “becomes who we think we are”, and “Many people in the modern world, even most people, lose sight of their real-self altogether.”8
So the Domesticated Mind is not a type of person. It describes something that has happened to all of us, to different degrees, simply by growing up in this culture. See What does domestication do to us?
When did we become domesticated? #
In two stages, in Therapeutic Shamanism’s account. The first came with the beginning of farming: “The Neolithic era, which started around 11,000 BC, when we began to abandon hunter-gathering and take up agriculture instead, saw the beginning of our domestication.” The second came much later: “This accelerates with The Fall, which began around 4,000 BC with the emergence of city-based cultures, kingdoms, nations and empires.”9 See What is the Fall?
Scientists also speak of human self-domestication, but they usually mean something different and far older. The biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that our species was gradually selected for lower reactive aggression. He suggests this may be linked with the origin of Homo sapiens itself, in which case the process “must already have started before 315,000 years ago.”10 That is an argument about how our temperament evolved, through social life, over hundreds of thousands of years. Therapeutic Shamanism is speaking of something that began only around thirteen thousand years ago, and that is cultural and spiritual as well as physical: the taming of our freedom, our wildness and our relationship with the rest of the living world. The two ideas share a word, and they should not be confused. See Are humans a self-domesticated species?
Was domestication all loss? #
No. “Our domestication has brought us great benefits of course”: modern health care, homes, food, computers and the internet. “But it is also true that all the benefits have come at the cost of our freedom and wildness.” The weighing is left to each person: “Whether you think that the costs of modern life outweigh the benefits, or whether you think that they are worth it, is for you to decide of course.” The point is simpler: “whatever the cost-benefit balance, our domestication of ourselves changed us.”11
Can we return to the Wild Mind? #
Not by going back, but by rewildingRewilding. Recovering the wild, undomesticated Soul: the practical healing work that follows from the Fall diagnosis. We cannot go back, only forward: ancient wisdom for future solutions. Read the full answer. Returning to an age long gone is impossible, “For we have gone too far to return.”12 What is possible is reconnecting with the part of us that was never tamed. If we are to recover our sanity, “then we have to connect back to our true self, underneath the layers of separation and domestication. We have to re-wild our own selves.”13 In Therapeutic Shamanism this is done through relationship: with the Lower-World Soul, with the Animal, Plant and Stone People, and with 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. See Can modern humans recover an animist way of seeing and undo domestication? and What does rewilding Soul mean, and how do we discover our gifts and life direction?
