In the past few decades, more and more people are getting interested in Shamanism in the Western world and more and more Westerners are practising Shamanism. So this begs the question; is there any difference between how Shamanism is practised in the Western world and how Shamanism is practiced among indigenous Shamanisms. Stay tuned if you want to find out.
So first of all, let’s address terminology. I am using the term Neoshamanism as an umbrella term to define all forms of Shamanism that you find practised by Westerners in the Western world. Forms of transcultural Shamanism, which means they are not related to any specific place. By Neoshamanism I will intend either imported and reinterpreted forms of traditional indigenous Shamanisms or new forms of Shamanisms born in the Western world. On the other hand, when I talk about indigenous Shamanisms, I’m not getting too deep into the term indigenous because, again, we will have a whole video on that as well. But by indigenous Shamanisms I mean those forms of Shamanism that we tend to associate to traditional Shamanisms, practised by indigenous people we will have more videos in the future to explain all these aspects and all these traditions in more details. So, as of yet, please bear with me and allow me to be a bit simplistic when it comes to the use of this terminology so let’s move on now.
I was able to find, in literature, five main differences between the two. So the first trick that we find in Neoshamanism, as opposed to indigenous Shamanisms, is universalisation. Universalisation means that your practice is not local specific any more. So whether you practice your ritual in Italy or in Africa or in France or in the US you’re supposed to get the same exact results. It doesn’t matter, really, whether you are practising your ritual in one specific country and also it doesn’t really matter whether there’s a specific cultural context, which is the reason why this trait of universalisation or universalising is sometimes also called decontextualising because not only does this mean that you can practice the ritual everywhere in the world but also practice is not local specific, not context-specific, and not even cultural specific. So you don’t have to belong to a certain culture or to a certain place or to practice it according to the traditions of one specific place in order for your practice and for your ritual to be effective.
The second one is sometimes called sanitizing, which means, basically, that all the dangers and hazardous aspects of indigenous Shamanism tend to be wiped out in Neoshamanism in the Western world. So, for example, the use of drugs and the use of extreme physical conditions, for example, during initiation or during certain specific rituals are not to be found, really, in Neoshamanism in the West. So these tend to be basically removed so that the practice is “sanitized” as the word itself says.
The third difference is that Neoshamanism and Western Shamans tend to be more interested in the self rather than the community. So this means, for example, that a Western Shaman might perform a ritual or might engage with Shamanism to find inner peace or his or her higher self and even though they often help other people, it is more based on the individual. So whether it be the Shaman himself or herself or the individual you are trying to help so it is more on a one-to-one basis rather than being in charge of the welfare and the health of a community.
The fourth difference is sometimes called romanticising. Often in Western Neoshamanism does the idea of Shamanism itself and of indigenous Shamans, around the world, as these mystical figures, these spiritual beings that are, somehow, transcending the material world and the interest related to the material world. This also translates in the idea that a shamanic practice is mostly or always good. So that when you do your harmonic journeying, for example, you cannot really find anything dangerous and the spirits, that you are going to encounter, are mostly believed to be benevolent and not harmful to the individual who’s doing the shamanic journeying.
The fifth trait is somewhat connected to the fourth one and it is often called, in literature, cultural primitivism. Cultural primitivism is explained by Geertz as follows;
“The main characteristic of cultural primitivism is that the ideal mode of life is thought to be led by contemporary so-called primitive or savage peoples, especially peoples in far-off exotic places. Thus, a basic motivating factor in cultural primitivism is the attraction of the exotic.”
(Geertz, 2003, p39)
You find this idea that there was a golden age, in the past before civilization took over, when people were in harmony, living a better life, basically than the one we are living now. Perhaps more in contact with nature, or more in line with seasonal changes, so it is basically this idea that there was this sort of Golden Age in the past where human beings were living a better life especially from a spiritual point of view. There’s a tendency among Western practitioners to see indigenous Shamanism and indigenous peoples around the world, somehow, leading in that Golden Age, where Things were better and more in harmony with nature and spirituality was more core to the day-to-day life of people. And by doing that, it is somehow locating these indigenous traditions in a place outside of time or at least outside of our contemporary civilized time and age, so that they are still living in that golden era where humankind had not been disconnected by nature and their spirituality, yet. So this is, somehow, a way of seeing civilization, as we know it today, as something that is deteriorating our spiritual lives as well as seeing people, who live by a different social structure, as outside of this negative outlook on life brought about by our contemporary social structure.
A very interesting article which I tend to cite a lot is Johnson’s article Shamanism from Ecuador to Chicago. Johnson talks about all these differences that you find between Neoshamanism, especially in his article, he mentions core Shamanism and indigenous Shamanism of the Shuar from the Ecuadorian region. So that’s why the article is called “Shamanism from Ecuador to Chicago” and basically he explains that Neoshamanism, actually, has a theoretical framework which is what Berger calls radical modernity. So Johnson writes;
“Neo Shamans can be distinguished from Shamans by their reliance on a context of radical modernity. Radical modernity entails: the rationalization of society which relies on universal, standardized conceptions of time and space and the confrontation with a plurality of religions, which leads to a focus on individual agency, choice, ‘needs’ and preference in the religious ‘marketplace’, and an obsession with the ‘self’, subjectivity and reflexivity; the discourse of mobility – individuals are free and capable of converting to any religious system in any place at any time because space is phantasmagoric and dislocated from place – there are not really sacred spaces but rather only sacred states of mind and sacred relationships with abstract deities.”
(Johnson, 1995, p.174)
It’s also important for me to point out that these are not critiques to Western Shamans or Western Neohamanism but, actually, these are just differences that have been pointed out by quite a few scholars in the literature regarding Neoshamanism or transcultural Shamanism or the Shamanism that has been increasingly practised in the Western world and how this manifests. And since, before the advent of Shamanism in the Western world, the main references that scholars had were those belonging to indigenous people, so Siberian Shamanism, Andean Shamanism, Amazonian Shamanism, and so on and so forth.
Of course, when Western Shamanism came to be and became more and more practised, normally we tend to understand things by comparisons and so the first comparison, of course, was the comparison between Western Shamanism and the indigenous forms, that had been already studied by ethnographers and anthropologists. Whereas, in more recent years, you will find more and more studies on different forms of Neohamanism per se, without having to rely on this comparison.
So I hope you like this video. If you have any questions leave them down below in the comment section and I will be happy to reply to them all. If you like this video SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate the notification bells so that you won’t miss anything out, and stay tuned for all the academic fun.
Bye for now.
REFERENCES
Atkinson, J. M. (1992) ‘Shamanisms Today’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 21, pp. 307–330.
Berman, M. (2009) The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Geertz, A. W. (2003) ‘Can we move beyond Primitivism?’, in Olupona, J. K. (ed), Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity, New York, Routledge, pp. 37–70.
Harner, M. (1992) The Way of the Shaman, San Francisco, San Francisco, Harper. [primary source]
Jakobsen, M. D. (1999) Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing, Reprint edition., New York, Berghahn Books.
Johnson, P. C. (1995) ‘Shamanism from Ecuador to Chicago: A Case Study in New Age Ritual Appropriation’, Religion, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 163–178.
Vitebsky, P. (2000) ‘Shamanism’, in Harvey, G. (ed), Indigenous Religions, London, New York, Cassell, pp. 55–67.
Wallis, R. J. (2003) Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans, 1 edition., London, New York, Routledge.