Thursday 31 March 2011
Shamanism and mental health
I have a hunch that certain forms of mental health are shamanic potential frustrated.
Reading Mircea Eliade's text Shamanism suggested to me that many with the shamanic potential have some kind of cracking or psychological breakdown, often around the age of twenty. He suggests that this cracking of the daily personality is what creates the space for the opening to a strong connection with non-material aliveness, and that this capacity to connect strongly with both daily life and spiritual energy is one of the primary characteristics of the shaman.
The shaman self-heals, or is recognised by elders as a potential shaman beginning his or her initiation - the psychological cracking is the beginning of the initiation in shamanic cultures, he suggests. Those elders, recognising the nature of the cracking, take the young shaman under their wing and provide training for perhaps five years. The training heals. The sense of purpose and direction heals. The trained shaman then protects the wellbeing of the community.
It is all about wellbeing.
Here are some quotes from Eliade
"But the primitive magician, the medicine man or the shaman is not only a sick man; he is, above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself. Often when the shaman's or medicine man's vocation is revealed through an illness or an epileptoid attack, the initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure. The famous Yakut shaman Tusput (that is, 'fallen from the sky') had been ill at the age of twenty; he began to sing, and felt better... At sixty... "if necessary, he can drum, dance, jump all night." But he needed to shamanize; if he went for a long time without doing so, he did not feel well." -p27-8
"Sternberg also observes that the election of a shaman is manifested by a comparatively serious illness, usually coincidental with the onset of sexual maturity. But the future shaman is cured in the end, with the help of the same spirits that will later become his tutelaries and helpers... the illness is only a sign of election, and proves to be temporary." -p28
"There is always a cure, a control, an equilibrium brought about by the actual practice of shamanism." -p29
"For the Yakut, the perfect shaman 'must be serious, possess tact, be able to convince his neighbours; above all, he must not be presumptuous, proud, ill-tempered. One must feel an inner force in him that does not offend yet is conscious of its power.'" -p29
Eliade emphasises that in shamanic cultures, mental illness is not automatically an indicator of shamanic emergence - mental illness as mental illness also exists and the difference is clearly recognised.
"According to Kai Donner, 'it can be maintaine that among the Samoyed, the Ostyak, and certain other tribes, the shaman is usually healthy and that, intellectually, he is often above his milieu.' Among the Buryat the shamans are the principal guardians of the rich oral heroic literature.... Among the Kazak Kirgiz the baqca, "singer, poet, musician, diviner, priest and doctor, appears to be the guardian of religious and popular traditions, preserver of legends several centuries old." p30
"As for the Sudanese tribes studied by Nadel: 'no shaman is, in everyday life, an 'abnormal' individual, a neurotic, or a paranoiac; if he were, he would be classed as a lunatic, not respected as a priest. Nor finally can shamanism be correlated with incipient or latent abnormality; I recorded no case of a shaman whose professional hysteria deteriorated into serious mental disorder.' In Australia matters are even clearer: medicine men are expected to be, and usually are, perfectly healthy and normal." p31
"More or less pathological sickness, dreams, and ecstasies are, as we have seen, so many means of reaching the condition of shaman. Sometimes these singular experiences signify no more than a 'choice' from above and merely prepare the candidate for new revelations. But usually sickness, dreams and ecstasies in themselves constitute an initiation; that is, they transform the profane, pre-'choice' individual into a technician of the sacred." p33
Reading Mircea Eliade's text Shamanism suggested to me that many with the shamanic potential have some kind of cracking or psychological breakdown, often around the age of twenty. He suggests that this cracking of the daily personality is what creates the space for the opening to a strong connection with non-material aliveness, and that this capacity to connect strongly with both daily life and spiritual energy is one of the primary characteristics of the shaman.
The shaman self-heals, or is recognised by elders as a potential shaman beginning his or her initiation - the psychological cracking is the beginning of the initiation in shamanic cultures, he suggests. Those elders, recognising the nature of the cracking, take the young shaman under their wing and provide training for perhaps five years. The training heals. The sense of purpose and direction heals. The trained shaman then protects the wellbeing of the community.
It is all about wellbeing.
Here are some quotes from Eliade
"Sternberg also observes that the election of a shaman is manifested by a comparatively serious illness, usually coincidental with the onset of sexual maturity. But the future shaman is cured in the end, with the help of the same spirits that will later become his tutelaries and helpers... the illness is only a sign of election, and proves to be temporary." -p28
"There is always a cure, a control, an equilibrium brought about by the actual practice of shamanism." -p29
"For the Yakut, the perfect shaman 'must be serious, possess tact, be able to convince his neighbours; above all, he must not be presumptuous, proud, ill-tempered. One must feel an inner force in him that does not offend yet is conscious of its power.'" -p29
Eliade emphasises that in shamanic cultures, mental illness is not automatically an indicator of shamanic emergence - mental illness as mental illness also exists and the difference is clearly recognised.
"According to Kai Donner, 'it can be maintaine that among the Samoyed, the Ostyak, and certain other tribes, the shaman is usually healthy and that, intellectually, he is often above his milieu.' Among the Buryat the shamans are the principal guardians of the rich oral heroic literature.... Among the Kazak Kirgiz the baqca, "singer, poet, musician, diviner, priest and doctor, appears to be the guardian of religious and popular traditions, preserver of legends several centuries old." p30
"As for the Sudanese tribes studied by Nadel: 'no shaman is, in everyday life, an 'abnormal' individual, a neurotic, or a paranoiac; if he were, he would be classed as a lunatic, not respected as a priest. Nor finally can shamanism be correlated with incipient or latent abnormality; I recorded no case of a shaman whose professional hysteria deteriorated into serious mental disorder.' In Australia matters are even clearer: medicine men are expected to be, and usually are, perfectly healthy and normal." p31
"More or less pathological sickness, dreams, and ecstasies are, as we have seen, so many means of reaching the condition of shaman. Sometimes these singular experiences signify no more than a 'choice' from above and merely prepare the candidate for new revelations. But usually sickness, dreams and ecstasies in themselves constitute an initiation; that is, they transform the profane, pre-'choice' individual into a technician of the sacred." p33
Wednesday 30 March 2011
The role of the contemporary social shaman
I'm not sure Shamanism is the right word. It evokes images of pan pipes and feathers in hair.
But here's the thing.
There's a role our culture has kind of lost, and I think we need it.
The role of the shaman. I figured it out in 2009.
In this blog I'd like to explore what the role of the shaman might be now.
They hold the rituals - whatever the rituals might be. That's for exploring. They hold the knowledge and expertise.
But the role is broader, I'm thinking. Shamans help people flourish in their life stage, and transition between life stages. They offer support, I guess, for personal, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
What does it mean to transition from youth into adulthood, and how do you do that well? How does your identity change, what clarity of purpose do you need to find, and what rites of passage help you make sense of your changing life?
Ditto with the transition of adulthood to eldership. What is the role of the elder? How do you be a good elder? What do you need to let go of and open up to?
The Shaman would potentially hold something like workshops in which people make sense of this stuff together, and then hold the rituals by which we make our rites of passage.
Questions about money start rattling around. What is the economic model for life as a shaman?
There are lots of people. People make transitions all the time.
If you could create workshops that were plugged in, relevant and popular enough, you could potentially be offering workshops all the time. You could charge for them and make a living. My yoga teacher Alaric runs classes at about £15 for 2 hours. He also runs three retreats a year. He makes a living that way.
How many people could be prepared to pay for this sort of thing, and how much? I guess these are questions about the personal development and spiritual development market.
My instinct is towards professionalising shamanism, in time.
Alaric is solely a yoga teacher, that is, he doesn't prop up his income with other work. He won't teach a class for less than £50/hour, and railes against pricing models that keep yoga teaching in the preserves of middle aged women who are supported by their husbands. Yoga teaching and practice is his career, he's damn good at it, he has a large following and earns what seems like a perfectly comfortable living from it.
To be a Rabbi or a vicar is a profession; that's what you do, and there's an economic model to support it. Thought I don't know what they are.
Where do Rabbi's and vicars' pay come from?
But here's the thing.
There's a role our culture has kind of lost, and I think we need it.
The role of the shaman. I figured it out in 2009.
In this blog I'd like to explore what the role of the shaman might be now.
They hold the rituals - whatever the rituals might be. That's for exploring. They hold the knowledge and expertise.
But the role is broader, I'm thinking. Shamans help people flourish in their life stage, and transition between life stages. They offer support, I guess, for personal, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
What does it mean to transition from youth into adulthood, and how do you do that well? How does your identity change, what clarity of purpose do you need to find, and what rites of passage help you make sense of your changing life?
Ditto with the transition of adulthood to eldership. What is the role of the elder? How do you be a good elder? What do you need to let go of and open up to?
The Shaman would potentially hold something like workshops in which people make sense of this stuff together, and then hold the rituals by which we make our rites of passage.
Questions about money start rattling around. What is the economic model for life as a shaman?
There are lots of people. People make transitions all the time.
If you could create workshops that were plugged in, relevant and popular enough, you could potentially be offering workshops all the time. You could charge for them and make a living. My yoga teacher Alaric runs classes at about £15 for 2 hours. He also runs three retreats a year. He makes a living that way.
How many people could be prepared to pay for this sort of thing, and how much? I guess these are questions about the personal development and spiritual development market.
My instinct is towards professionalising shamanism, in time.
Alaric is solely a yoga teacher, that is, he doesn't prop up his income with other work. He won't teach a class for less than £50/hour, and railes against pricing models that keep yoga teaching in the preserves of middle aged women who are supported by their husbands. Yoga teaching and practice is his career, he's damn good at it, he has a large following and earns what seems like a perfectly comfortable living from it.
To be a Rabbi or a vicar is a profession; that's what you do, and there's an economic model to support it. Thought I don't know what they are.
Where do Rabbi's and vicars' pay come from?
Friday 18 March 2011
End of summer ritual
I was on the plane back from France.
It was the last day of August.
I realised the long summer was ending and a new season, a new lifestyle, a different set of goals and a new place were about to start.
I need to mark it somehow, I thought to myself. I wonder how.
Fags and beer! Fags and beer! Myself said back.
Ok, I thought, but maybe there's a better way.
Of bringing something to a close, and creating good seeds for the entering of a new phase.
I settled on burial for closure, and planting for the new phase.
So I started with a candle lit bath, when I got home, in which I sifted through all my memories of the summer like a 3D slide projector with full sound, colour and maybe even smells.
By the end of the bath I was full of the summer and full of good stuff.
I dressed and took a leaf that I had picked from the top of a tall oak tree for Michael. We had six months apart last year and took to writing letters and putting things in them, things like leaves you pick from the top of a tree you're climbing.
So that leaf was a bit precious. It was from a special moment in a special place and it was bound for a special person. And instead I was going to give it as an offering.
I like this practice of other cultures of making offerings, offerings to patcha mama, a gift of some sort when you arrive in the city to get you in favour with the 'gods' of the place, so I'm trying to figure out how to actually do that. I think it counts to give actual things to actual people, but sometimes there's making a symbolic offering to something non-human, something like the earth, something that is part of the bigger aliveness we live with.
So trying not to attract attention to the security men in the large block of flats I lived in, I went downstairs and out into the little garden shrouded in night, with a spoon and my leaf and I think some sage, and myself full of memories and feelings of the summer.
I found me a little bush where I'd be protected from view, and gently dug a little grave for the summer in the soft earth. Then I simply put the leaf in the earth, at once laying the summer to rest and giving a gift of thanks. I laid the soft earth on top, lit a little sage leaf and quietly watched it smoke, feeling the summer gently close.
I went back upstairs and into a warm and contented sleep.
...
I was then homeless for a bit so didn't plant a plant as I'd intended because I couldn't look after it. I didn't do anything, and the next season was ok, but it wasn't really properly kicked off. That's ok.
I really liked doing that.
It was the last day of August.
I realised the long summer was ending and a new season, a new lifestyle, a different set of goals and a new place were about to start.
I need to mark it somehow, I thought to myself. I wonder how.
Fags and beer! Fags and beer! Myself said back.
Ok, I thought, but maybe there's a better way.
Of bringing something to a close, and creating good seeds for the entering of a new phase.
I settled on burial for closure, and planting for the new phase.
So I started with a candle lit bath, when I got home, in which I sifted through all my memories of the summer like a 3D slide projector with full sound, colour and maybe even smells.
By the end of the bath I was full of the summer and full of good stuff.
I dressed and took a leaf that I had picked from the top of a tall oak tree for Michael. We had six months apart last year and took to writing letters and putting things in them, things like leaves you pick from the top of a tree you're climbing.
So that leaf was a bit precious. It was from a special moment in a special place and it was bound for a special person. And instead I was going to give it as an offering.
I like this practice of other cultures of making offerings, offerings to patcha mama, a gift of some sort when you arrive in the city to get you in favour with the 'gods' of the place, so I'm trying to figure out how to actually do that. I think it counts to give actual things to actual people, but sometimes there's making a symbolic offering to something non-human, something like the earth, something that is part of the bigger aliveness we live with.
So trying not to attract attention to the security men in the large block of flats I lived in, I went downstairs and out into the little garden shrouded in night, with a spoon and my leaf and I think some sage, and myself full of memories and feelings of the summer.
I found me a little bush where I'd be protected from view, and gently dug a little grave for the summer in the soft earth. Then I simply put the leaf in the earth, at once laying the summer to rest and giving a gift of thanks. I laid the soft earth on top, lit a little sage leaf and quietly watched it smoke, feeling the summer gently close.
I went back upstairs and into a warm and contented sleep.
...
I was then homeless for a bit so didn't plant a plant as I'd intended because I couldn't look after it. I didn't do anything, and the next season was ok, but it wasn't really properly kicked off. That's ok.
I really liked doing that.
Monday 14 March 2011
New Years Ritual
My friends and I made up a ritual for our new years party this year.
It's really influenced by what happens on New Years Yoga retreats with my teacher Alaric Newcombe.
Here's what we did.
Reflection
We were closing off one year and creating space for the start of the next.
A few days before the party, in the downtime we created between Christmas and New Year, we made some time to ask ourselves some simple questions. Those of us who wanted more depth got help from Chris Gillebeau. But basically we asked ourselves:
What went well this year?
What went less well?
What are we glad of in this year?
What do we want to leave behind in this year and not take with us into the next?
What do we want to create space for in the new year? What do we hope will emerge?
That created the fodder for the ritual elements we folded into the party.
1. Marking gladness
On new years eve we gathered things to represent what we were were glad of. I don't know what anyone else gathered or made. We kept things private. I walked around the winter garden gathering one thing for everything I was glad of. A bunch of red berries for Michael. Some pretty white things for my job. Ivy leaves for my health. A big bunch of winter sage for my friends. And so on. Somehow I even found myself gathering things in gladness of the still-healthy atmosphere, the water cycle, the natural systems I barely ever think about and totally depend on for life.
By the end I had a pretty big winter bouquet bound in long grasses. It looked beautiful and felt kind of brimming with how nice it felt to dwell on all that I love.
We went to the sea, spaced out along the shore and took our time. We gave the things we were glad of to the sea.
Like a little offering somehow.
Like something to recognise that we have a 50-50 relationship with life. Some things we make happen, and some things happen to us, stuff like our births, our gender, our names, people we meet, important stuff like that sometimes and sometimes smaller stuff. So I guess that was a way to mark our gladness and bring it to the front of our minds, and also it was a way to say hi to the chaos that we're always dancing with, whether you want to call if chaos, or life, or god, or whatever. I've come to call it the Rivermaker; that which makes rivers. And a way to say thank you.
After that we took all the time we needed to stand and look at the sea and think and feel anything.
Then we gathered and went for a walk and came home and cooked up a feast.
...
Then we feasted and drank copiously and laughed uproariously and jabbered and generally had fun.
2. Letting go of the things that weren't that useful this year
At about 11 we lit the fire that had been made in the back garden earlier, slicing up turf and laying it aside for replacement the next day.
Then we took a little time to privately write on pieces of paper all the things that we wanted to leave behind in 2011, and fold them up.
When Alaric does this, he does it with a load of sober yogis who've been doing deep spiritual and physical practice together for four or five days. He gets us in a circle and gets us singing a really simple chant of some sort, and when anyone is ready they get up and go to the log burner and burn what they're letting go of and watch it burn. And he instructs the group to give this person their attention, energy and support while we chant.
I'd wanted to create something similar around our garden fire and somehow what actually happened is that suddenly it was five minutes to twelve and we were hopping around drunkenly going 'holy shit!' it's almost midnight! Burn things! Burn them! And we all jumped in and threw things in the fire and looked at each others and talked and laughed about them and sometimes tried to stop people burning things by saying "but I like that about you! Don't be perfect..." And then suddenly is was midnight and we popped champagne and crossed arms and sang auld lang sine at the tops of our merry voices and fireworks went off in the gardens of lots of neighbours and it was great.
3. Welcoming our hopes
After a little while it felt like time. We each grappled with and finally lit a big white flying lantern and watched it float, with our hopes and dreams and simple wishes for the year, up into the sky.
The coolest thing of all was that this seems to be The Thing that people do now at new years because the sky was full of these things. Hundreds of people across the town setting off candles into the sky in the start of the brand new year and we couldn't help but gawp at that black sky full of wobbly floaty little flames and feel that the sky was full of hope, our hope mingling with everyone else's.
Gradually we went inside and drank more and played games and did ridiculous things until collapsing into bed about 4.
I had given it really careful thought and talked a lot with people about it beforehand because I wasn't sure that the stuff of a yoga retreat, led by a respected teacher, would work in a regular party. Indeed, when I sent out the email with fuller preparation guidelines to the guest list a lot of the people - tellingly all of the people who I hadn't discussed it with personally - made their excuses and pulled out.
We nearly cancelled the party and I'm So Glad we didn't because what we found was that adding ritual elements to a regular party made it more fun, more personal, more good-natured, wove in some meaning and personal tenderness with the funny rombustuousness of a regular party. I'll do it again :)
It's really influenced by what happens on New Years Yoga retreats with my teacher Alaric Newcombe.
Here's what we did.
Reflection
We were closing off one year and creating space for the start of the next.
A few days before the party, in the downtime we created between Christmas and New Year, we made some time to ask ourselves some simple questions. Those of us who wanted more depth got help from Chris Gillebeau. But basically we asked ourselves:
What went well this year?
What went less well?
What are we glad of in this year?
What do we want to leave behind in this year and not take with us into the next?
What do we want to create space for in the new year? What do we hope will emerge?
That created the fodder for the ritual elements we folded into the party.
1. Marking gladness
On new years eve we gathered things to represent what we were were glad of. I don't know what anyone else gathered or made. We kept things private. I walked around the winter garden gathering one thing for everything I was glad of. A bunch of red berries for Michael. Some pretty white things for my job. Ivy leaves for my health. A big bunch of winter sage for my friends. And so on. Somehow I even found myself gathering things in gladness of the still-healthy atmosphere, the water cycle, the natural systems I barely ever think about and totally depend on for life.
By the end I had a pretty big winter bouquet bound in long grasses. It looked beautiful and felt kind of brimming with how nice it felt to dwell on all that I love.
We went to the sea, spaced out along the shore and took our time. We gave the things we were glad of to the sea.
Like a little offering somehow.
Like something to recognise that we have a 50-50 relationship with life. Some things we make happen, and some things happen to us, stuff like our births, our gender, our names, people we meet, important stuff like that sometimes and sometimes smaller stuff. So I guess that was a way to mark our gladness and bring it to the front of our minds, and also it was a way to say hi to the chaos that we're always dancing with, whether you want to call if chaos, or life, or god, or whatever. I've come to call it the Rivermaker; that which makes rivers. And a way to say thank you.
After that we took all the time we needed to stand and look at the sea and think and feel anything.
Then we gathered and went for a walk and came home and cooked up a feast.
...
Then we feasted and drank copiously and laughed uproariously and jabbered and generally had fun.
2. Letting go of the things that weren't that useful this year
At about 11 we lit the fire that had been made in the back garden earlier, slicing up turf and laying it aside for replacement the next day.
Then we took a little time to privately write on pieces of paper all the things that we wanted to leave behind in 2011, and fold them up.
When Alaric does this, he does it with a load of sober yogis who've been doing deep spiritual and physical practice together for four or five days. He gets us in a circle and gets us singing a really simple chant of some sort, and when anyone is ready they get up and go to the log burner and burn what they're letting go of and watch it burn. And he instructs the group to give this person their attention, energy and support while we chant.
I'd wanted to create something similar around our garden fire and somehow what actually happened is that suddenly it was five minutes to twelve and we were hopping around drunkenly going 'holy shit!' it's almost midnight! Burn things! Burn them! And we all jumped in and threw things in the fire and looked at each others and talked and laughed about them and sometimes tried to stop people burning things by saying "but I like that about you! Don't be perfect..." And then suddenly is was midnight and we popped champagne and crossed arms and sang auld lang sine at the tops of our merry voices and fireworks went off in the gardens of lots of neighbours and it was great.
3. Welcoming our hopes
After a little while it felt like time. We each grappled with and finally lit a big white flying lantern and watched it float, with our hopes and dreams and simple wishes for the year, up into the sky.
The coolest thing of all was that this seems to be The Thing that people do now at new years because the sky was full of these things. Hundreds of people across the town setting off candles into the sky in the start of the brand new year and we couldn't help but gawp at that black sky full of wobbly floaty little flames and feel that the sky was full of hope, our hope mingling with everyone else's.
Gradually we went inside and drank more and played games and did ridiculous things until collapsing into bed about 4.
I had given it really careful thought and talked a lot with people about it beforehand because I wasn't sure that the stuff of a yoga retreat, led by a respected teacher, would work in a regular party. Indeed, when I sent out the email with fuller preparation guidelines to the guest list a lot of the people - tellingly all of the people who I hadn't discussed it with personally - made their excuses and pulled out.
We nearly cancelled the party and I'm So Glad we didn't because what we found was that adding ritual elements to a regular party made it more fun, more personal, more good-natured, wove in some meaning and personal tenderness with the funny rombustuousness of a regular party. I'll do it again :)
The beginning
For nearly two years I have been professionally researching joy, play, fun and ecstasy for a company called the Fun Fed. The work has taken me deep into the corridors of the British Library, to Brazil, California, Scotland, New York, all over England, and my own back garden.
A strand of insight has emerged that I find utterly compelling.
According to historian Barbara Ehrenreich, western entertainment culture was previously, broadly speaking, 'festivities', and prior to becoming festivities, these activities were 'rituals.'
I currently define 'rituals' as activities which fuse entertainment, arts, community, meaning, healing and spirituality.
These activities were and are often somehow facilitated. Not necessarily in the ways we might expect, not by someone issuing instructions; they could be facilitated by tradition, by everyone knowing what to do and what should happen, by a bunch of local leaders stirring up activity in different parts.
Often rituals are facilitated by an individual and it seems that in many cultures this person is the 'shaman.' Facilitators, men and women who hold the singing, the dancing, the order of 'ceremonies', who are rooted in this world and also, perhaps, have an open connection with the non-material aliveness, and help mediate the community's relationship with this aliveness.
I defined it succinctly in an email recently:
Contemporary: Culturally resonant
Social: Happening in groups
Shamanism: Serving wellbeing, in connection with spirit.
I don't know about medical shamanism. One of the big roles of the shaman is to heal illness by going through trance into the spirit world where he or she will learn the cause of the patient's pain and, then come back to the ordinary plane of consciousness to remedy the problem.
"Plane of consciousness." It sounds terribly out there doesn't it.
It feels quite clear to me. I've been in 'ecstatic' states, states of being dissolved, three or four times in my life and it's clear that these are states in which I am not asleep, I am not dreaming, I am not awake in the normal sense, and I am not dead. I am conscious, but in an altogether different way to the everyday.
These states are rare but they are sometimes part of our human experience and they're recognised by a variety of languages and cultures. And who knows how many different shades of this state there are, or indeed other states. I don't.
So. Medical shamanism aside, I don't know about that, I have no instinct for it. I'm interested in social shamanism, social ritual. Events that bring us together and lift us up and enrich life somehow. And the contemporary version, the kind that works for you and me and everyday people, the kind that is not draped in purple velvet and crystals, or myths that we find no resonance with, but is just kind of of us and with us.
So I presented this thinking to the team and got cautious permission to continue my research in this avenue, but separating it off for now from the main business of the organisation.
So I'm creating a new blog for it where I'll post my notes and document my explorations.
I'm going to start by writing up everything I've been involved with so far that might be called a 'ritual'.
A strand of insight has emerged that I find utterly compelling.
According to historian Barbara Ehrenreich, western entertainment culture was previously, broadly speaking, 'festivities', and prior to becoming festivities, these activities were 'rituals.'
I currently define 'rituals' as activities which fuse entertainment, arts, community, meaning, healing and spirituality.
These activities were and are often somehow facilitated. Not necessarily in the ways we might expect, not by someone issuing instructions; they could be facilitated by tradition, by everyone knowing what to do and what should happen, by a bunch of local leaders stirring up activity in different parts.
Often rituals are facilitated by an individual and it seems that in many cultures this person is the 'shaman.' Facilitators, men and women who hold the singing, the dancing, the order of 'ceremonies', who are rooted in this world and also, perhaps, have an open connection with the non-material aliveness, and help mediate the community's relationship with this aliveness.
I defined it succinctly in an email recently:
Contemporary: Culturally resonant
Social: Happening in groups
Shamanism: Serving wellbeing, in connection with spirit.
I don't know about medical shamanism. One of the big roles of the shaman is to heal illness by going through trance into the spirit world where he or she will learn the cause of the patient's pain and, then come back to the ordinary plane of consciousness to remedy the problem.
"Plane of consciousness." It sounds terribly out there doesn't it.
It feels quite clear to me. I've been in 'ecstatic' states, states of being dissolved, three or four times in my life and it's clear that these are states in which I am not asleep, I am not dreaming, I am not awake in the normal sense, and I am not dead. I am conscious, but in an altogether different way to the everyday.
These states are rare but they are sometimes part of our human experience and they're recognised by a variety of languages and cultures. And who knows how many different shades of this state there are, or indeed other states. I don't.
So. Medical shamanism aside, I don't know about that, I have no instinct for it. I'm interested in social shamanism, social ritual. Events that bring us together and lift us up and enrich life somehow. And the contemporary version, the kind that works for you and me and everyday people, the kind that is not draped in purple velvet and crystals, or myths that we find no resonance with, but is just kind of of us and with us.
So I presented this thinking to the team and got cautious permission to continue my research in this avenue, but separating it off for now from the main business of the organisation.
So I'm creating a new blog for it where I'll post my notes and document my explorations.
I'm going to start by writing up everything I've been involved with so far that might be called a 'ritual'.
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