In a traditional society, if you exhibited “schizophrenic” tendencies, you are immediately drawn out of the pack and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans. You are told: “You are special. Your abilities are very central to the health of our society. You will cure. You will prophesy. You will guide our society in its most fundamental decisions.”
Contrast this with what a person exhibiting schizophrenic activity in our society is told. They’re told: “You don’t fit in. You are becoming a problem. You don’t pull your own weight. You are not of equal worth to the rest of us. You are sick. You have to go to the hospital. You have to be locked up.” – You are on a par with prisoners and lost dogs in our society. So that treatment of schizophrenia makes it incurable.
https://www.wilderutopia.com/performance/literary/terence-mckenna-on-shamanic-schizophrenia-and-cultural-healing/
This is not a thesis article. This topic is so huge that it any address would be insufficient. We attempt, anyway.
In European culture, the figure of the Witch could be said to represent the Shaman’s role. It is notable that the Witch is generally a female, and the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church was responsible for culturally and “literally” (as in, in reality) decimating the life of the sector of society that “see” and “hear” beyond normal boundaries.
The sickness that has developed in the White consciousness is so metastasized and turned in on itself that it is encoded in our language, our societal structures, passed down through epigenetics and trauma bonding. It is extremely rare that anyone who is not living completely “free” can catch even a glimpse of what lay beyond the codes that have been forced upon us since day 1. Can you even imagine what is true beyond what you can name? We are often amused by words in other languages that capture very specific, whether unusual, or extremely common, experiences or concepts. We are familiar with the idea of it being very important to emote and name positive thoughts to children, because a negative influence can snowball into a long-term problem. Chronic negative influences make this even worse. We see this as a vast problem. Alice Miller’s book “For Your Own Good” examines this in detail. Nazi childrearing techniques are an accurate example of how removing compassion and emotional connection from the family unit has caused an extreme amount of damage.
When whites were scattered onto Turtle Island, we did an immense amount of damage because we had already been thoroughly damaged by our own racial history. Today the topic of what happened, and its repercussions, have been at the forefront of many conversations. Yet, the prevailing infrastructures remain, and the opportunities for a white shaman to be honored by the tribe are nil, because we have been overtaken by isolationist control, and because there really isn’t anywhere to go anymore, because most of the land has been taken over. Yes, many live nomadically anyway, in various ways.
There are large factions of new-age practitioners (I use this not as a pejorative) who claim and demonstrate creating their “own realities” where they live lives of spirituality easily. This is not the realm of the shaman. The realm of the shaman is one of deep dive. Some are familiar with Ayahuasca, which I have not done, and which has its own culture, and some advocate against it. “Indeed there are many things.” A shaman is said to go through “initiations,” which can be extremely painful and reduce the psyche and ego to not much of anything, and then come back. Who better to guide others through crises than someone who has been through such crises that others cannot even begin to understand?
We acknowledge past lives, channeling, the power of magic, mind control, the effects of trauma, the effects of love and kindness, that events and consistent intolerable experiences result in breaks of the psyche, that we are all connected in ways we cannot imagine, that our Earth is in danger, that our collective spirit is in danger. Very few can see through the veil of insanity. Most choose not to look.
Normal prescriptions don’t work in cases this deep, especially when so many drugs are in the water making us hazy and lazy.
After generations of brainwashing, who can know what is real? I’ve been seeing and saying for years that something is very wrong in the collective field. I remember out of 2000 kids outside at a high school fire alarm pull I was the only one who wasn’t chatting away, but chose to read instead. It confused me to no end how everyone else could not be concerned with any sort of higher awareness. Whether that makes me “sad” or “contemplative” I do not know. I have experienced great sadness because my embodied experiences have not been what I was “told” I should be experiencing. I feel like a Lost Shaman.
What I have seen is that the dominating culture accepts the “healed” versions of a Shaman, but offers no space for the in-between, for the transition, for the confusion and emotional extreme that has no place to do. My life has been such that I have felt forced to academicize my experience, but there is little that can be done to fit such experiences into a box. With the right training, yes there are eloquent demonstrations. Yet, I remember Castaneda’s Don Juan repeatedly chiding him for having to write everything down. There is no need to write anything down, really. In fact, the written word can be either sacred, or oppression. In this time, which is said to be Kali Yuga according to the Indian information, we are so controlled by and bombarded with the written and the declarative that it is almost impossible to connect with the pure heart. People practice Yoga of all sorts and perhaps that helps a lot.
We still have to be able to navigate the worldly spaces. Such is the job of a Shaman. There must be a way to communicate this in a way where the people understand.
“They always go to the Witch last.”
My lessons as a Witch have been harsh and brutal. I’ve been put into positions where I have used my own Word in ways that have been deplorable, and have to find a way to negate them. Much of this has to do with dismantling old beliefs, and re-instituting new ones. Yet, living in the Web, I am affected by my surroundings. How much power does a person with their consciousness to influence their world? Perhaps much of this is decided before birth, and demonstrated in the natal chart.
No conclusions. We still move forward through the timeline.
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