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Introduction and Influence (con’t)
[Please
also see: Shamanism - Part 1]
[Please
also see: Shamanism - Part 2]
Shamanism In Contemporary
Medicine
The influence of shamanism in
New Age medicine is significant. As leading American shaman Michael
Harner says, "The burgeoning field of holistic medicine shows a
tremendous amount of experimentation involving the reinvention of many
techniques long practiced in shamanism, such as visualization, altered
states of consciousness, aspects of psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy,
meditation."1
Shamanistic medicine per se
may involve either a traditional approach, which is entirely occult and
opposed to the scientific principles of modern health care, or it may
involve a blending of the techniques of ancient shamanism with modern
science and medicine. In the former, Rolling Thunder observes it is
always true that "the healing comes from the spirit world."2
Concerning the latter, Harner, who has personally trained many orthodox
physicians to accept shamanistic methods into their practice, comments:
In fact, in some hospitals
... visits by native healers are being increasingly encouraged as the
Western medical staff becomes more aware of the benefits produced and
there is no conflict between shamanic practice and modern medical
treatment. Every North or South American Indian shaman I have ever
asked about this matter has agreed there is no competition whatsoever.
Jivaro shamans [into which Harner was initiated] are perfectly willing
to have their patients go to see a missionary doctor, for example....
One day, and I hope it will be soon, a modern version of the shaman
will work side-by-side with orthodox Western physicians. In fact, this
is already starting to take place.3
One example of the
incorporation of shamanistic techniques into modern medical health care
can be found in O. Carl Simonton, Stephanie Matthews-Simonton, and James
Creighton’s Getting Well Again: A Step by Step Self Help Guide to
Overcoming Cancer for Patients and Their Families.4 This
book not only incorporates several shamanistic techniques, it also
encourages patients to contact their own "inner guide" or "power
animal".
Another illustration is the
book by psychologist Dr. Alberto Villoldo and noted parapsychologist Dr.
Stanley Krippner, Healing States: A Journey into the World of
Spiritual Healing and Shamanism.5 They propose the
adoption of a shamanistic worldview, the acceptance of shamanistic
practice, and the integration of shamanism and modern medicine.6
They point out that worldwide only 15 percent to 20 percent of all
people are treated allopathically, and that for over a decade the World
Health Organization has given its blessing to shamanistic and other
pagan systems of medicine.7 Indeed, in the United States, the
AMA has followed the trend.
In 1980 the American
Medical Association revised its code of ethics and gave physicians
permission to consult with, take referrals from, and make referrals to
practitioners without orthodox medical training. This move opened the
way for physicians to initiate some degree of cooperation with
shamans, herbalists, spiritists, homeopaths, and other non-allopathic
practitioners.8
Not surprisingly, then,
shamanistic techniques are now increasingly used at modern medical
health centers. Jeanne Achterberg is associate professor and director of
research and rehabilitation science at the University of Texas Health
Science Center in Dallas. Her text Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and
Modern Medicine reveals how easy it is for modern medical
practitioners to incorporate shamanistic techniques like altered states
of consciousness and visualization into their health-care delivery. But
however else she conceptualizes it, she concedes that the essence of
shamanism is spiritism:
The focus of the shamanic
journeying is on obtaining power or knowledge....
... The shaman is
identified as one who has guardian spirits (also sometimes called
power animals, helping spirits, tutelaries, totems, or fetishes), from
whom power and knowledge is gained....
The shaman, then, is
defined both by practices and intent: Shamanic practice involves the
ability to move in and out of a special state of consciousness, a
notion of a guardian spirit complex and has the purpose of helping
others.9
Many Americans think
shamanistic health practices are "superior" to conventional treatment
because shamanism supposedly not only "cures" health problems but
"properly" aligns them with the environment and universe. In other
words, like ayurveda (Hindu medicine) and other pagan methods, shamanism
at its heart is much more than merely a medical practice; it is a
spiritual quest that seeks to answer fundamental questions about man’s
place and purpose in the world. Because these are questions that gnaw
deeply at the soul of modern man, shamanism is attractive.
Introducing shamanism into
modern medicine is ironic because of its essentially antiscientific
nature, such as its occultism and irrationalism. The following accounts
are typical of the bizarre world of shamanistic "healing" procedures.
(Readers may find some of the following quite offensive.) Shamans will
do such strange things as "placing spirits" in their mouth and sucking
out the "poison" from the body, which is believed to symbolically
represent the person’s illness. Or they may rub a patient’s body with
guinea pigs or gerbils believing that a transfer of the illness takes
place into the hapless creature. Here is an illustration from the
personal experience of Michael Harner (who, remember, is a chairman at
the New York Academy of Sciences):
If the patient has a
harmful power intrusion [causing the illness], the shaman suddenly [occultly]
sees one of the following: voracious or dangerous insects, fanged
serpents, or other reptiles and fish with visible fangs or teeth. He
immediately stops the [occult] journey [that he has been traveling in
his mind or the spirit world] to deal with these intrusive powers....
[T]he sight of one of these creatures... involves a complete certainty
by the shaman that it is eating away or destroying a portion of the
patient’s body. At that moment, one may experience an incredible
revulsion and an awareness that the insect or other creature is evil
and the enemy of the shaman as well as of the patient.... The shaman
must locate the harmful, intrusive powers within the patient. To this
end he uses a divinatory technique. In the absence of taking [the
drug] ayahuasca to [clairvoyantly] see into the patient, the shaman
may use a technique that is something like employing a divining
rod.... By passing his hand a few inches above the body slowly back
and forth, an experienced shaman gets a definite sensation in his hand
when it is over the place where the intrusive power lies. Another
technique is to pass a feather over the patient to pick up any
vibration.
When the shaman senses a
particular location, he calls the two spirit helpers, either silently
or in song, as he shakes his rattle steadily over the patient. When he
clearly sees the helpers approaching in the darkness, with his eyes
still closed he wills them into his mouth. There they will capture and
absorb the power intrusion as he sucks it out of the patient. When he
definitely sees the two in his mouth, he wills all his other spirit
helpers to assist him in the sucking. Now he is ready to begin the
work of abstraction. At the location in the patient’s body where he
has sensed the harmful intrusion, the shaman sucks with all his
might.... The shaman has to be very careful in this process not to
permit the voracious creature he saw from passing through his mouth
and throat into his stomach.... The shaman repeatedly sucks and
"dry-vomits" as many times as necessary. It is important not to
swallow the sucked-out power, but to expel it after each sucking into
the container on the floor or ground. This is done with powerful,
sometimes involuntary, violent wretching [sic] that gives the shaman a
real sense of cleansing, of being emptied of the emotionally
disgusting power that he has extracted. As he removes the power
intrusion from the patient, the shaman may feel engulfed in waves of
extracted power that almost stun him and cause his body to tremble....
He keeps up such cycles of sucking until finally, in passing his hand
back and forth above the patient, he no longer feels any localized
emanations of heat, energy, or vibration.... [T]hen he stops the
sucking process.... Finally, when he is convinced that the patient is
spiritually clean, he shakes his rattle around the patient’s body in a
circular fashion four times to provide a definition of the unity of
the cleansed area, demarcating its boundaries for the spiritual world
[e.g., so that no more evil spirits can enter].10
That such a spectacle can, to
observers, be odd indeed is seen from the following recollection of a
shaman-initiate present at a "healing" ceremony conducted by Peruvian
shaman Don Edwardo Calderon:
The apparent suffering of
my dear friend, whose guts were being sucked and puked out, was hard
to reconcile with the serene sense of love and compassion seeming to
envelop me. I had never participated in a ceremony where the medicine
nauseated so many, yet there was an orderliness about it that defies
description. At one point that night the only sounds I could hear were
various members of the [shaman] circle clearing their throats,
belching or vomiting—an oddly comforting euphony in the desert
darkness.11
One of the most famous North
American Indian shamans who used the sucking method was the late Mormon
leader Essie Parrish, who healed Indian and non-Indian patients. Because
of a vision from her spirit guides that she should reveal her shaman
methods to non-Indians in order to "benefit" them as well, she
cooperated in making the Sucking Doctor film.12
In the Kalahari !Kung Tribe, the shaman "pulls out the sickness with
eerie, earth-shattering screams and howls that show the pain and
difficulty of his healing." This involves the shaman in several hours of
exquisite torment.13
This kind of irrational
"healing" attempts to transfer the patient’s illness in other ways as
well. In the case of Don Calderon:
The act of diagnosis is not
separated from the act of healing, as they are in Western allopathic
medicine. They occur together at the same time.... For example, when
the guinea pig used in diagnosing is rubbed over the areas of the body
associated with the spiritual energy centers, it may manifest physical
symptoms correlating to the problem of the person [denoting the
manifestation or transference of illness]…. [T]he guinea pig makes
externally apparent what may be invisible to the person experiencing
it.14
Finally, if oral spirits,
fanged serpents, sucking out energies, vomiting diseases, and guinea pig
transfers aren’t strange enough, consider the process of "restoring" a
power animal into a person who, for various reasons, has lost it and has
become "sick" as a result. The shaman must descend into the "lower
world" to capture the spirit and return with it clasped in his hands. As
Harner states, he proceeds to "blow" the spirit back into the person’s
body through the chest and head. "Immediately place your cupped hands
containing the guardian spirit on your companion’s breastbone, and blow
with all your strength through your cupped hands to send it into the
chest of your partner.... Forcefully blow again to send any residual
power into the head."15
Now the shaman must assist the client to "dance his animal" in order to
make the spirit feel welcome. This gives "it the reward of experiencing
its movement in material form." The client is instructed to dance with
his animal regularly so that it will remain content and stay within him.16
What practices such as these
have to do with scientific medicine is not clear, to say the least!
Neither is this explained by its shaman promoters or persons in the AMA
who endorse a degree of cooperation with shamans. Unfortunately,
however, many modern scientists and physicians who incorporate aspects
of shamanism in their practices usually redefine its spiritistic
realities in scientific or psychological terms, thereby masking the
occult methods promoted. Dr. Achterberg naturalizes much of shamanism
into supposedly universal laws that function in accordance with
psychodynamics, such as visualization.17
The result is that many people are unaware that they are being treated
with shamanic techniques.
Achterberg, who also
codirects the Professional School of Biofeedback in Dallas, shows how
the use of biofeedback can be related to shamanism: "Biofeedback
involves healing in the imaginary realms and fits well within the rubric
of proverbial healing using the imagination. It contains aspects of
shamanism: Rituals are conducted, the subject goes into an altered state
of consciousness, takes an imaginary journey, and enters into a
territory where healing information is available."18
Other more direct
associations between shamanism and medicine can be seen in dream work,
visualization, and meditation. For example, the therapeutic use of dream
work illustrates one manner by which shamanistic methods are being
incorporated into American culture. Dream work is a component of New Age
medicine, much modern psychotherapy, and also important in shamanism, as
standard texts and periodicals reveal. Numerous modern books on dream
work, including some Christian books, are also ultimately based on
shamanistic techniques and goals. The pagan Senoi dream methods are an
example.19
These shamanistic connections are one reason so many modern texts on
dream work utilize altered states of consciousness and lead to spirit
contact. It is also significant that within the shamanistic tradition,
visualization and the directed use of the imagination may lead to spirit
contact and even possession. In other words, spontaneous spirit contact
results from what appears to be an entirely neutral technique.20
To summarize, hundreds if not
thousands of health-care practitioners are experimenting with
shamanistic techniques. Some are even using them on their patients
without patients’ knowledge. Shamanism is also being camouflaged by a
"scientific" reclassification of its characteristics, with even the
spirits being redefined into neutral psychological categories.21
That old adage "let the buyer beware" is quite relevant here.
Space does not permit
detailing the full influence of shamanism in modern American life. For
further information, popular books such as Dave Hunt’s America, The
Sorcerer’s New Apprentice: The Rise of New Age Shamanism may be
consulted.22 What concerns us more is the innocence with
which thousands of people are being drawn into shamanism and the
consequences this will bring them to personally.
In future articles we will
examine the characteristics, nature, and dangers of this ancient but
increasingly influential practice.
Notes
1
Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing
(New York: Bantam, 1986), p. 175.
2
Jim Swan, "Rolling Thunder at Word," Shaman’s Drum, Winter
1985, p. 43.
3
Harner, The Way of the Shaman, pp. 130,176-177.
4
O Carl Simonton, Stephanie Matthews-Simonton, Getting Well Again: A
Step by Step Self Help Guide to Overcoming Cancer for Patients and
Their Families (Los Angeles, CA: J. P. Tarcher, 1978).
5
Alberto Villoldo and Stanley Krippner, Healing States: A Journey
into the World of Spiritual Healing and Shamanism (New York:
Fireside/Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987.
6
Ibid., pp. 147-148.
7
Ibid., p. 187.
8
Ibid., p. 188.
9
Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern
Medicine (Boston, MA: New Science Library/Shambhala, 1985), p. 13.
10
Virginia MacIvor, Sandra LaForest, Vibrations: Healing Through
Color, Homeopathy and Radionics (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1979),
pp. 151-157.
11
Debra Carroll, "Dancing on the Sword’s Edge," Shaman’s Drum,
Fall 1985, p. 26.
12
Harner, The Way of the Shaman, p. 161.
13
Ibid., p. 173.
14
Carroll, "Dancing on the Sword’s Edge," p. 26.
15
Harner, The Way of the Shaman, pp. 104, 108.
16
Ibid., p. 108.
17
cf. Ibid., pp. 16,71-77,107,210-11.
18
Achterberg, Imagery in Healing, p. 100.
19
Strephon Kaplan-Williams, Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual
(Novato, CA: Journey Press, 1988).
20
Achterberg, Imagery in Healing, p. 98.
21
(see I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of
Spirit Possession and Shamanism (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1975), p.
192.
22
Dave Hunt, America: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice (Eugene, OR:
Harvest House Publishers, 1989).
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