CHECK IT OUT GUYS, WE'RE SHAMANS!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

According to my anthropology instructor, we pretty much all fall within the definition of "Shaman". Heeeeeee!

[Telarus]

Not surprised. Did he offer any specifics?

[Cain]

According to anthropology instructors, you know who else was a shaman?

Hitler, that's who.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Hitler was probably psychotic enough to qualify as having had a "shamanic crisis" at some point, anyway. 

Nigel - who's "we"? 

[hirley0]

"Sh"

Who dat who say wHO daT?

[Doktor Howl]

According to my anthropology instructor, we pretty much all fall within the definition of "Shaman". Heeeeeee!

Does this mean I have to start trying to pick up college kids at Starbucks?  Because I can't stand people that young, for the most part, let alone have any desire to get in their pants.  No, I think I'd wind up grabbing some hipster's copy of Atlas Shrugged, and start beating people with it.

Another distressing possibility here is that I'd have to run down to the gem show every February and not thump on new agers.

I'm really not happy about any of this.

[Triple Zero]

I AM A SHAMAN, MAGICIAN, THE SUN IS PURPLE, 3D DIMENSIONS, I AM FOR MENTAL EXTENSIONS

[Cain]

Incidentally though, and somewhat seriously, I've seen the case be made that followers of all trickster-deities, which would include Eris, are actually anti-shamanic.  I had this argument with WyldKat a long time ago, because she also went "Discordianism is Shamanism" (which I'm fairly sure was leading up to "and I am a Shaman", and then "therefore I am a Discordian", and finally "and I am not oppressing myself, so TCC does not hate Discordians").

[Triple Zero]

so, what was exactly the case for followers of trickster deities being anti-shamanistic?

[Doktor Howl]

so, what was exactly the case for followers of trickster deities being anti-shamanistic?

Well, the dictionary defines a shaman as:

1.spiritual leader: a spiritual leader who is believed to have special powers such as prophecy and the ability to heal

So, while we have the "prophecy" thing down, we're not so good with the healing thing.

[Triple Zero]

ok I was expecting some particular kind of difference in philosophy, or something.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Well there's sort of a difference in the underlying philosophy. Shamans interact with spirits with the general intention of benefiting people, and probably sometimes to actively drive away mischievous spirits. Discordians offer mischievous spirits a gift basket and a good retirement plan.

[Doktor Howl]

ok I was expecting some particular kind of difference in philosophy, or something.

Their philosophy:  Healed head good.

Our philosophy:  Bleeding head good.

Their philosophy:  You can get a job if you polish your chakras.

Our philosophy:  You can get a job if you go out and apply for jobs.

Their philosophy:  The shaman is the spiritual center of any society.

Our philosophy:  The toilet is the spiritual center of any society.

Their philosophy:  Listen to me, for I am wise.

Our philosophy:  Listen to me, for I am a dumbass.

[Phox]

Well there's sort of a difference in the underlying philosophy. Shamans interact with spirits with the general intention of benefiting people, and probably sometimes to actively drive away mischievous spirits. Discordians offer mischievous spirits a gift basket and a good retirement plan.

This was the thought that occurred to me as well.

ok I was expecting some particular kind of difference in philosophy, or something.

Their philosophy:  Healed head good.

Our philosophy:  Bleeding head good.

Their philosophy:  You can get a job if you polish your chakras.

Our philosophy:  You can get a job if you go out and apply for jobs.

Their philosophy:  The shaman is the spiritual center of any society.

Our philosophy:  The toilet is the spiritual center of any society.

Their philosophy:  Listen to me, for I am wise.

Our philosophy:  Listen to me, for I am a dumbass.

Though I believe this may be a better and more accurate summation. 

[Cain]

so, what was exactly the case for followers of trickster deities being anti-shamanistic?

From Trickster Makes This World:

In 1964, Mac Linscott Ricketts finished a doctoral thesis that is a remarkably wide-ranging survey of North American trickster tales.  There and in later essays Ricketts has argued that the tales locate the trickster in opposition to the practice and beliefs of shamanism.   To Ricketts way of thinking, humankind has two responses when faced with all that engenders awe and dread in this world: the way of the shaman (and the priests), which assumes a spiritual world, bows before it, and seeks to make alliances; and the way of the trickster (and the humanists), which recognizes no power beyond its own intelligence, and seeks to seize and subdue the unknown with wit and cunning.  "The trickster...embodies [an] experience of Reality...in which humans feel themselves to be self-sufficient beings for whom the supernatural spirits are powers not to be worshipped, but ignored, to be overcome, or in the last analysis, mocked."  The shaman enters the spirit world and works with it, but "the trickster is an outside...He has no friends in that other world...All that humans have gained from the unseen powers beyond-fire, fish, game, fresh water and so forth-have been obtained, by necessity, through trickery or theft..."  In obtaining these goods, the trickster, unlike the shaman, "did not also obtain superhuman powers, or spiritual friendship...He seems to need no friends: he gets on very well by himself..."

To explore this idea, Ricketts shows how a number of trickster stories can be read as parodies of shamanism.  In shamanic initiations, for example, spirits kill and resurrect the initiate, often placing something inside the resurrected body - a quartz crystal, for example - which the shaman can later call forth from his body during healing rituals.  If someone in your group claims such powers, you may find wry humour in the stories which have Coyote, when he needs advice, calling forth (which much grunting) his own excrement.  Likewise, dreams of flying are said to be premonitions of shamanic initiation, and the shaman in a trance can supposedly fly into the sky, into the underworld, into the deepest forest.  With this in mind, it's hard not the hear the parodic tone in the almost universal stories of trickster trying to fly with the birds, only to fall ignominiously to earth.  Trickster's failure implies that shamanic pretensions are daydreams at best, fakery at worst.  "Humans were not made to fly...Trickster, like the human being, is an earth-bound creature, and his wish to fly (and to escape the human condition) is...a frivolous fancy."

Similarly, the "bungling host" stories may be not only about the instinctual ways of animals, as I argued in an earlier chapter, but about the shaman's claim to be able to acquire the power of other beings.  Trickster fails to acquire powers because it flatly can't be done.  "The trickster, in trying to get his food in the manner of the Kingfisher, for instance...is reaching for superhuman abilities.  He is, in fact, attempting to transcend the human condition and live in a mode which is different from that which is proper for humans.  Blundering efforts to do what animals do," Ricketts concludes, "may be viewed as mockery of shamans and all others who think they can get higher powers from animal spirits."

If the shaman in touch with higher spirits is the prophet of Native America, then trickster, his laughing shadow, is a prophet with a difference.  Over and over the stories call attention to the actual constraints of human life: humans can't fly like birds; the dead do not return.  These are a species of "eternal truth", but pointing them out draws attention to this world, not another.  It is a revelation of fleshy bodies, not heavenly bodies.  Beyond this, where parody is able to strip the things it mocks of their charm, it opens up spaces in which something new might happen.  It is true when trickster breaks the rules we see the rules more clearly, but we also get a glimpse of everything the rules exclude.  Commenting on Navajo stories, Barre Toelken writes: "Coyote functions in the oral literature as a symbol of that chaotic Everything with which man's rituals have created an order for survival."  Mocking the rituals opens the door for the return of that chaotic Everything.  From the shaman's point of view, the rules that trickster breaks articulate the ideal world, but from trickster's vantage point, if we think the ideal os real we are seriously mistaken and won't see half of what is right in front of us.  We may wish our bodies produced quartz crystals, but the bowels regularly tell another story.