Acid Lights: Old school shamans, New school ways

by Hellsmedic

Or, otherwise titled, look. There’s culture, and we can do this.

And, now, to open up with a confession: I hate the word ‘shaman’.

Over at Therioshamanism, Lupa just did a very fantastic article on cultural appropriation, and the common complaint from some shamanic practitioners that there isn’t enough “substance” in “white” culture to ‘do anything’ with when it comes to working in our communities. This complaint, at least from what I’ve seen, seems to stem from the criticism that some shamans and neoshamans seem to take from different cultures: including Native Tribal folk, among others. It’s also completely ridiculous, to me, and I’ll cover why in just’a sec.

Firstly, as mentioned, I hate using ‘shaman’ as a word to refer to what I do, regardless  of it’s origins. Why? Because of the potential for criticism there. A learned person might have an idea of where the actual terminology comes from and what it refers to, but for most people, it conjures up images of a native ” Medicine Man”-which is a far cry culturally  from what I do. Not necessarily in duty, mind you, but the idea of rattles and drums and ‘rain dances’ . . . that’s not who I am, not what my service is about. I don’t like people thinking that about me: I am one of those people who is painfully aware and self conscious of how other people perceive me-and this isn’t only because of personal circumstances, but it also has a lot to do with my own spirituality. My god spouse [owner] laid down the rule a long time ago that I was to be religious about personal image, hygiene, ect. He dictates my life right down to what I’m allowed to wear, and what I’m not. And what I am not is a Native, any more then I’m a tambourine-shaking baptist.

But I am a Shaman, in the sense of being totally owned and pressed into spiritual service, with the looming threat of death and dismemberment if I should ignore my calling. Do we have a word for that, us ‘white’ folk? With our strip malls and fast food and new flashy cell phones? Of course not-(although maybe we should get with the creative, here!) it’s because most day-to-day people in ‘white’ culture don’t live with a constant need to talk to their ancestors. Western medicine, with it’s MRI’s and EKG’s has taken the place of the need for shamans to come in and battle spirits of sickness, illness, and disease. Few people are animists -few people regard the world around them with any kind of sentience and energy. How this is so for a generation that gave us Transformers, I’ll never know, but there you have it.

So, with ‘modern’ approaches. . . what need is there of ‘Shamans’?

Except for, you know, this annoying little fact: We’re (they’re) still being called by the Gods, by the spirits, to serve their communities. But. . . let’s look closer. Lets really look at the ‘lack’ of culture, and the ‘Shamans’ in it.

Way back when, Shamans served ‘Tribes’. Way back it was probably a smaller number of people, all grouped together-and the shaman was the go-to person for cures, counseling, magic. Spiritwork.

With the dawn of the ‘modern’ age, however-and this is especially true of days with the Internet-people are able to communicate over vast distances. Families are spread over hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles. The “tribe”, the “clan”, is dissolved. Right? Right? So what community is there for a shaman to serve?

I can’t speak of others. I can only speak of my own. We don’t call them ‘ Tribes’ anymore. In new cool modern lingo, we call them subcultures.

. . . You with me over there? Yeah? Alright, just checkin’.

So now that we have the semantics issue out of the way (except for the ‘shaman’ term itself), what are we left with? Well, I can throw one question out there at you. So if the community the shaman serves is spread out all over the world. . what kind of serving is there to be done? How can you heal someone if they’re sick if you can’t crush herbs for them, lay hands on them? How can you chase away the spirits of disease or depression (<–a common one, btw) for them if you can’t see them? Just how the hell does that work, anyway?

But modern technology lends itself to the modern shaman well. In some ways, it’s better this way, the Not Seeing. In this way, we are solely focused on a persons energy, a person’s spirit. We can use our imagination, we can use the pounding of music and the drink of rhythm to take us to that place and into those worlds, and we can do the fighting and come back and have been just as effective as our ancient predecessors. Why? Let me tell you this. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people on the Internet, it’s that their true colors come out. The part of them they don’t show their friends, families, ect. Some of them come out to be miserable, crabby-assed trolls who like to do nothing but try to make other people miserable. How do you think these people are in real life, BTW? Some, then, turn out to be just as gracious, if not moreso, then they are in person. How’s that? They’ll bow to you, and call you Brother. When free of societal trappings, you learn more about people then you ever could with a handshake. Maybe even then you could living with them, at least in some cases. I find this humorous and ironic in the sense that most of the time, people assume the internet does the opposite: hides who you really are.

So, okay, goes the argument. Internet culture as an outlet for shamans? But don’t you need them good ol’ drums and rattles to do all that weird n’crazy mojo those folks do?

No.

I, for one, have never used these: unless you count the fact that I did, in fact, play the drums in a rock band when I was in High School (coincidence? Lulz, yeah right). My tools? Music with a fast, regular rhythm: trance music. My hoops, with their flashing lights (1 is glow-in-the dark. Another is LED). My regular meditations? My artwork.

Piers Vitebsky wrote in his book “Shaman” that he’d been recently exposed to the Acid/Rave community, and was curious regarding the similarities between what happened at a Rave and what happened in the old school shaman days. He came back to the pulse rate of a lot of the music, the rapid colors and flashing lights, and the experimenting with mind-altering drugs. The question was asked ‘ could there possibly be shamans here’? and to him I say yes, my good sir, and you hit the nail on the head. We forged a way-and I’m glad someone saw it.

There’s always been an aspect of Shamanic work, too, that involved working with the dead, dying, and their families. I brought this up the other day when I was talking about Raven Kaldera’s work. How did I manage this? I went to school and got my EMT-B. Not only am I doing this in my every-day career, as I’m bid to do, but I serve my community with it, too. People come to be for advice, and I give it based on my Scope of Practice. Going through the schooling for being an EMT taught me a lot of what I needed to know to do my shamanic work: how to identify illness, recreational drug use. How to spot signs that The Body is not well and what it might be. How to support grieving loved ones and large-numbers of people in a crises. How to handle the sensitive needs of a dying person.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years since coming out and getting strait on my path, it’s this: the gods will find a way. The lack of culture is no excuse for appropriation, because we’ve gotten creative with our calling. Instead of fighting against the tide of technological advancement, we rode the wave. We use the internet to connect to our tribes, to hear their cries for help and to respond accordingly. We use our cell phones to answer those calls, the music and the movement to send the souls to where they need to go, the pulse Oximeter, stethoscope and BP cuff to help us find the problem-and to get better medical treatment for the body, and the right kind for the soul. We tell the stories of the battles we fight in our paintings, our drawings, on our blogs. We stick to our roots by beading talismans and making hanging scrolls for each other’s houses. We pray for the earth and the old ways, but we embrace the new–responsibly.

“Release” by Pearl Jam is playing in the background now, as I’m writing this. What a beautiful finish for this writing, I think.

“I see the world, feel the chill
Which way to go, windowsill
I see the words on a rocking horse of time
I see the birds in the rain
Ohh…ohh…ohh…ohh…

O, can you see me now
I am myself, like you somehow
I’ll ride the wave where it takes me
I’ll hold the pain…Release me…”

No need to appropriate what we are perfectly capable of creating ourselves.