Abstract
This article, based on an open-question survey completed in 2018, engages with McAdams and Manczak’s approaches to life stories (2015) and Mayer’s ten elements of the shaman myth (2008) to explore the way contemporary people based in the UK, who define themselves as shamans, talk about their becoming a shaman. Individual narratives point out the intricate meeting points between different shamanic traditions and the importance of continuous innovation. They highlight the complex network of human and beyond-human authority and problematize the place, meaning and agency of the self. Contemporary shamanism is a widespread, manifold and multifaceted phenomenon, which we argue is not as different from traditional forms of shamanism as some studies suggest.
Highlights
This article, based on an open-question survey completed in 2018, engages with McAdams and Manczak’s approaches to life stories (2015) and Mayer’s ten elements of the shaman myth (2008) to explore the way contemporary people based in the UK, who define themselves as shamans, talk about their becoming a shaman
The respondents, who were spiritually initiated or introduced, had a much higher degree of redemption sequence and meaning making. This resonates more with the self-agency and individualism found in neo-shamanism than the kind of individualism found in traditional shamanism (Friedman 1992)
For contemporary shamans, initial signs go unnoticed or are misinterpreted by others and recognition as a shaman is an individual affair, service to the community in a larger and more abstract sense than traditional shamanism allows remains central. This means a separation of modern shamanism from the specificity of exclusive local cultures and a turn towards a larger and more encompassing idea of humanity, in which the shaman can be of service
Summary
Shamanism is said to be one of the oldest forms of religion, with shamans as the traditional, indigenous and holistic specialists in charge of their trade. These ‘shamanic’ things mentioned by Harvey are western in nature and mostly urban-based, but can be (to various degrees) connected to shamanic traditions, and in some cases are built on a mix of different traditions They are known in the research literature as neo-shamanism (Wallis 1999; Davidov 2010), a term closely related to Core shamanism, Harner’s modern, simplified and universalistic way of practice (Harner 2009). At the core of the narratives are definitions of what a shaman is which are related to the identity of the narrator and the accounts of experiences in the process of becoming We interpret these self-definitions and experiences, based on our two-fold analysis, and reflect on them through the characteristics of traditional shamanism and neo-shamanism as described in the literature, which we use as points of reference. By looking at self-narratives to understand contemporary shamanism and its relation to traditional shamanism, we sought to highlight the importance of using ‘experience’ and narrative as the object of research of contemporary forms of shamanism
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