We are all, in a sens, idolaters of this recent western cultural artifact called "shamanism"; we love, we cherish, we dedicate our self to it, but as much as we get involve, so little we have something to do with the original, indigenous shamanism; we've created a lie, an illusion and we keep doing it just because this is how our culture works... you don't practice shamanism to sell it and to achieve personal transformation, shamanism it happens to be practiced because the world has unmanageable situations and because life is precarious and unforeseeable , because some people (the shamans) are forced to talk to the spirits and to heal the sick people... they are not doing it for fun or for them, they are doing it because there are some forces beyond them that affects them. I'm not speaking about the "real" shamans, it does not matter this point of view, it only matters our illusion, our lie, our self-limitation. This is what I want to know about and I want to fight against.
My point is that the only accurate perspective or maybe the only "right" place of shamanism in our culture, can be found in the scholarly literature of ethnology, sociology, anthropology, psychology and history of religion, but not as a proclamation of scientific objectivity of our powerful western culture, but because this is the only really "fair" usage of this cultural artifact called "shamanism", meaning - the only aspect of our shamanic intelligibility that is not intentionally mixing indigenous culture with western culture, that is just acquiring information. I'm interested in scholarly literature at its most psychological or subjective (read it "weak") level, as a culture who tries not to conquer, to engulf another culture but just to understand it.
Note: this is an important shift of my search. Perhaps this blog will die or will become something else.
03.02.2009
I'm returning to this blog and leave it as it is, it's ok as it is...
I'll add some more links at the bottom.
30.12.2009
This is very important: keeping in mind the cultural differences.
There are many ways our western culture figured out the mineral-plant-animal-man talking. One of this is Deleuze and Guattari's "animal-becaming" in Mille Plateaux.
I first read about "becoming" and "comunication" in Mille Plateaux and Inner Experience, I didn't know much about amerindian shamans. Back than, it made perfect sense IN THEORY with little evidence from PRACTICE or at least very confussing evidence. But after hearing Terence Mckenna's hallucinogens expiriences and advocacy, after finding out and reading about very similar "becomings" and "comunications" to indigenous people, I realised that Deleuze and Bataille were somekind of shamans. They couldn't write about "becoming" and "comunication" if there wasn't SOME extraordinary expiriences in their life (or at least some close understanding -I mean empathic and affective understanding- about this extraordinarity); this expiriences were similar to that of the indigienous peaple, shamanic expiriences that are so well described by concepts like "becoming" and "comunication".
Having a strong developed cartesian conscious, I realised that I also must have some expiriences or close understanding of this expiriences, while I was able to understand all that concepts and theory and also feel so close to indignous shamanic testimonies. And it is now perfectly clear to me that all the peaple in the world have SOMETHING inside them wich can drive them to "comunicate" with plants and minerals, to "become" animals and to "become" invisible to "see" at a molecular level.
Please, do keep in minde that all our cultural values and artefacts can hold as much shamanism as any other indigenous value and artefact. Don't copy shamans, be like shamans; don't creat new models, just be creative with the models that we have already.
Don't participate to the growth of the Dominator (super-)culture as it spreads more and more it's domination.
About
This is the log of a
work in progress. I'm tryning to keep here acount of all my quasi-shamanic inspiration -
the medium - so, please, do keep in mind that
these posts are in fact the actual WORK that some day will be presented as a finished work -
the message - (I hope it will be a book, but I certanly see this only as a last "bagage" that I have to throw away to free myself).
You can email me at -mariustoica_at_gmail_ dot_ com- for any question or opinion that you might have regarding my work.
Some info about myself: My name is Marius Stoica, I live in Timisoara (Romania), I'm 27 years old. Next week I'll get merried and my wife is pregnant in 4 months :) I've studied philosophy with an emphasis on contemporary french philosphy and some on phenomenology. In fact, I'm pretty influenced by authors like Battaille, Deleuze, Husserl or Marc Richir. I also don't like corporatism and imperialism and I try to resist to all the crap that the world is more and more filled in.
8 September 2007----------------
Trecem la modul freestyle
7 Octombrie 2008
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