|
|
Michael
Harner writes his testament
Michael
Harner’s book The Way of the Shaman (1980)
opened a new dimension in the lives of many Westerners. The ground was
already prepared by Carlos Castaneda’s writings about his experiences with
his master, don Juan Matus, in Mexico. But, in contrast to Castaneda, Harner
wrote a manual – a systematic description of how shamans can work hands-on. I
remember how I almost feverishly turned the pages of The Way of the Shaman and felt an intractable desire to start
drumming and journeying into the other worlds. The fact that Michael Harner
himself came to Sweden and gave a basic workshop in shamanism in the summer
of 1983 was like a gift from Dreamtime. The impetus of this workshop was
far-reaching; drumming groups were formed and a lot of soul journeying and
ecstatic dancing was being performed. The
Way of the Shaman was translated into Swedish and I had the privilege of
writing the preface where I stated: “To those who want to try the way of the
shaman Michael Harner’s book is indispensable.” I
wouldn’t make such a statement on Harner’s new book Cave and Cosmos – Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality (2013).
Rather I would say that it might be indispensable to go beyond Harner’s
version of shamanism if you really want to deeply root your shamanic way in
Mother Earth. I
am deeply indebted to Michael Harner not only for the workshop in 1983 but above
all for two pieces of advice on my own shamanic work; he advised me to go North
in order to learn from Saami healers and shamans, and he had the good idea of
how I should find a teacher in non-ordinary reality who could teach me the
essence of the old Nordic runes. But this cannot stop me from being downright
critical of Cave and Cosmos. To me
it is a boring read, partly due to the long and detailed stories from
Westerners (mostly white middleclass Americans) about what they have
experienced when journeying into the dimension that is called the upper world
or “heaven” in core shamanism. I
guess that Harner's point is that reading those accounts will demonstrate
that Westerners can have similar experiences as traditional shamans but then
it would have been enough with just a few journeying reports. After all, one
of Harner’s main theses is that we all experience different things and that
the meaning of the experiences only can be fully understood by the individual
doing the journey. Another question that follows, and that Harner doesn’t
address, is if you really can compare what an Inuit shaman-to-be experienced
naked and alone in a snow hut after fasting for a couple of weeks to what a
Westerner experiences during half an hour lying in a cozy and warm room with
sonic driving sounds in the earphones. Are the experiences really of the same
dimension? Doesn’t the Inuit shaman have a point when he claims that wisdom
only comes through suffering and loneliness? I
remember how Harner in 1983 frenetically took notes of what people in the
workshop told about their journeys explaining that he was working on a
cosmological cartography. After 30 years we have part of this mapping in Cave and Cosmos - but it is hardly a
coherent map of non-ordinary reality, since all maps of non-ordinary reality
are individual and no one can draw a universal one. Some of the book’s drawings
by Harner’s disciples describing the different levels of heavens remind me of
the Swedish theologian, and Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg and his book Heaven and Hell from 1758 (In Latin: De
Caelo et Ejus Mirabilibus et de inferno, ex Auditis et Visis = Heaven and its
Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen). Is
Harner trying to establish a new religion? He himself rejects such an idea.
According to him, core shamanism is no religion since it is based on what
each individual can experience. You don’t believe what other people tell you
– not even Harner – instead you find out for yourself by directly
experiencing how things are. That sounds good and is also a traditional
shamanic standpoint, but core shamanism has been developed into its own brand
of shamanism. This is quite obvious if you compare Cave and Cosmos to The Way
of the Shaman, which really was a general introduction to some of the
methods that traditional shamans use. Core shamanism has now been cleansed
from most of the cultural and traditional features that you will find in
“old” shamanism and turned into a modern, Western, individually designed kind
of shamanism. According
to Harner, this “culture free” kind of shamanism is what best suits
Westerners. This might be so, especially for those Americans who have lost
contact with their own European indigenous traditions and haven’t found any
creative way to connect to the land of Turtle Island. But there is a danger
that this “culture free” kind of shamanism will be decoupled from the
landscape, the world view and the ways of life where shamanism developed. Even if you don’t look at core shamanism as a new
religion it is obvious to me that it certainly has the potential to move in
that direction. The core shamanism of Cave and Cosmos seems to be
totally focused on soul journeying with the help of a drum or other sonic
driving devices which only is part of what shamans traditionally devote
themselves to. It represents a coherent system, a shamanism that is
systemized in a way that is unknown to traditional shamans. One might call
what Harner has created a shamanic “body” held together by certain basic
theoretical key tenets that bears many similarities to religion. For years,
Harner claimed that core shamanism has no “dogma.” Sadly, Cave and Cosmos
negates that statement. The main topic of Michael Harner’s paradigm seems
to be the question of spirits – the existence of spirits, the proofs that
they exist and the differences between varied types of spirits, those that
dwell in this world (the middle world), those that dwell in heaven and those
that dwell somewhere between. In The Way of the Shaman Harner wrote
about energies, power and power animals, now this has changed into detailed
descriptions and classifications of spirits. The shaman is seen mainly as a
mediator between the humans who need help and the “compassionate spirits”
who always know what everybody needs. Which spirits do Harner’s disciples meet in
heaven? It can be Benjamin Franklin, or Albert Einstein, or Jesus, or Buddha.
The spirits are clever and adopt guises that are adjusted to the journeyer.
These compassionate spirits, according to Harner, all have experiences from
life on earth, either as humans or animals; they know everybody’s need and
they only wish to do good – in contrast to some of the spirits in the middle
world that have not been able to make it into heaven. Those spirits may cause
chaos, sickness and all kinds of problems. For me, this talk about good and
evil spirits is distressingly familiar and gives me bad vibrations. Has
Michael Harner turned into a prophet? He stresses that his heavenly journeyers
have the same experiences as the founders of the great religions and he interprets
his disciples’ reports as proof that the heavens do exist. I accept that this
is Harner’s experience, but my own 30 years of shamanic work tell me quite
other stories about the cosmos and Mother Earth. Harner writes that the power of the universe is
so strong that shamans have to work with mediators such as power animals and
spirits. My experience and understanding is that the cosmos chooses to let
its power take familiar forms when it meets our consciousness, just to make
it possible for us to handle this power. Carlos Castaneda wanted to take a
further step, namely to experience energy directly instead of via its
mediated forms. In his book The Wheel of Time he lets don Juan Matus
explain how he has used shamanic rigmarole about allies, power plants,
Mescalito, the little smoke, the wind, the spirits of rivers, mountains and
chaparral as a way to lure Castaneda’s attention, as a way to trick him into
the way of the spiritual warrior. Harner chooses the opposite way; instead of
transcending form and experiencing energy directly he elaborates a highly
systematic way on how to deal with the forms of power. This is not what I
call spiritual freedom. To me, shamanism has always had a political
dimension, a Mother Earth dimension, and shamans sometimes have to take a
stand in very practical and concrete ways, e.g. trying to stop the building
of a pipeline or the mining for uranium or supporting indigenous peoples in their
struggles to preserve their culture and land base. But the core shamanism of Cave
and Cosmos seems to be more concerned with – and to prefer - Heaven than
with Earth. To Michael Harner core shamanism is sufficient unto
itself. To me core shamanic methods can be used to reconnect to the shamanic
traditions of your own landscape, but then you also have to transcend core
shamanism. Shamanism cannot be “culture free”, at least not if you really
want to put your shamanic feet deep down into the earth, making yourself
accessible to the kiss of knowledge that is given not in heaven but by
the spirits of the Earth, the landscape, from real existing animals and plants,
from Mother Earth herself and through ceremony and prayer. (This article has also been published in A
Journal of Contemporary Shamanism, Fall issue 2013) Jörgen I Eriksson, August, 2013. |
