[The Pomegranate 12.

2 (2010) 139-58] ISSN 1528-0268 (Print)

doi: 10.1558/pome.vl2i2.139 ISSN 1743-1735 (Online)

Shamanisms and the Authenticity of Religious Experience

Susannah Crockford

susannah.crockford@gmaiLcom

Abstract

Shamanic practices and practitioners in Western countries are often derided

as "inauthentic" by both scholars and members of indigenous communi-
ties. The experience derived from such practices is therefore also implied
to be contrived. This paper analyses shamanism in the United Kingdom
as part of "Western shamarusm" rather than "neo-shamanism." Western
shamanism is understood to be a valid religious tradition found in Europe
and America that is based on Western cultural and religious traditions.
The concept of authenticity is critically examined as a cultural construct,
and the validity of a religious experience is located subjectively.

There are shamans in other parts of the world (except in Western industrial-
ised cultures - people calling themselves shamans there are with a relatively high
degree of certainty commercial "plastic shamans").'

Western shamanism is routinely dismissed in academic accounts of sha-

manism. The main bone of contention is that it is inauthentic: based
on the fabricated fieldwork of Carlos Castañeda, misappropriating non-
Western cultural forms, and motivated by consumerism and naive mate-
rialism.^ It is seen as commercial and artificial or simply "plastic." This
assessment of Western shamanism is reified by a distinction between
"traditional" and "neo" shamanism that is made by many scholars,
based on a simplisfic split between Western and non-Western cultural
forms.^ Shamanism is a term that is so broad that it can incorporate a vast

1. Ina Rosing, "Lies and Amnesia in Anthropological Research: Recycling the

Waste/' Anthropology of Consciousness, 10, nos. 2-3 (1999): 23.
2. See Daniel Noel, The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginai Realities (New
York: Continuum, 1998), 26-105, for a critical view. Noel considers Western shaman-
ism a neo-colonialist "fictive fabrication" and proposes an alternative-the Merlin
myth as a cultural archetype in a Jungian framework for Euro-Americans desiring to
create a "new shamanism."
3. Olav Hammer, Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to

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140 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

conceptual terrain, yet the borders of this terrain firmly stop at Western
industrialised cultures.
Yet what does it mean to say that a religious practice is inauthentic?
Authenticity seems like a self-evident concept, but like so many osten-
sibly axiomatic terms it resists easy description. There are two main
themes in debates conceming authenticity that I would like to highlight
for their significance to the present discussion. The first theme concerns
appropriation. Charles Taylor in his The Ethics ofAuthenticity argues that
while the idea of authenticity has a complex history, the core of it is that
we are authentic when we exhibit or are in possession of that which is
most our own: our own way of flourishing or being fulfilled. To be sepa-
rated from that which is most our own is to be in a state of alienation."*
What is it, then, that is most our own? In terms of religion, it is the prac-
tices and rituals that are derived from the culture of our birth that are
often deemed to be most our own. If we adopt a ritual or practice from
another culture, this is deemed to be appropriation. We are pretending
to be something that we are not. However, the problems with this for-
mulation are manifold as it privileges an idea of discrete cultures into
which individuals are born. The second theme is coherence to estab-
lished fact or record, the idea of genuineness, that something factually
is what it claims to be. In terms of a religious practice, the "truthfulness"
of its history is raised, and if the origin can be clearly demonstrated to be
human then it is less likely to be seen as "real" religion. This means that
new religions can often be condemned as "cults" or derided as "fakes,"
while older, more established religions are granted authenticity.^
Rather than accept or restate this demarcation, the present paper will
examine why Western shamanism is considered inauthentic. Western
shamanism is seen as rooted in Western cultural tradition, consequently I

the New Age (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 136; Paul C Johnson, "Shamanism from Ecuador to
Chicago: a Case Study in New Age Ritual Appropriation," in Shamanism: A Reader,
ed. Graham Harvey (London: Routledge, 2003), 335-354.
4. Charles Taylor, The Ethics ofAuthenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1991), 81.
5. So for example, world religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism are
"real" religion while shamanism. Paganism, etc. are not. This reproduces a theo-
logical bias toward "true" religion, which is problematic if religious truth claims are
to be treated equally. For further discussions on authenticity in religious discourse
see Frans P.M. Jespers, "Longing for Authenticity: Religious Transformations in Late
Modern Europe," International Journal in Philosophy and Theology 67, no. 4, (2006):369-
390; Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis, "Beyond Sacred: Recent Pagan Engagements with
Archaeological Monuments — Current Findings of the Sacred Sites Project," The Pome-
granate 11, no. 1 (2009): 97-123; Douglas Cowan, Bearing False Witness: an Introduction
to the Christian Countercult (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003); Matthijs van de Port,
ed.. Authenticity (Münster: Lit Verlag Münster, 2004).

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 Crockford Shamanisms 141

will refer to Western shamanism rather than neo-shamanism.'^ The exam-

ples used will primarily be from the UK in order to give some degree
of ethnographic clarity, although the situation in the USA will also be
discussed due to the sharpened politicisation of the issue of authenticity
there. The theoretical scope will be limited to the question of whether
Western shamanism can be called authentic and what this says about
authenticity in the wider debate on contemporary Paganism. Following
several recent works, shamanism is described as a plurality of cultur-
ally variable forms.^ If universal applicability of the term is denied, then
Western shamanism becomes a rip-off, an appropriation of a specific
Siberian cultural form. If shamanism is defined as a universal form with
culturally specific styles then Western shamanism is the Western form
typified by elements common to Western culture. The present paper
analyses a shamanic field of discourse in Western culture, where social
actors are struggling for recognition and symbolic capital and authentic-
ity is an important selling point for accumulating both.^

Three Western Shamans

The etymology of the term shaman is problemafic. Kehoe argues that
because the term came from Siberia it can only be applied to Siberians.'
However, the root of a term is not its essence; the origin does not deter-
mine the course of a concept's evolufion. "Shaman" came from Tungus
but is no longer restricted to that linguistic family, for it has crossed lin-
guistic and cultural boundaries and mutated its symbolic associations
and meanings along the way. Shaman is not the only term metamor-
phosed from its original meaning; a parallel can be found in the term
"paganism," which originally meant heretic, non-Christian, and is now

6. Following Kocku von Stuckrad, "Reenchanting Nature: Modern Western Sha-

manism and Nineteenth Century Thought," Journal of the American Academy of Reli-
gion 70, no. 4 (2002):771-99; see also Robert Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasy,
Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans (London: Routledge, 2003), 30, for
a critique of the term 'neo-shamanism'.
7. There are a number of studies which adopt this position, see Kocku von Stuck-
rad, Schamanismus und Esoterik: Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen
(Leuwen: Peeters, 2003), 19-22; Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 30-31; Thomas DuBois,
An Introduction to Shamanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 277-

8.1 am here using Bourdieu's concepts of field of discourse and social/symbolic

capital, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003) 16-22,159-97; Richard Shusterman, Bourdieu: a Critical Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
9. Alice Beck Kehoe, Shamans And Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical
TInnking (Prospect Heights, 111: Waveíand Press, 2000), 102.

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142 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

used to denote a variety of reconstructed nature-based spiritualities. The

solution is not to return to the root but to be aware of the etic and emic
disfinctions, sensitive to cultural differences and biases in interpretafion,
and to understand the positive aspects of Western sbamanism for those
who participate in it.
Western shamanism offers a universal yet individualised spirituality,
sometimes by revivifying pre-modern ancestry such as Celtic shaman-
ism, somefimes by adapfing and appropriating non-Western cultural
forms. It offers an alternative to a perceived shallow, empty moder-
nity, while remaining compatible with modern life, being neither too
time- nor effort-consuming to interfere. This alternative to a perceived
shallow, empty modernity is then itself perceived as shallow and empty
by critics. By trying to resist modernity, shamanism becomes modernity
par excellence. Shamanism is deemed inauthentic because moderrüty in
the industrialised West is deemed inauthentic.
In the Urüted Kingdom, anyone claiming to be a shaman can expect
to be greeted with scepticism, because there is no cultural category or
established tradition to support the role. So who in the UK calls them-
selves a shaman and why? Gordon MacLellan, an envirorunental educa-
tor and shamanic pracfitioner, says this of his vocation:

I'm called 'a shaman' — maybe by people who do not know any better—or
even by those who should. But since none of us seem to be able to define
exactly what makes the shaman, maybe when people feel the term is the
right one, that is enough of a decision and that will have to do. 'Shaman'
isn't a label that is achieved: not a status that can be measured, tested and
awarded. Rather, it is something that comes upon a body and its appella-
tion depends probably more upon the role that an individual plays within
a community and, to some degree, how they achieve that rather than on
any personal claim upon the title.^"

Through this definifion MacLellan, as a contemporary pracfifioner, is

evoking anthropological descriptions of shamanic practifioners cross-
culturally. The shaman is supposed to be called by spirits and is often
unwilling to accept the call." One of the crificisms levelled at Western
shamanism is that its participants do volunteer, they pay to attend work-
shops or complete a course, which at the end entitles them to call them-

10. Gordon MacLellan, "Dancing on the Edge: Shamanism in Modern Britain," in

Shamanism: A Reader ed. Graham Harvey (London: Routledge, 2003), 365-74.
11. Piers Vitebsky, "Shamanism," in Indigenous Religions: A Companion, ed. Graham
Harvey (London: Cassell, 2000),60; Andrei Znamenski, The Beauty of the Primitive: Sha-
manism and the Western Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 265-266;
Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 55-56.

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 Crockford Shamanisms 143

selves shamans.^^ The critique is that in the West, people are buying a
product ratber than entering a cultural tradition, and therefore they are
not in possession of what is most their own, but rather making what
belongs to otbers their possession through commerce.
MacLellan is clearly trying to distance bis activities from this kind of
perception. He goes on to explain tbat in fact his sbamanism is rooted
in bis own cultural tradition. Tbe spirit-world tbat be uses ecstasy to
contact and journey through is the Otberworld of tbe Celts, very ancient,
and very British. It is the world of Faerie, the land of enchantment, tbat is
said to have existed tbousands of years ago." Wbat MacLellan is doing
is rooting bis practice in the past mythology of the Britisb Isles, the spir-
itual side lost by centuries of materialism and industrialisation, tbrougb
the process Weber called disenchantment.^'' Tbis shifts bis sbamanic
practice from something appropriated from a foreign "other" to a lost
cultural tradition now revived. Once the authorising tradition becomes
tbat wbich is his own, it grants bis shamanic practice authenticity, and
MacLellan tberefore can call bimself a shaman, although by bis own
admission, be would never do this.
Not everyone involved in Western sbamanism is as circumspect as
MacLellan. Bradford Keeney is openly declared an "American shaman"
by Kottler and Carlson; it is even tbe title of their book. Keeney is said to
be "a true shaman" because he was a famous therapist and then aban-
doned his profession to study witb indigenous bealers from Mexico,
Brazil, Japan, Paraguay, Namibia, Soutb Africa, Bali, the Ojibwa culture,
Louisiana Black cburches, and elsewbere. From this experience, Keeney
devised a new form of psycbotberapy based not on talking but on
dancing, singing, and touching where the disturbed patient should not
be calmed but furtber excited and healing is effected by arousal. The
authors claim tbat this new form of psycbotberapy encompasses
Not only ... East with West, but North with South, and the 21st century
with practices that have been in continuous use since prehistoric times.

12. Merete Demant Jakobsen, Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches

to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 160.
13. MacLellan, "Dancing on the Edge," 367-68.
14. Whether such a Celtic past ever existed in the way it is now interpreted by
contemporary Pagans or if this is just a modern romantic invention is a matter of
some debate, see Tom Cowan, Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit (San
Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 1-10; Terence Brown, ed.. Celticism (Amster-
dam: Rodolpi, 1994), 1-20, 61-78,143-158.
15. Jeffrey A. Kottler and Jon Carlson with Bradford Keeney, American Shaman: an
Odyssey of Global Healing Traditions (New York: Brurmer-Routledge, 2004), x-xi. There
are eight points to Keeney's revision of psychotherapy detailed on these pages; I have
highlighted what seemed the most significant here.

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144 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

Keeney's definition of a shaman is equally broad, being based on direct

contact with God (or the gods) and prayer seen as the bridge to that
connection. The connection to the divine is used by the shaman to heal
individuals and society.^*
Keeney's interpretation of shamanism and what makes him a shaman
is so different from MacLellan's that it is difficult to assert that they are
even talking about the same thing. Keeney's shaman transcends cultural
boundaries to offer a universal and ancient means of healing, which he
as an already-trained psychotherapist can use to revolufionise Western
psychotherapy. MacLellan's shaman is rooted in British mythology and
cormected to a more limited idea of community that the shaman benefits.
Keeney's practice makes use of that which is most his own—psycho-
therapy and spiritual healing—as does MacLellan's appeal to a Celtic
Otherworld. Both exhibit the key features of shamanism in scholarly
discourse: the use of ecstasy to contact or master a spiritual world which
is then used to heal or otherwise benefit others. As such it is difficult to
deny either is making an inauthentic statement about being a shaman.
Rather it seems that the looseness of the category shaman can be manip-
ulated to fit the claims of anyone. The idea that anyone can be a shaman
was one that was enthusiastically marketed by the forefathers of Western
shamanism: Michael Harner and Carlos Castañeda. It fits with Western
individualism and egalitarianism —shamanism is a technique to be used
by anyone to their benefit and others'. The ability to make anything your
own is part of Western cultural tradition, any other religious practice or
belief can be adopted or abandoned at will because individuals are free
and equal to choose their religion. This may seem harmless yet it is this
impulse that creates accusations of cultural appropriation or theft.
This is one accusafion that could be levelled at the Sacred Earth Camps
in Exmoor in Devon. The camps run three or four day courses for individ-
uals willing to pay between £100-150 to attend "adventures for the spirit
in medicine wheel wisdom ways."^'' What this includes is workshops in
tipi, pipe, and other ceremonies, medicine walks in the woods, sweat
lodge ceremonies, council fires, sacred path teachings, dance, chanting
and drumming, story telling, and star gazing. The sweat lodge in par-
ticular is said to be an inipi, the Lakota word for sweat lodge, and on
entering participants call out "rriitak-oyasin," which is said to be Lakota
for "we are all related." The co-ordinator of the camps is named Beth-
lehem Taylor, also called Sun Eagle Heart, who claims to be a Rainbow

16. Ibid, 43.

17. "Sacred Earth Sweat Lodge Ceremonies," http://www.sacred-earth-camps.
co.uk/.

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 Crockford Shamanisms 145

Elder and Pipe Carrier and "much respected and well known medicine
teacher." A picture of Taylor reveals him to be an elderly white male,
without discernible Native American ancestry, nor is there any descrip-
tion of which tribe he is supposed to be enrolled in (if any). Castaneda's
Don Juan is quoted without reference to any work of literature, as if in
fact, he were a real person. Sweats and drumming rituals are adver-
tised as the route to the spirit world, where the shaman can confer with
"the ancestors" and receive medicine power, wisdom and guidance. The
ancestors are Native American rather than British, as a quote from Taylor
reveals:
As a Medicine man, I've had to walk the black road of difficulty and
understanding of the West. And, of all the many different spiritual paths
that I have walked, the Native American path of harmony and balance,
love and beauty, is the one that is the most profound and totally humané
[sic]. And, it is this path that we shall explore together.'*

Native American spirituality is universalised and romanticised in this

view. This is not an isolated case, there is a British "pow-wow" scene that
recreates Native American dances, as well as significant sales of books
and merchandise related to Native American religious practices."
The case of the Sacred Earth Camps seems inauthentic from the
outset: pitching tipis and calling yourself by an Indian name is a classic
case of "playing Indian," which can be seen as racist and disrespect-
ful to Native American communities. The Lakota Nation issued a dec-
laration strongly rejecting Western uses of their spiritual practices as
the Sacred Earth Camps do.^° The result of this naive appropriafion is
picking and choosing ceremonies, rituals, and practices from various dif-
ferent Native American sources and reifying them as a Native American
"religion" called shamanism. This is not only inaccurate representation
but also offensive, as it obscures the pressing social issues facing Native
American communities.^^ However, positioning Native American com-

18. Ibid.
19. Approximately 10 British pow-wows are held annually, mostly in the southern
half of the country, which stage events on weekends that include singing-teams and
dances. See Christina Welch, "Complicating Spiritual Appropriation: North Ameri-
can Indian Agency in Western Alternative Spiritual Practice," Journal of Alternative
Spiritualities and Neiv Age Studies 3 (2007): 97-117.
20. Wilmer Stampede Mesteth, Darrell Standing Elk, and Phyllis Swift Hawk,
"Declaration of War against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality," 1993, http://www.
aics.org/war.html.
21. Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 205; Kehoe, Shamans and Religion, 81-91; Vine
Deloria, Jr., God is Red: A Native Vieiv of Religion (Golden, Colo: Fulcrum, 1993), 23-60;
Philip Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1-10,154-180;
Lisa Aldred, "Plastics Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercial-

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146 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

muni ties as passive victims of neo-colonialism or cultural appropriation

by Westerners reifies a dominant-subordinate relafionship. This ignores
Native American agency in selling and distributing their own religious
practice.^ Many such individuals are rejected by Native American acfiv-
ists and scholars, who strongly deny that any non-Indians should be
taught Indian religious practice.^ While it is important to be sensitive
to accusafions of neo-colonialism, at the same fime it is difficult to mark
ownership of religious pracfices or rituals or culture in general. It brings
up the complicated issue of cultural copyright, who owns culture, who
can be considered as belonging to which culture, and where, if any-
where, the boundaries of cultures lay.^*
While it may seem obvious to say that a British person connecting
to a Celfic past in shamanic practice is more authenfic than one con-
necting to Native American culture, this is not necessarily the case. It
cannot be said with certainty than any contemporary British individual
is descended from the Celts. Arguably the Celts are as genefically distant
from individuals alive in Britain today as Native Americans. However,
the authenticity of Celts or Native Americans that is strived for is not
genetic. It is significant that it is this historical relative that MacLellan

ization of Native American Spirituality," American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2000):
329-52.
22. For example. Sun Bear, who was of mixed blood — half-white, half-Chippewa.
If he could claim "authentic" links to both cultures, why then should he not teach
the practices of one to the other? He was accepted as an authentic representative of
"Indian-ness" to non-Indians, who paid to attend his sweat lodge ceremonies and
join his self-created Bear tribe, but he was not accepted by his own community any
more because of the same activities. He was rejected as a plastic medicine man by
them, and his Bear tribe was decried as a fraud since tribes cannot be invented by
humans, according to many Native Americans. See Aldred, "Plastics Shamans and
Astroturf Sun Dances," 337-38.
23. The Circle of Elders of the Indigenous Nations of North America, a representa-
tive body of traditional indigenous leadership in the United States, requested that
the American Indian Movement undertake to end the activities of those described as
"plastic medicine men" in 1984. The AIM resolution at the request of the Elders listed
individuals thought to be "plastic medicine men" and the characteristics that would
define them as such: selling ceremonies (sweat lodge, vision quest) and sacred articles
(religious pipes, feathers, stones), particularly to non-Indians, thereby misusing these
ceremonies. See Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 201-204.
24. In terms of Native Americans, there is a "'blood quantum" specifying a specific
fraction of Indian blood that must be genealogically proven before an individual
can be considered, legally, a Native American, see Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 20i.
Certain tribes have taken steps to try to "copyright" certain items, such as the Hopi
who requested "no more research"; and now all projects involving Hopi intellectual
resources must be reviewed and approved by the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office
through permit or contract. See John Loftin, Religion and Hopi Life (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2003), 122.

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 Crockford Shamanisms 147

picked rather than Romans, Vikings, or Anglo-Saxons. The Celts are

idealised as a colonised people. Connecfing to a Celfic past enables a
modern Brifisb person to shake off the yoke of the conqueror and iden-
fify with tbe conquered. This is also reflected in the appropriafion of
Nafive American pracfices: they were also a colonised, pre-industrial
culture. Most of Keeney's extensive list of sources are vyhat anthropolo-
gists would describe as "subaltern groups." Each of these three cases
demonstrates a desire to root the idea of shamanism in something other
than the West, either a pre-modern, autochthonous past, or a mulfi-cul-
türal synthesis, or a non-Western society. This desire vocalises a state-
ment of discontent witb the West, a rejection of modernity as spiritually
barren and boring. In this discourse, it is modernity tbat is inauthentic,
and shamanism is a way to overcome it.

Authenticity in Modernity
According to Marxist and mass-society theorist standpoints, modernity
leaves the individual feeling powerless, as tbe control of life is passed to
external agencies, with a concomitant loss of autonomy when compared
to pre-modern sociefies. Opposed to these standpoints, Giddens argues
that there is in fact very little individual power or autonomy in tradifional
societies, and that in modernity there is also opportunity for power that
is not available in pre-modern sociefies. The individual can seek mastery
through appropriation, through which the loss of autonomy can be com-
batted by reasserfing their own power by adopfing something opposite
to modernity. Returning to Taylor's definifion, the opposite of authentic-
ity is alienafion, to be disconnected or distanced from tbat which is most
your own. The perceived loss of autonomy in modernity, what Marx
called alienation, is experienced as a loss of authenticity. This creates a
feeling that life is unreal and fake, based on representafions rather than
originals. To combat this individuals reach out to appropriate something
that is viewed as authenfic and original. Often this appropriafion is of
non-Western or pre-modern cultural forms, the opposites of modernity.
There is a yearning for what modernity has supplanted and so individu-
als construct phenomenal worlds tbat fulfil this desire. Altbough, ironi-
cally, this feeling of inauthenticity is itself an erroneous representafion,
as Giddens rightly points out, since there was no more power or auton-

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148 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

omy in pre-modern societies than in modern societies.^

Shamanism is parficularly appealing as a defence against alienafion in
part because of the way it was conceptualised by Mircea Eliade. Eliade
described shamanism as an "archaic technique of ecstasy," thousands
of years old and cross-culturally prevalent before modernity. As such it
allowed contact with the absolute world of truth untouched by the terror
of history.^* This positioned shamanism as an ancient tradifion that was
the opposite of modernity, a survival of "old religion" that existed since
prehistory only to be extinguished by industrialisation. This discourse
was begun by Eliade but has been continued by multiple practitioners
and anthropologists, not least Michael Harner and Carlos Castañeda.
What has been constructed is an idealised and essenfialised practice
characterised by a connection with nature, a tradition stretching back
to prehistory, journeys to different versions or states of reality, mastery
of spirits and emphases on subjecfive experience rather than objecfive
measurement. This expresses a desire for communal forms of idenfity
and belonging that are supposedly lacking in modernity. What I would
argue is that in fact it is part of the discourse of modernity. Shamanism
is invoked as a rebellion against alienation and inauthenticity, however,
it is part of an inherent dialectic in the discourse of modernity.
The traditions that are appealed to in Western shamanism are invented.
To take one example, the idea of "nature" prevalent in shamanic practices
developed in the nineteenth century as a response to industrialisation
and urbanisation—it is historically contingent rather than "natural."^^
It is a common theme in contemporary Pagarüsms that ideas, rituals,
and motifs that are claimed to have ancient roots can in fact be traced to
fairly recent antecedents. Druidry can be traced to the rituals of Iolo Mor-
ganwg in the 1790s, Wicca to the works of Gerald Gardner in the 1940s,
and Heathenry to a revival of Icelandic eddas and sagas in the 1970s.^

25. Anthony Giddens, "Modernity and Self-Identity: Tribulations of the Self," in

The Discourse Reader, ed. Nikolaus Coupland and Adam Jaworski (London: Rout-
ledge, 1999), 415-425; on modernity see also Gustavo Benavides, "Western Religion
and the Self-Cancelling of Moderrüty," journal of Religion in Europe 1 (2008): 86-110;
Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982),
15-33; Robert Heffner, "Multiple Modernities: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in a
Globalizing Age," Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998): 83-104.
26. Kocku von Stuckrad, "Utopian Landscapes and Ecstatic Journeys: Friedrich
Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Mircea Eliade on the Terror of Modernity," Numen 57
(2010): 78-102; Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard
R. Trask (London: Arkana Penguin, 1989), 3-33.
27. von Stuckrad, "Reenchanting Nature," 771-799.
28. Graham Harvey, "Inventing Paganism: Making Nature," in The Invention of
Sacred Tradition, ed. James R. Lewis and Olav Hammer (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007), 277-90; Jenny Blain, Nine-Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-

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 Crockford Shamanisms 149

In terms of Western shamanism, the work of anthropologist Carlos Cas-

tañeda has been described as its inaugural sacred text, based as it is
on fabricated fieldwork yet held as truth by would-be shamans seeking
journeys in non-ordinary reality as described by Castañeda through the
character of the shaman, Don Juan.^' The crificism tbat can be levelled at
each of these practices is that they are romantic inventions, that they are
not "real" or "authenfic" religious tradifions because they are not "how
things always have been" either because they are inaccurate when com-
pared to the historical or archaeological record or because the records
do not have enough data to tell us bow things "really" were. In either
circumstance, the charge of inauthenficity is based on an idea that reli-
gious pracfice should be connected, in some way or another, with his-
torical accuracy. Tradition in this view is supposed to be an unchanging
cultural truth that connects the present to the past.
However, ceremonies, rituals, and artefacts are not the same as they
always have been. Cultures are constantly changing and what is called
tradition only has the veneer of timelessness. The way things always
have been is often not factually the ways things always have been.
That tradifion is invented was first argued by Hobsbawm and Ranger,
when looking at cultural traits such as Scotfish bagpipes, assumed to
be uniquely Scotfish but actually of foreign origin and recent import.^"
In terms of sacred tradition, the issue becomes even more loaded and
emotionally charged. Members of religions often truly believe that their
sacred scriptures are timeless, unchanging, and absolutely true.^' For
example, in Orthodox Judaism it is sfill held that the first five books of
the Bible were written by Moses himself, yet contemporary biblical crifi-
cism indicates a number of different authors and different redacfions
throughout the gradual construcfion and reconstrucfion of the Old Tes-
tament through time. Protestantism is perceived by adherents as a return
to the "original" religion of the Bible through textual literalism, which is
a paradox, since it is actually a new interpretation. However, Protestant-
ism and Orthodox Judaism have not attracted the same level of scholarly

Shamanism in North European Paganism (London: Routledge, 2002); Ronald Hutton,

The Triumph of the Moon: a History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000) and also his The Druids, (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007).
29. Charlotte Hardman, " 'He May be Lying, But What He Says is True': The Sacred
Tradition of Don Juan as Reported by Carlos Castañeda, Anthropologist, Trickster,
Guru Allegorist," in The Invention of Sacred tradition, ed. James R. Lewis and Olav
Hammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 38-55.
30. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., Tlw Invention of Tradition (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-42, 263-308.
31. See James R. Lewis and Olav Hammer, eds.. The Invention of Sacred Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1-37, 56-74,141-157.

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150 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

criticism concerning their authenticity.

If all sacred tradition is open to change and reinvention, then attempts
to fix it and claim that it is only one thing and one thing only would be
an emic position, taken up by believers themselves. On the etic level, it
would not be analytically valid to dismiss one religious form because
it is an invention which appropriated motifs from other sources, since
this seems to be a feature of all religions. The question then becomes
when does a new religious movement become an accepted sacred tra-
dition? Does shamanism only appear inauthentic because we can trace
its antecedents to the near, recorded past? There is a certain discourse
of authenticity involved in this transition where what is old is real, and
what is new is fake, which corresponds with a related discourse that the
non-West is authentic, whereas the West is not. The discourse has been
prevalent in Western culture since the Enlightenment that the materi-
alism and commercialism of industrialised capitalism was viewed by
some as sucking the soul and meaning out of culture, until eventually
authentic culture is only found in the pre-urbarüsed non-Western world.
In this discourse, modernity itself is inauthentic, a view perhaps put best
by the prophet of Western modernity, Friedrich Nietszche:

The most characteristic quality of modern man: the remarkable antithesis

between an interior which fails to correspond to any exterior and an exte-
rior which fails to correspond to any interior —an antithesis unknown to
peoples of other times. Knowledge ... now no longer acts as an agent for
transfornung the outside world but remains concealed within a chaotic
world which modern man describes with a curious pride as his uniquely
characteristic 'subjectivity' ... for we moderns have nothing whatsoever
of our own; only by replenishing and cramming ourselves with the ages,
customs, arts, philosophies, religions, discoveries of others do we beconae
anything worthy of ^^

This antithesis that is uniquely ours is perhaps the only authenticity

allowed for modern Western culture: to be inauthentic. What this shows
is that the idea of authenticity itself is part of a discourse which con-
demns modernity and glorifies the 'other'. This discourse is, as stated
above, part of modernity, and integral to Western self-identification.
Shamanism is therefore part of that which is most truly our own.

Shamanism as Culturally Transcendent: The Claims of Core-Shamanism

What has already become clear is that there is a plurality of shaman-

32. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," in
Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Urüversity Press, 1997), 78.

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 Crockford Shamanisms 151

isms, some of which appropriate non-Western religious practices, others

which try to reconstruct their own pre-modem past, and still more that
do both or neither. It is my argument that the definifion of shamanism as
ancient and culturally-transcendent, popularised by Eliade, is a Western
construct. One particular form of shamanism stands out as representa-
tive of this: core-shamanism. What is ironic is that it purports to be a
technique stripped of its cultural baggage that renders a universal reli-
gious experience, claims which are part of the discourse of modernity.
Core-shamanism was developed by Michael Harner, initially an
anthropologist working with the Shuar (Jivaro) people of Ecuador.
Harner learned how to go on soul-journeys to the spirit world using both
psychotropic drugs and drumming. He then repackaged this as core sha-
manism, removing the key elements of drugs and sorcery. This was then
sold as a universal technique underlying all cultural forms of shaman-
ism in the present day and throughout history to the Palaeolithic, using
drumming to induce an altered state of consciousness, which Harner
calls the Shamanic State of Consciousness (SSC).^^ Anyone can attain
the SSC if they follow the techniques proposed by Harner in the form of
listening to rhythmic drumming and focusing the mind in intense con-
centration. It can be learned from workshops, or simply from buying his
book The Way of the Shaman and listening to recordings of drumming.^
Core- shamanism thereby fulfils many of the requirements of a Western
audience: it is available to all, can be purchased in a discrete unit, and it
offers a quick fix to any or all problems. Harner suggests the techniques
used in core-shamanism can be used to help trauma, drug abuse, over-
eating, in fact many of the ills seen to typify modern Western culture.-*^

33. While Harner claims an unbroken tradition of shamanism dating to the Paleo-
lithic, a number of differences are highlighted by anthropologists between core-sha-
manism and traditional anthropological accounts of shamanism. The main difference
between core-shamanism and non-Western shamanism is that core-shamanism is
not embedded in local social structure or geared toward communal aims accord-
ing to Vitebsky, "Shamanism," 66. For Jakobsen, Shamanism, 160, the biggest differ-
ence between Greenlandic shamanism and Western shamanism is the time taken for
apprenticeship: Harner claims to offer students of core shamanism to learn in minutes
what it takes angakkoq years to learn. Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 49-53, highlights
four main "charges" against core-shamanism: decontextualizing and universalizing;
psychologizing and individualizing; reproduction and reification of cultural primi-
tivism; romanticizing of indigenous shamanism including ignoring the dark side of
battles with spirits, evil spirits and death threats.
34. On Harner and core-shamanism see Jakobsen, Shamanism, 160-165; Wallis,
Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 45-48; Znamenski, The Beauty of the Primitive, 234-56.
35. Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman (San Francisco: Harper and Row
1985).

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152 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

Harner's core-shamanism is popular in the United States/^ but has

also spread to Sweden,^'' the Netherlands,^* Denmark,^' and the United
Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, Harner's Foundation for Shamanic
Studies sponsors The Sacred Trust, run by anthropologist Simon Buxton.
Their promotional literature defines shamarüsm thusly:

Shamanism is without dispute the most time-tested system for healing —

personal, environmental, communal and global — through the purposeful
and holistic integration of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual
capacities. Archaeological and comparative ethnological evidence sug-
gests that the practice of shamanism is at least 40,000 years old and it
continues to be practised today by indigenous peoples of all continents.
Over the last four decades, there has been a remarkable revival of interest
in shamanism from non-indigenous cultures, mirroring a groundswell in
sustainability, eco-consciousness, global awareness and responsibility.'"'

This definition demonstrates the key features of the Western construc-

tion of shamanism: ancient, culturally transcendent, connected to nature
and environmentalism. By essentialising a core practice, it can then be
sold to anyone, anywhere. The courses offered by The Sacred Trust have
a similarly wide appeal, focusing on soul retrieval, dealing with death,
the spirits of nature, divination, and darkness retreats described as
"journeys to the midnight sun." What this offers is a slimmed down and
sanitised version of shamanism, where any particular cultural system
is played down, and there is no central mythology to fit the techniques
into. This avoids accusations of cultural theft and at the same time it
points to the universality of core-shamanism. If any parficular cultural
system was assigned to the techniques, it would become another religion
with a fixed dogma, a right and a wrong way of doing things. In core-
shamanism, there is no right or wrong way, only the interior, subjective
way. Each person's subjective experience authorises what they do.
At the same time there is a cultural system which is more often than
not assigned to core-shamanism: New Age. The term New Age is as
nebulous and open to interpretation as shamanism, since it is not an
organisation as much as a label, applied pejoratively more often than
positively."*^ So for example, the Native American acfivist website

36. Johnson, "Shamanism from Ecuador to Chicago," 344-49.

37. Galina Lindquist, Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene: Neo-Shamanism in
Contemporary Sweden (Stockholm: Stockholm Studies in Anthropology, 1997).
38. Hanneke Minkjan, "Seeking Guidance from the Spirits: Neo-Shamanic Divina-
tion in Modern Dutch Society," Social Compass 55, no. 1 (2008): 54-65.
39. Jakobsen, Shamanism, 164-207.
40. Sacred Trust, Shamanism 2010: Workshops, Teaching Events & Trainings (Wim-
bourne: The Sacred Trust, 2009), 1.
41. Wouter Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture (Leiden: Brill, 1996),

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 Crockford Shamanisms 153

aimed against plasfic medicine men is called New Age Frauds and Plastic
Shamans, with New Age being spelled nuage by users and pronounced
to rhyme with "sewage."''^ In both American Shaman and the Sacred Earth
Camps website, defensive rebuttals are given to any suspicions the audi-
ence may have that they are "New Age."*^ It seems unlikely that such
defences would be made without realisfic anficipation of attack. Sha-
manism is often included under the umbrella term New Age along with
currents as diverse as astrology, channeling, UFOlogy, Paganism, reiki,
homeopathy, human potenfial. New Thought, transpersonal psychol-
ogy, neurolinguisfic programming, deep ecology, ecofeminism, Wicca,
modem witchcraft, and mediumism."*^ However, the very breadth of
currents included under the term New Age and the fact that it is used
pejorafively rnifigate against its analyfic ufility. It means everything and
nothing and as such becomes an epistemic black hole. While Western
shamanism is often discarded by association with New Age, its roots
are the European fascinafion with shamanism that dates to the seven-
teenth century."*^ As such it has a close affinity with other forms of con-
temporary Paganism such as Druidry, Heathenry, and Wicca, which also
demonstrate a desire to recreate pre-modern and non-Western forms of
religion. It does not share very much with many other of the currents
listed above, other than the contempt that is shown for them by certain
scholars of religion and theologians.
As such I would recommend disassociating shamanism from New
Age and jettisoning the term "New Age" altogether. Instead shaman-
ism, Druidry, Heathenry, and Wicca can be grouped together as contem-
porary Paganism: modern religious movements that reconstruct, revive
or invent pre-modern or non-Western rituals and beliefs and share
common features of environmentalism, self-help, and an emphasis on
experience to support beliefs which may seem otherwise unsupportable.
In terms of healing, a cure is the most convincing argument for a therapy
to make. If that cure is attributed to the soul-flight of a shaman, then one

1-3
42. New Age Frauds & Plastic Shamans, http://www.newagefraud.org/
43. Kottler and Carlson, American Shaman, xii-xiii: "we are somewhat suspicious
about anything that smacks of "New Age", we have little doubt about the power of
his interventions ... we mention this by way of an introduction, lest the reader think
that we are all a bunch of New Age screwballs." Sacred Earth Sweat Lodge Ceremonies,
http://www.sacred-earth-camps.co.uk/sacredearthcamps.html "Please note-this
is not NEW AGE synthetic, nylon knickers, shamanism. This is medicine wheel way."
Capitals in original
44. On New Age ideas more generally see Hanegraaff, Neiu Age Religion and
Western Culture; Hammer, Claiming Knoiuledge.
45. See von Stuckrad, Esoterismus und Schamanismus, 35-136.

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154 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

might believe that shamanisfic claim to be true. Although such attribu-

tion may be specious on a medical level, on the personal level, it can be
a very powerful experience to undergo a ritual and then be cured. The
experience of healing can lead to a sincere belief in the practice or ritual
that supported that experience, regardless of the factual accuracy of the
religious system on which the ritual or practice is based.
An invented pracfice or ritual can sfill be appealing or helpful. It
can give people something they subjectively need even if the claims
of the religious system are not objectively true. Due to this the prac-
tice confinues, its reputation spreads and more people join."** What
matters more to believers is the relevance to their lives rather than his-
torical accuracy or cultural appropriafion. How they feel and what
experiences they have at sacred sites or during reconstructed rituals
has more impact than who originally built those sites or how they per-
formed rituals."*^ Individuals therefore can have experiences found
to be valuable or subjectively valid. This validity is not based on
"fact" in a scientific or objective sense but on subjective experience and
sentiment. This can lead to something Pagans call "unverified personal
gnosis," where a practice is powerful on an individual level but com-
pletely unverifiable by surviving Pagan lore. Some symbols, rituals, or
motifs become associated with certain deities or ideas because contem-
porary practitioners feel that they are appropriate, rather than having
basis in any existing record. They have no factual basis but are accepted
through the personal understanding of the way the religion is practised
in contemporary society.'*^ What this demonstrates is that the personal
experience of a religion often outweighs the historical or cultural accu-
racy for practitioners.

Conclusion
With the recent official recognition of Druidry as a religion by the

46.1 am here following the Stark and Bainbridge thesis on the utility of religion,
see Rodney Stark, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001), 12-15.
47. Robert Wallis, "Queer Shamans: Autoarchaeology and Neo-shamanism," World
Archaeology 32, no. 2 (2000): 252-62; Blain and Wallis, "Beyond Sacred," 97-123.
48. An example from Heathenry is the valknot, a symbol of three interlocking tri-
angles said to be sacred to the god Odin. This is not stated in surviving lore, but the
symbol is found on several runestones associated with sacrifice, warriors, and the
Valkyries, things that are strongly associated with Odin in Heathen lore. Modern
Heathens use personal experience with this god to conclude that there is a connection
and give him the symbol. See, for example, Galina Krasskova, Exploring the Northern
Tradition (Franklin Lakes, N.J.: New Page Books, 2005), 13-14.

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 Crockford Shamanisms 155

British government, there are signs of growing acceptance of Paganism

in Britain."" Official recognition confers certain rights, but it does not
confer authenticity. There is no authentic, true, actual, real culture either
present or past to be "discovered" or "represented." There are only
multiple inventions and reinventions manipulated and transformed
by social actors. The notion that there is "authentic" culture derives
from a discourse in Western culture that idealises non-Western or pre-
modern societies over Western industrialised modernity. This field of
discourse includes not only shamanism but also other forms of contem-
porary Paganism such as Druidry, Heathenry, and Wicca. Authenticity is
a powerful tool for legifimating or de-legitimating these pracfices used
by both practifioners and scholars (and sometimes, scholar-practition-
ers). Denying authenticity is as much an emic position as granting it,
as both involve using authenticity as a selling point for accumulating
recognition and social capital. As such rather than slide into the polar-
ising debate, the only viable academic standpoint is to investigate why
shamarusm and related contemporary Paganisms are prevalent and
whether historical accuracy or cultural appropriation have any bearing
on this, and if so, how do practitioners address these issues.
The three cases presented demonstrate a variety of strategies for
dealing with issues of authenficity. MacLellan invokes a past that he can
legitimately be connected to, the cultural heritage of the British Isles,
regardless of how reconstructed that may be. Keeney chooses so many
diverse sources so as to transcend roots in any one particular culture, a
strategy shared with Michael Harner and core shamanism. The Sacred
Earth Camps appropriate a popular non-Western "other" that is com-
monly seen as more authentic. What this indicates is an awareness that
their practices are recent inventions, and therefore require legifima-
tion. This awareness is common throughout contemporary Paganisms;
however, how much it matters to practitioners is individually variable.
Some forms of Paganism, for example Star Trek Paganism, are quite
obviously invenfions based on ficfifious source material.^" More often
than not, what matters to individual practitioners is the relevance or use-
fulness of the experience. They creatively reconstruct, reinterpret, and

49. "Druidry to be classed as religion by Charity Commission," http://www.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11457795. The Charity Commission is a non-ministerial depart-
ment of the British government; "Pagan Police Get Solstice Leave," http://news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8154812.stm; also increased access to ritual sites such as
Stonehenge and Avebury, and burial sites such as Prittlewell Saxon Cemetery. See
"Beyond Sacred," 97-123; and Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis, Sacred Sites - Contested
Rites/Rights (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2007), 23.
50. Harvey, "Inventing Paganisms," 289.

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156 The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010)

situate practices in space and time and enjoy doing it. Through unveri-
fied personal gnosis, rituals and beliefs can be reconstructed and then
subjectively legitinüsed. This does not mean such creativity is uncontro-
versial, however. Indigenous communities and Pagans themselves reject
the creative actions of certain shamarüc practitioners. Yet religious expe-
rience can be derived by participants from ritual whether or not that
ritual is a recent invention or it is rejected by others. It is that experience
which for them constitutes authenticity, because only experience is truly
our own and provides our own way of flourishing or being fulfilled.

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