“Shamanism”
As I make my way through the history of religion, spirituality, and entheogens, it is impossible to ignore the implications of the concept of “shamanism”. To me, the word "shamanism" feels bereft of much meaning at this point as it seems to be applied far and wide to any number of spiritual practice. Personally, I think of "shamanism" as any practice that involves some sort of "traveling" or "journeying" to other realms and then "communicating" with the beings that inhabit them. Did Christianity have roots in divination practices, prophecies, and magical ritual that could be lumped into this this mono-brand of "shamanism"? Well, we could ask the Etruscans, the ancient divination culture based in Central Italy in the millenia prior to the rise of Christianity. If all of their literature hadn't been destroyed and their culture wasn't extinct as of the 1st century AD (Ghirotto, et. al, 2013).
“Shamanism”, if you think about it, is kind of an interesting concept to homogenize because, potentially, the other realms that are being visited are not in-fact, culturally-specific, but are rather inter-cultural dimensions of reality. However, I do not believe that Laufer had any sense of this potential meaning when he proliferated the terminology. In fact, Laufer refers explicitly to external indicators of shamanism and makes no reference to the internal experience of the "shaman",
Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia vid Tibet, China, and Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition of the supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Tanjur, or the second part of the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese collection (Laufer, 1917).
I am deep enough into this work to know that while magical artifacts have a place within practice, you can certainly have a charm or incantation without a shaman. I haven't exactly considered that point before, but maybe you get where I am going with it.
To be frank, I am really struggling to find ANY good, at least somewhat unbiased research about psychedelics, entheogens and/or religion. By and large, the Abrahamic programming is so insidious that we bump up against religious bias in all of the articles I have encountered thus far. I am resigning myself to the understanding that I am not going to find what I am looking for in an article on the internet. The reality is that even those who may have more profound insights to share are afraid to share them because of the potential consequence.
Sofia's own James Fadiman states his reservations on speaking candidly about his views very clearly in "Higher Wisdom", "From a personal standpoint, there is a terrible time where I don't have personal freedom. There is no freedom of speech anymore; it's called political correctness... I can't say what I want in most public venues or I get attacked. I find this to be a terrible time" (Walsh and Grob, pg. 40). Swap "political" for "religious" and it is the same game under a different name. All we have to do is login into instagram or BBC.com to see the deep ties between religion and politics and the absolute power these alliances yield globally. The Judeo-Christian behemoth (religious pun intended) is insurmountable. How are we supposed to find a semblance of objective "truth" within the research we study if the pioneers and greatest names in the field are afraid to speak their truth? Beyond personal bias, cultural norms (i.e. the religiopolitical narrative) controls the results of any and all studies as we are only as open as our perspective - and we cannot see what we cannot name.
Ghirotto, S., Tassi, F., Fumagalli, E., Colonna, V., Sandionigi, A., Lari, M., Vai, S., Petiti, E., Corti, G., Rizzi, E., De Bellis, G., Caramelli, D., & Barbujani, G. (2013). Origins and evolution of the Etruscans' mtDNA. PloS one, 8(2), e55519. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055519Links to an external site.
Laufer, B. (1917). Origin of the Word Shaman. American Anthropologist, 19(3), 361–371. http://www.jstor.org/stable/660223Links to an external site.
Walsh, R., & Grob, C. S. (Eds.). (2005). Higher wisdom: Eminent elders explore the continuing impact of psychedelics. State University of New York Press.