I Deeply Regret Teaching A Simple Skill, Because The Learner Was Insincere.

Shamanic Practitioners are fast-track, short-cut shamans only in name. Shamanic is a relatively new term, I think, probably related to the New Age movement. If 'shamanic' describes a shaman, then from my perspective, the New Age shaman does not align with what indigenous people understand a medicine person to mean.

A postmodern interpretation of what the shaman is can be best outlined here. 

"The shaman fulfils some of the transcendental artistic expression, some of the counselling and accompanying done by psychologists and philosophers. Acting as a mirror and also being the creator of the collective dream, he/she is the storyteller and keeper of the cultural memory, reminding us of the work of a Jungian analyst helping us read and rewrite the ‟circuitry” of our soul. We now live in a time when this shaman is showing himself again to the world..

The shaman's functions in the community are keeping the balance between man and nature, keeping the culture alive, the stories, the customs of the tribe and their traditions. He is a physical and psycho-emotional healer of the community members, a keeper of the ritual laws, depository of the tribe’s wisdom, beyond time and space, to see the Principle manifested in the harmonious simplicity of nature."

"The harmonious simplicity of nature" is not a cerebral exercise. Admiring a tree, loving nature, and sitting in forests doesn't cut it. To be even vaguely shamanic, deep communion with nature for shelter, warmth, sustenance, and hydration for extended periods (years) alone. Anything less is lazy. The medicine person is the 1st nature therapist and sometimes the facilitator for the bridge between the worlds. Our body, ultimately, goes back to nature; however, we are disposed of.

The plastic medicine people refuse to learn about nature or spend time alone in it; they sanitise the misappropriated rituals, they make them safe. It never looks good when your pupils die; it's better to have lazy, ignorant pupils than badly taught dead ones. Shamanic is not what it is.

I deeply regret showing someone how to make an Elder twig whistle, which they were going to copy, but decided not to. This was for her "shamanic practitioner training, sundance ritual". Again, more misappropriated nonsense and not giving it he seriousness and sincerity it deserves.

Indigenous Plains Dancers prepare for up to a year and perform rituals that can include prolonged fasting and dancing around a central pole, which represents the centre of the universe. Historically, the ceremony was banned by governments aiming to suppress Native American culture, but it continues today as a vital religious practice. The Plastic Medicine version involves no antler hooks.

Traditional Indigenous spiritual leaders have explicitly stated that the Sun Dance is for Indigenous people only. 

In 2003, Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota spiritual leaders issued a proclamation requesting that non-Indigenous people not attend or participate in their Sun Dance ceremonies to prevent exploitation and ensure cultural integrity. Clearly, those offering these ceremonies in the UK have not got the message.

No Indigenous culture charges for spiritual things. But the plastic medicine people do. This is Pic'n'mix New Age Sundance Wiccan, OMG. It's a spectacle of cultural misappropriation.

The Western privileged industrial shamanic practitioner is desperate to be seen as the spiritual elder, without the trials and tribulations of learning survival. They want Vision Quests without risk and do them like candy. They have initiations without tests. Nature Connection online, devoid of nature. They pilfer Indigenous peoples' culture and use of their rituals, when they have been asked not to.

The Plastuc Medicine Person is the name indigenous people give white people who call themselves "shamanic practitioners". They project onto indigenous people what they expect, and are then shocked when their young people have smartphones, are doing smack and are living in poverty and discriminated against. Colonised peoples across the world have more in common with indigenous people than the descendants of the colonisers. But we don't need to pilfer from other cultures, let alone call ourselves things which we can't be.

There's a common theme among these English Plastic Shamanic Practitioners, the ever-present Demonic Spectre of the capitalist Wentiko.

If you thought the Wendigo was a mythical nature being, think again. Wendigo is a psychological complaint that everyone under Capitalist rule is subject to and responds to, one way or another. The indigenous Wendigo is the person/people driven to cannibalism by starvation, unable to reintegrate into society because they see people as food. The Wndigo of the Capitalist-Mind sees money in every new thing they learn, even if they aren't expert. It expresses itself as a form of narcissism that is highly susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This way they can get away with calling themselves "Shaman-like" Practitioners, because they aren't being shaman, they are just using pilfered tools from indigenous people.

These are the experts without the experience. Earlier on, I said that the Indigenous shaman/is the storyteller and keeper of the cultural memory, reminding us of the work of a Jungian analyst helping us read and rewrite the ‟circuitry” of our soul. There's a cultural memory of the protests in the 1990s still alive among those veterans who reactivate at the mention of tree destruction. But there is something more than that. The memory of those comrades who have died since. Very few people who were on the road protests claim to be shamanic practitioners, yet many spent years in the woods, moving from protest to protest. So in 2019, when one of the  Founders of Extinction Rebellion & and a historical novelist got together to run a 5-day course on activism at £600 per person, it seems rather strange, as neither has experience of NVDA, let alone what life off the grid was like. None of us had mobile phones, YouTube, podcasts & social media didn't exist. We used CB radios, read Schnews, and watched Undercurrents at festivals

We Tried To Stop The Destruction

Because Capitalism = destruction, however shamanically you try to dress it up. The capitalism Wendigo mind worm is allowed to run wild in the mind that spends all its time justifying its misappropriation, while rejecting the skills that might actually make Thrutopia possible.

No, we are functionally Extinct. 

According to Scott Thrutopia takes us from a recognisable present to a future we would be proud to leave to the next generation. But the caveats are that we don't learn survival skills, that part of indigenous culture- the bit that involves work is rejected. Scott calls it "going back"; she wants to take today's technology with her, so she can still play World of Warcraft.

Functional Extinction means a great simplification, 2°C and rising, catastrophic flooding, catastrophic storms, deadly heatwaves, global droughts, global sea level rise, and global terrestrial Ice loss.

Thrutopia suggests an alternative future, which, if we dream hard enough and pay these white medicine fakes enough, could happen.

I deeply regret teaching an insincere learner. But I remember being told by a Sufi teacher many years ago was this. If you give sincerely to someone who is insincere and they choose to misuse your gift. The mark is upon their soul. Do not be guilty, sincerity is pure.

I seem to encounter the insincere among these charlatans everywhere. Whether about Spirituality or Extinction honesty is a shortcoming.

A true Shaman can stomach the acceptance of extinction, can prepare their community for collective death. We are headed for the afterlife, en masse, nature is the place to prepare.