General > Frauds

"Core shamanism"

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Juliet:
Crap.  I had a nice long reply, and lost it to a finger-press in the wrong place.   >:(

If we look, we can see how Harner could have fooled himself into thinking he'd discovered the 'core' of the practices lumped under 'shamanism.'  That he decided to run with it and become a sort of guru is unfortunate.  (And that assumes he didn't just shrug his shoulders and ask, 'Why not?' before deliberately setting out to be a con artist.)

The people who fool themselves into following Harner (and his disciples) are looking for something that their culture doesn't provide.  And because, in the West, ethnicity does not indicate one's religion or form of religious practice, they find nothing odd in putting together a bit from a Siberian group, a bit from the Dineh, adding a dollop of imaginary Druidic practice, stirring well, and baking for a weekend.  (Then possibly rationalizing it after the fact with the existence of legitimate syncretistic religions, as if the founders of Voudoun sat around a table picking and choosing what to include, rather than trying to preserve what they could while comprehending this weird religion that condemned them to death and servitude.)

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