NAFPS Forum

I'm putting this here cuz I don't know if it really belongs in the Angel Retreat thread... and I don't want to distract from the purpose there.

goozih post in the Castaneda thread about traditional spirituality being stripmined and clearcut..  is the sweat lodge ok?

I don't mean to sound stupid, and definitely not trying to offend anyone when I say this, but the time in my life when I sweated, long ago, she was like a good (better than good) friend.. and I am concerned.

Has the sweat lodge been injured in this.. ?  

Good question the events that happened in the last couple of week affect us all.
The Inipi or what is called the Sweat Lodge has been taken many abuses in
the last 40 years.
It is a ceremony that is done here weekly by many families
who live on the rez here it is a part of our lives.
We have always known that prayer should never be paid for.
The inpi is a thousand years old and it should be left to the
native people who earned the right to pour. I never heard of anyone
ever getting hurt until these white folk started abusing the lodge.

we will survive and endure,

That is good to know.  Thank you.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with taking a sweatbath according to the customs of your country, and if you personally feel that there's a spiritual purification aspect to it, well and good.  Most of them these days are mostly for hygenic and social purposes, but then cleanliness is next to godliness.   ;)   And if Newagers want to make a holy sauna part of their religion, more power to them.  They should not, however,  present it under false colors as a Native "sweat lodge", and it should go without saying that they should know what they're doing and take all due precautions for the safety of those participating.  These are the main issues about it - appropriation of a thing that does not rightly belong to a person, and complete obliviousness to how to work the thing once they get it.

whatever........................................ >:(

And if Newagers want to make a holy sauna part of their religion, more power to them.  They should not, however,  present it under false colors as a Native "sweat lodge", and it should go without saying that they should know what they're doing and take all due precautions for the safety of those participating.  These are the main issues about it - appropriation of a thing that does not rightly belong to a person, and complete obliviousness to how to work the thing once they get it.

Here is where we run into problems more dead newagers because even a little encourgment to these unbalanced people will cause more deaths

Quote from: uktena on October 20, 2009, 01:52:39 AM
There is, of course, nothing wrong with taking a sweatbath according to the customs of your country,

Agreed, but only if those customs are respected. If not respected... people can die.

QuoteAnd if Newagers want to make a holy sauna part of their religion, more power to them.

Well, here we run into the same problem of respecting the traditions of the peoples who developed the sauna, as opposed to just making crap up.

Sauna cultures have guidelines for safe construction and use of recreational/bathing saunas. The cultures who have surviving spiritual ceremonies with the sauna have actual traditions: spirits connected to the sauna, ways those spirits should be respected, songs or prayers, things you do and don't do.

So even though sauna is also (and now mostly) used in a secular manner, both in the originating countries and throughout the world in health clubs, etc. There is a big difference between an authentic, traditional sauna ceremony and disrespectful newagers making stuff up.

Even if James Ray had called his death sweat a sauna, he did it wrong by the standards of any culture that uses steam baths.

QuoteThey should not, however,  present it under false colors as a Native "sweat lodge",

Agreed. Nor should they call it by the name of any other ceremony, from any other culture that has standards for physical and spiritual safety.

They should call it "Idiots suffocating in a plastic tent." Or "Cult leader bullies suffocating, dehydrated people into dying in plastic death tent." This debacle had nothing to do with authentic ceremony or culture of any kind. But this racist used outsiders' attraction to romanticized fantasies of NDN spirituality to lure them into his web. They forked over money for their fantasies of "Vision Quest", "Sweatlodge", "Spiritual Warrior" and sweeping desert vistas surrounding a big tipi. Because "Pay to starve and thirst and die in a plastic tent" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Quote from: Kathryn on October 20, 2009, 08:16:23 PM
Because "Pay to starve and thirst and die in a plastic tent" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

But we can offer it for only half the price that James Arthur Ray did!

@ earthw7 and Kathryn:  Points taken

So even though sauna is also (and now mostly) used in a secular manner, both in the originating countries and throughout the world in health clubs, etc. There is a big difference between an authentic, traditional sauna ceremony and disrespectful newagers making stuff up.

Even if James Ray had called his death sweat a sauna, he did it wrong by the standards of any culture that uses steam baths.

I was writing late at night with little sleep and obviously did not express myself clearly.  I actually edited out a lot of what a originally wrote, trying (not successfully) to avoid my usual rambling style, and I did have a long section about how any kind of "purification" can be dangerous.  I think I used the example that it's possible for full-immersion baptism to lead to a drowning, which is why Baptist preachers do it in a certain, tried-and-true way.  I cut that part out to make the post shorter, but it seems like I should have left it in for the sake of clarity.

"According to the customs of your country" means just that, according to the tried-and-true practices that the local people know will work and avoid harm.  I had in mind the standard American steambath such as found in health clubs and gyms.  These always have a laundry list of dos and don'ts posted on the wall, a thermometer inside that can be looked at, and the people who use them generally know how long to stay and when to get out.  That's how it's done according to the customs of my country.  Building a structure out in the desert as big as a small apartment, covering it with plastic, stuffing it with a herd of people, stoking up the heat as high as possible, burning incense inside it, and letting people stay there for hours--that definitely is not, and any American who has his head on straight would know that.

I try not to speak for any culture but my own, but I'm sure the Swedes, Finns, Russians, and others have their own list of dos and don'ts, written or not. Apart from American steambaths, I've also participated in the Russian banya, which has its own customs different from ours.  I went with friends, and scrupulously did everything I was told to do, and likewise avoided what I was told not to do. (Examples:  DO let other people swat you with birch branches; DON'T drink alcohol inside the steam compartment.)  I've done this fairly often, and done lots of reading about the practice, but I would never presume that I had the right and knowledge to build a Russian banya and charge people for using it, let alone claiming that I was conducting a pagan Slavic ritual to bring people closer to the spirits of nature.

As to that part about Newagers and a "holy sauna", I neglected to put that in quotes.  I was trying to be make a joke at their expense, I guess it didn't work.  :-\   I should have elaborated on what I meant--I was thinking something like, rather than ripping off the practices of other cultures, they should do what they do best and make something up out of old science-fiction cliches, such as that their practice was channeled by a sixth-density entity from Venus, that the structure represents the Space Brothers' flying saucer, and it has to be hot inside because, well, that's what it's like on Venus.  My fuzzy thinking at the time was that if they do it like this and make sure they know how to build and run such a thing without endangering the people involved, then let them have their fun.  I realize now this wasn't right, especially after I re-read what  that one idiot said,  that the people who died were just enjoying astral traveling so much they didn't want to come back.  These people are so out of touch with reality, they can't be trusted with anything more dangerous than chicken feathers.  As earthw7 so rightly puts it:  Here is where we run into problems more dead newagers because even a little encourgment to these unbalanced people will cause more deaths

So now, let me state unequivocally my opinion:  NOBODY outside the cultures that created them should be building anything of the sort, whether they call it steambath, sauna, sweat lodge, or Venusian flying saucer.  If they want a purification-by-heat experience, they can go to the local gym; and if they're any kind of a spiritual person, they know they can pray in their heart anywhere.

Nor should they call it by the name of any other ceremony, from any other culture that has standards for physical and spiritual safety.

That's one reason I'm here, to listen and to learn.  I realize now that I've heard the words "sweat lodge" and "medicine lodge", etc., so much over most of my life, that it sort of goes right by me.  If he had called his practice a "banya", I would have immediately said, "Now just a minute here...."  It seems that from now on, I need to define the terms a little more clearly in my own mind.

My main point, in the last sentence of my previous post, seems to have gotten lost, but I'll clarify that, too.  Religious practices are a kind of technology, and any technology can be dangerous in the wrong hands.  Not only do the Newagers steal technology from other cultures rather than looking deeply into their own cultures for what is good, true, and spiritual, but once they get their hands on it, they have no idea how to make it work.  Most of this is harmless, if offensive; but only a blithering idiot would think that starvation and exposure (vision quest) and screwing around with the body's temperature regulation (sweat lodge) can be done by anyone, anywhere, anytime, as long as it "done from the heart."

Quote from: uktena on October 20, 2009, 10:21:33 PMThese people are so out of touch with reality, they can't be trusted with anything more dangerous than chicken feathers.

As if chicken feathers wouldn't also be dangerous in their hands!

Would you trustingly walk into a room full of these people when they're brandishing chicken feathers?

Darn, hoisted once again with my own petard!  A self-important know-it-all like me doesn't stand a chance around here, does he?  :D

You're right, it's possible to smother someone with chicken feathers, and I'm sure one of those "sham-mans"  would manage to do just that while trying to purify someone of his negative energy while invoking the positive, spiritual, cosmic energies of the sacred ancient Amazonian jungle-fowl.

watch out for those chicken feathers ;D

The sacred pillow fight to the death. Watch the feathers fly!

(too soon?)

There is often a cultural difference that so many non NDNs interpret as agreement with a fraudulent  individual. Silence can be easily misinterpreted. Indirectly confronting an individual which is an old tradition can also easily be dismissed. The aggressive nature of frauds often speaks to others whose cultural back ground is based on similar cultural norms. Our NDN silence does not protect us. It's good we are now speaking out. I see we must protect what is ours. I remember one year the New Agers came to the cultural conference held annually at Morely Alberta. They hogged the microphone. Strange people floated about the place named Princess Pale Moon and Little Deer etc. They called themselves Rainbow People or Sun Bears Bear Tribe. They were so aggressive. We wanted to talk about suicide poverty and the old NDN values- all the issues that are so important to trying to live a good life today. The frauds had no ears only big mouths spouting the usual New Age goobedlygook. Instead of escorting them off the grounds it was the NDNs who left. People got so frustrated with their antics that they pulled up stakes and left. Later in the day a powerful thunderstorm and a high wind passed over the camp. Things were not as the crazy people thought.

Quote from: NDN_Outlaw on October 23, 2009, 03:54:07 PM
There is often a cultural difference that so many non NDNs interpret as agreement with a fraudulent  individual. Silence can be easily misinterpreted. Indirectly confronting an individual which is an old tradition can also easily be dismissed. The aggressive nature of frauds often speaks to others whose cultural back ground is based on similar cultural norms.

So true.

I was in an odd, but all-too-typical, conversation the other night. A white guy barged in and demanded that the NDNs give him answers to his hypothetical questions about whether white people could ever lead NDN ceremonies. He had already been told in another conversation, in detail, by over a dozen people, "No, non-NDNs have no right to lead NDN ceremonies." Dissatisfied, he dismissed their words and kept looking for others to talk to.

So there we are with this guy doing this again, to a largely different group of people. Again, the people conversing were mostly NDNs. One white woman agreed with the pushy white guy that "everyone should share everything they know; we're all related." (paraphrasing). I told him, "You've already been told 'No.' Why can't you respect that? Why do you keep doing this?" All the NDNs either ignored him or were polite to him. Two or three of them said, "Let's not fight," and changed the subject.

The next day he was telling people "all the Indians agreed with me!" and calling the kind NDN woman he followed there a "racist" for telling him he had no right to ceremonies.

We've seen this over and over. Those who are pushy and disrespectful assume that those who disagree with them will be aggressive and hostile in response. Unless they are smacked down they assume they have consent.  Even when people are saying "No." Their ignorance about cultural differences leads them to further abuse and twist the words of those kind enough to speak to them. And then when people stop speaking to them, they blame everyone else but themselves.

Kathryn, I think the short phrase needed here is "spoiled brats".