[The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010) 139-58] doi: 10.1558/pome.vl2i2.

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ISSN 1528-0268 (Print) 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 communities. 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 industrialised 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 shamanism. The main bone of contention is that it is inauthentic: based on the fabricated fieldwork of Carlos Castaeda, misappropriating nonWestern cultural forms, and motivated by consumerism and naive materialism.^ 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 shamanism 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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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 ostensibly 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 separated 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 practices 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 formulation are manifold as it privileges an idea of discrete cultures into which individuals are born. The second theme is coherence to established 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 theological 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):369390; Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis, "Beyond Sacred: Recent Pagan Engagements with Archaeological Monuments Current Findings of the Sacred Sites Project," The Pomegranate 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 (Mnster: Lit Verlag Mnster, 2004).
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will refer to Western shamanism rather than neo-shamanism.'^ The examples 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 culturally 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 authenticity 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 determine the course of a concept's evolufion. "Shaman" came from Tungus but is no longer restricted to that linguistic family, for it has crossed linguistic and cultural boundaries and mutated its symbolic associations and meanings along the way. Shaman is not the only term metamorphosed 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 Shamanism and Nineteenth Century Thought," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 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 Stuckrad, 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), 2778.1 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: Waveand Press, 2000), 102.
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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 shamanism, somefimes by adapfing and appropriating non-Western cultural forms. It offers an alternative to a perceived shallow, empty modernity, 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 moderrty in the industrialised West is deemed inauthentic. In the Urted 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 themselves a shaman and why? Gordon MacLellan, an envirorunental educator and shamanic pracfitioner, says this of his vocation: I'm called 'a shaman' maybe by people who do not know any betteror 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 appellation 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 crossculturally. 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 workshops 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: Shamanism and the Western Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 265-266;
Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans, 55-56.
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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 spiritual 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 abandoned 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 (Amsterdam: 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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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 ownpsychotherapy and spiritual healingas 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 manipulated 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 Castaeda. 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 individuals 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 particular 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 Bethlehem 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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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 description 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 advertised 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 human [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 disrespectful to Native American communities. The Lakota Nation issued a declaration 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 different 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 com18. 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 American 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 Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010

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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 acfivists 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 anywhere, 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 connecting 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 representative 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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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 idenfify 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 anthropologists 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-cultral synthesis, or a non-Western society. This desire vocalises a statement 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 combatted by reasserfing their own power by adopfing something opposite to modernity. Returning to Taylor's definifion, the opposite of authenticity 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 individuals construct phenomenal worlds tbat fulfil this desire. Altbough, ironically, 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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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 Castaeda. 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 urbanisationit is historically contingent rather than "natural."^^ It is a common theme in contemporary Pagarsms 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 Morganwg 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: Routledge, 1999), 415-425; on modernity see also Gustavo Benavides, "Western Religion and the Self-Cancelling of Moderrty," 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 University Press, 2007), 277-90; Jenny Blain, Nine-Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010

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In terms of Western shamanism, the work of anthropologist Carlos Castaeda 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 Castaeda 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 compared 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 religious pracfice should be connected, in some way or another, with historical 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 crificism indicates a number of different authors and different redacfions throughout the gradual construcfion and reconstrucfion of the Old Testament 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, Protestantism 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 University 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 Castaeda, 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 (Cambridge: 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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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 tradition? 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 materialism 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-urbarsed 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 exterior 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 condemns 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 shaman32. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge Urversity Press, 1997), 78.
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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 representative of this: core-shamanism. What is ironic is that it purports to be a technique stripped of its cultural baggage that renders a universal religious 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 shamanism, removing the key elements of drugs and sorcery. This was then sold as a universal technique underlying all cultural forms of shamanism 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 concentration. 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, overeating, in fact many of the ills seen to typify modern Western culture.-*^

33. While Harner claims an unbroken tradition of shamanism dating to the Paleolithic, a number of differences are highlighted by anthropologists between core-shamanism 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 according to Vitebsky, "Shamanism," 66. For Jakobsen, Shamanism, 160, the biggest difference 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 primitivism; 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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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 shamarsm 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 suggests 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 construction 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 coreshamanism, 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 Divination 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 (Wimbourne: The Sacred Trust, 2009), 1. 41. Wouter Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture (Leiden: Brill, 1996),
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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 audience may have that they are "New Age."*^ It seems unlikely that such defences would be made without realisfic anficipation of attack. Shamanism 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 psychology, 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 seventeenth century."*^ As such it has a close affinity with other forms of contemporary 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 shamanism, Druidry, Heathenry, and Wicca can be grouped together as contemporary 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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might believe that shamanisfic claim to be true. Although such attribution 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 practice confinues, its reputation spreads and more people join."** What matters more to believers is the relevance to their lives rather than historical 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 performed 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 completely unverifiable by surviving Pagan lore. Some symbols, rituals, or motifs become associated with certain deities or ideas because contemporary 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 accuracy 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 triangles 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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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 premodern societies over Western industrialised modernity. This field of discourse includes not only shamanism but also other forms of contemporary 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-practitioners). 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 polarising 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 commonly seen as more authentic. What this indicates is an awareness that their practices are recent inventions, and therefore require legifimation. 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 usefulness 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 department 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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situate practices in space and time and enjoy doing it. Through unverified personal gnosis, rituals and beliefs can be reconstructed and then subjectively legitinsed. This does not mean such creativity is uncontroversial, however. Indigenous communities and Pagans themselves reject the creative actions of certain shamarc practitioners. Yet religious experience 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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