The True Shaman
Spanish Version www.concienciaindigena.org/single-post/2018/06/02/El-Verdadero-Chamán
The true "shaman" does not proclaim himself as such, and rather is recognized by those around him in his tribe.
They have no more super power than their love for their people and their sensitivity to life. They are not doing paid miracles for tourists, nor do you find them on the internet, promoting their latest book, or making world tours as rock stars.
These people are not disguised in stage-style outfits or indigenous fashion catwalk, full of feathers on their heads, and magic fakery hung around their necks. They only work with and for their people and only in their ethnic groups.
You will see them moving rocks to build, helping to make adobe bricks, cutting firewood, harvesting the cornfield, carrying sacks of corn, carrying buckets of water from the river, accompanying the sick, or the dying, digging tombs for their deceased, herding cattle, going to the cities to do legal procedures of their community, helping in deliveries, etc. And yes, of course, sometimes when it's their turn you'll even see them leading to some ritual, ceremony or pilgrimage. Sometimes you will hear them sharing about their worldview, the myths and legends of their ethnicity to preserve them alive so that children and young people know them. They are characterized for being the people who work the most and give the most for the good of their community.
They are usually poor because they have almost no time to work for themselves, because they care more about their people. Normally they begin to be recognized as special people after a lifetime of hard work giving more than others, when they are older people, because working hard all day is nothing special, especially among indigenous people, who are strong and unstoppable.
They will never be interested in leaving their tribe to go to the world to strut looking for fame, fortune and followers making several magic trick. The word "Shaman" and the abusive form in which it is used today is purely Western and belongs basically to the New Age world, in many ethnic groups they have never heard this term, and instead they refer to these people who work harder than others as Marakames , healers, yerberas, midwives, medicine woman, elderly. etc.
Do you need a shaman? Well look for it inside yourself and if you find it will be useful only for you, if you say you have it, you have already entered the grotesque circus of the New Age clown.
Strictly speaking, the "Chaman" at some point in history was a figure that belonged to a Siberian ethnic group now extinct. Word that until the sixties almost nobody knew and was basically used by anthropologists to talked about to such personage. (which obviously was not what you think today of a shaman) Not anyone that puts feathers on the head and does any cheap magic trickery is a shaman.
As you will see, nothing to do with the generalized New Age idea of the magic Shaman just because it proclaims itself to be one, dressed as a prince or queen of shoddy super imaginary powers available to the public to pay for miraculous events, ceremonies, rituals or hallucinogenic trips under request for psychotropic tourism, in order to possess so longed self-deception.
In short, a "shaman" is only a normal and healthy human being in the full sense of the word.
What is worthwhile is to observe his beautiful example of life and learn from it.
