THE NEW SHAMANS
by Carminha Levy

They are everywhere. They are healers, artists, ecologists, politicians - why not?, agents of transformation. Some of them are aware that they are the New Shamans. They belong to research and study groups working together with the internal Shaman, healing archetype, and with the powers of Nature. They link an ancestral wisdom with the modern times. They search for self-cure, the enlarging of consciousness, and their motto is "Save Mother Earth".

Others follow a new internal order conducted by intuition and the search for harmony in life. Gilberto Gil, Lucelia Santos, and Sting, among others, may be considered, by hypothesis, New Shamans.

It is convenient to know that this new way of feeling the World is the most archaic manifestation of religiousness, healing and art. Its most ancient record dates back to the Paleolithic Age: the cave paintings which are rituals of hunting and fertility.

A legend says that in the beginning of mankind, men, due to the precariousness of life, asked the Supreme being to send them some protection. It is the Eagle which, being "only" a bird, is not accepted. (Human pride dates back a long way). The Supreme Being tells the Eagle to give the Divine Protection to the one who first welcomes it. It is a beautiful woman (could it be Freedom?), with whom the Eagle copulates. Thus the Shaman is born, son of the Consciousness (Eagle) and the Female Loving Energy.

The human being is not distressed any more. One of them has since then lived intimately connected with the sorrows of mankind and the secrets of the Deep World.

The present days of chaos are not much different from those of the beginning of mankind. The threat of destruction by technological war, ecological crimes, violence raised to the level of art, pandemics such as Aids leave Man once more face to face with his precariousness.

It is not by chance that the whole world has been witnessing for two decades the rebirth of Shamanism. Carlos Castaneda brought us in contact with this "Strange Reality", making a revolution in the scientific world which only recognized Shamanism until then through Mircea Eliade and his Ph.D. thesis: "Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy". Communities such as Esalen (USA), Findhorn (Scotland), Mapia and Nazare (Brazil) proliferate, setting the "re-ligare" of our Reality with the Deep World.

Sixty years ago, the cult to Saint Daime starts in Brazil. This movement brings from the age-old Brazilian Indian tradition the search for balance between the energy of nature with man, and consequently, his self-cure. The spreading of the Saint Daime in the Amazon outskirts and in the large urban centers is an inter nationally accepted fact nowadays.

The pioneer work of the American anthropologist Michael Harner has the same origin. Initiated through Ayuaska by a South American Shaman, Harner has the insight of how fundamental it is for the balance of civilized man to restore Shamanism. He then develops a technique of entering an altered state of consciousness without the use of drugs, only with drum beats (the Shaman's "horse") recorded in cassette tape. In this high-tech Shamanic ecstasy, one gets in touch with the power animal and the archaic healing wisdom of the internal Shaman.

This urbanization movement of Shamanism led by Michael Harner's findings is spread, from the USA to the whole world, reaching the USSR, where we can also find the unconscious movement. The deep structural transformation which happened in the USSR, granting Gorbachev the Nobel Prize, is a strong indication of this hypothesis. The gypsy tradition says that when a child is born with a birth mark, this child is reverently adopted by the whole tribe, for it will be the future Kaku (Shaman), the reformer and healer of his people. It is very synchronic, therefore Shamanic, Gorbachev's marked bald head - a New Shaman.

CARMINHA LEVY is an educator, psychologist, art-therapist, member of the "The Foundation for Shamanic Studies" (USA), President and Founder of the Paz Géia - Institute of Shamanic Research - Rua Prof João Brito 116, Itaim Bibi - Sao Paulo (SP), Brazil - 04535 - Telephone: (011) 866.5211 - 822.4992