Plastic Shaman is the term used for individuals who try to pass themselves off as shamans, medicine men & women, traditional and alternative healers, spiritual advisors, seers, psychics, or other practitioners of non-traditional modalities of spirituality and healing who ordinarily do not have any genuine connection to the traditions they claim to represent. Rather they leverage the mystique of these traditions and people's curiosity for personal gain. Generally this involves offering fake artifacts, fictional accounts in books, or illegitimate tours and ceremonies for sale.

Plastic shamans are dangerous because they harm the reputations of the people they claim to represent. Fraudulent and sometimes criminal acts have been committed by these imposters. It is also claimed that these plastic shamans may use corrupt, negative and sometimes harmful aspects of authentic practice; frequently this is equated by legitimate shamans as 'dark' or 'evil'.

Plastic shamans are dangerous because they give people false ideas about spirituality and ceremonies. For example, many people have been injured, and several have died in fraudulent sweat lodge ceremonies. Frequently, the plastic shamans will require that the ceremonies are performed in the nude. Also, sex is sometimes brought into the ceremonies. This has the result of keeping people quiet about it if they leave the group by relying on personal shame.

A sexual cult claiming a Native North or Mesoamerican cultural heritage called the Chuluaqui-Quodoushka, or the "Q" by its adherents, is regarded by some indigenous people as an example of "plastic shamanism". This organization is claimed to have produced harmful results for those who approach the practice expecting something else.

Spiritual journeys are widely believed to be very individual, and what feels true and honest to one person may feel illegitimate to another.

One danger is that students who come to learn from plastic shamans may be exposing themselves to physical, as well as psychological and emotional risk because the methods used may have been invented, 'adapted' or stolen from elsewhere and taught without reference to a real tradition or to the precautions such a tradtion would normally take with regard, for example, to sacred ceremonies.

Distinctions

It should be noted that the Shamanic tradition originated in Siberia, and has no direct connection with the various North American traditions. However, in recent years the term Shamanism has come to refer to a type of spiritual path independent of hierarchically structured religious traditions such as Christianity and Judiasm. Contemporary 'global' shamanism is characterized by eclecticism and personal spiritual connections. This is of course one view; more detail can be found here.

See also

Shamanism

New Age

Further reading

• Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. 1964; reprint, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN 0691119422
• Michael Harner: The Way of the Shaman. 1980, new edition, HarperSanFrancisco, 1990, ISBN 0062503731
• Graham Harvey, ed. Shamanism: A Reader. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0415253306.
• Alice Kehoe, Shamans and Religion: An Anthropoligical Exploration in Critical Thinking. 2000. London: Waveland Press. ISBN 1577661621
• Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley, eds. Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge. 2001; reprint, New York: Tarcher, 2004. ISBN 0500283273
• Daniel Pinchbeck, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism. New York: Broadway Books, 2002. ISBN 0767907426
• Robert J. Wallis, Shamans/neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 041530203X
• Andrei Znamenski, ed. Shamanism: Critical Concepts, 3 vols. London: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0-415-31192-6
• The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies by Richard de Mille (1973)
• Daniel C. Noel, Soul Of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities,

Continuum International Publishing Group ISBN 0826410812

• Jay Courtney Fikes, Carlos Castaneda: Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties,

Millenia Press, Canada, 1993 ISBN 0-9696960-0-0

External links

Native Sites denouncing Plastic madicine men

• http://www.comanchelodge.com/plastic-shamans.html
• http://www.geocities.com/ourredearth/plastic.html
• http://users.telenet.be/gohiyuhi/nafps/articles/
• http://spiritways.org/plastic_medicine_men
• http://newagefraud.org/
• http://www.geocities.com/fakemedicinemen/
• http://members.tripod.com/TopCat4/module1.htm

Anthropologist Site

• http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/war.html

Native American forum on Plastic shamans.

• http://newagefraud.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

Articles

• http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/09/30/how-to-spot-a-fake-shaman/
• http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/News2005-2006/Giago051107ExposingFakeMedicine.html
• http://www.manataka.org/page23.html

Articles on Selling Native Spirituality

• http://www.bluecorncomics.com/newage.htm
• http://mytwobeadsworth.com/PlasticShamans.html
• http://www.williams.edu/go/native/natreligion.htm
• http://www.dlncoalition.org/dln_issues/selling_indian_culture.htm
• http://www.hanksville.org/sand/intellect/image.html