Animist Spirit Magic is Not Here to Make You Happy
How much should religion be about personal happiness? This is a question traditional “world religions” grapple with; and so too must alternative spirituality centered on nature and magic — like Wicca, shamanism, paganism, deep ecology, witchcraft, and others.
There’s a danger, first, in saccharine rainbows and gumdrops. There’s plenty of this in various “new age” activities, just like in American culture generally: just think happy thoughts. This leads to silly and shallow practices that can’t grapple with real trouble.
And there is, of course, always real trouble. Robert Bellah, who studied religions in human history, described a key goal of all religious activity as providing some kind of escape from the fundamental deficits of life — death, pain, and disappointment — as well as the particular problems a society faces. Spirituality has to provide something in these areas, even if it’s not smiling rainbows.
But contemporary (“core”) shamanism demonstrates that you can offer too much in this department, by focusing on it almost exclusively. Like other new age phenomena, practitioners see shamanism as essentially therapeutic. That is, it’s supposed to cure people of their problems, with soul retrievals or some other method.
That should be good, right? What could be wrong with solving people’s problems?
The issue is, we’re an incredibly narcissistic culture. We make a lot of problems for ourselves. Not serious problems, like where to get fish from the river so we don’t starve, or how to deal with a child’s death, but personal psychological problems, like eating too little so we look like magazine models. I italicize psychological because these issues are defined in the mode of modern medical: they’re problems because they interfere with our functioning in modern western society. In another place or time, they might not manifest, might not cause a problem in life, and might not be seen as conditions or diseases to fix at all.
Modern psychology wants to fix psychological problems so that we can better function. Because of that goal, it’s also not very interested in root causes, but instead in ameliorating symptoms. Hence anti-depressants and pain-killers. But the real diagnosis is actually simple: western culture and life sucks for humans. Modern medicine can fix us with drugs, so we can get through it. But it can’t fix the real problem.
Contrast this with serious religious practice based on nature. The first truth we should see from this kind of vantage must, I think be: the western world has a fucked up relationship with nature, and we need to do something different. So that means a change in a relationship. A change in how we see and interact with the world around us. A change in how we live.
Those changes may be individual, but they have to be communal too. And while they might make us happier — I think we all hope they do — that might not be guaranteed, especially for short-term happiness and contentment. After all, we may all need to sacrifice something to live with nature correctly: maybe we can’t think and live as consumers any more. That could be painful. But it would still be necessary, and the better course.
This isn’t about fixing our personal problems, but doing things in a better way. For instance, living with nature and nature spirits won’t have much to do with helping someone cope with their OCD. Maybe it will, indirectly: maybe their OCD will improve if they change their life and connect spiritually with nature. But, you know, it might not. They still probably have to live their life, and go to their shitty job, and face the stresses of their city, and so on: their OCD is still a medically defined problem that makes them suffer. Well, that stinks. But I don’t think shamanism, or any other old/nature religion or magic ought to be on the hook to solve that. Nor should solving that be anyone’s spiritual focus.
Consider a parallel with Christianity. I personally don’t find very much attractive in Christianity (and I’m familiar with a bunch of its forms), but it’s done well — you have to admit: it’s met a lot of people where they are, and given them something they need — so it’s instructive. Christianity doesn’t traditionally promise people they’re going to be happy. It doesn’t try to solve people’s every problem, especially not all their psychological hang-ups. Instead it says, “forget about that for a while, think about something bigger and better.” Because realistically, no religion can solve everyone’s problems. The issue is how it helps you cope.
So therein lies a big problem with therapeutic alternative spirituality. The focus is on doing something that’s ultimately impossible — curing all ills with magical practice — and it neglects giving people their own strength, through their own spiritual connections. But the bigger problem is that the focus is always on individuals and their petty problems. We all have them. But is that all we can fix? I say no. We can aim a lot higher. Nature spirituality should have much bigger goals.
First, it can give people an escape from the very origin of modern problems. It can offer an alternative to modern consumer capitalism. This may be temporary — just like going to church is temporary — but it’s something we all need. This could take a lot of forms, and I’m happy to see what people are trying. Whether it’s drum circles or forest bathing, or rituals by the moonlight. That’s all an alternative. An alternative to modernity.
(And as an aside, therapeutic soul retrievals really aren’t much of an alternative: you go to an office and have an expert do some procedure on you and charge a big fee. Isn’t that exactly what modern medicine does to you?)
Second, nature magic spirituality can actually address the spiritual problems our culture has created. We’ve messed up our place in the world and in nature. That’s not just a physical/technical/practical problem. It’s a spiritual one. It’s also not a personal problem. It has personal dimensions for many of us, but it’s communal; societal. So what do I mean in terms of addressing this? Again, it could vary. We may need some rituals. But I don’t primarily mean spectacles. I mean we need to restore the right balance. We need to cast spells. We need to get the spirits back into the glens and the hollows. I mean, this is magic stuff right? Let’s do it and make some change in the world. It won’t be enough — capitalism is still going to go munching away on things — but it will be something, and we need to try doing it.
So let’s get out of the mindset of fixing people’s modern western problems; let’s not be therapists with a drum and some crystals. Let’s actually be fucking spiritual.
