Current diagnosis of the majority of Earth humanity: totally fucked with a slight case of extraordinary possibility. The prescription: its time for a Shamanic Renaissance.
Why shamanism? First of all, prehistory or more accurately the oral/social roots of hidden Ourstory was much more fun. If we follow history back beyond the darkness of its own confusion, we enter a period that I refer to as the Age of Shamanism.
"It can reliably be said that shamanism is the most ancient healing technology of all that is still extant and practiced, virtually unaltered among remote tribes, and by solitary practitioners worldwide."(Jim Ewing, Reiki Shamanism, p. 63)This "prehistoric age", thank the goddess, is defined by wholeness in communion with nature as multidimensional beingness that birthed the partnership model of society, gave rise to art and theatre, took love for granted and hospitality as sacrament.
On the other hand, History is a shit-stained web of mental enslavement and atrocity controlled by the forces of dense materialism and/or death. Before this we have tens of thousands of years of human life free from the power and prognostications of creeping bastards in bastions, a.k.a. the paradisaical garden or as Terrence McKenna explains it,
"the cattle/human /mushroom triad that reinforces the partnership, non-dominant, orgiastic style". ( Terence McKenna interviewed by Gracie & Zarkov, Mondo 2000, http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/mckenna/mondo2k.html)Secondly, ecstasy precludes war and religion! Shamanism is the antiserum for ungodly institutions of religion. When you're in ecstatic trance chatting with ancestors and bringing the energy of the universe into your heart to reestablish perspective, you don't need to be told what to believe. Religion is shamanism sucked dry and repackaged by false prophets seeking false power who are too lazy to hunt for themselves and too afraid to take their medicine or swallow the mushroom as it were.
Think about the progression. You start with ecstatic transcendent human experiences highlighted with fiery chariots, supernatural multidimensional tourism, and miraculous displays of light/color/sensation/knowing. This is truly grand useful stuff that some frauds manipulate for nefarious or ignorant purposes and then you get patriarchy, religious war, inquisition, neo-cons, wars of, on, and for terrorism and eventually the ultimate sign of the apocalypse, Walmart.
Probably the single best reason for a Shamanic Renaissance is that it is the only way to heal ourselves and the planet. Shamanism reintegrates our separatist identities into the natural rhythms of this beautiful blue green mother sphere. It heals through wholeness. Wholeness being reality also destroys illusion and the great lie (what we have previously referred to as History).
Shamans are known as they who "see in the dark". They are the mediators of the unseen that travel to the spirit world, returning with the manna of healing and wisdom. As this precarious and brutal age staggers toward its conclusion we need a Shamanic Renaissance to preserve the essential wholeness of our humanity into the next journey of consciousness.