..."There was a fusion between religion and Politics,church and state. In Almost all orderly,stable societies there has been a preference for the priestly way.
The Shaman is a much too dangerous creature to have around. He is often a solitary half-mad creature through whom a God or Demon -may begin speaking through unexpectedly.
Or he may keel over trance-like, leaving his body only to return glassy-eyed from the invisible realm of myth with some outreageous demand...not at All keeping with "orderly social process"
The shaman's primary allegiance is to the supernatural dimension-not to the society.
Here we see a conflict between immediate visionary experience and the social order.
Most of the experiences on which our present religious traditions have been based on happened in the long ago,and from a safe vantage point of a current perspective may be determined in any number of ways.
It seems to be a common human belief that
the miraculous and wonderful could have easily happened in the distant past but not today at All...and the churches have developed a great variety of unpleasant ways of dealing with visionaries and heretics (the two are often identical) who interrupt the more orderly processes of religion."
Stephen Larsen.."the Shamanic doorway"
peace
w.
