Michael Harner
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Michael Harner is the founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, the formulator of "core shamanism," and one of the primary proponents of neoshamanism. He was trained as an anthropologist, having taught at Yale, Berkeley and at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he chaired the department. Harner's reputation as an academic was essentially destroyed when he "went native" and began to represent himself as a shaman.
According to Daniel Noel, at Berkley, Harner sat on Carlos Castenada's dissertation committee; Castenada's dissertation was "Sorcery: A Description of the World," which he later published with few changes as Journey to Ixtlan. Susan Grimaldi wrote an article for Shaman's Drum magazine, published by Harner's Foundation for Shamanic Studies, in response to Noel's book, wherein she claims this was not true.[1] Indeed, according to Harner's own educational affiliations, he never taught at UCLA which is where Castenada was a graduate student. Harner's own departure from academic anthropology to become what Daniel Noel termed a "shamanthropologist" came with the publication of The Way of the Shaman as a "how-to" guide for people outside of shamanistic cultures to become "shamans." The Foundation of Shamanic Studies, founded in 1985, published more books along these lines, and offers weekend seminars and for-fee classes to the same end.
The Way of the Shaman became an important text in the early history of neoshamanism, and like Castenada's novels, provided a mythic context for shamanic practices. Part of the popularity of Harner's book is explained by the fact that, in contrast to so-called hallucinogenic shamanism that was popular with spiritual seekers in the 1960s and the 1970s, "The Way of the Shaman" began to popularize "safe" spiritual techniques based on drumming, rattling and guided meditation. This resonated with the changing spiritual tastes of Western "New Agers."
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[edit] References
- Harner, Michael, The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing, Harper & Row Publishers, NY 1980
- Noel, Daniel, The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999
