I have an idea that I’ve been toying with for a while, and which I want to use as the basis for maybe some sci-fi-style short stories. It’s this idea of people seeking out shamans to employ them as a sort of cosmic stand-in. That like maybe part of what a shaman does is to act on behalf of people who need to accomplish something in the spirit world, but who are unable or unwilling to make the journey or fight the battle themselves. It’s sort of like the shaman can put on this magical mask and “become you” temporarily in the eyes of the spirit world.

I like this idea cause it makes me think of a lot of different possibilities for stories, as well as for further research. One of the main avenues opened by it which I’m interested in exploring is the idea that maybe you could pay a shaman or sorceror or something to take on your negative karma. So that they would be punished for your wrong-doings. But they would know how to deflect them, probably. This reminds me a lot of the idea of the Beside-Helper & the Cosmic Justic Machine, which I wrote about elsewhere. The other interesting aspect here, is that if you had a shamanic-stand-in operating on your behalf, not only would they incur your accumulated karmic debt, but they would also be able to reap the benefits of solving it. Which means that their customers would never spiritually progress, that they would become stagnant. Also, maybe this is how these shamans would become more and more powerful and evolved.

I was thinking it would be cool if there was some kind of quasi-futuristic syndicate, where like you go to them, and you meet with a consultant, and they do all these tests and measurements to figure out what your spiritual problem is. Then, they assign you a stand-in, from their pool of available talent. Each shaman would be good at enacting certain types of mystical problems or dramas. I was thinking too, that maybe one of these syndicate shaman stand-ins would have a business card which reads:

CONSOLIDATE YOUR KARMIC DEBTS

It would be fun to go into the whole thing of making spirituality into perfectly quantifiable financial transactions. The trick of course, would be that while you clear yourself in the eyes of the universe/spirit-world, you would become forever a slave to the syndicate. It’s almost like the shamans would act as sort of spiritual loansharks.

The whole thing also reminds me of the Ransom Theory of early Christianity. That Christ’s death was a ransom paid to the Devil to free humans from his grasp, which he’d acquired through the Original Sin of Adam & Eve. I also think this would be a cool way to describe like “Agents of the Devil,” also, as being like not fundamentally “evil” but offering people a sort of “quick-fix” solution to their spiritual problems, where the solution ends up being worse than the problem in the long run.