I made this picture last night, in addition to my floating conspiracy pyramid. This one is based on an old post where I was toying with an idea for some sci-fi/fantasy type stories, based around this central premise:

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.

The accompanying elaboration of this idea is that not only would they be able to take on your spiritual problems (for a fee), but they would also be able to reap the spiritual rewards you would have gotten for solving the problem yourself. So basically, people who come to them would never progress spiritually - they would stagnate. They would sort of be like shamanic loansharks or something. It would be cool to have the “evil” characters not actually be evil at all in the traditional sense. They would just be clever spiritual businessmen who knew enough to offer people a “quick fix” solution to problems they should really be knuckling down and solving themselves.

I was also imagining there would be various levels within this type of organization. I’m picturing it happening in a modern city, and you probably wouldn’t contact the shaman directly. There would be like either a central office, or like independent consultants who would analyze your spiritual dilemma, and then connect you to a shaman from their network of freelancers, depending on what the required area of specialization is. I’ll definitely be coming back to this when I get some other writing out of the way.