[tmbchr]™

Shamans Adrift in Contemporary Culture



I’m reading through an interview with Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa. I don’t know much about Mutwa’s background other than that he has ties to David Icke (which makes me at least a little suspect in my opinion). There are a couple gems in the interview though, such as where he eats a bit of flesh from a grey alien that his friend had harvested from a saucer crash (excerpted here for the curious who are unwilling to wade through the whole interview).

Anyway, reading through Mutwa’s experiences and the legends that he relates, I was mentally comparing a lot of it to the rantings of Dr. Malachi Z. York, founder of Nuwaubianism. And something struck me all at once. Now, while Mutwa doesn’t seem 100% all there credibility-wise, he seems a lot more together than York. And yet their subject-matter and explorations are at least somewhat similar - sort of a contemporary sci-fi shamanism.

The main difference between the two men seems to my eyes to be that in the case of Mutwa, he has a more or less firm grounding in a traditional school of Zulu shamanism, complemented by other African mythological systems. But in the case of York, it seems that he pretty much cobbled together Nuwaubian doctrine out of whatever he could find in the mythological trash-heap. So you have bits from the Bible, Egyptology, UFO lore, sci-fi, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And hearing him mash it all together just sounds very unbelievable, because you can identify the various sources that he used to arrive at his conclusions. Mutwa, on the other hand, seems - dare I say - more coherent, because his mythic references are culled from a fairly unified traditional system.

And yet both men are doing the same thing: they are drawing from the lore of the cultures which they were raised in, in order to explain paranormal phenomena and weird experiences. They just happen to be from different cultures - one which respects that in the traditional shamanism, and ours which does not. And thus somebody like Malachi York seems far less credible (well, that and the 100+ counts of child molestation). In any event, the whole thing was sort of a revelation to me about the relation between a shamanic-type figure and his culture, and the ways in which myth is built around somebody’s experiences and beliefs.

, , ,





12 Reader Responses

  1. alistair Says:
    December 4th, 2005 at 12:03 pm

    david icke trys to build on the idea of communing with entities in a similar way to shirley maclean, who was a new age guru in the 80`s. icke`s trip to south america is remarkably similar to maclean`s. mtwa`s eating of the flesh of the grey (although he never said it was, only that he was told it was.) sounds a lot like the ingestion of hallucinegenic plants that mckenna talks about. in the shamanic tradition the process of becoming a shaman takes you to the edge of death, sanity, bankrupcy and whatever else we cling to in life and if you survive you can guide others.
    maclean, mutwa, icke and others find an audience among the disenfranchised. those merely curious and those seriously looking for answers pay thousands of dollars in fees, book and dvd purchases and travel to retreats. it is an industry. i suppose it`s a religion too. people like icke ride the democrat, political angle as well.

  2. Ktulu Says:
    December 4th, 2005 at 2:40 pm

    the process of becoming a shaman takes you to the edge of death, sanity, bankrupcy and whatever else we cling to in life and if you survive you can guide others.

    Somehow this reminds me of Fight Club, the whole process of hitting rock bottom, losing everything important, losing his sanity, burning his hand with acid, etc. Kind of interesting if you look at “Tyler Durden” as like a modern shaman, with fighting being the only ritual.

    Interesting take on an interesting movie.

  3. alistair Says:
    December 4th, 2005 at 7:14 pm

    the re-integration of the self.

  4. Ktulu Says:
    December 4th, 2005 at 8:57 pm

    exactly, thank you alistair.

  5. zacharius Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 12:34 am

    reminds me of a quote by mckenna where he paraphrases some of the rainforest shamen he’s met:

    ‘you think this is easier for me than for you, becuase i wear a gourd on my penis? everytime i make one of these journeys, i know it may be the last time, because the shamanic vision is so challenging to who i am..’

  6. rev max Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 12:24 pm

    There have been studies on rates of mental illness in immigrant communities, esp. afro-carribean immigrants in great britain. Rates of paranoia and depression are higher. One of the the theories is that people bring with them all of their cultural conventions, beliefs, customs superstitions etc but discover there is no support for these in their new country. SO this totally upends their entire worldview and identity. The other is that becaus ethey don’t speak the language and look differently they actually are treated with more suspicion and so to some extent the paranoia is well founded.

    Yes I am suspicious of the Icke connection as well. But apparently Mutwa really is a well-respected sangoma. LOL! I bet he doesn’t see Icke in the context of western culture, eg, the fact that Icke posed naked on the cover of his own book “I am Free I am Me” may not seem silly to him.

    Then again, why does it seem silly to me? Icke ain’t a genius but there is something admirable about his extreme lack of inhibitions.

  7. Kylark Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 1:14 pm

    And yet both men are doing the same thing: they are drawing from the lore of the cultures which they were raised in, in order to explain paranormal phenomena and weird experiences.

    A great failing of mainstream American culture is that it fails to provide an ontological framework for “shamanic” experiences. So that when a person is beset by one, there is no way to make sense of it and you just pull from whatever mythology you have at hand (in my case it was a mishmash of Christianity, and various artifacts of popular culture, e.g. Lord of the Rings, the Matrix, Fight Club, popular music, etc.) If your new insights are clothed in this motley garb, there’s no way to relate them without sounding crazy.

    Philip K. Dick did a good job of integrating his existing beliefs (Christianity) with a truly novel and robust allegory (VALIS). The more I read of his stuff the more awed I am by the mythology he created/discovered.

  8. Tim Boucher Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 3:25 pm

    If your new insights are clothed in this motley garb, there’s no way to relate them without sounding crazy.

    Yeah that’s precisely what I was after. Especially I think if something happens to you and you weren’t previously prepared for it, and/or you suddenly have to explain something crazy in a short span of time. All of a sudden, you become like a mythological vaccuum cleaner, which to you is worthwhile but to everybody else you’re just sucking up garbage.

    But apparently Mutwa really is a well-respected sangoma. LOL! I bet he doesn’t see Icke in the context of western culture,

    Wow, that’s a really great point. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Icke probably seems totally normal to somebody raised in a shamanic culture. Wow… this whole thing really opened a lot of doors for me.

  9. alistair Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 3:50 pm

    david icke, like william cooper and shirley maclean and others, are telling us to wake up, yet we are so gripped within the arms of morpheus that we can only respond to culturally accepted modes of awareness. when the anxiety hits we knock it back with pills. mutwa recognises icke in his shamanic form and the literate, individual robot snorts and laughs.
    it is the clear distinction between tribal and literate culture. the written vs. the spoken word. marshall mcluhan made it clear when he predicted a re-tribalisation of western culture through the computer. we aren`t quite there yet. once multi-media becomes a stable platform for desktop broadcast, as simply as the telephone, then the shift will really begin. it will be the death of the mega-church because the local minister will be able to broadcast from the rectory.

  10. alistair Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 5:48 pm

    i meant to say that we respond WITH culturally and IN culturally accepted modes of awareness. to go to the edge is verboten. when you return you will be cast out as if you have a different smell upon you.

  11. Ktulu Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 10:26 pm

    when you return you will be cast out as if you have a different smell upon you.

    Hence, why the Platonic Philosopher is rejected by the masses when he returns to the cave, UNLESS he has learned to adapt to multiple “realities”, and exert the proper “smells” to be accepted within the framework of the ever-evolving matrix (without allowing those “smells” to influence his or her own enlightened perspective).

  12. Lynn Says:
    December 8th, 2005 at 9:06 am

    I’m so excited to find this blog - so many posts on things that fascinate me.

    I had purchased the 2-volume tape set on Credo Mutwa through the David Icke site. Icke is a bit of a crackpot, but his lack of sensitivity to what others think of him seems to propel him to put ideas out there that no one else would dare to. I’ve watched only the first tape, there’s so much material but it’s fascinating. The connection between Africa and possible ancient alien encounters is an intereting one, like the Dogon people of Mali.



SURROUND YOURSELF WITH STRENGTH.