In the modern world of sciences the mysticism of sickness has mostly been eliminated as the prevailing understanding for solving problems in the body. There are still some people who believe in the powers of soup and certain holistic remedies that have been passed down the generations. But we know the power of belief itself can be strong when healing people. So for the most part, healers, especially in the sense of the shaman have not been as strong in the modern world.
But what if shamans only changed their position from one thing to another?
The idea of the shaman, while not always using that name, is rather ancient. They are a type of person who underwent a trial of some kind, sometimes to the brink of death, then came back and understood the ways to heal other people. Across cultures their jobs varied to the point that anthropologists today still have a hard time determining the correct definition of a shaman. For the most part shamans were guided by spirit guides that were usually animals, they entered dreams and other altered states of consciousness to repair or mend the souls of people. They were also psychopomps, mediators, healers, and storytellers.
It’s the last one I draw the most focus, but you can find parallels in other areas as well. One part of being a shaman was retaining and telling or retelling stories over and over again. They were important to pass along and in many cases the shamans made the stories themselves. This ties in with a writer perfectly, and brings the most evidence to the table. A writer is a storyteller first and foremost, and a shaman fulfilled the same function.
It’s the other areas, like healing and fighting off evil spirits that become a bit more challenging to explain when you try to pair up writers as the new age shamans. But isn’t that exactly what writers do?
Let’s start with the altered states of consciousness which are used to cross into the spirit world. Have you ever felt like you were in a trance when writing? Like you were so zoned and focused on writing that you were getting it done without paying attention to anything else and then suddenly it was done! You might not have, because of the amount of distractions we see in life these days and how easy we have access to them. But when you eliminate all the distractions you are left with pure writing. Some people enter these trances for only ten minutes, others can do it for hours. But it still gets done.
Next you have spirit guides. That’s a bit easier one to handle. When storytelling became the main focus, and shamans had to start believing in new kinds of spirit guides, what writers got was their characters. How often does a character sway you one way or another? Maybe they even start to bleed into the rest of your life and you think about what one character would do in a situation you are in. These characters are guiding you.
We can even go so far as to take a look at just what kind of people end up becoming famous writers. You see an unusual amount of writers today that have gone through some horrible experience in their lives. Sometimes it may be problems around suicide (a common one with writers) and maybe it might be just horrible experiences. Either way these are what you can consider the shaman initiation rite, which is something that happens to most shamans to provide them with their healing properties, so that they can understand sickness. You can look at it further as, the good writers have experienced life first and now they write about it. A good shaman experience death first and then they could heal it.
Finally we get to the healing aspect. We aren’t fighting off evil spirits. But writers most certainly heal people. They heal people emotionally, and mentally more than anything, but even physical wounds can be overcome. Just look at how many self-help books are out in a bookstore. But it’s not the self-help books that matter. Writers heal people by showing them that there is more to life, that there is so much to experience and love. Writers heal the heart-break by showing people love that can withstand. Writers heal the suicidal thoughts and fantasies by giving people worlds where those people matter.
There is so much that a book can do these days and the writers are a vessel for that. They aren’t walking around healing cancer with their hands on patients chests, but they are giving cancer patients the hope and personal strength to defy cancer on their own. A book can change your world and writers hold the power to that. They may not heal everyone, but if you let them, they will heal you.
