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[quote=Anonymous][quote]I just want to make a comment on shamanism. It is extremely ancient and Native American shamanism bears deep ties to Siberian shamanism and also near eastern shamanism that was later subsumed into the tradition of Indo-European pre-socratic philosophy. You may not be aware of this, but ancient Europeans practiced shamanism very deeply. They are not separate. They are deeply and anciently connected.
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OP here, thank you for pointing this out to me. I think you do make a valid point, and you're right I wasn't aware of Siberian shamanic practices, though I do wonder if we're defining shamanism differently. In a sense, all mystic practices are deeply connected - we could argue that Hindu shamans, Christian shamans, Muslim shamans, etc exist, because the practices of shamanism exist in every religion.. Every religion has its tradition of nature spirits, ancestor spirits, spirit guides, trance, and so on. But if you look up known shamanic healers who advertise their alternative therapy services at least here in the States, they tend to couch their work in terms of either North American or South American Native language, and sometimes even dress the part. So I think that was what I was referring to, but otherwise yes I agree with you.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]And I'll just add, THANK YOU for pointing out how far Western yoga practitioners (not all, but quite a few) will say they believe in "Yoga" and "Vedanta" but deliberately avoid using "Hinduism" because of its polytheist aspects.

Yet they are perfectly okay using the word "Buddhism". A lot of this comes from the mistaken belief that Buddhism is atheist. It's not. Buddhism also has a very polytheistic pantheon, which gets dismissed because who wants to acknowledge Kuan Yin, Tara, and Manjushri?[/quote]

Thank you. I love that you home in on the verity that buddhism is not atheistic. How I hate that assertion! How can you posit a reality of pure consciousness and then say 'oh but it is atheism.' pssht not thinking![/quote]

Yeah, it needed to be said![/quote]

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