Michael Harner
From Free net encyclopedia
Michael Harner is the founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, the formulator of "core shamanism," and one of the primary proponents of neoshamanism. He was trained as an anthropologist, having taught at Yale, Berkeley and New York University, where he chaired the department. Harner's reputation as an academic was essentially destroyed when he "went native" and began to represent himself as a shaman.
At Berkley, Harner sat on Carlos Castenada's dissertation committee; Castenada's dissertation was "Sorcery: A Description of the World," which he later published with few changes as Journey to Ixtlan. Harner's own departure from academic anthropology to become what Daniel Noel termed a "shamanthropologist" came with the publication of The Way of the Shaman as a "how-to" guide for Europeans to become "shamans." The Foundation of Shamanic Studies, founded in 1985, published more books along these lines, and offers weekend seminars and for-fee classes to the same end.
The Way of the Shaman became an important text in the early history of neoshamanism, and like Castenada's earlier, discredited work, provided a mythic context for the use of entheogens. Since the publication of Way of the Shaman, ayahuasca use has increased dramatically among Europeans with little or no cultural context, to the extent that it now supports a booming trade in "ayahuasca tourism."
These activities have placed Harner and his Foundation at the center of a great deal of controversy over the issue of cultural appropriation.
References
- Harner, Michael, The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing, Harper & Row Publishers, NY 1980
- Noel, Daniel, The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999