Examples Of Neo Shamanism

New Age. Neo-paganism. Neo-shamanism. The very names of these ‘new religious movements’ conjure up an image of modernity, in sharp contrast with the old and the traditional. One thing that they have in common is that they have reinvented religion in a modern context, appropriating older beliefs and religions to create legitimacy. As Johnson argues for example, neo-shamanism attempts to legitimise itself by drawing on worldwide traditions of shamanism (1995). They claim that the shamanism that they practice is identical to the older forms that they attempt to emulate and they attempt to support this by appealing to the (supposedly) underlying universal nature of shamanism. This appeal to history is comparable in all accounts, like

Both are supposedly traditional, but as van der Veer convincingly argues, this traditional authenticity is created specifically through their participation in a secular modernist culture (2007: 317). Because the scope of van der Veer’s article is different, he does not focus on the individual’s participation in Qigong or Yoga, and instead focuses on the specific historical, political and cultural events that helped reinvent Qigong and Yoga in their specific ways. The individuality of the new religious movements is however evident in Aupers, Johnson and Luhrmann (2006; 1995; 2012a). The New Age movement emphasises the individual journey to spiritual reward, and every journey will be shaped to the individual’s needs (Aupers & Houtman, 2006: 203). The neo-shamanist’s path is equally shaped by the individual, as they focus on individual agency and needs (Johnson, 1995: 174). Interestingly, there are a lot of similarities between these new religious movements and evangelical Christianity, something that Luhrmann herself notes as well. They place great emphasis on the ‘self’, they use ‘let’s-pretend’ and playfulness, and yet they truly believe that it is all