2024
Volume 24, Number 3/4, pp. 141-145
Shamans, ancient and modern, and animal relationships
M.W. Fox
Veterinarian, Golden Valley, Minnesota, USA
Shamans, or medicine men and women, ancient and modern, can teach us to appreciate nature and our planet. Some of their traditional practices and altered states of consciousness, offering a holistic and integrated worldview that were of benefit to their communities, may be of inestimable value today as we face the twin crises of climate change and species extinction with concomitant biodiversity loss.The contribution to these crises of the dominant and long-enduring, materialistic, rational, divisive and objectifying dualistic worldview of Cartesians, separating body and mind, human and animal, culture and nature, is considerable.