Intimations of a Spiritual New Age: V. Socio-Cultural Bases of a Globalizing Neo-Shamanism and its Relation to Climate Crisis: Possibilities, Inevitabilities, Barriers

Summary

The paper explores the potential for a collective renewal of the sacred in response to the secularization of traditional religions and the commodification of life. It considers whether this renewal could take the form of neo-shamanism, influenced by historical figures like Jung and Toynbee, or if it will be limited to more individualistic spiritual movements. The discussion includes the role of entheogens in resacralizing nature to address climate change.

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Abstract

Extending this series of papers on a futural spirituality, and considering the numinous as an inherent human capacity for an awe that confers a sense of all-inclusive meaning, communality, and humility, the question arises whether, in the face of a secularization of traditional world religions, globalization of a techno/capitalist economy of perpetual commodification of planet and person, and a widening sense of loss of meaning and higher purpose, some collective re-newal of the sense of the sacred might be possible —or not. While Jung, Toynbee, and Sorokin regarded such a movement as inevitable, bringing forward to the degree possible the full spectrum of the numinous in an originary ur-shamanism, Bourguignon, Weber, and the later Heidegger foresaw its necessary blockage by the unique complexity and hyper-rationalism of a globalizing materialist economy. The further question becomes whether any such renewal would be constrained to the more “adjustive” movements of Stoicism/Neoplatonism and much of current New Age spirituality—as mainly mirroring the hyper-individualism of Rome and modernity. Or, might it open toward the more revolutionary impact of an early Christianity, and in the present as the futural neo-shamanism variously anticipated by Jung, Reich, Toynbee, and Heidegger? Could such a neo-shamanism, especially as energized by the collective use of now widely available entheogens, resacralize planet and nature in time to address this looming crisis of a human generated climate change and help to inspire its containment?

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