| Shamanic Healing: We Are Not Alone
An Interview of Michael Harner by Bonnie Horrigan
| Michael Harner, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving shamanic knowledge as it survives on the planet and to teaching the basic principles of that knowledge for practical applications in the contemporary world. Harner, who has practiced shamanic healing since 1961, received his doctorate at the University of California-Berkeley. He is a former professor and chairperson of the department of anthropology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, and has taught at Columbia, Yale, and UC Berkeley. He also served as co-chair of the anthropology section of the New York Academy of Sciences. His books include The Jívaro, Hallucinogens and Shamanism, and the classic The Way of The Shaman. In the course of his academic study of shamanism, Harner lived and worked with indigenous peoples in the Upper Amazon, Mexico, Peru, the Canadian Arctic, Samiland, and western North America. Alternative Therapies interviewed Harner at his office in Mill Valley, California, during an intense storm. The following article is from the FSS journal, Shamanism, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring-Summer) 1997. (These articles are all offsite, use your browser back button to return to Come Together Articles)
What is shamanism?
Is shamanism a religion?
My understanding is that there are two aspects to shamanic healing: a medicinal one and a spiritual one.
What happens when a sick person asks a shaman for a healing?
What is soul retrieval?
How is an altered state of consciousness achieved in shamanism?
Is that like depossession?
In your opinion, why don't we do that now?
In regard to extraction healing, in the shamanic view, where does the illness to be extracted come from?
If I understand the concept, shamans restore wholeness and power to a human being, and then that wholeness and power heals whatever is wrong with that person. So in this framework a power-filled person has the ability to heal himself.
So the person is not healing himself?
Can you talk about the difference between ordinary reality and nonordinary reality, especially regarding the implications for medicine?
What about divination?
How can doctors and nurses use this knowledge?
I know the Foundation is conducting research regarding drumming and health. Can you talk about that?
What are you working on now?
Once a shaman contacts the spirits, what happens?
Your interest in miracles was obviously spurred by your experiencing or witnessing miracles. Would you be willing to tell us a miracle story?
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