Curses and the Language of Victimhood

It’s a long-standing tradition in indigenous societies to visit your village shaman if you thought you’ve been cursed or spiritually injured by another. These injuries usually came at the hands of a sorcerer, a paid agent of one’s enemies. We modern folk, who have worked long and hard at civilizing the “savage” in us, dislike such talk because it raises the hackles of ancestral superstitious impulses that we want to think we have long buried (and don’t ever want to see again).

Middle World practitioners know how alive and kicking these impulses are—however much grave dirt we may try to throw on them. It’s not EEE-VIL, really. It’s human. It’s human when you harbor ill-will toward that mean aunt who just took away your favorite toy. Enough 9-to-5-ers have a Voodoo doll of their bosses inside their skulls that they torture in order to relieve the burden of their unjust serfdom. For that matter, how many corporations have cursed their clientele with goods that are intentionally fashioned for profit and not for the benefit of the populace. It’s part and parcel.

Thoughts are things, we’re oft told. If we can heal ourselves or manifest our wishes, then it stands to reason that in the great balance of the Universe, we can also harm ourselves and manifest our nightmares. Pollyanna thinking is ineffective when it denies the actuality of what’s going on. If we stick our fingers in our ears, pinch shut our eyes and start reciting positive mantras, we’re shutting ourselves off from the world of reality and (here’s the kicker) we’re doing it because deep inside we’re scared of what’s REALLY going on…meaning that the root intention of our actions (our rites) is the validation of what we fear. (Yeah, read that last sentence again.)

So again, it behooves all people (but practitioners especially) to closely examine the seeds of their actions—even when it’s wrapped in bright-and-shiny denial.

. . .

The validity of curses need to be handled with level-heads. After all, we can scare more soul out of our clients by filling their minds (not yet hardened by initiatory experiences) with stories about curses and possessing thoughtforms…thereby leaving them more vulnerable than we found them, and to the very things we're trying to help them with.

But how do we talk about how curses without freaking our clients out? The very nature of curses implies intention to harm, injury, vulnerability, unjust causality, existential uncertainty and fear of the unknown. A big mosh-pit of human chaos.

The strategy some practitioners enforce is:  Do the work, but don’t talk, think or otherwise mention it ever again. Perhaps this works for some, but I’ve always sensed, as a client, when this sleight-of-hand is operational (and this was even before I ever began practicing shamanism). The subsequent dissatisfaction left an unquenchable thirst to know the truth…a thirst that I also see in many clients. Because not telling them what’s really going down is equivalent to telling them that neither they nor the practitioner (in your best Jack Nicholson voice, now) can handle the truth. 

And what does it mean when we can’t handle the truth? If truth isn’t the thing that we’re handling in a shamanic session, then we might as well register in an Actor’s Guild. “Can’t handle the truth” means that, in our shamanic work, there is not a presence, a consciousness, a wisdom, a power that’s present/conscious/wise/powerful enough to handle what’s really happening when someone (intentionally or not) curses another. So. Not. True.

Illustration: When a kid has gashed their shin or broken their arm, and his friends run from the scene screaming bloody murder or lifting their open palms to the heavens at life’s incomprehensibility, it deepens the kid’s sense that something is majorly (perhaps irreparably) wrong. On the other hand if an adult comes along who (while sympathetic to the pain) knows exactly what to do and tells the child, in a knowing way, that everything is going to be okay then the pain can be borne without panic. 

Illustration 2: This even works when the child has been the target for intentional misdeeds. An adult can either get hot-under-the-collar and deepen the Mini-Me’s sense of injustice and wounding, or the adult can help bring the child to understand some valuable life-lessons, take appropriate action, and teach her how to effectively deal with such situations--all with the understanding that these things happen...and the quicker we learn to take them in stride, the easier our lives will be and the faster we can get on with more important things like friendships and growing into the people we’re meant to become (instead of meditating on the wrong-doing and possibly perpetuating the victim-pattern throughout life). 

Where does such mature, wo/manly attitudes blossom? In our own hearts and minds when we deal with our own pockets of fear and victimhood…those little (un)intention seeds inside the happy-go-lucky ideas of ourselves that we maintain to preserve functional sanity. It means going hammer-and-tongs into our own history (personal and ancestral), peeling back the glossy layers, and realizing that we can fix the unfixable. We can stare into the gullet of our deepest fears, and (while the ride can get wet and wild) we come out of it okay—enough times that we don’t pee our pants each time anymore. In other words, we’ve initiated ourselves (with serious Spirit help) and passed the guardians of No-Can-Do, Too-Big-To-Fix, and Just-Live-With-It. 

[Equip yourself properly and take some solid Middle World training before undertaking a meeting with such guardians...Betsy Bergstrom's classes are excellent.]

To the degree that practitioners don’t take their Hero’s Journey into their fears is the degree to which they will continue to buy into and therefore perpetuate the Language of Victimhood through their clients. At best, such language evokes a commiserating sympathy and at worst sustains the client’s victimhood—and those who come to practitioners to commiserate aren’t interested in actual healing because they’re not done with their victimhood. Serious Gotta-Heal folks want to run to the hands of reassuringly adept, mature practitioners. (I know, this can create an overwhelming Middle World learning curve for newbies, but at the least this Darwinian process ensures that only tenacious, scrappy and effective practitioners make the cut…another guardian to pass.)

Braggadocio and (blind) Positive Thinking doesn’t work. Neither, really, does Fake-it-till-you-make-it. Only the solidity that many pee-free self-honesty sessions impart will give you the aura of knowing, compassionate adult that the vulnerable crave. In a rocking shamanic session, not only is the practitioner’s Truth-O-Meter active, but so is the client’s. So faking it won’t wash (and frankly, I don’t know how any practitioner can get away with it if their Helpers are standing around with a burly Truth stick at the ready), or it will register with the client at an unconscious level and cause anything from irritation to anxiety. 

The reality is that many Middle World practitioners (the butt-naked honest ones) will be scared shitless for a bit. So we should all take heart and keep facing the challenges that appear on our path without getting t0o down on ourselves. After all, if the Spirits choose us, we’re meant for this work. (Read Martin Prechtel’s last chapters of _Talking Jaguar_, and he will tell you the same thing about his first years as a shaman.)

I’ll continue this discussion next time about some of the implications of rapidly initiating and maturing ourselves.