THE GREAT FORGETTING
The first task of Shamanism is to address The Great Forgetting in European culture, that we belong to the natural world. It began several thousand years ago with ancient Greek rationalism, and continued with the Old Testament dominion over nature given to man, along with Christianity's assigning of the world to the Devil. This divide was inherited by Science, and remains with us today in the form of the mind-body split.
Its resolution is not so much an intellectual problem, as an experiential quest. Sheer time in nature is one way. Trance Dance, in which the body yields ecstatically to the spirit, is another way. Sweatlodge, that immersion in the elements in the context of community and prayer, is another.