Re-imagining Self and Personhood in Contemporary Pagan, Neo-Shamanic and New Age Spirituality
Kathryn Rountree
As a preamble, I note that the material introducing the theme of this workshop explains “self-alteration” mostly in reference to the conscious effort of an individual, agentic self to instigate self-change – or at least to consciously reconcile or deploy a “creative self-reckoning” with change wrought upon the self by internal or external forces – rather than the kinds of largely unconscious self-alteration that happen inevitably to all selves in the course of living a life. While it might be argued that the very notion of “self” necessarily incorporates an individual’s conscious awareness, it is worth acknowledging that most alteration of an individual happens in conjunction with processes of biological and social maturation as we encounter new people, ideas, knowledge and experiences. A self is never fixed or final, is always in the process of being made, irrespective of whether the source prompting alteration comes from within or outside the individual or a combination of the two, whether the self is conscious or unconscious of altering, and whether the alteration is deemed desirable by the individual self.
Three decades ago Paul Heelas (1991) coined the phrase “self-religion”, which was quickly picked up and developed by other scholars of religion (Hanegraaff, York, Barker, Woodhead, Clarke, Introvigne) to characterise the religious paths of a fast-growing, diverse cohort of inwardly-focussed followers of so-called New Age religions. These spiritual seekers pursued self-understanding, -exploration, -growth, -help, -healing and -empowerment using a variety of psycho-spiritual therapeutic tools that paid a lot of attention to the self and, often, a lot of money to various teachers, guides and gurus. Because of the historical moment in which the phenomenon flourished – the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s – and the highly eclectic nature of practitioners’ sources, it is easy to construe the drive for self-development and personal maximisation, in part, as a late modern/early postmodern religious expression related to the policy regimes of neo-liberal capitalism. This, even as New Agers themselves described their activities as countercultural and “alternative”, as a response to their sense of alienation from powerful religious and other cultural institutions that failed to reflect their beliefs, values, concerns or, frequently – given that women predominate in the movement – their gender.
Yet the trope of the “self-made man” – and it invariably was “man” – emerged before neoliberalism entered common usage in the 1970s and ’80s. It is an older, widely-endorsed trope, at least in the modern West where individuality has been most fervently celebrated (Seigel 2005: 3), about taking personal responsibility for making one’s way and achieving one’s goals despite unpromising personal circumstances. Henry Clay used the term in 1842 in the U.S. Senate to describe individuals whose success lay with themselves, rather than with outside conditions – with personal ambition, enterprise, diligence and hard work. By the mid-1950s, the self-made man’s “success” normally implied business success. Although self-making and becoming “self-made” is not historically particular to the last half century, it has undoubtedly ramped up during this period.
Notably, public approval for self-making has been reserved mostly for social, economic and political endeavours. In religion, self-alteration tends not to be widely applauded unless, ironically, it takes a form of selflessness – contrition, repentance, meekness, humility, obedience, self-denial, or postponed self-gratification – none of which have much appealed to younger generations since the countercultural upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. The Me Generation’s cultural aspirations focussed on self-realization, self-fulfilment, intellectual and spiritual enlightenment and multiple forms of social, political and other types of experimentation deemed narcissistic, hedonistic, sinful and wrong by established centres of official power, particularly those of church and state.
This paper begins by looking briefly at so-called “religions of the self”, the group of spiritual and religious paths and persuasions that emerged out of the 1960s and ’70s counterculture. It goes on to explore the ways in which some people who choose to follow these paths – many of whom have shunned the “New Age” appellation precisely because it is associated with what they see as an unhealthy self-obsession – have increasingly reconceptualised the notion of the “self” in ways that take it beyond the bodily, relational or reflective dimensions of individual being, conceived thus since the time of Descartes and Locke (Seigel 2005: 5). In particular, many modern Pagans and “new animists” disavow the “New Age” label given to them by others, including scholars of religion, saying that they are much more earth-focussed and draw inspiration from religions, myths, folklore and rituals from the past, compared with New Agers who focus on a transcendent metaphysical reality and global awakening in the future (York 1995).
My particular ethnographic focus in this paper is a group of modern western shamans based mostly in Malta, a community of women I have been fortunate to come to know better in the past two years of intermittent lockdowns – despite living on the opposite side of the world – thanks to the increased use of Zoom and social networking platforms. The members of this community posit, and more importantly experience, participation in a conscious, intersubjective, capital-S Self co-constituted of, and by, all human and nonhuman, material and immaterial beings, including plant and animal spirits, ancestors, and other spirit beings, deities and supernatural entities with no fleshly referents. This collective, capital-S Self encompasses the consciousness of all individual, small-s selves. Within this ecology of selves (c.f. Kohn 2013), all interconnect in a dynamic, mutually influencing, ever-evolving, collective consciousness of a collective Self. Human selves are neither at the pinnacle nor centre of this eco-system of multifarious beings: shamans reject such an anthropocentric conceit. Personal self-alteration of any human or other being connects with, impacts, causes and is caused by alterations within the collective Self. Any discussion of “self-alteration” grounded in this community’s worldview therefore necessarily implicates thinking about a larger, collective Self-alteration.
The ideas explored here pertain not only to discourses on the anthropology of religion generally, and neo-Paganism in particular. I also draw inspiration from the growing scholarship interested in an anthropology beyond the human: Nurit Bird-David’s animism and relational epistemology, Eduardo Kohn’s contention that selfhood does not belong exclusively to humans, Philippe Descola’s work on the continuities and discontinuities between human and nonhuman selves, and others who have taken anthropology and the social sciences beyond the bounds of human selves and human relations: Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Alfred Irving Hallowell, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and others. In the same way that most of these scholars have come to their understandings through their research among indigenous communities, the community I discuss here have also come to their understandings of being-in-the-world in connection with other beings-in-the-world as a result of their study of, and sense of affiliation with, indigenous shamanic cultures. And, in the long anthropological tradition, as an ethnographer immersed in a particular community, I have also come to understand and experience alteration of the personal and collective self/Self in new ways.