The Shaman
In my last post I introduced the idea of the Shaman:
Shaman – An otherworldly helper for the Protagonist with one foot in each world. I’m not entirely sure how to best play this character off, this may be presented as a conscience or other form of guiding voice present in the environment.
This kind of character is harder to understand for Western audiences because shamanism isn’t really prevalent anymore. A Shaman is someone who has one foot firmly planted into this world and another planted into the world of Spirit. The Shaman is a storyteller, artist and tribal guide all in one. They are also known as the Medicine Man or other kinds of healers. A Shaman is someone who loves their community so much they braves the world of spirits in order to interpret it and give guidance.
The journey to become one is kind of terrifying. Terrence McKenna has a nice tl;dr of the process here:
You get paired with a master Shaman. This is someone who has seen basically everything that could realistically be thrown at you and then you just see what happens. Our rejected mentally ill in another culture would have been the healers and spiritual guides.
Are our mentally ill the cure to society's ills all along? Nature seems to love having the solution to a social problem be so obvious that we miss it. 1/25 people live with a serious mental illness.
Are Humans intended to be Shamans?