Intimations of a Spiritual New Age: V. Socio-Cultural Bases of a Globalizing Neo-Shamanism and its Relation to Climate Crisis: Possibilities, Inevitabilities, Barriers

Authors

Harry T. Hunt, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

DOI

https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2021.40.1.1

Abstract

Extending this series of papers on a futural spirituality, and considering the numinous as an inherent human capacity for an awe that confers a sense of all-inclusive meaning, communality, and humility, the question arises whether, in the face of a secularization of traditional world religions, globalization of a techno/capitalist economy of perpetual commodification of planet and person, and a widening sense of loss of meaning and higher purpose, some collective re-newal of the sense of the sacred might be possible —or not. While Jung, Toynbee, and Sorokin regarded such a movement as inevitable, bringing forward to the degree possible the full spectrum of the numinous in an originary ur-shamanism, Bourguignon, Weber, and the later Heidegger foresaw its necessary blockage by the unique complexity and hyper-rationalism of a globalizing materialist economy. The further question becomes whether any such renewal would be constrained to the more “adjustive” movements of Stoicism/Neoplatonism and much of current New Age spirituality—as mainly mirroring the hyper-individualism of Rome and modernity. Or, might it open toward the more revolutionary impact of an early Christianity, and in the present as the futural neo-shamanism variously anticipated by Jung, Reich, Toynbee, and Heidegger? Could such a neo-shamanism, especially as energized by the collective use of now widely available entheogens, resacralize planet and nature in time to address this looming crisis of a human generated climate change and help to inspire its containment?

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Hunt, H. T. (2021). Intimations of a spiritual New Age: V. Socio-cultural bases of a globalizing neo-shamanism and its relation to climate crisis: Possibilities, inevitabilities, barriers. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 40 (1). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2021.40.1.1