The Shaman Thread

Many years ago I had a conversation with my father while picking up pizza at his favorite place about, of course, space faring and colonization and how my particular skills seemed to him, at the time, non essential. My response was simply how did he know that this was not an essential step of evolution before we could leave the planet? Frontiers, as exciting and new as they are, are also very dangerous because it IS new. ESP's seem like a very handy thing to have well developed to help you get a heads up about those dangers while out there.

This conversation was resurrected in the face of my feeling not so well and deciding that taking it easy with Netflix was a good idea. I settled on an oldie but goodie: Earth 2. If you have never watched this show and you are a SciFi fan, this is something that may interest you. I will try not to spoil the show for you. The premise of the show is that enclosure has become intolerable on the stations; there is a great need and desire to go planet side and live there.

There are particulars I really found interesting. Especially, the connection that forms between a couple of the characters with the planet and it's indigenous inhabitants. It becomes very clear that there is at the very least one shaman with them. This character is an accidental shaman, but he is a shaman none the less. One who has much to learn about the art and craft of what shamanism is.

The questions that rolled around in my mind while watching this show were: how do we preserve the shaman skills while on stations traveling the black oceans of the universe? How will those skills be needed and utilized before we decide to dive back into one of the deep wells of space? Will those skills be sharp enough to reconnect with a large living body and its inhabitants? Will we be wise enough to remember that planets cannot be tamed?

I have ideas that may answer a few of those questions. The obvious one being how do we preserve the shaman skills??? We teach them to those who wish to learn and show a proclivity either openly or secretly just like we have done here in this deep well of space. Station life will require that there be a green house of sorts. The techniques will be different for growing food, but there still needs to be someone who can hear the plant life and tend to it in a good way. This would be a good practice field for a shaman stuck on a station. There will also be a great need for alternative medicines since manufacturing meds may not be the best way to handle things on a station and certainly we cannot rely on planet side delivery of said things. We must learn to be independent. The face of healing will have to change and shamanistic skills will certainly be handy there. There is even now and here a great proclivity for some to connect with technology in near mystical manners. I believe we have started to call them technomages. Considering the fact that we will be depending on a large piece of technology while we float through space toward our next well, a couple of good technomages hanging about would certainly make me breathe easier. I would certainly like our flyboys/girls to have an uncanny sense of what is coming at them while they jockey around between stations and where ever else they need to go outside. Open space tends to be a bit unpredictable. Loads of things zipping about at mach 5 and other surprises I am sure.

Will those skills be sharp enough to reconnect with a planet???? I hope so. Another question remains. Will those skills be allowed to continue or will we face another persecution and devouring of a belief system based upon fear and the need to control the mass population? Will we grow up as a species and begin to recognize that we are all different colored threads in a very large tapestry creating the larger picture of who we are meant to be? If we don't, I'm not sure we will make it and if by some stroke of genius luck that we do, with an even larger stroke of such luck, maybe an accidental shaman will surface. Personally, I would like to skip the whole freak out what the heck kind of crazy have I gone? phase, but that's just me. It would be, in my opinion, prudent to preserve and nurture the Shaman Thread that runs through humanity.