What is your image of a shaman?

I see Carlos Santana when i hear the term.
And the only other association i have with it is that i think he or she is something like a medicine man or woman.

I have no image.

More contrivances as to what a Shamen, Guru, wise man, enlightened person , SHOULD be like, sound like, look like.

Adyashanti was a guru that was outspoken and brass, a tell it like it is tyoe.

Any and all mental constructs of how a wise person should be is just more conditioning.

Eckhart Tolle says he now wears a baseball cap to Starbucks because people say’’‘Oooh, but you are spiritual master, you shouldn’t drink coffee!” lol

The soft spoken dressed in sack cloth image of a guru is a lie, as is most everything. haha

Unfortunately all I see is a WoW character…sadness.

Dark skinned, dreadlocks, really built.

A man with animal skin as his robe and mask. The crazy one that yell out loud and conjuring spells for irrational reasons. The one that prepare ‘magical’ cauldron with ‘magical’ herbs. The one that can talk to animals and their spirit. I think the real world shaman that I can think about is the Indian (native Americans) Shaman.

I’ve taken the term as my own. I’m using it as a character archetype in a story I’m writing.

The Shaman—embodies wisdom of nature and so is necessarily completely isolated from society. Teachings and conditioning given to chosen student is the only thing that ties her to the rest of the world. She’s very old, but vital; loving but stern and seemingly-distant; wise but convoluted.

The appropriate definition is different, but the same sort of idea is there. The Shaman is the bridge between culture and nature that culture must yet discover and adapt to. I feel it isn’t a static thing—the shaman changes as nature does and so does culture. I don’t think it’s a role that one person must play in a community. I think many if not most, if not all, should be a little shamanic, whatever it means exactly.

Whenever I try to write the character, it always seems to come out being cartoonish. I might drop the character and make the representation in multiple people, or just put the whole story on hold.

Daloon.

a man who talks really quiet…..who has a ton of crystals in a back of a van, who loves native American culture. Long silver hair…..Hot, and loves women.

I have an image of a friend of mine who conducts Shamanic drum sessions.

Very tall, shoulder length hair, short beard, glasses and a heavy metal T-shirt & jeans.

What is your image of a shaman?

Yoda

I want nothing more than to spend a great deal of time learning from a shaman. Someday i hope to be taken on an ayahuasca spirit journey by a south american shaman….someday….

A person that heavily relies on his or her intuition.

@jazmina88 do the women love him back?

I get two images. One is of a traditional tribal healer and the other is a co-option of the term by New Agers for some supposed wise man spouting non sequiturs.

I see the shaman as the interlocutor between this world and the other sideways worlds that exist inside the human psyche.

Gerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Ted Haggard, Billy Graham, Tammy Fay Baker, too many

@MadMadMax, I think you missed the “an” at the end.~