the shaman as signpost

This was written in response to a recent post on Vortex Egg in which metachor mentions the students he substitute teaches asking him if "magic" really exists. In order to not put himself in potential trouble with the rigidity of social intstitutions he told them it did, but that they would have to look for more info themselves. Here's my take on it:

One off the attributes of the shaman is that while they have access to occluded information and present an available outlet for others to gain access to it, they do not do so by "standing in the middle of road" (as Casteneda puts it), waving a big signboard that says "Secrets of the universe... Free!"

Being on the edge means staying in the shadows, dropping tantalizing hints and subliminal sugestions but not explicitly revealing sources to those who seek for them. A shaman's power is precisely that he controls (or cozens with) forces that others do not. If everyone had such access the shaman would cease to exist, except as a redundant figurehead to a time when information was still a costly and dangerous trade.

Which isn't to say that occult knowledge shouldn't be widely available, but that's what the Net is for for the modern shaman. As someone in the precarious position of power and responsibility your choice of telling these young aspirants that magic is real and that they should search for themselves is perhaps not only the safest bet (to cover your own tracks and tail) but jives with the idea of magical initiation. It is the searching for hidden knowledge that opens the mind to it just as much as the knoweldge itself. If a magical world view was just handed to us, we probably wouldn't recognize it (or want it), but by longing for and searching for it we set ourselves up to recieve it in its full import.

Rumi talks of a man possessed by longing for spiritual enlightenment who wanders out into the desert and falls to his knees crying in prayer. The angels are shocked and ask God why he does not answer the prayers since God is the only thing the man has left to depend on. God responds saying that if he fulfilled that need the man would go back to whatever idle amusements attracted him, but that the passion of his longing is enlightenment itself.

Your student's desire to discover a world of real magick is perhaps the surest sign that they will do so, and on their own if need-be. The shaman's role in that is to mirror that desire and reflect it back in the direction of the right trail to follow, or in the direction that there arre trails to follow if you have the courage and clarity to find them.