I used to think that evil wasn't a real thing, except in the abstract or imaginary realm. Something you could pin on a perpetrator of the worst crimes, or imagine existing at large as "the devil" or "satan" or in the form of demons. So it might attach to a belief system as the opposite of good . . . or so I thought. But as I dug deeper into Jung's psychology I started to see evil as shadow, that is, the repressed or rejected aspects of humanity and our personalities, that, because they are shunned become maladapted, dangerous or destructive, hence down-graded and marginalized by consciousness - the collective consciousness of a people or culture or the waking consciousness of the individual.
Individuation introduced Jung's process of using dreams or other access to the deep psyche, to encounter and assimilate the shadow, and through hard work, reintegrating it into our waking life.
The collective consciousness of a culture has a collective shadow and the individual has a personal shadow. As individuation proceeds and the individual assimilates his or her personal shadow, the collective shadow shows up in their dreams and so does the archetype of the hero (in both men and women) . . . i.e., the slayer of the dragon, the light-bringer, the protector, the wise leader, the medicine person, that models for the ego how to weather the storms of life or take on powerful adversaries. (aside: If we identify with the archetype of the hero, we are stepping into inflation.)
For years I followed Jung's lead and teaching and sedulously did my shadow-work. But when I started down the path of shamanism, I learned that there is such a thing as dark or black magic that is known for weaponizing power. There are lots of examples of powerful shamans turning to the dark arts, usually for personal gain.
Shamanism is open to the existence of other realities, spirit realities, and, in fact, every shaman, both beneficent and self-serving enlists the help of spirits.
Shamanism is not all about healing. For some shamans it is about power (just as in some of our Western corporations, garnering wealth and influence is key to one's business-model). In fact some corporate players have studied under shamans and incorporate shamanic practices into how they conduct business. This is not shamanism, it is using shamanism.
Villoldo (shaman, author and director of the Four Winds Society) tells how he used to bring business leaders to the rainforest for shamanic training, thinking that it would change their business practices for the better, but eventually he realized he was wasting his time and barking up the wrong tree.
Getting back to dark shamanism, there are evil spirits, just as in our movies there are menacing ghosts and various kinds of monsters that manage to break out of parallel realities, except in shamanism the shaman is trained to know which spirits to align with and befriend.
Maybe, to better understand what I am saying, it helps to consider how in almost all mythologies there are gods and demi-gods and other entities who are refractory or dark and menacing. These mythologies are not simply inventions of the imagination of great story-tellers or the spin-off creations of the superstitions of a given culture. That is what our Western / European culture would like to think, which goes along with our notion that older cultures were / are naive, unenlightened and gullible. But these mythic beings were not just modeled on archetypes as many Jungians would say. They are based on the collective awareness of other realities that exist outside of our consensus reality.
This is not hypothetical or debatable, it is an experiential given, it is shamanism 101, it is what one needs to know to even begin one's shamanic journey. For example, the great plant medicines (such as peyote, the "magic" mushroom (psilocybin), ayahuasca and the cactus San Pedro, are not just "medicines" as we know them, that we might someday capture in a pill and brand - they are plant-spirit-medicines. In other words spirits aren't just viable other-worldy entities, but they are also synonymous with the personalities of certain plants that work best for us when we relate to them as plant-spirits, allies, teachers and doctors. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't experienced it myself.
The reason we have difficulty with swallowing the existence of spirits is we are never sure what we are imagining or what is outside of our imagination. (This question always comes up in shamanic workshops, and for many it is insurmountable; they can't get over it, under it or around it and the work shuts down.)
But for, I would say, most shamanic students who stick with it, shamanism functions like a pulsing beam of ultrasound that breaks up the clouded lens in cataract surgery except that in cataract surgery they replace the clouded lens with a clear acrylic lens (which often returns 20/20 vision to the patient), whereas in shamanism, once the clouded lens of the interfering rational mind is eliminated, the eye begins to see what is really there. It's not as if the imagination is turned off, but it becomes a trustworthy window or doorway to the infinite realities of the living universe.
So by discussing evil here, going back to the title of this essay, Let's accept the reality of evil and get on with life, I am suggesting that denying evil or staying afraid of the possibility of evil is the next barrier that we need to push past as students of shamanism. Power is not a a bad thing in itself. In shamanism it is an expression of our core, our "duende". Shamanism builds our personal power, but a shaman doesn't run away from evil or pretend that it doesn't exist, they build their shamanism by aligning themselves with helpful and beneficent spirits: animal spirits, plant spirits, the spirit of water, the spirits of powerful places, spirits that visit us in dreams and visions, medicine spirits. As we build and center our shamanism in this fashion, evil becomes relative and, though it is here and probably always will be, we don't have to fall into it, be seduced by it or be victimized by it or stalked by our fear of evil.
When I went to the rainforest to work with ayahuasca in a remote retreat, my guide gave us this advice: If you are confronted by a spirit in your journey who is intimidating or behaving in a menacing way, simply ask it respectfully, "Are you here to teach or heal me? If not then please leave me alone, because I am here to heal". I used this advice more than once, and it worked.
We should know that emotional or energetic vulnerability, or having a weak core, is like honey to the spirit world, especially when we are in the liminal space of deep healing work, and we need to be aware that when we are vulnerable in our core, we may be approached by spirits who are are not interested in our welfare. So here is another piece of advice from John Seed (author of "Thinking like a Mountain"). He said: "It is our intention that does the heavy work." In other words our intention to heal and align with healing is probably the most potent expression of our personal power. In the shamanic universe our intention is something like a force-field that allows healing medicine in and keeps the bad medicine out.
