A few days before I found this thread, I read a long document about the Vanir, a group among the old norse gods. The Vanir are generally regarded as peaceful «fertility gods», and they practisioned «seid», which is regarded as the norse variant of shamanism.
The authors of the paper compares what is known about the Vanir with traditions in other areas. They states that the role of the shaman as a healer «is not a matter of manipulating isolated, monadic individuals for the sake of health, but understanding the individuals place in the cosmos as they relate and are related to the place where everything comes from, and intervening within that framework as is appropriate and necessary; physical healing is an aspect of this process.» They referes to Lincoln (1986) as stating: «It is not just a damaged body that one restores to wholeness and health, but the very universe itself» and «The full extent of such knowledge is not revealed in all its grandeur: the healer must understand and be prepared to manipulate nothing less than the full structure of the cosmos». (Source: http://www.vanadis.is/skrar/File/Writings/Vanirhealing.pdf, I was not able to copy parts of it.)
I would highly appreciate to have a good shaman around if a better new world should be created. Or even better, a group of them.
Psychopaths, as many have mentioned, is really a great challenge. As Laura pointed out, it is their joy to inflict pain in others. (I have listened to two of them comparing things they have done, laughing of how stupid other people are, laughing of how little other people understand. All of their «deeds» were shocking, and rather unbelievable. They do the things people think that nobody are doing. They have no limits. I spied on them, maybe five or six years old, it's a crazy world.)
It's very difficult to spot all of them, and I think a shaman, with the ability to «see the unseen» is needed. The psychopath might not step forward at all. He or she, or maybe more of them, can also hide behind, spread a negative word here, another there, about the leader or group of leaders, or about the shaman, or another they do not like. Split people.
What to do with them is another difficult problem. Maybe the different kinds of psychopaths should be treated differently. The worst, the classical or essential, are extremely dangerous.
I agree with those that proposed to try to «immunize» the community against them, as far as possible. Educate, spread the knowledge. Value creativity, abstract, balanced and complex thinking.
I also think that genes for psychopathy are spread thinly out in most of the population. Maybe careful partner choice can be useful. Also, be sure that pregnant women are well nutritioned.
The next is a bit off topic to the main theme, it's a reply to a statement earlier in the thread. In entry #340 it was stated that there are no cave paintings («artifacts») from the north part of Europe.
Actually, there are cave paintings in the northern part of Europe, in altogether twelve caves, from the same area in northern coastal Norway. Nine are real caves, three are more like shelters of stone that the locals regard as caves. They are different from the famous caves in France, and some of them are discovered not long ago. I do not know much about them, but I checked since I knew there were some.
The paintings are of humans, and they are thought to be between 2500 and 4000 years old. There are some intesting things with these paintings: In one cave, there are 33 dancing humans, one of them have a wand (this person is interpreted as a shaman).
In another, there are three humans, two adults with a child between them.
Some of the humans have horns. The paintings are mainly in the part of the cave where dark and light meet each other, or in the innermost part of the cave.
One of the human figures have horns, and five fingers on one hand, four fingers on the other. According to one of the web pages about the caves, http://www.mythic-lofoten.com/Symbolikk.html, four fingers might represent an alien. Thus the person in the painting might be a hybrid? The webpage compare the figure with four fingers in the Norwegian cave with the Nazca lines and the Tiahuanaca culture, and caves in an area in southern France, http://fun.chryzode.org/english/merveill.htm.
The information I found is not in English, the sources are: http://www.riksantikvaren.no/filestore/bergkunsthandb_korr.PDF and http://nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nordland/1.6193854.
The area where the caves are present are in the interaction zone between the norse population and the Sami people, at least later on, in the Viking age where more information are available.
