“Actually,…there is a formative force spontaneously working, like a magnetic field, to precipitate and organize the ethnic [local, historical] structures from behind, or within, so that they cannot finally be interpreted economically, sociologically, politically, or historically.”—Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology

  A “formative force spontaneously working, like a magnetic field….” 

  What brings a sports team together and elevates it beyond a collection of individuals to championships? What lifts four young talented musicians, say the Beatles in 1960, from differing backgrounds into the musical and cultural juggernaut they became? What melds a military force into an unbeatable organic unit that sweeps all before it off or under the field of combat? Or what motivates an entire town and surrounding area in say the Middle Ages to build and adorn a magnificent cathedral that will stand as a monument to their God for a millennia to come?

  Thinkers will never succeed in putting their finger on it because it is an ephemeral, spiritual event. It is a galvanizing of individual hearts into a greater whole, a Life altering and enhancing transcendence, a bonding experience words will never quite encompass. 

  When it is gone those who were drawn into and caught up in its gravitational pull are forever changed. They speak of that period in their lives in reverent tones. They hold reunions with their brothers in arms—their blood brothers—and endlessly rehash the commitment and sacrifice that was demanded of them and readily given, the hardships endured, and the eternal love and respect they hold for those who accompanied them on that life-changing journey. 

  We live in an age of intellect and criticism and a consequent sense of spiritual hollowness. The ‘magnetic field’ that once drew us together and gave us communal meaning and purpose has disintegrated. As a result we have become fragmented on both an individual and a societal basis. 

  The task of the Shaman-Type to come is to conjure up from the crumbled wreckage of the past a new ‘magnetic field’ that will meet the needs of our collective day moving forward. 

  And that ‘collective’ is no longer the West or the East, no longer this nation or that, no longer this world religion or that, this civilization or that but of all humanity! 

  In fact all Life on planet earth… 

  For it is all One…

  Life….