Chris Dierkes - Jesus the Shaman (from Beams and Struts)

Chris posted a very interesting and in-depth article over at Beams and Struts a week or so ago. The idea of Jesus as a shaman is nothing new - I was reading about that back in college 25 years ago, and those books were 25 or more years old. Jesus was also linked with Mithra, Osiris, and Dionysos by various authors, all of whom are mythic figures in the shamanic archetype.

A little background on my take on this, which owes much to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche analyzed drama in terms of two archetypes, the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Dionysos is the god of wine and ecstasy, an earthy puer who charms the women and enchants the beasts. Apollo is the Golden Boy, pure light and reason, but also charming and seductive, a smooth talker.

Dionysos represents the horizontal... [via Integral Options Cafe]