Ove Kåven

RSS / Atom

Questions and Answers

You can ask me questions here.
  • Questions may be asked in English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Northern Sami, French, or German.
  • Anonymous submissions are allowed, but your IP address may be logged (in case a question ever needs to e.g. be reported to the police or something).
  • The question queue is moderated. Your question will generally not be published before it is answered.
  • If you don’t want your question to be published publicly here, it’s possible to use the Contact form instead (but I make no response guarantees there, and you can’t be anonymous).
  • Currently, questions may not contain HTML.
  • I may choose to not publish or answer questions that:
    • promote disinformation or hate;
    • advertise particular products or services;
    • contain personal or sensitive information;
    • are abusive or of a harassing nature;
    • or I’m just not legally allowed to answer.
  • I will generally try to answer questions within a few days.






Categories: all (38) | art (1) | climate (1) | cosmos (10) | creativity (1) | intelligence (1) | math (2) | media (1) | sami (2) | shamanism (16) | technology (3)


Kelly (2024-07-05 17:53:08), category: shamanism
You gonna update your Shamanism section anytime soon? What you are discerning about the subject is interesting.

Yours sincerely,

Kelly Rodriguez
The main problem I’ve had with doing that, is that I strive to be educational, first explaining the fundamentals of how things work, and then build up to more complex things. However, nobody I’ve met really knows why these things work. They often do have observable effects, but the technical mechanisms, as well as the frameworks which they might fit into, are unknown. There’s no shortage of ideas, but there’s definitely a shortage of actual technical understanding. You could compare it to driving a car: if someone (like the spirits) give you one, you can of course drive it without understanding how the engine works. But I want to be able to explain how the engine works, and I want my explanation to be as bullshit-free as possible. For example, I will not use New-Age-style buzzwords like “vibrations” or “energies” if I can’t explain precisely what exactly they mean, and that whatever they’re referring to actually exists. I suppose there are some pieces of the puzzle I do have some ideas about, and perhaps could write a few words about, but I don’t know yet exactly how it all fits together. (Anyone who thinks they might be able to help with that, feel free to contact me.)

Of course, it would still be possible to write about how to “drive” instead, i.e., about the practices of shamanism. However, I don’t really like that idea either, because, for your own safety, shamanism should generally only be learned under the supervision of another shaman. Besides, there are many resources and courses available. And I might also myself be willing to give a free crash course to anyone I like enough. (Again, anyone who’d like to give that a shot should feel free to contact me.)

Granted, there are some concepts which could be useful for non-shamans to know about, such as power animals and whatnot, but they’re very far away from a Western understanding of how the world works, and thus hard to explain properly. So I just don’t feel very comfortable writing about the practice of shamanism before I understand the mechanisms of why it works myself. I hope to gain enough insight to do that soon, though I might need help from others to get there.