For most of human history--and still today in some parts of the world--medicine was practiced by guys who look a lot like the high-larious photoshopped pic of Obama as Shaman in Chief. As Western "civilization" spread across the globe beginning in the early modern era, these people--figures of great power, respect and gravitas within their own societies--were demonized as "witch doctors," gibbering, befeathered, half-naked maniacs whose practices seemed barbarous and downright Satanic to the Christian eye. Their medicine was suppressed as the indigenous cultures of the New World were decimated, and as scientific rationalism became ascendant, their healing work was altogether discredited.
But I was healed by a shaman when doctors couldn't even figure out what was wrong with me. Best of all? He didn't charge. Within their own societies, shamans don't accept money for healing. To do so would violate their ethical responsibilities as the healers and spiritual mediators for their people. So while the dude with the feathers and nose bone looks primitive to the Western eye, he's in some ways a lot more civilized than my family doctor.
Although there were and remain a large number of charlatans, many shamans, curanderos, herbalists, bancos, etc. survive and practice today. They don't always (or even usually) wear the feathers and nose bone; they look like anyone else walking around on a city street. Their medicine is often extremely powerful, developed over centuries of experience, of trial and error, of profound understanding of the local plants. They're able to address problems that Western medicine cannot cure, because they often work with energy or in dimensions beyond our ordinary, baseline reality. I have personally witnessed miraculous healing, physical, emotional and spiritual, carried out by men and women who never once saw the inside of a hospital or wore a white coat.
Look at any surviving indigenous tradition, and you'll probably find some form of shamanism. It's most prevalent among the members of "haplogroup-B," the genetic family that were the first humans to leave Africa and spread into Asia, where they probably coexisted with Neanderthals. They followed migrating herds of game east across Asia. Near Lake Baikal, they split; one group eventually crossed the Bering land bridge to the Americas, the other went south to populate Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands. Today shamanic traditions remain strong in Central and South America, particularly the upper Amazon, and they persist wherever First Nations people live, including the Hawaiian Islands and Australia. There are also surviving European traditions, such as among the Sami of Scandinavia; however, in Europe, the epicenter of Christianity and rationalism, most shamanic traditions survive only in degraded or incomplete form. Though there are great variations from culture to culture, one thing is true for all shamanic healers: they're able to interact with the spirit world, and they derive their healing power from their spirit allies.
The societies the shamans serve support them. It is a symbiotic relationship based on shared responsibility for communal health and reciprocity. Shamans I know are horrified (and some jealous) to see that Western doctors grow rich off their practice and often have no relationship to the people they treat. Our model of medicine seems unbalanced and ultimately destructive to them, since it is not based on reciprocity or a sense of communal wellness. And, of course, there is no spiritual dimension to Western medicine (unless you count a chaplain reading your death rites), which makes it far less potent and effective from their point of view. Hospitals are good for emergencies, but not for illness. One shaman from Peru said to me: "If I break my arm, take me to a hospital. But if I am sick, take me to the forest."
Regardless of one's own personal beliefs about the existence of the spirit world or the power of the placebo effect, the fact is that shamanic methods work. Pioneering Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schulteis spent years among the tribes of the Amazon and was astonished by the depth and breadth of their skill with healing plants. In my own experience, I have seen shamanic work heal one person's profound depression; he came to the healing wanting to commit suicide, and left with a renewed sense of joy and gratitude for life (that person is doing well today). I know at least three people who have been cured of cancer using ayahuasca, a powerful plant medicine from the upper Amazon. There's a new book out about this by Margaret de Wys called Black Smoke, wherein she recounts here experience of being healed by a Shuar shaman in the Amazon and went on to become a healer herself.
In my own case, I personally have been relieved of a chronic digestive disorder that Western doctors could not diagnose, and so threw a series of drugs at me to see if any of them worked. After spending thousands of dollars on tests (you name it: CAT scans, MRIs, barium X-rays, full colonoscopy, dozens of blood, stool and urine tests) that came up negative, and having taken several courses of damaging drugs (Flagyl, Xifaxan, Doxycycline and a whole host of others I can't recall right now), no Western doctor could tell me why I was always bloated, always had diarrhea, why I had incredible pain in my abdomen. I went to doctor after doctor, from gastroenterologists to ENTs to infectious disease specialists, and the experience was always the same. They would talk to me for about five to ten minutes, prescribe a battery of tests (often repeats of tests I'd had already). I would go do the tests. They'd come back negative. The doctor would then say something like "Let's put you on a course of X and see if that works," or "Could be irritable bowel syndrome," which is what they call it when they don't know what it is.
Though insurance covered all these tests and visits, over a four-year period the costs started adding up. Not to mention the time lost from work. The doctors never asked me much about my lifestyle. Nothing about my emotional state, other than "Are you stressed? Getting enough sleep?" And of course there was no discussion of the energetics of the situation, since that whole dimension of healing, so critical in Chinese, Tibetan and Indian medicine (which are oh, three thousand years older than Western medicine), is simply not real to allopaths.
I had to pursue alternative healing methods. A shaman took one look at my body and said, "You have a shadow in your stomach." Part of the shamanic gift involves this kind of vision, the ability to "see into" a person's body. They often aren't seeing a visual image, but rather the information comes to them as a form of knowing, and they then communicate this knowing in visual terms so the patient can understand. The shaman performed a healing ceremony for me, which was quite long and too complicated to describe in detail here, but it involved the use of medicinal plants, of singing and of prayer. The prayers involve invoking the shaman's spirit allies, who come and perform the healing through the shaman. It's not the shaman who heals; it's the spirits. The shaman has trained to be able to receive this kind of healing ability, but he or she doesn't own it. At one point in the ceremony, the shaman literally sucked the shadow out of me; he put his mouth up against my abdomen, and sucked. Then he puked (this is one common way shamans move sickness).
When I asked him later what was causing the distress, he was a little bit circumspect because I'm a Westerner, and so he anticipated I might have trouble accepting the explanation from his perspective. But he eventually told me: I had an energetic parasite, an entity that had attached itself to me and was, like a lamprey eel, drawing off my energy. For him, this sort of thing is ordinary. He sees it every day, and it's part of his work. Within the society he comes from, the Shipibo of Peru, this sort of spiritual parasitism is like a common cold, but it can't be treated with drugs. It can only be treated by someone who understands the spirit world.
Long story short: I no longer have digestive problems. Total cost for my healing? $0. He never asked for money. So I bought him dinner and gave him some clothes to take home to his family back in South America.
It's just beginning, but there's a genuine archaic revival underway as these old traditions start to penetrate the West. Part of the reason people want alternatives is that Western medicine has failed us on so many levels, not the least of which is its betrayal of our basic humanity, our commonality as vulnerable and ultimately mortal beings on this planet. Its abdication of its duty to relieve suffering in deference to profit. So I'll take a shaman over Dr. McKalip any freaking day, unless I've broken my arm.