The Role of Fear in Shamanic Ascension: a Case Study of Neoshamanic Practices in Serbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper I examine one of the most well-known neoshamanic groups in Serbia in the context of its ritual practice and the role of fear and pain that characterize some of its aspects. Founded by Ratomir Vučković, the group “Drevni koreni” (“Ancient Roots”) was the first organized neoshamanic group in Serbia. In its loosely institutionalized form it existed from 2001 to 2010, to be succeeded by several new schools led by Vučković’s students. He was regarded as the most prominent teacher of neoshamanism in Serbia and as a figure of considerable charisma among his followers. Based on his claims that, during his long-term stay in Canada, he had been trained and initiated by a genuine Native American shaman, Vučković presented his teachings as a variant of “true” shamanism, as opposed to various “watered-down” forms of the New Age neoshamanism. Vučković offered both theoretical and practical training in shamanism in the form of courses, workshops, weekly training sessions, and occasional summer camps. With regard to the complex sociopolitical and cultural context of the post-communist Serbia and the place of various esoteric currents in it, I analyze the main practices of this group in relation to its claim to authenticity. I am particularly interested in the ways the group has sought to identify itself against the background of the contemporary religious pluralism exemplified by the New Age movement. As integral parts of “traditional” shamanism, fear and pain related to the group’s practices appear to serve as discernment markers of the desired authenticity, in contrast to the concepts of painless self-development, inner harmony, and positive thinking typically linked to the New Age movement and its spiritual currents. Thus, the group’s practices largely determine its approach to the issue of self-identification.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".