NAFPS Forum

I received a notice from TripAdvisor saying my review was rejected as "inappropriate" and "not relevant." But if they pulled a whole thread, maybe they are thinking endorsing a dangerous "retreat" opens them up to legal liability. Plus the way SPR blocks bad reviews with payoffs.

Heard back from the PR guy from that site. First him then my reply.

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I don't think I was embarrassing myself.  Also, why did you refer to our services as 'plastic shamans'? I reached out because there are actually educated facilitators who genuinely care about the spiritual well-being of individuals.

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You work for a hustler who harms for profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shaman

You even tried to bribe us into endorsing fraud.

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ETA: As of 10-18-24, another email sent by him, followed by my response-

"Hi, I'd like to kindly ask you to remove the post and ensure that no working ethics are compromised. My purpose was solely to introduce our exceptional professional approach in this field and discuss it."

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No. It would obviously be unethical for us to remove the post simply because a fraud or their PR agent doesn't like their falsehoods being pointed out, or their unethical, immoral, deceptive, and exploitative practices.

Any email you send will be posted publicly, including these emails. This can include any defense or explanation on their behalf. We always seek to get to the truth of these matters, and more information is always welcome.

As I wrote before, your approach was far from professional. You offered to bribe us to promote an obvious fraud.

There is another topic on Simon Buxton: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=530.0

I apologize for posting the link to the present topic. The correct link to the other topic is:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=304.0

This is written from the inside of 'European shamanism", but nevertheless a very interesting and thorough investigation into Simon Buxton's fraud over the last two decades:

https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/the-invention-of-european-bee-shamanism

The invention of European bee shamanism
A British shamanic school is accused of 'conspiracy to defraud spiritually seeking persons for their own financial benefit'
Jules Evans Sep 21, 2024
This is a long, strange story, so make a cup of tea, find a comfy seat and dive in. It’s free for a month …
[…]
The unravelling
There had been rumours for years that Buxton’s work was plagiarised or simply made up. The first rumblings came from Ross Heaven, British occultist and one-time friend and business partner of Buxton’s. They ‘always had a competitive aspect to their friendship’, according to one person who knew them both, and they fell out in a big way shortly after the publication of The Shamanic Way of the Bee in 2004.
[…]
Despite these rumours and the departure of several senior teachers, there was no public reckoning. Anyone with questions about origins, sources and cold, hard facts was either discouraged or invited for a special private interview with Simon and / or Naomi, from which they either emerged re-convinced, or they quietly left the school. The Sacred Trust was still growing as shamanism became more and more popular. And it was beginning to build a mass audience in the US, thanks to one student – Ariella Daly – offering a course on bee shamanism on the Shift Network, the biggest platform for New Age teachings.
[…]
And then in August 2023, an American Path of Pollen practitioner – Chelsy - decided to go public with her doubts about ‘European bee shamanism’. Chelsy had begun to suspect that the whole thing was made up and plagiarised – Bridge, the Bee Mistress and the Six Sisters, the entire Path of Pollen. She was handed information by other students who had become disenchanted and suspicious, and she did her own digging around.
[…]
She came across other anomalies besides the passages from PL Travers  – some passages from Rudolf Steiner that had also been plagiarised without credit, some similarities between the rituals of the book and the Navajo ‘Path of Pollen’, including the ritual of hunting a stag and killing it with pollen. A photo of a supposed ‘elder’ of the tradition from the Sacred Trust’s website turned out to be taken from an ordinary book on bee-keeping.
[…]
In September 2023, Simon Buxton agreed to a Zoom call with Chelsy and another student. He does not seem to have been prepared for the forensic grilling he would receive at Chelsy’s hands, and seemed confident he could talk his audience around.
[…]
Finally, the Path of Pollen was packaged and sold as shamanic healing, when really it turned out to be largely occult sex magic, i.e hardcore practices not directed to ‘healing’. Not telling people this is denying them informed consent and leaving them bewildered as to where these practices come from and what spirits they invited into their minds and bodies.

I am reviving this topic because there are developments recently; in 2023 and 2024, to be posted in the present topic.

There is another topic on Simon Buxton: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=530.0

Then there are weighty comments in a few other topics:

There is 2005 post by jergonsacha in a locked topic:
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=236.msg1252#msg1252

Another post (by Moma_porcupine, 2009)
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1697.msg17060#msg17060

There is an disturbing new trend in the UK: plastic shamans are wising up to the fact that their suspect 'lineages' are under scrutiny and unfavourable comment costs them money as they are unmasked as frauds and fewer punters attend their bogus workshops and pseudo-ceremonies.

How to get around this? Simple! You just make up a lineage of your own that no-one else has ever heard of despite extensive research and appoint yourself the 'Master' of this "arcane knowledge"! See my post on SIMON BUXTON and under CORE SHAMANISM.

This, to me, is even more worrying than posing as a 'shaman'. At least the posers can be unmasked - but how do you prove that a fictional form of shamanism (Buxton's ridiculous sounding 'Bee Shamanism') is made up to make its self-important founder sound like a guru and earn a few bucks? Since the entire system is invented frauds like Buxton can say almost anything and get away with it, claiming - as he does - that the tradition has remained hidden for centuries and he is only now bringing it to light as the reigning 'Bee Master' (sic) and tribe leader.

I think this demands further investigation.

Finally, I wonder whether anyone here has run across the book The Shamanic Way of the Bee by Simon Buxton. I admit I've only skimmed through it, having run across it at a friend's house, but I'm rather suspicious about its authenticity for several reasons. The use of the term "shamanic" to refer to a spiritual path being taught in Britain of course immediately sets off alarm bells; equally so his use of the name "Melissae", an obviously Latinate term, to refer to a supposed order of priestesses within this tradition. (Certainly there's a degree of linguistic crossover between Celtic and Latin words, given how long Britain was occupied by the Romans, but I'm skeptical of the notion of an "ancient path" using Latin terminology that was never written down.) I also ran across an article at http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Plastic-shaman which appears to be an older version of the Wikipedia article on "plastic shamans" which asserts that Buxton's work is "pilfered from a Navajo Beauty Way song". I'd appreciate any insight or references that anyone could provide as to the source of this assertion. Buxton apparently runs "training workshops" at his "Sacred Trust Centre" in Dorset, England for nearly 500 pounds a throw -- if he's ripping off Navajo sources in doing so, this really ought to be exposed.

Not long ago I phoned the Royal Anthropological Institute here in London with regard to the plastic shaman / fraud Simon Buxton. I was so appalled by what I discovered about him and his farcical and rather creepy sex cult the "Path of Pollen" that I was sure that he could not really be a member of such a prestigious organisation.   I learned, to my dismay, that not only was he a member but "a respected member with many friends in the Institute", or so I was told by the highly indignant and defensive woman who responded to my enquiry.

This documentary throws much needed light on the issue of fraudulent academics and anthropologists and I suppose it helped me to understand how a fraud like Buxton could become a "respected" member of the Royal Anthropological Institute.  Or I should more accurately say that it helped me to question whether or not the Royal Anthropological Institute is quite as prestigious as its name and website imply.

Next: Developments in 2023 and especially 2024.

Silvia Polivoy, Rick Doblin, and other fellow travellers lure clients in, abuse and drug them.

Any positive testimony videos seen on their web sites and in reviews are of people still under the cultic/drug influence.

...after an incident that Doblin described in 2016, when Doblin acknowledged that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had canceled a planned collaboration after a VA researcher participated in MAPS training and identified MAPS’s use of touch as “abusive.” As Doblin paraphrased the VA researcher’s perspective, “This [treatment approach] is just so out of the normal bounds of (you know) being able to touch somebody. And then…they [the trial subjects] are under the influence of MDMA and (you know) you’re touching them.

”

Along with "touch" this has been done:

“putting a towel in the client’s mouth for her to bite on” and “lying on her and grappling or wrestling with her.”

https://chemicalpoetics.substack.com/p/maps-is-an-mdma-therapy-cult