Shamanism

[Fist and Faith]

I don't remember when I first heard about shamanism, but it was a few decades ago. I read a few encyclopedia entries at the local library. (Actually, in my younger days, I didn't have much respect for anybody or anything, so I actually cut the entries out of those encyclopedias. Not bragging, clearly.) Only a few years later, I saw the comic character named Shaman. (Part of Alpha Flight, Canada's superhero team. John Byrne at his finest!) Really fun stuff, so I started reading about it a little more seriously. I think it's very interesting from what I guess would be called an anthropological standpoint. (Not that I've ever studied anthropology.) And it's also great when viewed as nature magic. Like the comic book character; another comic book called Shaman's Tears (Mike Grell at his not very finest, but very good); the Malazan bonecasters; a few great episodes of Xena; etc.

I have several books about shamanism. As I told a few people via txt, I just got Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, by Mircea Eliade, for 50% off at the Borders closing sale, which is what brought all this on right now. I also have Shamanic Voices, by Joan Halifax. That's very cool, because, after a 30-page introduction, the bulk of the book is the actual words of many shamans from around the world. Here's an excerpt from the first, a Siberian shaman named Sereptie:

I set out, found a suitable tree and started to cut it down. When the tree fell, a man sprang out of its roots with a loud shout. I was petrified with fear (from this unexpected event). The man asked: "Where are you going?" "What could I do - I am going to my tent." "Why, of course, since you have a tent, you must go there. Well, my friend, I am a man, who came out of the roots of the tree. The root is thick, it looks thin in your eyes only. Therefore I tell you that you must come down through the root if you wish to see me." - "What sort of a tree is that?" I asked. "I never could find it out." The man answered: "From times of old, it is of this tree that the kuojka sledges have been made and the shamans have been growing from. Rocked in the cradle, they become shamans - well that's what this tree is for." - "All right, I shall go with you."

Crazy stuff!

[Cambo]

Mircea Eliade! He's a big name in religious studies! I like him, he had some mind blowing ideas, like Eternal Recurrence, and some really bedrock theories, like the sacred and the profane.

Haven't read any of his stuff specifically on shamanism, though.

[Avatar]

Well obviously that shaman was a regular consumer of mind-altering substances...

--A

[Fist and Faith]

Ya think maybe? Heh.

[Vraith]

Mircea Eliade!

Heh...for quite a long time I thought he was a she way back when, I think cuz I'd never seen/read anything, just kept hearing the name mentioned along with Joseph Campbell.

And Av/Fist...I think I heard somewhere there's a native russian-area mushroom that remains unaltered even after going through the body, so some of those shamans "re-use" by drinking their urine a time or two.

I've enjoyed much I've read quoted from the various traditions...but the only people I've ever met who claim the name [I live near Lilydale, NY 1/2 the year...it's kinda famous for an itty bitty town in "spiritual" circles] seemed either to be incompetent or lying.

[Cambo]

Even with quite sufficiently potent mushrooms, it's an old shaman trick to guzzle some psilocybin-laced urine just as you are peaking to give your experience that extra kick into the next level. I shit you not, my friends.

[hierachy]

I consider myself to be a potential shaman... in western society we tend to term it 'schizotypal personality disorder'.

[Fist and Faith]

I've enjoyed much I've read quoted from the various traditions...but the only people I've ever met who claim the name [I live near Lilydale, NY 1/2 the year...it's kinda famous for an itty bitty town in "spiritual" circles] seemed either to be incompetent or lying.

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there who hear about something, and decide they are one just because they want to. If there is anything supernatural about it, then all traditions say you do not choose the power; the power chooses you. Same with everybody running a yoga class telling their new students to "Feel the energy moving up your chakras." Meanwhile, the people who developed this stuff say you awaken the chakras one at a time, over a period of years. But oh boy, I read a couple of neat books, so now I'm a kundalini shaman!

[ussusimiel]

What I like about the shamanic and shamanism is the how it challenges the very way I most usually think about the world. I have no direct experience of shamanism, but I know a couple of people who have and speaking with them has changed the way I look at and think about the world. (Neither considers themself a shaman and rattles and drums are the strongest trance-inducing agent they have used.)

Now when I have a dream that includes an animal, after I have considered the psychological possibilites, I go on to consider the shamanic possibilities of the animal spirit, for example: a wolf can be a guardian rather than a threat.

The shaman, for me, is the person who knows that our idea of ourself is an illusion, who knows that before consciousness, humans (or our genetic ancestors) existed as animals do and so in some vital way we are still connected to that more elemental experience. I value the expanded perspective that this brings to my way of seeing the world.

u.

[Fist and Faith]

...before consciousness, humans (or our genetic ancestors) existed as animals do and so in some vital way we are still connected to that more elemental experience. I value the expanded perspective that this brings to my way of seeing the world.

That's as good as it gets. *bow*

And your wolf thought is also great. Almost nine years ago, I posted this:
kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=7125#7125

I tried Rice's "Interview..." years ago, and actually stopped reading in the middle. It just didn't do a thing for me. But her sister, Alice Borchardt, has three werewolf books that I really like. The way the wolves see and feel about life, the world, and everything is very well done, imo.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

This was an interesting book, almost like a Russian version of Casteneda, except if anything a good deal stranger: Entering the Circle.

[Avatar]

Very interesting "definition" Ussus. I like it.

--A

[ussusimiel]

Fist and A, thanks for the positive feedback

A book I really like is Astrology, Science and Culture, by Roy Willis and Patrick Curry. In it they quote from an anthropologist called Alan Campbell:

if it [shamanism]is a quality rather than an office, then it admits of degrees. You can have a lot of it or a little of it . . . You are either a chief or you are not - that's an office - but you can be more or less shamanistic.

This is from Campbell's book (which I haven't read), To Square with Genesis : Causal Statements and Shamanic Ideas in Weyãpí. They also mention Eliade's book in the same section. I haven't read that either but I did study the sacred and the profane when I did the sociology of religion at college, so like Cambo, I've experienced his ideas. (Feel like I'm back in college with all the referencing )

u.

[Fist and Faith]

(Feel like I'm back in college with all the referencing )

I'm sure groups who had shamans would have said that some were better - more powerful - than others. I can understand that, in regards to it being a quality of which you can have a lot or a little.


Holarchy is onto to something. It seems that, for most peoples with shamans, and all of those from central and northern Asia (where the word and definition come from), 'schizotypal personality disorder', epilepsy, and other things, are part of the definition. You don't become a shaman without those characteristics. The people know who is going to be a shaman in years to come, because they have seizures, largely withdraw from society (wandering alone in the wilderness a lot), and are just odd. Those who are taught, by the spirits and by a practicing shaman, become shamans. Those who become, I suppose we would say, the village's crazy person.

[ussusimiel]

To quote from Astrology, Science and Culture again:

. . . not so long ago it was received wisdom in anthropology that tribal shamans, when not simply charlatans, were victims of mental illness, notably schizophrenia (see Silverman 1967). Only recently has it been accepted that, so far from being pathological cases, genuine shamans are extraordinarily endowed with mental strength and resilience. Typically, a fully-fledged shaman has come through horrendous psychic ordeals involving the virtual dissolution of his or her socially constructed personality and often including a near-death experience (NDE). The crucial difference between an initiated shaman and a schizophrenic is that the latter is the passive victim of overwhelming and unpredictable attacks by psychic forces, whereas the former voluntarily enters into and returns from the world of non-ordinary reality, engaging with spirit entities on a basis of equality (see Noll 1983).

This reminds me of what Jung said after he had met James Joyce's daughter, Lucia. To paraphrase: Her father dives into the river of language and returns with treasure, she sinks like a stone.

u.

[Avatar]

Hey, hey, I got a quote.

“The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man.
But it’s lovely work if you can stomach it.”

--A

[deer of the dawn]

Hey, hey, I got a quote.

“...But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; ...”

I'll speak for my husband, who is definitely NOT a shaman but a Christian missionary. He despises the whole fundraising part of it. But, it keeps him humble.

A looooooooong time ago I was briefly involved with the Native American Church. Sat up all night eating peyote and listening to drums and songs. Then there was a daytime prayer service, no peyote (but likely other herbacious substances). During the service, I had a vision of an eagle flying. I became the eagle and my arms spread and contorted into the shape of wings. The minister recognized that something was happening and came over with an eagle wing fan and fanned me vigorously. I don't know how long the vision lasted, but my arms were tired.

It was a nice experience for an American pagan (at the time), but there was no lasting impact on my life or power that came out of that. In fact, I would say that I used that experience to deceive myself into one of the worst decisions I ever made.

Anyway the urine-drinking and other weirdness associated with shamanism eventually put me off. I read Castaneda and Jaguar Woman and all that peeing and vomiting and raping just didn't appeal.

I like church. We sing songs, we dance (this is Africa, after all), we pray and laugh and cry. No pee.

[Fist and Faith]

deer... *whew* That's some crazy stuff you did! Peeing, vomiting, and raping doesn't do it for you?!? What a prude! I'll bet you didn't really give it your all!

[deer of the dawn]

[Holsety]

I have had a few odd experiences that lead me to believe I am mildly psychotic/schizophrenic and that I am no longer as fully in the "real" world, that is to say the world that humanity constructs in order to communicate, as I once was. I have no particular urge to move further in or further out than before. I just have an urge to try and reshape the material world into a world that is somehow, impossibly, better than it is right now while maintaining my own happiness as best I can.