Shamanism
A Master of Ecstasy
"The word shaman comes to English from the Tungus language via Russian. Among the
Tungus of Siberia it is both a noun and a verb. While the Tungus have no word for
shamanism, it has come into usage by anthropologists, historians of religion and others in
contemporary society to designate the experience and the practices of the shaman. Its usage
has grown to include similar experiences and practices in cultures outside of the original
Ural-Altaic cultures from which the term shaman originated. Thus shamanism is not the name
of a religion or group of religions."
"Shamanism is classified by anthropologists as an archaic magico-religious phenomenon in
which the shaman is the great master of ecstasy. Shamanism itself, was defined by the late
Mircea Eliade as a technique of ecstasy. A shaman may exhibit a particular magical specialty
(such as control over fire, wind or magical flight). When a specialization is present the most
common is as a healer. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an
ecstatic trance state in which the soul of the shaman is believed to leave the body and ascend
to the sky (heavens) or descend into the earth (underworld). The shaman makes use of spirit
helpers, which he or she communicates with, all the while retaining control over his or her
own consciousness. (Examples of possession occur, but are the exception, rather than the
rule.) It is also important to note that while most shamans in traditional societies are men,
either women or men may and have become shamans."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)
"These myths refer to a time when communication between heaven and earth was possible; in
consequence of a certain event or a ritual fault, the communication was broken off, but heroes
and medicine men are nevertheless able to reestablish it."
- Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
"By entering an ecstatic state, induced by ritual dancing and the invocation of spirits, the
shaman is believed able to return to that time, visiting heaven and hell to talk with gods,
spirits of the dead, and animals."
- Cosmic Duality
"Shamans reach the state that gives them access to the supernatural world in a variety of
ways. A very common way is by ingesting mind-altering drugs of various types."
- James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator"
"It is the Siberian and Latin American shamans who have most often employed psychedelics
as booster rockets to launch their cosmic travels. In Siberia the preferred substance has been
the mushroom known as Amanita muscaria or agaric. This is perhaps the much-praised soma
of early Indian religion as well as one of the drugs referred to in European legends."
- Roger N.Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism
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"Another common method is to listen to the protracted pounding of a drum. Less direct
methods are also widely practiced. These include various forms of isolation and self-denial,
such as fasting, solitary confinement, celibacy, dietary and purity restrictions, and protracted
prayer. Igjugarjuk, a Caribou Inuit shaman, claims to have been isolated by his mentor in a
small snow hut where he fasted and meditated in the cold, drinking only a little water twice,
for thirty days. After his initiatory vision (see below) he continued a rigorous regime
involving a special diet and celibacy. Leonard Crow Dog, a Native American Sioux shaman,
describes in detail the process of his first vision quest. He participated in a sweat lodge
ceremony for spiritual cleansing, then was taken to a fasting place of his family's, where he
was wrapped naked in a blanket and left in a hole to fast and pray alone for two days (an
adult shaman will fast four or more days). Wallace Black Elk also frequently describes both
the sweat lodge ('stone-people-lodge') ceremony and the vision quest. Ascetic practices by
Japanese shamans are especially prevalent among those who actively seek shamanhood rather
than being called by a deity. These practices include fasting and dietary restrictions of various
kinds, seclusion in a dark place, walking pilgrimages between sacred places, and rigorous
regimes of immersion and bathing in ice-cold water. These disciplines, especially the
endurance of cold, eventually fill the shaman with heat and spiritual might."
- James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator"
"Let him who would join himself to the prince of Torah wash his garments and his clothes
and let him immerse (in) a strict immersion as a safeguard in case of pollution. And let him
dwell for twelve days in a room or in an upper chamber. Let him not go out or come in, and
he must neither eat nor drink. But from evening to evening see that he eats his bread, clean
bread of his own hands, and he drinks pure water, and that he does not taste any kind of
vegetable. And let him insert this midrash of the prince of Torah into the prayer three times in
every single day; it is after the prayer that he should pray it from its beginning to its end. And
afterward, let him sit and recite during the twelve days, the days of his fasting, from morning
until evening, and let him not be silent. And in every hour that he finishes it let him stand on
his feet and adjure by the servants (and?) by their king, twelve times by every single prince.
Afterward let him adjure every single one of them by the seal."
- Sar Torah, paras. 299-300
The shaman is said to 'make a journey,' during which he is spoken to by the spirits, who give
him curing instructions and make their wishes known for certain kinds of propitiatory
sacrifices; they may also appear to him in the form of visions or apparitions. Motifs of death
and rebirth, often involving bodily dismemberment and reassimilation, are common in
shamanism..."
- McKenna and McKenna, The Invisible Landscape
"...It appears that shamans are able to draw on a range of psychologically skillful diagnostic
and therapeutic techniques accumulated by their predecessors over centuries. Some of these
techniques clearly foreshadow ones widely used today and thereby confirm the reputation of
shamans as humankind's first psychotherapists."
- Roger N.Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism
"We know today that the medicine man derives his power from a circular feedback involving
his personal myth and the hopes and expectations of those who share it with him. The
ensuing 'mutual exaltation' was studied by McDougal and by Gustave LeBon many years
ago. It is still regarded as one of the key factors in the psychology of masses. It has
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subsequently been reinterpreted in Freudian terms as the individual's willing surrender to an
all-powerful father figure capable of meeting the childish dependency needs still lingering in
members of the group."
- Ehrewald, The ESP Experience
"Shamanism often exists alongside and even in cooperation with the religious or healing
practices of the community....Knowledge of other realms of being and consciousness and the
cosmology of those regions is the basis of the shamanic perspective and power. With this
knowledge, the shaman is able to serve as a bridge between the mundane and the higher and
lower states. The shaman lives at the edge of reality as most people would recognize it and
most commonly at the edge of society itself
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)
Initiation Rituals
"A common experience of the call to shamanism is a psychic or spiritual crisis, which often
accompanies a physical or even a medical crisis, and is cured by the shaman him or
herself....The shaman is often marked by eccentric behavior such as periods of melancholy,
solitude, visions, singing in his or her sleep, etc. The inability of the traditional remedies to
cure the condition of the shamanic candidate and the eventual self cure by the new shaman is
a significant episode in development of the shaman. The underlying significant aspect of this
experience, when it is present, is the ability of the shaman to manage and resolve periods of
distress."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)
"Frequently a candidate will gain shamanic powers during a visionary experience in which he
or she undergoes some form of death or personal destruction and disintegration at the hands
of divine beings, followed by a corresponding resurrection or reintegration that purges and
gives a qualitatively different life to the initiate. For example, the Siberian (Tagvi Samoyed)
Sereptie, in his long and arduous initiatory vision (on which see below), was at one point
reduced to a skeleton and then was 'forged' with a hammer and anvil. Autdaruta, an Inuit
initiate, had a vision in which he was eaten by a bear and then was vomited up, having gained
power over the spirits."
- James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism"
"I saw that I was painted red all over, and my joints were painted black, with white stripes
between the joints. My bay had lightning stripes all over him and his mane was cloud. And
when I breathed, my breath was lightning."
- Nick Black Elk, in the narrative of his Great Vision
"...The important moments of a shamanic initiation are these five; first, torture and violent
dismemberment of the body; second, scraping away of the flesh until the body is reduced to a
skeleton; third, substitution of viscera and reveal of the blood; fourth, a period spent in Hell,
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during which the future shaman is taught by the souls of dead shamans and by 'demons'; fifth,
an ascent to Heaven to obtain consecration from the God of Heaven"
- Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation
"They are cut up by demons or by their ancestral spirits; their bones are cleaned, the flesh
scraped off, the body fluids thrown away, and their eyes torn from their sockets...His bones
are then covered with new flesh and in some cases he is also given new blood."
- Fabrega and Silver in Behavioral Science 15
"The ecstatic experience of the shaman goes beyond a feeling or perception of the sacred, the
demonic or of natural spirits. It involves them shaman directly and actively in transcendent
realities or lower realms of being." "The shaman is not recognized as legitimate without
having undergone two types of training:
1) Ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.)
2) Traditional ('shamanic techniques, names and functions of spirits,mythology and
genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.)
The two-fold course of instruction, given by the spirits and the old master shamans is
equivalent to an initiation.' [Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 13 , p. 202;
Mcmillian, N.Y., 1987.] It is also possible for the entire process to take place in the dream
state or in ecstatic experience."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)
"The novice's task of learning to see the spirits involves two stages. The first is simply to
catch an initial glimpse of them. The second is to deepen and stabilize this glimpse into a
permanent visionary capacity in which the spirits can be summoned and seen at will."
- Roger N. Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism
"All this long and tiring ceremony has as its object transforming the apprentice magician's
initial and momentary and ecstatic experience...into a permanent condition - that in which it
is possible to see the spirits."
- Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
"The next thing an old shaman has to do for his pupil is to procure him anak ua by which is
meant his 'angakoq', i.e., the altogether special and particular element which makes this man
an angakoq (shaman). It is also called his quamenEg his 'lightning' or 'enlightenment', for
anak ua consists of a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his
head, within the brain, an inexplicable searchlight, a luminous fire, which enables him to see
in the dark both literally and metaphorically speaking, for he can now, even with closed eyes
see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others;
thus they look into the future and into the secrets of others.
"The first time a young shaman experiences this light...it is as if the house in which he is
suddenly rises; he sees far ahead of him, through mountains, exactly as if the earth were on a
great plain, and his eyes could reach to the end of the earth. Nothing is hidden from him any
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longer; not only can he see things far, far away, but he can also discover souls, stolen souls,
which are either kept concealed in far, strange lands or have been taken up or down to the
Land of the dead."
- K. Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos
A Second Real World
"The pre-eminently shamanic technique is the passage from one cosmic region to another -
from earth to the sky or from earth to the underworld. The shaman knows the mystery of the
breakthrough in plane. This communication among the cosmic zones is made possible by the
very structure of the universe."
- Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
"The main feature of the shamans' universe is...the cosmic center, a bond or axis connecting
earth, heaven and hell. It is often pictured as a tree or a pole holding up the sky. In a trance
state, a shaman can travel disembodied from one region to another, climbing the tree into the
heavens or following its downward extension. By doing so he can meet and consult the gods.
There is always a numerical factor. He climbs through a fixed number of celestial stages, or
descends through a fixed number of infernal ones. His key number may be expressed in his
costume - for example, in a set of bells which he attaches to it. The key number varies from
shaman to shaman and from tribe to tribe."
- Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom
"He commands the techniques of ecstasy - that is, because his soul can safely abandon his
body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through
his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go
below and above because he has already been there. The danger of losing his way in these
forbidden regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished with his guardian
spirit, a shaman is the only human being able to challenge the danger and venture into a
mystical geography."
- Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
"In the ages of the rude beginnings of culture, man believed that he was discovering a second
real world in dream, and here is the origin of metaphysics. Without dream, mankind would
never have had occasion to invent such a division of the world. The parting of soul and body
goes also with this way of interpreting dream; likewise, the idea of a soul's apparitional body:
whence, all belief in ghosts, and apparently, too, in gods."
- Neitzsche, Human, All-Too-Human
"We must recognize ourselves as beings of four dimensions. Do we not in sleep live in a
fantastic fairy kingdom where everything is capable of transformation, where there is no
stability belonging to the physical world, where one man can become another or two men at
the same time, where the most improbable things look simple and natural, where events often
occur in inverse order, from end to beginning, where we see the symbolical images of ideas
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and moods, where we talk with the dead, fly in the air, pass through walls, are drowned or
burnt, die and remain alive?"
- P. D. Ouspensky
Perception in Trance States
The ceremonies of the Cult of the Horned god were first found in the Paleolithic cave
paintings of Ariege which depicted a dancing figure in the skin of a horned animal.
Cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic (20-30,000 years ago) depicts zig zags and dots
combined with realistic images of animals against grid forms. Similar abstract geometric are
also found in the ritual art of the South African bushman where the trance dance of the
shaman is a central unifying force of the community. In the dance the shaman perceives his
body as stretching and becoming elongated. His spirit soars out of the top of his head and is
transformed into an animal. In the century old depictions of the trance dance, the bushman
shaman absorb the energy of a dying eland and take on many of the magic animal's physical
characteristics. He perceives his transformed state as similar to being under water; he has
difficulty breathing and feels weightless. When he returns from his spirit journey he is able to
perform healing and even his sweat supposedly posses curative powers. A few days later the
shaman would be able to reflect upon his experience and paint it in natural rock shelters
found in the surrounding cliffs. There was no esoteric stream of wisdom and everyone in the
village would share in knowledge of the spirit world.
Psychologists differentiate two stages in trance states induced by drugs, fasting and/or
sensory deprivation.
1.) Antopic forms - abstract geometric forms such as grids, dots and spirals
2.) Realistic images from memory combined in surreal ways against a geometric background.
The Paleolithic paintings depicts similar hallucinatory images to the modern bushman's but
differ in one respect; they were not done out in the open but in the deep, dark recesses of
caves. Was the sensory deprivation of being immersed in the dark a means of inducing a
trance state in the Cro-Magnon shaman?
- "Images of Another World" An episode of Ancient Mysteries broadcast by the A&E
Network
"Among the Eskimo shaman's clairvoyance is the result of qaumenaq, which means
'lightning' or 'illumination'. It is a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his
body, inside his head, within the brain, enabling him to see in the dark, both literally and
metaphorically speaking, for he can now even with closed eyes, see through darkness and
perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others. With the experience of the
light goes a feeling of ascension, distant vision, clairvoyance, the perception of invisible
entities and foreknowledge of the future. There is an interesting parallel, despite differences,
in the initiation of Australian medicine-men, who go through a ritual death, and are filled
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with solidified light in the form of rock-crystals; on returning to life they have similar powers
of clairvoyance and extra-sensory perception."
- John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions
Hypnogogic images
"Hypnogogic images are the germinal stuff of dreams, and they usually begin with flashes of
light. Often, an illuminated circle, lozenge, or other generally round form appears to come
nearer and nearer, swelling to gigantic size. This particular image is known as the Isakower
phenomenon, named after an Austrian psychoanalyst who first identified it. Isakower claimed
the image was rooted in the memory of the mother's breast as it approached the infant's
mouth."
"Hypnagogic images can be interpreted in many different ways. Literally and figuratively, it's
all in the eye of the beholder. The drowsy person in the hypnagogic state is just as open to
suggestions as subjects in the hypnotized state."
"When people start floating n the hypnagogic state, the amplitude and frequency of
brainwaves decrease. The alpha rhythms of wakefulness are progressively replaced by slower
theta activity. This translates to a loss of volitional control, a sense of paralysis. As the person
descends further into sleep itself, the outside physical world retreats to the fringe of
consciousness and the new reality becomes the internal dream world."
The final stage of hypnagogic images is, "polyopia, the multiplication of the image, usually
seen in one eye....These specks of light...are produced by electrical activity in the visual
system and brain. One can almost imagine the specks representing electric sparks flying
along the neural pathways of the brain." They may look like hundred of stars "but they can
also take the form of spots, circles, swirls, grids, checkerboards, or other figures composed of
curves or lines. They are easy to see in the dark, but, in the light, they are on the borderline of
perception."
"Even when the hypnagogic forms are not consciously noticed, they can still register as
subliminal stimuli and influence subsequent image formation and fantasy."
- Ronald K.Siegel, Fire in the Brain
