The first three installments in this Shaman series have been presented in audio-video format, but for parts 4 and 5, we're diving into written content. Following these written pieces, I'll provide commentary on both, sprinkled with personal experiences in video again.
Welcome, or welcome back.
This year, we're delving into this Shaman series alongside the Tantra series. Additionally, I'll share more about nutrition, therapies, and healing processes I utilize in navigating neurological challenges and Lupus, the Curandera/Healer way.
Let's embark on this enlightening journey!
As an avid collector of old books and a custodian of vital academic works preserving the authentic history of paths like traditional shamanism, I'm disheartened by the erosion of our traditions as a native indigenous person of the Americas. Mainstream packaging for sale, whether in books or gimmicks, doesn't resonate with me. In this post, I'll share some crucial history while also touching on topics that may strike a chord with someone, serving as a reminder that everything is okay. Seeking therapy or mental health care is valid, but there may be other experiences you've encountered yet to be explored.
I recently had a laughable moment on LinkedIn when asked about shamanism and hypersensitivity, empathetic tendencies, and the like. You'll soon understand why after reading this piece.
In Central America and parts of Mexico, the Curandero is often perceived as neurotic, odd, or even frightening. Our lands are deeply rooted in Catholicism, which sometimes leads to perceptions of Curanderos as magicians or witches.
Conversely, in my homeland, many Curanderos refuse to speak Spanish, opting to converse in our indigenous tongues. There are even villages where traditions are openly practiced, and the Shaman or Curandero is held in high esteem, untouched by the greed of mainstream influence. In this post, we'll explore a historical narrative from the early 20th century.
The original material was penned by the esteemed Mircea Eliade. For those unfamiliar with his work, I've included a brief excerpt and a simple Wiki link below, catering to fellow bookworms or those interested in Eliade's subjects.
Mircea Eliade was Romanian: [ˈmirtʃe̯a eliˈade]; born March 13 February 28 1907 – April 22, 1986. He was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. One of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century[1] and interpreter of religious experience, he established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential.[2] One of his most instrumental contributions to religious studies was his theory of eternal return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but (at least in the minds of the religious) actually participate in them. Wikipedia
The version I have is in Spanish El Chamanismo y las tecnicas arcaicas del extasis by Mircea Eliade, so I had to translate it and it serves us perfectly here in this series.
Please do savour the Feed your head entré
Shamanism and psychopathology Mircea Eliade Romanian historian
Let us now examine the relationships that have been believed to be discovered between Arctic and Siberian shamanism and nervous diseases, especially the different forms of Arctic hysteria. Since Krivoshapkin, Bogorai, Vitashevskij and Czaplicka, the psychopathological phenomenology of Siberian shamanism has not ceased to be demonstrated. The last supporter of the shamanism explanation for Arctic hysteria – Ohlmarks – was even forced to distinguish between arctic shamanism and subarctic shamanism, according to the degree of neuropathy of its representatives. This author assumes that shamanism was originally an exclusively Arctic phenomenon, due primarily to the influence of the cosmic environment on the nervous lability of the inhabitants of the polar regions. The excessive cold, the long nights, the desert loneliness, the lack of vitamins, etc., influence, according to this author, the nervous constitution of the Arctic peoples, causing either mental illnesses (Arctic hysteria, meryak , he menevik , etc.), or the shamanic trance. According to this theory, the only difference that distinguishes a shaman from an epileptic is that the latter cannot reach trance of his own will.
Shamanic ecstasy is, in the Arctic zone, a spontaneous and organic phenomenon, and only by referring to said zone can we speak of "great shamanism", that is, of the ceremony that ends in a real cataleptic trance, during which the soul is supposed to leave the body and travels towards the heavens or the underground hells. In the subarctic regions, as the shaman is not a victim of cosmic oppression, he does not spontaneously achieve a real trance, and is forced to provoke a pseudotrance with the help of narcotics or to dramatically simulate the "journey" of the soul. The thesis of the identification of shamanism with a mental illness has also been supported in relation to other forms of shamanism outside of Arctic shamanism. Wilken stated, more than sixty years ago, that originally in shamanism... for example in Indonesia~
Indonesian trance was nothing more than a real illness and only many years later did genuine trance begin to be dramatically imitated. And the surprising relationships that seem to exist between mental imbalance and the different forms of South Asian and Oceanic shamanism have not failed to be pointed out. According to Loeb, the Niue shaman is epileptic or extraordinarily nervous, and comes from certain families in which nervous instability is hereditary. Based on Czaplicka's descriptions, Layard believed he could discover a close resemblance between the Siberian shaman and the bwili from Malekula. They are also equally neuropaths as are the sikerei of Mentawei» and the bomor of Kelantan. In Samoa, epileptics become fortune tellers. The Batak People from Sumatra and other Indonesian towns preferentially choose sickly or weak people to perform the profession of magicians. Between the Subanum of Mindanao the perfect magician is generally a neurasthenic or, at least, an eccentric. The same thing happens elsewhere: among the Sema Maga , the doctor-healer sometimes seems unepileptic; In the Andaman Archipelago, those affected by epilepsy are considered great magicians; between the Lotuko In Uganda, invalids and neuropaths are usually candidates for magic (but they have to undergo, however, a long initiation before being qualified in their profession). According to Father Housse, among the Araucanians In Chile, those who want to dedicate themselves to shamanism "are always sickly or sensitive individuals with a weak heart, a very delicate stomach and prone to fainting. They assume that for them the call of divinity is irresistible and that a premature death would inevitably punish their infidelity or resistance." Sometimes, as among Jivaros "the future shaman is only a reserved and taciturn being, or, as among the Selk'nam and the Yámana from the Land of Fire, beings predisposed to meditation and asceticism. Paul Radin shows the hysteroid structure of the majority of the doctor- healers that he cites in support of his thesis about the psychopathological origin of sorcerers and priests.
And he adds, agreeing with Wilken, Layard and Ohlmarks: "What was initially due to psychic needs became a prescribed and mechanical formula for use by all those who wished to transmute themselves into shamanic priests or establish a point of contact with the supernatural." Ohlmarks states that nowhere in the world are psychomental illnesses so intense and widespread as in the Arctic areas, and quotes Russian ethnologist Zelenin as saying: "In the North these psychoses had spread much more than elsewhere." But analogous observations have been made about many other primitive peoples, and we do not understand how such observations can facilitate our understanding of a religious phenomenon. Considered from the perspective of homo religiosus – which is the only one that interests us in the present work – The mentally ill appears as a frustrated mystic, or, better yet, as an ape-like mystic. His experience is devoid of religious content, even when it apparently resembles a religious experience, in the same way that an act of autoeroticism achieves the same physiological result as a sexual act itself (ejaculation), being only an apelike imitation of such an act, since in it the concrete presence of the "couple" is missing. It may happen, on the other hand, that the identification of a neurotic individual with an individual "possessed" by spirits, an identification that is considered very frequent in the archaic world, in many cases is not that but the result of imperfect observations made by the first ethnologists.
In the Sudanese tribes, recently studied by Nadel, epilepsy is quite widespread; But neither this, nor any other mental illness, is considered by the indigenous people as a true possession. Be that as it may, the conclusion is obvious: the supposed Arctic origin of shamanism does not necessarily come from the nervous lability of the peoples who live too close to the pole and from the specific epidemics of the North, from a certain latitude. As we have seen, similar psychopathic phenomena occur in different parts of the world. It is not surprising that certain illnesses almost always appear in relation to the vocation of healer-doctors. The religious person (shaman/future shaman), like the sick person, feels projected onto a vital level that reveals the fundamental data of human existence, that is, the loneliness, insecurity and hostility of the world that surrounds him. But the primitive magician, the doctor-healer or the shaman is not just a sick person; they are, above all, a sick person who has managed to cure, and who has cured himself. Many times, when the vocation of the shaman or the doctor-healer manifests itself through an illness or an epileptic attack, the initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure. The famous shaman yakut Tüsput (that is, "fallen from Heaven") fell ill at the age of twenty, began to sing and noticed a great improvement. When Sieroszewski found him, he was seventy years old and showed tireless energy. "If he had to, he could play the drum, dance and jump for a whole night." He was, furthermore, a man who had traveled; He had even worked in the gold mines of Siberia. But he felt the need to dedicate himself to shamanism: he would get sick if he stopped practicing it for a long time. He told Sternberg: "The old people say that a few generations ago there were three great shamans in my family. There are no known shamans among my closest ancestors. My parents were in perfect health. I am forty years old; I am married and have no children. I was very well until I was twenty; later, I fell ill, my body ached and I suffered from terrible headaches. Some shamans tried to cure me and they couldn't. I got better when I began to dedicate *myself to shamanism. I became a shaman ten years ago, but at first I exercised my faculties only on myself; I have only dedicated myself to healing others for three years. The profession of shaman is extremely tiring. Sandschejew stumbled upon a Buryat that in his youth he had been an "anti-shamanist." But he fell ill and, after having sought a cure in vain (he even moved to Irkutsk to consult with a good doctor), he devoted himself to shamanism. He was cured immediately, and became a shaman until the end of his days. Sternberg also points out that the choice of the shaman is manifested by a fairly serious illness that generally coincides with sexual maturity. But the future shaman ends up being cured with the help of those spirits who will later be his protective and auxiliary spirits. Sometimes these are ancestors who wish to transmit to you the spirits that remain available. This is, in effect, a kind of hereditary transmission: in this case the illnesses are only a sign of the "election", and it is a temporary illness.
It is always about a healing, a mastery, a balance achieved by the exercise of shamanism itself.
For example, it is not due to the fact that he suffers from epileptic seizures that an Eskimo or Indonesian shaman has his strength and prestige; but to the fact that he can control his own epilepsy. Externally, one can very well point out a large number of similarities between the phenomenology of the meryak either menerik and the trance of the Siberian shaman; but the essential fact remains, however, the capacity that the latter possesses to voluntarily provoke his "epileptoid trance." And, what is more, shamans, so similar, apparently, to epileptics and hysterics, give proof of a constitution higher than normal nervousness, because They manage to concentrate with an intensity inaccessible to the layman, they resist exhausting efforts, they dominate their ecstatic movements, etc. According to the reports of Bjeljavskij and others, collected by Karjalainen, the shaman vogul has a lively intelligence, a perfectly agile body and seemingly limitless energy. By his own preparation, with a view to his future work, the neophyte strives to strengthen his or her body and perfect their intellectual qualities. A Yakuto shaman named Mytchyll, whom Sieroszewski knew, surpassed, although he was old, the younger ones during the sessions by the height of his jumps and the energy of his gestures. "He became animated, sparkled with wit and inspiration. He stabbed himself with a knife, swallowed sticks and devoured hot coals" ( Du shamanismo d'apres les croyances des Yakoutes ). According to the Yakuts, the perfect shaman "must be serious, tactful, know how to convince those around him; above all, he must never appear presumptuous, proud, strong with inner fire. An inner strength must be felt in him that does not offend, but one is aware of his power." It would be difficult to recognize in this portrait the epileptoid that one imagines according to other descriptions.
Although shamans perform their ecstatic dance inside a yurt crowded with people, in an extremely small space, with clothes that carry more than fifteen kilos of iron in rings and many other objects, no spectator is injured. And in the baqça of the Kazakh-Kirghizes, during the trance, although "he throws himself from one side to the other, with his eyes closed, he always picks up all the objects he needs." This astonishing capacity for control, which dominates even ecstatic movements, reveals an admirable nervous constitution. In general, the Siberian and North Asian shaman does not present any signs of mental disintegration. His memory and his power of self-control are clearly superior than those of most. According to Kai Donner (LaSibèrie ), "it can be argued that among the Samoyeds , the Ostiacos and other tribes, the shaman is usually healthy and is often, from an intellectual point of view, far superior to his environment." Among the Buryats Shamans are the main custodians of the rich oral heroic literature. The poetic vocabulary of a shaman yakut spans 12,000 words, while your usual language ( language of the community)– does not exceed 4000 (Chadwick, Growth of literature , III). Among the Kazakh-Kirghizes, the baqça , "singer, poet, musician, fortune teller, priest and doctor, seems to be the custodian of popular religious traditions and the preserver of secular legends" (Castagné, Magic and exorcism).
Similar observations have been made regarding the shamans of other regions. According to Koch. Grünberg "the shamans among the Taulipang are, in general, intelligent individuals, sometimes cunning, but always possessed of great character, because in their training and in the exercise of their functions they need to demonstrate energy and self-control". Métraux, when dealing with Amazonian shamans, observes: "It does not appear that any physical or physiological anomaly or particularity has been chosen as a symptom of a special predisposition for the exercise of shamanism. Among the Wintu The transmission and perfection of speculative thought is in the hands of shamans. The intellectual effort of the prophet-shaman dayaco is enormous and denotes a mental capacity much higher than that of the community. The same observation has been made about African shamans in general (Chadwick, Poetry and prophecy ). As for the Sudanese tribes studied by Nadel, "there is no shaman who in his daily life is an 'abnormal', a neurasthenic or a paranoid, if he were, he would be placed among the crazy, he would not be respected as a priest. Anyway of accounts, shamanism cannot be related to a nascent or latent abnormality; "I don't remember a single shaman whose professional hysteria has degenerated into a serious mental disorder." And it is necessary to take into account the fact that the initiation itself does not require only an ecstatic experience, but, as we are going to see, it also entails a theoretical and practical instruction that is too complicated to be accessible to a neurotic. Whether or not they are subject to real attacks of epilepsy or hysteria, shamans, sorcerers, doctor-healers in general, cannot be considered as simple patients, because their psychopathic experience has a theoretical content.
**If they heal themselves and know how to heal others, it is, among other things, because they know the mechanism – or, better yet, the theory – of the disease.
All these examples explain, in one way or another, the singularization of the doctor-healer within the society. Whether chosen by the gods or spirits to be their spokesperson, whether he is predisposed to such a function as a result of some physical defects, or whether he is the bearer of an inheritance that is equivalent to a magical-religious vocation, in any case the doctor-healer ***separates themselves from the world of the profane precisely because being far from these things they are in a more direct relationship with the sacred and manipulate their manifestations more effectively. Weakness, nervous disease, spontaneous or hereditary vocation are so many signs of a "choice."
Sometimes these signs are physical (connatural or acquired weakness), other times they are an accident, even the most common ones (for example, falling from a tree, being bitten by a snake, etc.); but, usually, as we will see in detail later on, the election is announced by means of an unusual accident; lightning, apparition, dream, etc. We are interested in the insisting on this notion of singularization through an unusual and abnormal experience, because it is necessary to consider that singularization as such arises from the very dialectic of the sacred. In fact, the most basic hierophanies are nothing other than a radical separation, of ontological value, between any object and the surrounding cosmic zone: such a stone, such a tree or such a place, due to the very fact that it is revealed as sacred , because they have been, in a certain way, "chosen" as a receptacle for a manifestation of the sacred, they are ontologically separated from the other stones, from the other trees and from the other places, and are situated on a different, supernatural plane. Already analyzed elsewhere ( Traité d'histoire des religions ) the structures and dialectics of hierophanies and kratophanies; in a word, the manifestations of the magical-religious is sacred. What is important to observe now is the symmetry that exists between the singularization of sacred objects, beings and signs, and the singularization by choice, "choosing" among those who experience the sacred with a different intensity than the rest of the community and who embody, in a certain way. way, the sacred, since they live it abundantly, or, rather, "are lived" by the religious shamanic "form" that chose them (gods, spirits, ancestors, etc.). These few preliminary details will show their true significance when we have studied the preparation methods and techniques.
When it comes to initiations for future shaman.
Illness
-initiation through Illnesses, dreams and more or less pathological ecstasies are, as we have seen, so many means of access to the condition of shaman.
Sometimes these unique experiences mean nothing more than a "choice" from above and do nothing more than prepare the candidate for new revelations. But, almost always, illnesses, dreams and ecstasies constitute an initiation in themselves; That is, they manage to transform the profane man from before the "election" into a sacred technician. Of course, this experience of an ecstatic order is always and everywhere followed by a theoretical and practical instruction provided by the old masters; but it is no less decisive because it is what radically modifies the status religious in the shamanic, priestly, of the "chosen" person.
We will see below that all the ecstatic experiences that decide about the vocation of the future shaman assume the traditional scheme of an initiation ceremony: suffering, death and resurrection. From this point of view, it matters nothing to us which "disease-vocation" plays the role of an initiation;
**because the suffering it causes corresponds to initiatory torture, the psychic isolation of a "chosen sick person" is the parallel of the ritual isolation and loneliness of initiatory ceremonies, the imminence of death known to the sick person (agony, unconsciousness, etc.) evokes the symbolic death adopted in all initiation ceremonies. The examples that follow will show how far the illness-initiation comparison goes. Some physical suffering will find its precise translation in the terms of an initiatory (symbolic) death: for example, the dismemberment of the body of the (sick) candidate, an ecstatic experience that can be produced either thanks to the sufferings of the "disease-vocation", or through certain ceremonies. rituals, even if, through dreams.
As for the content of these initial ecstatic experiences, although quite rich, it almost always admits one or more of the following themes: dismemberment of the body, followed by a renewal of the internal organs and viscera; ascension to Heaven and dialogue with the gods or spirits; descent into Hell and conversations with the spirits and souls of dead shamans; various relationships of religious and shamanic order (secrets of the trade). As is easily seen, all these themes are initiatory. They are all attested in some documents; In others only one or two are mentioned (dismemberment of the body, ascension to Heaven). On the other hand, it is possible that the lack of certain initiatory themes was due, at least in part, to our deficient information, since the first ethnologists were generally content with reports that were very summary. Be that as it may, the presence or absence of these themes also indicates a certain religious orientation of the afferent shamanic techniques. There is, without a doubt, a difference between the "heavenly" shamanic initiation and what could be called, with certain reservations, "infernal." The role played by a Supreme and celestial Being in granting ecstatic trance, or on the contrary, the importance given to the spirits of dead shamans or "demons", point to divergent orientations. It is likely that these differences are due to different and even opposing religious conceptions. In any case, they involve a long evolution and certainly a history that, given the current state of research, can only be outlined in a hypothetical and provisional way. For the moment we are not going to deal with the history of these types of initiation. And, in order not to complicate this exposition, we will separately present each of the great mystical-ritual themes: dismemberment of the candidate's body, ascension to Heaven and descent to Hell. But it is necessary to never lose sight of the fact that this separation only exceptionally corresponds to reality; that, as we will see very soon in the Siberian shamans, the three main initiatory themes coexist. Sometimes in the experience of the same individual and which, in any case, are generally found within the same religion.
*** Finally, it should be taken into account that these ecstatic experiences, although constituting the initiation itself, are always completed in a complex system of traditional instruction.***
We will begin the description of shamanic initiation by studying the ecstatic type, and this for two reasons; because we believe that it is the oldest and because it is the most complete, in the sense that it includes all the mythical-ritual themes listed previously. Immediately afterwards we will offer examples of this same type of initiation in regions other than Siberia and northeastern Asia. Ecstasy and initiatory visions of the Yakut shamans In the preceding we have cited many examples of a shamanic vocation manifested in the form of an illness. Sometimes it is not exactly an illness itself, but rather a progressive change in behavior. The candidate becomes a meditative man, seeks solitude, sleeps a lot, seems absent, has prophetic dreams and, sometimes, attacks. All these symptoms are nothing more than the prelude to the new life that awaits, without knowing it, the candidate is preparing themselves. Their behavior reminds us, on the other hand, of the first signs of the mystical vocation, which are the same in all religions and are well known for us to consider it necessary to insist on sharing them. But there are also "diseases", attacks, dreams and hallucinations that decide in a short time. the career of a shaman. It does not matter much to us whether these pathogenic ecstasies actually occurred, or whether they were imagined or, at least, further enriched with folkloric memories to end up being integrated into traditional shamanic mythology. What is essential seems to us to be the adhesion of such experiences; the fact that they justify the vocation and magical-religious strength of a shaman, and that they are invoked as the only possible validation of a radical change in the religious regime.
For example
And remember this is what they experience in altered state, they were not physically dismembered and no one peeled their skin literally, but in trance state they had collective visions (elders and elder shaman and the future shaman).
Sofran Zateev, shaman among the Yakuts , states that usually the future shaman dies and lies three days in the yurt, without eating or drinking. In the past, the ceremony during which the candidate experienced an ecstatic state ( not literal!) dismemberment or dissolution of the physical body, was repeated three times. Another shaman, PetrIvanov, tells us more about this ceremony: the members of the future shaman are broken off and separated with an iron hook; His bones are peeled, his flesh is shaved, all the liquids in his body are thrown away, and his eyes are torn out of their sockets. After this operation, all the bones are brought together and joined with iron.
The future shaman would in hallucinations have visions and have to go through it emotionally to emotionless, fearlessly, surrendered to their path. So basically go through a hellaciously bad "trip" if you will.
According to another shaman – Timofei Romanov – The ceremony lasts from three to seven days fifteen : during all this time the neophyte remains almost without breathing, like a dead person, in a solitary place. The Yakut Gavriil Alekseev affirms that each shaman has a Bird-of-Prey-Mother, which looks like a large bird, with an iron beak, hooked claws and a long tail. This mythical bird is shown only twice: at the shaman's spiritual birth and at his death. It takes his soul, takes it to Hell or the underworld and lets it mature on the branch of a pine tree. When the soul has matured, the bird returns to the ground, cuts the candidate's body into small fragments and distributes them among the evil spirits of illness and death. death. Each of these spirits devours the piece they are given, which is intended to give the future shaman the power to cure the corresponding diseases. The evil spirits leave after having devoured the entire body. The Bird-Mother is with the future shaman throughout this. Once again in a shared collective altered state.
The Bird Mother puts all the bones back in their place, and the candidate wakes up as if coming out of a deep sleep.
According to other reports of Yakut origin, the evil spirits transport the soul of the future shaman to Hell and there they lock it up in a house for three years. (or only one year, when it comes to neophytes who will be little shamans). There the shaman undergoes their initiation: the spirits cut off his head and place it aside (because the candidate must see with his own eyes how they tear it into pieces), then they cut it into pieces and distribute its pieces among the spirits of the different diseases. Only with this condition does the future shaman obtain the power to heal. They immediately cover their bones with fresh meat and, in certain cases, also provide them with new blood. According to another Yakut legend, also collected by Ksenofontov, shamans are born in the North. There grows a giant fir tree that has nests in its branches. The large shamans are on the highest branches, the middle ones on those that sprout in the middle and the smallest ones on those that are at the bottom of the tree. In the opinion of some, the Mother Bird-of-Prey, which has the head of an eagle and iron feathers, perches on the Tree, lays its eggs and hatches them; The birth of great shamans requires three years of incubation, that of medium ones, two, and one year that of small ones.
When the soul breaks the shell, the Bird-Mother takes it, for instruction, to a devil-shaman, who has only one eye, one arm and only one bone. This lulls the soul of the future shaman in an iron cradle and feeds it with curdled blood.
Then three black "devils" arrive and tear up his body, plunge a spear into his head and throw pieces of meat in different directions as offerings. Three other "devils" cut off his jaw and deliver each of its pieces to each of the diseases he is called upon to cure. If one of the skeleton bones happens to be missing, a family member must die to replace it. It sometimes happens that up to nine people related to him die. According to another story, the "devils" retain the soul of the candidate until he has assimilated their science. He lay sick all that time. His soul is transmuted either into a bird, another animal, or even into a man.
The candidate's "strength" is preserved in a nest hidden by the foliage of a tree, and when the shamans fight among themselves – taking on the appearance of different animals – They try to destroy the nest of their adversary (Lehtisalo). In all these examples we come across the central theme of an initiation ceremony: breaking up the body of the neophyte and renewing its organs; ritual death followed by resurrection and mystical plenitude. And let us not forget the motif of the giant bird that hatches the shamans in the branches of the World Tree; It has great importance in North Asian mythologies and especially in shamanic mythology.
THE INITIATION OF AUSTRALIAN MAGICIANS
For some time the first observers have attested that certain initiations of the medicine-men Australians imply the ritual death and the renewal of the candidate's organs, an operation performed by both the spirits and the souls of the dead. The most recent studies have fully confirmed and supplemented this information. [...] the Wotjoballuk believe that it is a supernatural being, Ngatya, who consecrates the medicine-men: he opens the belly by inserting the rock crystals that give the magical power. To create a medicine-man the Euahlayi proceed as follows: they take the chosen young man to a cemetery and leave him tied up there for several nights. After he is alone, numerous animals appear, which touch and lick the neophyte. Later a man appears with a stick; he puts the stick in his head and puts a magic stone the size of a lemon into the wound. Then other spirits come along and chant gods magical and initiatory songs to instruct him in the art of healing.
COMPARISONS BETWEEN AUSTRALIA, SIBERIA, SOUTH AMERICA ETC ...
As we can see, the analogy between the initiations of the Siberian shamans and those of the gods medicine-men Australians is very close. In both cases the candidate undergoes, by semi-divine beings or ancestors, an operation that includes the breaking up of the body and the renewal of internal organs and bones. In both cases this operation takes place in an "inferior", or implies the descent into hell. As for the pieces of quartz or other magical objects that the spirits would introduce into the body of the Australian candidate, they are part of a practice that is of little importance among Siberians. In fact, as we have seen, only rarely is there an allusion to pieces of iron or other objects put to melt in the same cauldron where the bones and flesh of the future shaman were thrown. Another difference opposes Siberia and Australia: in Siberia most of the shamans are "chosen" by the spirits and gods, while in Australia the career of the medicine-man it seems to be as much the result of a voluntary search of the candidate as that of a spontaneous "election" by spirits and divine beings.
In any case, these analogies between Australia and Siberia visibly confirm the authenticity and antiquity of the shamanic initiation rites. The importance of the cave in the initiation of the medicine-men it is a further validation of this character of antiquity, given the important part that the cave seems to have had in the Paleolithic religions. On the other hand, cave and labyrinth they continued to have a first-rate function in the initiation rites of other archaic cultures, both being, in fact, concrete symbols of the paths that lead to the other world, which allow a descent into hell. According to the first information that we had about the Araucan shamans of Chile, they carried out their initiation in caves often adorned with animal heads.
On the other hand, it is important to point out right now the correspondences that can be found elsewhere for the belief ofintroduction of rock crystals into the candidate's body by the spirits and initiators. This motif is also found among the Semang of Malacca, while it constitutes a precise characteristic of South American shamanism. "The Cobeno shaman introduced rock crystals into the novice's head that rose his brain and eyes to replace these organs and become his 'strength'". In other places, rock crystals symbolize the shaman's auxiliary spirits. Typically, for the shamans of tropical South America, the magical force is embodied in an invisible substance that the masters sometimes pass on to novices from mouth to mouth.
“There is no difference in nature between the magical substance, an invisible but tangible mass, and the arrows, thorns, rock crystals with which the shaman is stuffed. These objects materialize the strength of the shaman who, in many tribes, is conceived in the most vague, albeit not very abstract, form of magical substance ".
THE INITIATIVE DISMISSAL
In fact, both the spontaneous vocation and the initiatory research imply, both in South America, both in Australia and in Siberia, a mysterious disease or a more or less symbolic ritual of mystical death, sometimes given in terms of a fragmentation of the body and a renewal of the organs. Among the Araucanians the choice generally manifests itself with a sudden illness: the young man falls "as if dead" and when he regains his strength, he declares that he will become machi.
Similar motives appear in North American shamanism. Maidu initiators put candidates in a pit full of "medicine" and kill them with a "Poison-medicine"; thanks to this initiation, neophytes acquire the faculty of holding red-hot stones in their hands without hurting themselves. In shamanic society "Ghost CeremonyOf the Pomo, initiation involves the torture, death and resurrection of neophytes; these lie on the ground like corpses and are covered with straw.
The same symbolism of death and mystical resurrection in the form of both mysterious diseases and shamanic initiation ceremonies is also found elsewhere. Among the Sudanese of the Nuba Mountains the first initiatory consecration is called "head" and it is reported that it is a rite in which "The novice's head is opened so that the spirit can enter".
Among the Daiacs of Borneo the initiation of the manang (shaman) includes three different ceremonies, corresponding to the three degrees of daiac shamanism. The first degree, besudi ("Touch, touch") is also the most basic and can be obtained with very little money. The candidate lies down on the porch as if he were sick and the others manang they take him steps all night. It is supposed that in this way he is taught how the future shaman can discover diseases and remedies: precisely by touching the patient [...] The second ceremony, called beklites ("Opening"), is more complex and has a distinctly shamanic character. After a night of spells, the old folks mama they lead the neophyte into an isolated room by means of curtains.
“They claim that there they cut off his head and take out his brain; after having washed it, they put it back in place in order to infuse the candidate with a clear intelligence capable of penetrating the mysteries of evil spirits and diseases; then they introduce gold into his eyes in order to give him such a penetrating sight that he can see the soul, wherever it is, lost or wandering; then they plant toothed hooks at the ends of his fingers to make him capable of capturing the soul and holding it tightly; finally they pierce his heart with an arrow to make him compassionate and full of sympathy for those who are sick and suffering ”.
Of course, it is a symbolic ceremony [...] There is a third ceremony that perfectly integrates the shamanic initiation, which includes an ecstatic journey to heaven on a ritual ladder.
TRIBAL INITIATIVES AND SECRET SOCIETIES
We have repeatedly emphasized the initiatory essence of the candidate's "death", followed by his "resurrection" [...] In fact, the ceremonies that mark the passage of the individual from one period of life to another or his admission to any "secret society" always includes a series of rites that can be summarized in the convenient formula: death and resurrection of the candidate. We recall the most common of them:
period of withdrawal in the bush (symbol of the afterlife) and larval existence, in the manner of the dead; prohibitions imposed on candidates, deriving from the fact that they are assimilated to the dead (a dead person cannot eat certain foods, cannot use his fingers, etc.).
face and body dyed with ashes or with certain calcareous substances in order to obtain the livid whiteness of the ghosts; funeral masks.
Symbolic burial in the temple or fetish house.
Symbolic descent into the underworld.
Hypnotic sleep; drink that causes candidates to lose consciousness.
Harsh tests: beating, roasting of the feet in the fire, suspension in the air, amputation of fingers and various other cruelties.
All these rituals and all these tests have the purpose of doing forget the past life. This is the reason why in some cases the candidate, having returned to the village after the initiation, assumes that he has lost his memory and must be taught again to walk, to eat, to dress.
**** Next time we'll go a little deeper into Shamanism El Chamanismo and health. Our own as Shaman and some of our Native traditions of the Americas in working with others.
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