(Chapter 1 from 'The Invisible Landscape' by Terence and Dennis
McKenna)
Of all the diverse religious institutions that humans have
elaborated since before the beginning of recorded history, that
of shamanism is one of the most singular and is probably one of
the most archaic as well. The shaman is something of a maverick
among religious practitioners. While shamanism occurs in
virtually every culture on the planet, manifesting itself in
religious traditions both ancient and modern, both ''primitive
and sophisticated, the shaman remains eminently individualistic,
idiosyncratic, and enigmatic, standing ever apart from organised
ecclesiastical institutions while still performing important
functions for the psychic and religious life of the culture.
Comparable, but not identical, with such similar idiosyncratic
practitioners as medicine men and sorcerers, the shaman is the
possessor of techniques of proven efficacy and of powers
bordering on the paranormal, the complete understanding of which
still eludes modern psychology. It is this complex and
fascinating figure of the shaman that we want to analyze from a
standpoint at once sympathetic, interpretative, and psychological,
with a view to answering the following questions: (1) What are
the traditional aspects of shamanism as it is encountered in
primitive cultures? (2) What is the nature of the shamanic
personality and abilities, and what is the psychological role of
the shaman in the society at large? And (3) Are there
institutions analogous to shamanism in modern society?
The vocation of shaman is found in nearly all archaic cultures,
from the Australian aborigines to the Jivaro Indians of central
Ecuador and Peru to the Yakut tribes of Siberia. It is believed
to have originated among these Siberian peoples, though its
diffusion into other cultures must have taken place very early in
prehistory for, along with sorcerers, magicians, and priests,
shamanism can be counted among the oldest of professions.
The word "shaman" is derived from the Tungusic term
saman, derived in its turn from the Pali samana, indicating a
possibly Southern (Buddhist) influence among these northern
peoples (Eliade 1964, p. 495). Eliade distinguishes the shaman
from other types of religious and magical practitioners primarily
on the basis of his religious function and techniques: ". .
. he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform
miracles of the fakir, like all magicians, whether primitive or
modern. But beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be
priest, mystic, and poet. He further defines the shaman as a
manipulator of the sacred,
whose main function is to induce
ecstasy in a society where ecstasy is the prime religious
experience. Thus the shaman is a master of ecstasy, and the art
of shamanising is a technique of ecstasy (Eliade 1964, p.4).
In archaic societies, a person (either a man or a woman) may
become a shaman in primarily one of two ways: hereditary
transmission or spontaneous election. In either case, the novice
shaman must undergo an initiatory ordeal before he can attain the
status of a full shaman. The initiation generally has two aspects:
an ecstatic aspect, which takes place in dreams or trance, and a
traditional aspect, in which the shaman is given instruction in
certain techniques, such as the use and significance of the
shamanic costume and drum, the secret "spirit language,"
the names of the helping spirits, techniques of curing, the uses
of medicinal plants, and so on, by an elder master shaman. These
traditional techniques of shamanism are not invariably
transmitted by an elder shaman but may be imparted to the
neophyte directly through the spirits that come to him during his
initiatory ecstasy. Lack of a public ritual in no way implies
that such traditional instruction is neglected.
The ecstatic part of the shamans initiation is harder to analyze,
for it depends on a certain receptivity to states of trance and
ecstasy on the part of the novice: He may be moody, somewhat
frail and sickly, predisposed to solitude, and may perhaps have
fits of epilepsy or catatonia, or some other psychological
aberrance (though not always, as some writers on the subject have
asserted [cf. Eliade 1964, pp. 23ff and below]). In any case, his
psychological predisposition to ecstasy forms only the starting
point for his initiation: The novice, after a history of
psychosomatic illness or psychological aberration that may be
more or less intense, will at last begin to undergo initiatory
sickness and trance; he will lie as though dead or in deep sleep
for days on end. During this time, he is approached in dreams by
his helping spirits and may receive instructions from them.
Invariably during this prolonged trance the novice will undergo
an episode of mystical death and resurrection: He may see himself
reduced to a skeleton and then clothed with new flesh; or he may
see himself boiled in a caldron, devoured by the spirits, and
then made whole again; or he may imagine himself being operated
on by the spirits, his organs removed and replaced with "magical
stones," and then sewn up again.
Although the particular motifs may vary between cultures and even
individuals, the general symbolism is clear: The novice shaman
undergoes a symbolic death and resurrection, which is understood
as a radical transformation into a superhuman condition.
Henceforth, the shaman enjoys access to the supernatural plane;
he is a master of ecstasy, can travel in the spirit-realm at will,
can cure and divine, can touch red-hot iron with impunity, and so
on. In short the shaman is transformed from a profane into a
sacred state of being. Not only has he effected his own cure
through his mystical transmutation, he is now invested with the
power of the sacred, and hence can cure others as well. It is of
the first order if importance to remember this, that the shaman
is not merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has
healed himself, who is cured, and who must shamanise to remain
cured. Lommel (1967) gives the following description of a
shamanic initiation in Siberia:
The Tungus say of their shamans: "Before a man becomes a
shaman he is sick for a long time. His understanding becomes
confused. The shamanistic ancestors of his clan come, hack him to
bits, tear him apart, cut his flesh in pieces, drink his blood.
They cut off his head and throw it in the oven, in which various
iron appurtenances of his costume are made red-hot and then
forged. This cutting up is carried out somewhere in the upper
world by the shaman ancestors. He alone receives the gift of
shamanhood who has shaman ancestors in his clan, who pass it on
from generation to generation; and only when these have cut up
his body and examined his bones can he begin to shamanize."
(p.65)
We have noted that the function of shamanic initiation in the
primitive society is to effect the transformation of the shaman
from a profane, human condition to a superhuman, sacred one. But
while the shaman may carry out activities such as divining and
prophesying, and occasionally sorcery, these are not his major
functions, and often fall within the province of other types of
practitioners. The shaman's primary functions are those of healer
and psychopomp. This is related to the specific nature of the
shamanic ecstasy; not all forms of mystical ecstasy are shamanic,
for this, like initiation, has its own peculiar nature. The
shamanic ecstasy is one in which the shaman is supposed to leave
his physical body and journey to the Center of the World, which
connects the earthly realm with the celestial world above and the
infernal regions below. This axis mundi may be symbolized as a
tree, mountain, tent pole, ladder, liana, or something similar;
the shaman is able to make the journey and return safely because
he is a master of ecstasy and possesses the guidance of helping
spirits along the way. His main functions thus become either
guiding the soul of a deceased person to its home in the infernal
or celestial realms or journeying to those realms for the purpose
of retrieving the soul of a sick person (which has wandered off
by itself or been stolen by the spirits while the patient was
asleep), returning with it, and restoring it to the patient's
body. The shaman thus fulfills his functions by being able to
travel in the supernatural realm, and he is enabled to do this
because he is a master of ecstasy.
From the description of the shaman's duties in the community, we
can draw some obvious conclusions and make some further
hermeneutical speculations as to the shamanic function within the
cultural context. The curing function of shamanism, as well as
such secondary functions as divination and prophecy, show clearly
that the shaman, like all magical practitioners, helps a
primitive culture to come to terms with environmental forces that
are both nurturing and threatening. Thus, through the shamanic
propitiation of the spirits, good crops or fruitful hunting can
be assured; drought, epidemic, or other natural disasters can be
averted. On the deeper level of collective psychology; we can
perceive several functions of the shaman that would not be
articulated by the members of a given society, but that,
nevertheless, are intrinsic to the shamanic function. Lommel (1967)
says of the social role of the shaman:
primitive man is quite exceptionally susceptible to various
forms of mental disorder. Psychoses, neuroses, hallucinations,
mass hysteria and the like are of very frequent occurrence. The
shaman can cure these states~but only when he has overcome them
in himself . . . the shaman is the center, the brain and the soul
of a (primitive) community. He is, so to speak, the regulator of
the soul of a group or tribe, and his function is to adjust,
avert, and heal defects, vacillations, disturbances of this soul.
Looked at biologically, the whole life of primitive people is
more strongly influenced by the subconscious than seems to be the
case among ourselves. It is clear that in this situation the
position of the shaman is one of paramount importance. (p.73)
The shaman is able to act as an intermediary between the society
and the supernatural, or to put it in Jungian terms, he is an
intermediary to the collective unconscious. Through the office of
the shaman, the society at large is brought into close and
frequent encounter with the numinous archetypal symbols of the
collective unconscious. These symbols retain their numinosity,
immediacy, and reality for the society through their constant
reaffirmation in shamanic ritual and through the shaman's epic
narration of mythical scenarios and his artistic production. The
shaman does more, however, than just recite the myths or express
the religious symbolism in making ritual artefacts; the shaman
lives the myth. By virtue of his superhuman, transformed state,
he enacts the role of the mythical hero: He can fly through the
air, talk to the gods, see everywhere, understand the animals,
and perform other feats characteristic of a semi-divine entity.
Thus, the shaman is the exemplar in the present epoch, which is
regarded by primitives as a profane, historical time, of the
condition supposed to have been accessible to all humans before
the fall (cf. Eliade 1961, chapter 2). In his ecstasy the shaman
re-enters that mythical, paradisiacal condition that existed
before the fall and thus reasserts, for the entire culture, the
reality of that mythical time. Thus, the validity of the
archetypal motifs, which presumably describe the human condition
in the paradisiacal era, is reaffirmed.
The shamanic function also includes a psychoanalytic capability.
That the shaman can cure illnesses of a psychological or
psychosomatic nature is well established. "The shaman is
undoubtedly, perhaps essentially, a doctor -but the factual
medical knowledge of the primitives is very small; the shaman's
medical function seems to be confined to psychological, perhaps
psychoanalytical techniques, and his successes fall mainly within
the psychological domain" (Lommel 1967, p.25). By what exact
mechanism he is able to do this is not completely understood. It
is as though the shaman, in his capacity of ecstatic psychopomp,
practices a participation therapy of the most sophisticated type;
by means of his ecstatic capacity, the shaman "plunges"
into the collective unconscious and restores the patient's self-identity
(equivalent to "finding his soul") by taking onto
himself the unconscious contents that have inundated the patient
through the principle of transference (cf. Jung 1954). Because
this is accomplished in the context of ritual, which is real and
numinous to the participants, the shaman's task is doubtless
somewhat easier than that of a modern psychoanalyst who is often
faced with a demythologised, rationally hardened personality.
The shaman, then, acts as a doctor of the soul, both the
individual and the collective soul, and he is also a real and
living exemplar of the primordial, mythical human condition, and
in being so maintains the reality and immediacy of the sacred. He
is able to carry out these functions because he is master of the
techniques of ecstasy, and it is by virtue of this that he
maintains his suprahuman state.
It is clear that the practice of shamanism, to a greater extent
than other religious offices, depends on the unique personality
of the shaman. This must account in part for the great diversity
of preinitiatory traits that constitute a shamanic election as
well as the diversity in methods of shamanizing, in the means
employed to produce ecstasy, and in the motifs of the shaman's
journey, not only in different cultures but between individuals
as well. With this in mind, let us lift the shaman out of his
cultural context for a moment and focus on the characteristics of
his psychological makeup.
An item of the first order in addressing ourselves to this
psychological examination of the phenomenon is the question of
the psychopathological nature of the shamanic personality. There
are, as we have noted, certain cases where the symptoms leading
to shamanic initiation can be traced to a condition of mental
illness, epilepsy, or catatonia; however, this is by no means
true for all such cases, as some have claimed. Initiation can
also be triggered by an encounter with a magical animal, the
finding of a magical stone or other object, or an ordeal in the
wilderness.
Eliade (1967) masterfully points out where such theories have
gone astray:
The problem, in our view, has been wrongly stated. In the first
place, it is not correct to say that shamans are, or must always
be, neuropaths; on the contrary, a great many of them are
perfectly sound in mind. Moreover, those who had previously been
ill have become shamans just because they succeeded in getting
well [italics his]. Very often, when the vocation reveals itself
in the course of an illness or an attack of epilepsy, the
initiation is also a cure. The acquisition of the shamanic gifts
indeed presupposes the resolution of the psychic crisis brought
on by the first signs of this vocation. The initiation is
manifested by, among other things, a new psychic integration. (p.77)
And, similarly, Nadel (1946) states:
And here it is important to stress that neither epilepsy nor
insanity, nor yet other minor mental derangement, are in
themselves regarded as symptoms of spirit possession. They are
diseases, abnormal disorders, not supernatural qualification. No
shaman is, in everyday life, an abnormal individual, a neurotic
or a paranoiac; if he were, he would be classed as a lunatic, not
respected as a priest. Nor finally can shamanism be correlated
with incipient or latent abnormality; I recorded no case of a
shaman whose professional hysteria deteriorated into serious
mental disorders. (p. 36)
From these comments, it is apparent that shamanism is not an
institution designed to capitalise on psychological aberrations.
We shall return to the question of the stability of the shamanic
personality in the next chapter, where we will consider the
similarities between the self-cure of the shaman and the attempt
to resolve a life-crisis that characterises essential
schizophrenia.
Let us now consider the shamanic trance itself. All of the shaman's
functions, his ability to cure, divine, converse with the spirits,
and travel in the supernatural realm, depend on his ecstasy; were
he unable to attain ecstasy at will, he could not be a true
shaman. Thus, the human will employ certain means for achieving
ecstasy, which may be frenzied and prolonged drumming, dancing,
and chanting, sleep deprivation, fasting, and so on. These
techniques are not dissimilar to the self-flagellation and
asceticism practised by certain Christian mystics. In addition to
these techniques and often in conjunction with them, the shaman
will employ certain narcotic plants, such as the drinking of
tobacco juice or the inhalation of hashish smoke. While Eliade (1964,
pp. 220f., 223, 400f., 477) asserts that the use of narcotic
substances as an aid to ecstasy invariably indicates a decadence
or vulgarisation of the shamanic tradition [...], there is reason to
doubt this (cf. Wasson 1971,. pp.326-334). On the contrary, the
use of narcotic plants as an adjunct to shamanism is widespread
and occurs in every region of the globe where the plants occur.
The important role of the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita
muscaria in Siberian shamanism has been exhaustively documented
by Wasson, and the incredibly complete narcotic technology of New
World Indians has been examined by Schultes (Schultes and Hofmann
1973) at length. From this evidence it appears that the narcotic
experience and the shamanic experience are, in very numerous
cases, one and the same, though the narcotic experience must be
moulded and directed by the symbolic motifs of ritual to give it
its peculiarly shamanic quality.
It is our contention, to be amplified in later chapters, that the
presence of psychoactive substances is a primary requirement for
all true shamanism, and that where such substances are not
exogenously available as plants, they must be endogenously
available, either through metabolic predisposition to their
synthesis, as may occur in schizophrenia, or through the various
techniques of shamanism: dancing, drumming, singing, and the
confrontation of situations of stress and isolation. Where these
alkaloids are not present, shamanism becomes ritual alone, and
its effectiveness suffers accordingly. We hope to show that
because of the biophysical roles these compounds play at a
molecular level, they are the operational and physical keys
allowing access to the powers claimed by the shaman.
One of the most interesting, and least understood, aspects of the
shamanic personality centres upon the question of paranormal
powers; the shaman is supposed to be a "master of fire and
psychic heat," is thought to be clairvoyant, clairaudiant,
and telepathic. Further instances are given by Eliade (1967):
From among the best-observed cases, let us recall those of
clairvoyance and thought-reading among the shamans of Tonga,
recorded by Shirokogorov; some strange cases of prophetic
clairvoyance in dreams among the Pygmies, as well as cases of the
discovery of thieves with the aid of a magic mirror; some very
concrete instances concerning the results of the chase, also
aided by a mirror; examples of the understanding, among these
same Pygmies, of unknown languages; cases of clairvoyance among
the Zulus; and lastly-attested by a number of authors, and by
documents that guarantee its authenticity -the collective
ceremony of firewalking in Fiji. (p. 87f.)
There is herein a fruitful and untapped subject for
parapsychology. The actual occurrence of such phenomena, in at
least some instances, is beyond question and suggests that the
radical reorganisation of the psychic faculties, which shamanic
initiation is supposed to produce, does have some validity beyond
the merely symbolical; the shaman actually is superhuman in some
little-understood manner. Our later speculations will center on a
possible biophysical mechanism for this transformation. What is
interesting, and also supports the assertion that these phenomena
are real, is their essential similarity to paranormal powers
encountered in other religious traditions. Such motifs as magical
flight, psychic heat, and immunity to hot coals, for instance,
are found in the yogic techniques of Buddhism and Hinduism (Eliade
1967, pp. 89ff.). The ability to perform such magical feats, in
both the shamanic and the yogic traditions, simply reconfirms the
ontological mode associated with such practitioners; they have
transcended the human condition and now participate in the
condition of the "spirits."
Let us now focus our attention on a more speculative question:
whether there are, or could be, institutions in modern society
that draw their models from shamanism. There appears to be
occurring in modern life a progressive alienation from the
numinous archetypal contents of the collective unconscious, which
has engendered a gradually encroaching sense of collective
despair and anxiety. The archetypal motifs of the Western
religious tradition seem to have lost their effectiveness for the
larger portion of civilised humanity or, at best, have been
depotentiated to the level of a "merely psychological"
reality. Western humans have lost their sense of unity with the
cosmos and with the transcendent mystery within themselves.
Modern science has given us a picture of human beings as
accidental products of random evolutionary processes in a
universe that is itself without purpose or meaning. This
alienation of modern humans from the numinous ground of their
beings has engendered the existentialist ethic and the
contemporary preoccupation with the immediate historical
situation. Humans are regarded as leading a wholly profane
existence within a wholly profane time, that is, within history;
the reality of the sacred is denied or reduced to the level of
psychology.
In non-Western cultures, in "primitive" cultures
particularly, humans are not conscious of living in historical
time, but regard themselves as inhabiting a numinous sacral time
(cf. Eliade 1959). If these humans are conscious of history at
all, it is of a mythical, paradigmatic history, a paradisiacal
epoch that lies beyond the attritional influence of profane time.
From the point of view of religious symbolism, this preoccupation
of modern humanity with its historical and existential situation
springs from an unconscious sense of its impending end.
It is in this unenviable position, then, that we find the modern
temper: anguished by the imminence of death, yet trapped in
profane, historical time and thus able to regard death only as
nothingness; the saving presence of a sacred, transcendent mode
of being is absent from the contemporary worldview. Thus modern
humans stand today at the very edge of the abyss of death and
nothingness, and it is precisely here that one can perceive a
useful role for a modern shamanism. Again there is a need for a
doctor of the soul, a figure who can bring humankind into close
and fruitful confrontation with the collective unconscious, the
creative matrix of all that we are and have ever been.
Naturally, the modern shaman will have to search for means of
fulfilling his psychopompic functions, which are different from
the relatively straightforward ritualistic techniques of his
predecessor. One of the most potentially effective of such means
lies in his artistic and poetic capacities; the soul of modern
humanity is still open to influence by aesthetic means. Hence one
of the first places we should look for signs of a modern
shamanism is in the artistic sphere. The shamanic role of the
artist in modern cultures extends not only to his work, but to
his very life. Through manipulation of his physical medium, the
artist seeks to express his personal vision of reality - a vision
arising from the roots of the unconscious and not dependent upon
public consensus, in fact, often actively opposed to it. More
than that, the artist exemplifies in his life a freedom that is
similar to the superhuman freedom of the shaman.
Although it is not too difficult to recognise the role of the
artist in the modern world as being in some sense shamanic, it is
perhaps more difficult to understand our second nomination for a
contemporary counterpart to the shamanic practitioner, the
scientific researcher. Eliade (1967) has pointed out that
scientists are the creators and keepers of a new mythology of
matter. Indeed, the scientist who charts the unexplored levels of
organisation to be found in nature, from the bizarre, paradoxical
realms of quantum physics to the staggering vastness of the
metagalaxy, has much in common with the shaman who journeys
through the magical topography of the spirit-world.
One area of modern life that does not appear to be shamanic, but
that might profitably model itself after shamanism, is
psychoanalysis. A modern "soul doctor" might well
achieve better results if he or she could model therapy after a
psychopompic journey through the collective unconscious. The
exact techniques would, of course, have to be adapted to modern
patients, but where the unconscious is concerned, all people are
primitive. One approach to such a shamanic psychoanalysis could
be through the controlled and judicious use of psychotropic drugs;
knowledge of both the promises and dangers of such agents has
increased tremendously in recent years, as has understanding of
the role they play in shamanism. A combination of knowledge and
wisdom in applying their properties could very well give an
effective and harmless "technique of ecstasy" that
could be usefully employed in psychoanalysis (cf. Naranjo 1973).
With this we conclude our preliminary discussion of shamanism.
The background that we have laid down, our discussion of the
shaman's traditional role in archaic societies, our examination
of his singular personality, abilities, and techniques have been
skeletal at best. Our speculation on shamanism and modern society
is likewise incomplete and intentionally so; we sought only to
make the point that the numinous motifs of shamanism can have a
relevance to modern humans, and doubtless there are instances of
this that have not been mentioned. If we are to draw a conclusion
as to how we can profit from the study of shamanism, it is this:
Perhaps, through understanding the fascinating and alien figure
of the shaman, we can draw somewhat nearer to that numinous,
archetypal, living mystery that dwells within each of us.