Divination and the Shamanic Story [1 ed.] 9781443806787, 9781847184672

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Divination and the Shamanic Story

Divination and the Shamanic Story

By

Michael Berman

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Divination and the Shamanic Story , by Michael Berman This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2008 by Michael Berman All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-467-7, ISBN (13): 9781847184672

Stories have traditionally been classified as epics, myths, sagas, legends, folk tales, fairy tales, parables or fables. However, the definitions of the terms have a tendency to overlap, making it difficult to classify and categorize material. For this reason, a case can be made for the introduction of a new genre, termed the shamanic story–a story that has either been based on or inspired by a shamanic journey (a numinous experience in non-ordinary reality) or one that contains a number of the elements typical of such a journey. Other characteristics include the way in which the stories all tend to contain embedded texts (often the account of the shamanic journey itself), how the number of actors is clearly limited as one would expect in subjective accounts of what can be regarded as inner journeys, and how the stories tend to be used for healing purposes. Within this new genre it is proposed that there exists a sub-genre, shamanic stories that deal specifically with divination, and examples are presented and analysed to support this hypothesis. Stories from various cultures and periods of time can be identified which deal with a concept of divination that is essentially shamanic. By means of textual analysis it can be shown they all share certain attributes in common, the identification of which forms the conclusion of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 Introduction Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 28 Shamanism: A Literature Review Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 58 The Many Faces of the Shaman Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 99 Two Khanty (Ostyak) Tales The Shaman’s Drum The Squirrel Woman Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 125 Shamanic Stories from Haiti The One who would not listen to his own Dream The Gizzard Chapter Six.............................................................................................. 146 Shamanic Stories from the Western Yugur Steppe The Story of the Cow Mangqys Grandmother The Idler’s Adventure Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 157 Three Yoruba Tales Okus–The Taboo Meat The Wooden Spoon and the Whip Moremi

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Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 171 Conclusions Appendix A ............................................................................................. 180 Can Dreams Save Lives (Divination in the Classroom) Appendix B ............................................................................................. 188 How to Account for the Appeal of Neo-Shamanism Bibliography............................................................................................ 195 Index........................................................................................................ 221

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

If any copyright holders have been inadvertently overlooked, and for those copyright holders that all possible efforts have been made to contact but without success, the author will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

The hypothesis proposed in Divination and the Shamanic Story is that stories from various cultures and periods of time can be identified which deal with a concept of divination that is essentially shamanic, and that by means of textual analysis it can be shown that these stories all share certain attributes in common. The identification of what these attributes are will form the conclusion of the work. And methodologically, by referencing my own direct experiences as well as observations of other participants, my academic stance will be that of both participant and scholar. For the purposes of this study, a shaman is understood to be someone who performs an ecstatic (in a trance state), imitative, or demonstrative ritual of a séance (or a combination of all three), at will (in other words, whenever he or she chooses to do so), in which aid is sought from beings in (what are considered to be) other realities generally for healing purposes or for divination–both for individuals and / or the community. What this suggests is that Eliade's focus on the journey as the defining feature of shamanism is not a true reflection of what actually takes place, at least not in the case of the demonstrative and imitative forms. As for the practice of shamanism, it is understood to encompass a personalistic view of the world, in which life is seen to be not only about beliefs and practices, but also about relationships–how we are related, and how we relate to each other. And when this breaks down–in other words, when it is not taking place in a harmonious and constructive way– the shaman, employing what Graham Harvey likes to refer to as “adjusted styles of communication”, makes it his or her business to resolve such issues. In her paper “South Siberian and Central Asian Hero Tales and Shamanistic Rituals”, the Leipzig researcher Erika Taube suggests that Folk-tales–being expressions of early stages of the development of human

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Chapter One society–reflect reality: material culture, social relations, customs, [and] religious beliefs. When folk-tales were being formed and appeared as vivid forms of spiritual and artistic expression in correspondence with the general social development, those elements, which nowadays are usually regarded as phantastic creations of human mind, were strictly believed phenomenons, i.e. they were accepted as facts. Therefore, it is not at all a new idea that such tales sometimes reflect shamanistic beliefs and conceptions (Taube, 1984, p. 344).

If they were forms of “artistic expression”, however, then they could well have been regarded as such by those they were told to and we actually have no way of knowing whether they were “accepted as facts” or not. On the other hand, what we can show is that they do reflect shamanistic beliefs and conceptions, and this will become apparent once we start to analyze them. Sir James Frazer made a similar claim in his abridged version of The Golden Bough, first published in 1922: “folk-tales are a faithful reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind; and that we may be sure that any idea which commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may seem to us, must once have been an ordinary article of belief” (Fraser, 1993, p.668). In reality, however, there is no way we can be certain that any idea that appears in such tales must once have been an ordinary article of belief as, not being able to get inside other people’s minds, we cannot possibly know what was actually the case. On the other hand, as Emily Lyle (2007) points out in the abstract to her paper “Narrative Form and the Structure of Myth”, what we can be reasonably sure of is that “At each stage in transmission of a tale from generation to generation, modifications take place but something remains. Thus there is a potential for material to be retained from a time in the distant past when the narrative was embedded in a total oral worldview or cosmology.” In view of the fact that in the past shamanism was widely practised in the regions where the tales in this study were told, it is therefore highly likely that a shamanic worldview and shamanic cosmology is to be found embedded in them. Stories have traditionally been classified as epics, myths, sagas, legends, folk tales, fairy tales, parables or fables. However, the definitions of the terms have a tendency to overlap (see Berman, 2006, p.150-152) making it difficult to classify and categorize material.

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Consider, for example, Eliade’s definition of myth. For Eliade the characteristics of myth, as experienced by archaic societies, are that it constitutes the absolutely true and sacred History of the acts of the Supernaturals, which is always related to a “creation”, which leads to a knowledge, experienced ritually, of the origin of things and thus the ability to control them, and which is “lived” in the sense that one is profoundly affected by the power of the events it recreates (see Eliade, 1964, pp.18-19). However, many stories are “lived” in the sense that one is profoundly affected by the events they recreate without them necessarily being myths. Moreover, a number of the stories that will be presented in this study could be regarded as having the above characteristics but would still not necessarily be classified as myths. Another problem encountered is that a number of the definitions of what a myth is are so general in nature that they tend to be of little value. For example, the suggestion that a myth is “a story about something significant [that] … can take place in the past … or in the present, or in the future” (Segal, 2004, p.5) really does not help us at all as this could be applied to more or less every type of tale. For this reason a case was argued in Berman (2006) for the introduction of a new genre, termed the shamanic story. This can be defined as a story that has either been based on or inspired by a shamanic journey, or one that contains a number of the elements typical of such a journey. Like other genres, it has “its own style, goals, entelechy, rhetoric, developmental pattern, and characteristic roles” (Turner, 1985, p.187), and like other genres it can be seen to differ to a certain extent from culture to culture. It should perhaps be noted at this point, however, that there are both etic and emic ways of regarding narrative (see Turner, 1982, p.65) and the term “shamanic story” clearly presents an outside view. It should also be pointed out that what is being offered here is a polythetic definition of what the shamanic story is, in which a pool of characteristics can apply, but need not. Characteristics typical of the genre include the way in which the stories all tend to contain embedded texts (often the account of the shamanic journey itself), how the number of actors is clearly limited as one would expect in subjective accounts of what can be regarded as inner journeys, and how the stories tend to be used for healing purposes. In his Foreword to Tales of the Sacred and the Supernatural, Eliade admits to repeatedly taking up “the themes of sortie du temps, or temporal dislocation, and of the alteration or the transmutation of space”

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Chapter One

(Eliade, 1981, p.10), and these are themes that appear over and over again in shamanic stories too. Additionally, given that through the use of narrative shamans are able to provide their patients “with a language, by means of which unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be expressed” (Lévi-Strauss, 1968, p.198), it follows that another feature of shamanic stories is they have the potential to provide a medium through which psychic states that might otherwise be difficult to put into words can be expressed. Finally they are all examples of what Jürgen Kremer defines as “tales of power”–conscious verbal constructions based on numinous experiences in non-ordinary reality, “which guide individuals and help them to integrate the spiritual, mythical, or archetypal aspects of their internal and external experience in unique, meaningful, and fulfilling ways” (Kremer, 1988, p.192). Within the new genre of the shamanic story, it will be proposed that there exists a sub-genre, shamanic stories that deal specifically with divination, and examples both traditional and contemporary will be presented and analysed to support this hypothesis, followed by a consideration of what the tales have in common. One of the problems with the word “religion”, as Jonathan Z. Smith observes, is that it is not a native category but one “imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture … a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore it is theirs to define” (Smith, 1998, p.269 & p.281). Even so, given how frequently the word is used in common parlance, to ignore it when attempting to define what shamanism is would not be particularly helpful either, especially in view of the associations the word carries, for the fact of the matter is that by referring to shamanism as a religion, it could well result in the whole subject being treated with a great deal more respect than it otherwise might be. 

Despite the criticism now levelled against Eliade’s work, without him the current interest in shamanism would probably never have materialized. So instead of dismissing Eliade out of hand as someone who merely popularised various ethnographic reports written by others, by casting a critical eye over what he has to say and by being selective, it is felt there is still a lot of value to be found in his writing and thus justification for referring to it.

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As Donald S. Lopez, Jr. points out, it would not be inaccurate to say the idea that a religion must have beliefs in order to be a religion, rather than other features, has clearly influenced the way in which Christians have told their own history. Moreover, with the dominance of Christian Europe in the nineteenth century, Christians have also described the “world religions” from the perspective of belief too (Lopez, 1998, p.21). Indeed, “belief” has probably become the most common term used to describe religion despite the fact that the word does not even exist in some of the languages spoken by the peoples whose practices we describe in such terms. Consequently the conclusion has been reached that it is probably more helpful to describe what we refer to as religions in other terms. In an early paper “De la fulfilment des phénomènes religieux,” which was published in L’année Sociologique 2 (1897-98), Durkheim expresses the view that “phenomena held to be religious consist in obligatory beliefs, connected with clearly defined practices which are related to given objects of those beliefs” (Durkheim, 1975, p.93). One problem with this definition, however, is that beliefs can be chosen rather than obligatory. Indeed it can be argued that this is increasingly the case in the times we are living in, with religion having become so much more personalized now than it used to be. Moreover, even Durkheim himself admits that there are “some people who refuse to recognize any other deity than the one which free meditation has led them to believe exists; and in this case they are the real legislators of the cult to which they adhered” (Durkheim, 1975, p.96). For this reason, “the optional beliefs and practices which concern similar objects or objects assimilated into the previous ones” (Durkheim, 1975, p.98) are classified by him as religious phenomena too. Durkheim is of the opinion that “Individual beliefs and practices have always been of little significance in comparison with collective beliefs and practices” (Durkheim, 1975, p.97), and within indigenous shamanic communities this was certainly the case. The shaman could be seen to act with the interests of the whole community in mind rather than the individual. However, within neo-shamanic circles, the situation can be somewhat different. Of particular relevance to this study is what Durkheim refers to as “effervescence assemblies”, exemplified by the ritual enacted periodically among the totem tribes of central Australia known as a corroboree:

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Chapter One [W]hen a corroboree takes place, everything changes ... The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are assembled, their proximity generates a kind of electricity that quickly transports them to an extraordinary degree of exultation (Durkheim, 2001, p.162).

Durkheim observes how, at a certain point in the ritual, something comes over the participants and private individuality is replaced by a collective identity that is manifested in joint frenzy, thereby removing the individual completely from their ordinary conditions of social activity (see Durkheim, 2001, pp.162-164). This observation is significant when it comes to differentiating between indigenous and neo-shamanic rituals. For when neo-shamanic rituals are conducted on a one-to-one basis, private individuality cannot be replaced by the collective identity Durkheim refers to, and thus it highlights a noticeable contrast sometimes found between the two forms. Durkheim’s definition of what rituals consist of is a cause for concern however if applied to what takes place in our present day and age: “rituals are ways of acting that are generated only within assembled groups and are meant to stimulate and sustain or recreate certain certain mental states in these groups” (Durkheim, 2001, p.11). The fact of the matter is that rituals can also be highly personal, created and performed by individuals acting outside of a group situation. Take, for example, the rituals created by solitary witches or neo-shamanic practitioners working on their own. Another criticism that has been levelled against Durkheim is that his account of religion fails “to incorporate the actor’s own subjective belief and experience of sacred reality” (Turner, 1991, p.243) unlike Otto, for example, who defined religion as the experience of the holy. Describing one’s own experience of sacred reality in terms that are both understandable and acceptable can prove to be quite a problem for those of us involved in shamanic practice. How, for example, can you convince an observer that you travelled to the Upper World and met your Sacred Teacher when all he saw was you lying on the floor with your eyes closed as if you were sleeping? Indeed, offering any kind of explanation is often more trouble than it is worth, which might well be why those of us who are actively involved in neo-shamanism tend not to talk about what we practise unless pressed to do so. The fact of the matter is that ‘Without direct experience, talk of ASC experiences can [only] remain at

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the level of what the philosopher Immanuel Kant famously called “empty concepts,” concepts devoid of the richness, meaning, and significance that only direct experience can impart. [And] This deficit can be dangerously distorting’ (Walsh, 2007, p.90). Weber who, like Durkheim, is considered to be one of the founders of sociology, believed there was no known human society without something which modern social scientists would classify as religion, and that every society has some conceptions of a supernatural order, consisting of spirits, deities or impersonal forces which are different from those forces considered to govern ordinary “natural” events. And such conceptions can clearly be found in shamanism. Where I would disagree with Weber, however, as a practising neo-shaman, is in his belief that not every person has “the capacity to achieve the ecstatic states which are viewed, in accordance with primitive experience, as the pre-conditions for producing certain effects in meteorology, healing, divination, and telepathy” (Weber, 1963, p.2). Present-day shamanic practitioners and workshop leaders, such as Harner and Horwitz, would clearly disagree with Weber too. It is supposed by some that a belief in spirits is somewhat archaic. Weber, however, showed this to be a misconception by pointing out that nowhere has the existence of spirits and demons been permanently eliminated, not even in the Reformation. The decisive consideration, in his opinion, being “who is deemed to exert the stronger influence on the individual in his everyday life, the theoretically supreme god or the lower spirits and demons? If the spirits, then the religion of everyday life is decisively determined by them , regardless of the official god-concept of the ostensibly rationalized religion” (Weber, 1963, p.20), as in the case of indigenous shamanism. Of particular relevance to this study are Weber’s thoughts on the subject of charisma and charismatic leaders. He used the term charisma to refer to “a certain quality of an individual’s personality which is considered extraordinary and treated as capable of having supernatural or exceptional powers and qualities” (Weber, 1978, p.241). The powers of charismatic leaders “are regarded as having a divine origin, and on this basis they come to hold power and are treated by others as leaders” (Weber, 1978, p.241). Moreover, of key importance, as Weber then goes on to point out, is that their power is considered by others to be valid and true. Indigenous shamans clearly assumed such roles and neo-shamanic practitioners such as Harner and Horwitz can be said to have a similar status too as far as their followers are concerned. In light of the fact that

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“Weber believed that charismatic leadership was inherently vulnerable to the problem of succession because the new leader would be obliged to demonstrate that they possessed the same extraordinary charismatic qualifications as the previous leader” (Morrison, 2006, p.368), it will be interesting to see what happens when such figures eventually pass away or retire, and whether the institutions they have established will continue to thrive or not. It is perhaps worth pointing out that in classical indigenous shamanic communities the same problem would not necessarily have existed in that the role of shaman was often a hereditary one. Fitzgerald, a more recent figure of importance in the field of religious studies, asserts the attempt to extend the category “religion” crossculturally generates “intractable problems of analysis that can only be resolved by abandoning the category altogether and substituting better alternatives” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p.11). He also makes the point that “the concept of religion must have some essential characteristic, and if it does not, then the family of religion becomes so large as to be practically meaningless and analytically useless” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p.73). However, the fact Fitzgerald has difficulty in isolating this characteristic does not mean that it does not exist. As grammarians or anyone involved in the teaching of languages knows, grammar rules can be extremely difficult to isolate but once again that does not mean they do not exist or we should give up attempting to isolate them. Moreover, the same could also apply to many other words in universal use–“democracy” for example. Even Fitzgerald himself admits “I would not want to undertake the task of demonstrating that the discipline of sociology is defunct because its central concept is too vague” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p.222). So why attempt to do so for the concept of “religion” then? One reason for attempting to define the word must surely be that it is inherent in us to attempt to impose meaning on the environment, to order, classify, and regulate it as a means of making sense of the world. Weber even went so far as to describe human beings as “meaning-makers”, and the seemingly unavoidable temptation we succumb to–to put labels on everyone and everything–would seem to support this. Another reason for attempting to define the word is pragmatic. Unless we know what it is that we are studying, we have no way of being sure that we are collecting the right data. A definition which facilitates research may be all that is needed sometimes but without it no sound research can take place. The fact of the matter is that in any study of contemporary Western spaces the problem of religion is likely to arise.

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“The terms ‘religion’, ‘religious’, and ‘religions’ … will be heard repeatedly, and will be brought into play by actors and commentators eager to name, claim, or denounce people, things, events, and places, and to explain their nature” (Knott, 2005, pp.82-83). To be fair on Fitzgerald, he does accept “there is a common-sense use of ‘religion’ that refers loosely to belief in god or the supernatural” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p.5) and that this is likely to remain with us in common parlance. And, as he points out himself, it can be argued that the word “religion” exists for a very good (or, possibly, very bad if viewed from the other side of the fence) reason even if it “is being used in quite different ways by different authors working in different situations” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p.87). If people in non-western cultures do not even have a word for religion then they must invent one. For without religion or religions as special forms of belief and practice and special juridicial status they are [considered to be] somehow intellectually morally wanting by the standards being set by dominant western culture (Fitzgerald, 2000, p.23).

This very much applies in the case of shamanism. What we call shamanism, what we consider it to be, will clearly affect its standing in both the popular and the academic world. However, at the same time it should not be forgotten that “concepts are products of scholars’ cognitive operations to be put to work in the service of scholars’ theoretical interest in the objects of their research. Concepts are not given off by the objects of our interest” (Braun, 2000, p.9). Indeed, “religion” itself can be regarded as nothing more than an intellectual invention of modernity. One of the problems we need to be aware of when considering definitions is that “What theorists think religion is often depends upon the explanation of it they favour. They do not always seek to simply demarcate the sphere of investigation, but also to state or imply things within the definition which support their theoretical interpretation of it” (Hamilton, 1995, p.12). While it is easy to be critical of the definitions proposed by others, it is not so easy to come up with a convincing alternative. Few people would argue with what Graham Harvey proposes, which is that “Religions are structured, orderly, socially sanctioned ways of reaching out to those things, or that thing, which people most want” (Harvey, 2000, p.1). However, if money is what somebody most wants,

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then opening a savings account might best serve this requirement. It can thus be argued that such a general definition is of rather limited value. Perhaps the definition that is most universally applicable is the one proposed by the American anthropologist Stewart Guthrie: Religion can be said to be based on the biological need we have to give experience form and order “since no organism can live in a world it cannot understand enough to meet its other needs” (Guthrie, 1993, p.32). To find this we turn to relationships with entities in non-ordinary reality as for most of us relationships within human society prove to be unsatisfactory for this purpose. And as we can conceive of such entities only in terms of our own mental categories, anthropomorphism inevitably follows. This can be defined as “the attribution of human characteristics to things or events that are not human” (Guthrie, 1993, p.39). For the purposes of this study, shamanism will be referred to as “a religion of ritual observance”, centred on the dramatization of the death and resurrection of the shaman (rather than the figure of the King as in Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Canaan) in whom the well-being of the client and of the whole community rests. As for what shamans do, each time they conduct a séance, like performers, they can be said to “specialize in putting themselves in disequilibrium and then displaying how they regain their balance, pychophysically, narratively and socially” (Schechner, 1988, p.xviii). The phrase “a religion of ritual observance” has been used in particular to describe Shinto–“a religion not of theology but of ritual observance” (Driver, 1991, p.38). Though there are texts connected with the Shinto tradition, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan), they were both written in Chinese in the early eighth century to help legitimate the position and the prestige of the Imperial Court so neither can be considered to represent a theology as such. It is quite customary for religions to involve some sort of ritual observance, such as the sacraments of Christianity, the five daily prayers facing Mecca of Islam, or the elaborate rituals of Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, as Gray (2004) points out, a strong case can be made for the fact that the heart of spiritual life is not to be found in doctrine but lies in practice–in ritual, observance and sometimes even mystical experience. If we look at some of the major religions, for example, nothing as simple as a creed can be extracted from the complex practices of Hinduism,

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Buddhism has never attached particular importance to doctrine, and in Judaism priority is given to practice rather than belief too. Wicca can also be regarded as a religion not of theology but of ritual observance. For as in the case of Shinto, there is no one bible or prayer book in Wicca and the primary concern is not ethics, dogma, or theology. The focus instead is on the practice of rituals. These include, for example, marking eight holiday “sabbats” in the “wheel of the year”, and many Wiccans also mark “esbats,” rituals for worship in accordance with a given moon phase (such as the night of the full moon). The advantage of referring to shamanism as a religion of ritual observance is that it is unlikely to cause offence to either New-Agers who might consider the term “religion” without any form of qualification to be an unacceptable word to describe what they practise, or members of the predominant religions who might consider, for various reasons, that shamanism should not be included among their number (see Berman, 2006, p.80). At the same time, by including the word religion in the description, albeit in a modified form, it might well result in the subject being taken more seriously and treated with more respect than it has been in the past. It has been suggested that an essential characteristic of the religious man is that he “interprets his existence not only in terms of being responsible for fulfilling his life tasks, but also as being responsible to the taskmaster” (Frankl, 1986, pp.58-59). A shaman is responsible to the spirits who help him, so not only is it being proposed that shamanism is a religion but that the shaman is a religious man (or woman) too. An argument that can be presented against regarding shamanism as a religion is that it takes so many different forms. Durkheim, however, can be quoted to counter this. A religion, as he points out, does not usually consist of a single cult but of “a system of cults that have a certain autonomy. Sometimes they are ranked hierarchichally and subordinated to some dominant cult into which they are eventually absorbed; but sometimes they simply exist side by side in a kind of confederation” (Durkheim, 2001, p.40). Indeed, this was the situation in Australia–the society Durkheim chose to focus on for his research. In his paper “The Siberian shaman as Diviner” (2007) Juha Pentikäinen, Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Helsinki, proposes that we should refer to the concept of shamanhood

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rather than shamanism because “Shamanhood (parallel to Russian samanstvo) is a kind of cultural mother tongue rather than a religion in the languages lacking the very concept of ‘religion’ in the western meaning of the word.” This however, disregards the fact that there are neo-shamans born into, and practising, in cultures where the concept of religion does come from the Latin religio. Another reason for making use of the term shamanhood, according to Pentikainen, is that it is “synonymous with samanstvo, the Russian term preceding shamanism in older sources, [and] is closer to the self-perception of the shamans themselves, since they do not see shamanism as a ‘religion’ in the western sense of the word.” Once again, however, this fails to take into account those neo-shamans who do see what they practise as a “religion” in the western sense of the word, which is why, for the purposes of this study, the term shamanism has been preferred. It has to be admitted that the view being expressed here, that shamanism is a religion, is neither a fashionable nor a widely accepted one, and most writers on the subject would argue against it. Take Johansen, for example: “Shamanism is not a religion–at least scholars of comparative religions and modern anthropology, with the exception only of some, mostly Russian, colleagues agree on that–but a phenomenon– namely the activities of shamans–that can be found in various religions” (Johansen, 1999, p.41). If, however, this was the case, what would be the religion of Aboriginal Australians for example, or the Nisqually for that matter? The fact of the matter is that no conclusive proof can be provided either way to resolve the question of whether shamanism is a religion or not, and as further discussion would be a digression from the main focus of this work, the time has now come to move on. Ake Hultkrantz in his paper “The Shaman in Myths and Tales” makes the point that “Since shamanism is so widespread, it is evident that the tales told about shamans will be colored by the narrative traits and modes of cultural expression specific to the various regions” (Hultkrantz, 1995, p.147), and that is very much what was found in the process of collecting the stories chosen for inclusion in this study. Nevertheless, there are certain characteristics they share in common and these will be presented in the final Chapter of the work. For the “outsider”, without direct experience, the material in shamanic stories can be “rich but ultimately poetic to the point of unknowability … Various modes of interpretation are possible, each potentially rewarding [and] … they can build on each other with an

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interpenetrating layering” (Balzer, 1996, p.310). For this reason a variety of approaches will be employed to reach a fuller understanding of the texts in question. Another reason for using more than one approach is that each interpretation can only be partial, because it is the result of each reader’s incomplete perception of reality. This should lead us to explore different interpretations and perspectives–whether expressed, implicit, or even left out of a given text. The psychoanalytical approach, as exemplified by the work of Bettelheim and von Franz, will be taken into account, as well as the socio-historical perspective, and formalist approaches such as structuralism and narratology will be alluded to as well. In this way attention will be drawn to how the selected stories can be interpreted on a number of different levels to convey both their richness and depth. By making use of textual material from different cultures and times, the intention is to highlight the pervasive influence the concept of divination has had and to show how it has been dealt with by different cultures. It should be pointed out however that when it comes to the interpretation of myths (or shamanic stories for that matter), if we agree with Jung that the collective unconscious is inherently unconscious, it becomes impossible to say for sure what its contents refer to (see Segal, 1998, p.9). For this reason it has to be concluded that any speculation as to the intended meaning of the tales in this study, though fascinating, can ultimately remain little more than that. Joseph Campbell’s paradigm for the myth in The Hero with a Thousand Faces follows the tripartite ritual framework model explicated by Arnold van Gennep in 1909, later to be developed further by Victor Turner (1969). The three stages Campbell identifies consist of separation (the call to adventure or threshold crossing), initiation (the confrontation with an antagonist or divinity), and return (the return crossing and reincorporation into the community). And as all shamanic stories presented in Berman (2006) incorporate these stages, it is the paradigm that thus appears to be the most appropriate for the purposes of this study. It will be interesting to see whether it can also be applied to shamanic stories that specifically deal with divination too. In Morphology of the Folktale, completed in 1928, Propp described the structure of folktales (the Russian fairytale) following the chronological order of the linear sequence of elements in the text, an approach which has since become known as syntagmatic structural

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analysis. Lévi-Strauss, on the other hand, presented a paradigmatic model which described the pattern (usually based upon an a priori binary principle of opposition) believed to underlie the text. Propp was of the opinion that the functions of dramatis personae in a tale serve as stable, constant elements, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled, and the number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited to thirtyone. As Steven Swann Jones points out, the problem with Propp’s hypothesis is that since each tale “may incorporate only a few of these 31 functions, two tales may have entirely different combinations of these elements in them, which does not exactly constitute a valid basis for structural equivalence” (Jones, 2002, pp.14-15). The fact that the scheme is “corpus specific” is also problematic as this means it does not necessarily apply to other types of tale and thus it value is limited (see Martin, 1986, p.95). A further criticism of his work is that he “does not explain why the fairy tale pattern should exist in the first place or what, if anything, it means” (Dundes, 1980, p.35). However, as to offer such an explanation was not one of Propp’s stated aims, this criticism would seem to be somewhat unjust. In his essay entitled “The Structural Study of Myth,” Lévi-Strauss contends that “mythical thought always works from the awareness of oppositions towards their progressive mediation” and that “the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction” (Lévi-Strauss, 1955, pp.440 & 443). It was Hegel who explained that in every situation there can be found two opposing things and their resolution–thesis, antithesis, and synthesis–and Lévi-Strauss based his theory on this. Whereas Propp had based his thirty-one function sequence on the linear order of events found in his 100 fairy tale corpus, Lévi-Strauss sought to discover what he felt was the underlying paradigm of binary oppositions. Lévi-Strauss considers the deep structure of myth to be a series of binary oppositions mediated, and he equates this structure with the purpose of the myth, which he believes is to provide a model capable of resolving contradiction (see Dundes, 1964, p.46). This does not necessarily apply to the surface narrative of the story however, where there may well be no such resolution. Lévi-Strauss was interested in the homology between the structure of myth and the structure of language, and came to the conclusion that

Divination and the Shamanic Story

15

myths form a system analogous to the phonological system which underlies a language because in both cases the individual components have no meaning in themselves, but only in relation to each other. As for the notion of binary oppositions that he adopted, it was derived from structural linguistics. However, not only has this theory been generally discredited from a linguistic point of view but also by ethnologists as “binary logic is often blurred in practice or is sometimes subsumed under tripartite structures” (Meletinsky, 1998, p.61). A good example of this can be seen from the way in which the articles are used in English grammar, where there are in fact three choices–the zero article, the indefinite article (either “a” or “an”), or the definite article. Lévi-Strauss has suggested that the main value of myths is “they make it possible to discover certain operational modes of the human mind, which have remained so constant over the centuries and are so widespread over immense geographical distances, that we can assume them to be fundamental” (Lévi-Strauss, 1981, p.639). The claim that certain operational modes of the human mind are both widespread and fundamental should surely come as no surprise unless we believe all human beings are different and have nothing in common with each other. As for his belief that myths are a way of thinking, using concrete objects, about such problems as self and other, social relations, kinship, cooking, culture and nature, that could well be the case too. The problem, however, is that his readings are necessarily somewhat subjective; he could well be breaking the myths down incorrectly and we have no way of really knowing for sure (cf. D’Andrade, 1995, p.249). The structuralist approach to analysing myth has also been criticised for failing to explain how symbols can change our world and experience– “the structural relationships found in metaphor do not provide an explanation of its healing power” (Winkelman, 2000, p.240). On the other hand, in Lévi-Strauss’s defence, to explain how symbols can change our world and experience is not what he set out to do. Lévi-Strauss criticises Propp for analyzing wondertales as he contends that “tales are constructed on weaker oppositions than those found in myths” (Propp, 1984, p.176) and are thus unsuited to structural analysis. However, even if it were true that myths reveal binary oppositions more clearly than folktales, in his 1955 essay, Lévi-Strauss chooses to demonstrate his version of “structural analysis” with the story of Oedipus which, as Dundes (1977) points out, is clearly not a myth in

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Chapter One

that the version we are familiar with was written by Sophocles. Dundes thus come to the conclusion that binary oppositions are just as strong in folktales as they are in myth, and for this reason cannot in fact be used to define the nature of myth. There could, however, be another conclusion drawn, which is that all this goes to show the distinction between myth and folktale is far from being clear cut or universally agreed upon, and that it is more helpful for our purposes to refer instead to the shamanic story, the case for the use of which has already been presented in Berman (2006). While on the subject of the Oedipus story it is interesting to note that King Oedipus himself has actually been referred to as a shaman and his search, assisted by the townsfolk, has been likened to a paradigm of a shamanic quest (see Schechner, 1988, p.35). In connection with textual analysis, Christopher Booker should be mentioned for his epic The Seven Basic Plots, which apparently took him thirty four years to write. In it he proposes there are only seven basic plots to stories. These he refers to as overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. Though written in a popular rather than an academic style, it is undoubtedly a well-researched study and an invaluable resource–if only for the large number of synopses it provides us with, and nobody could argue with one of his opening remarks: “We spend a phenomenal amount of our lives following stories: telling them; listening to them; reading them; watching them being acted out on the television screen or in films or on a stage. They are far and away one of the most important features of our everyday existence” (Booker, 2004, p.2). Booker describes the pattern of any properly constructed story as a threefold ebb-and-flow, in which the swings between the two poles [of darkness and light] become more pronounced until the climax is reached. The initial constriction and a first, limited opening out are followed by a new, more serious constriction. This is followed by a phase of preparation which culminates in the most acute constriction of all, the story’s climax. This leads to the final liberation, with the release of the prize (Booker, 2004, p.228). 

Either way, what we can say with some degree of certainty is that the story would seem to have a shamanic background in that it “is evidently built on the experiences of the shaman who discharges his soul to the realm of the dead in order to fetch a sick person’s soul” (Hultkrantz, 1993, p.44).

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However, there is surely no reason why the “ebb-and-flow” Booker refers to should necessarily always be threefold or, for that matter, why there should always be a “prize”, and this illustrates one of the pitfalls inherent in the reductionist approach he adopts. The fact of the matter is that whichever narrative theory one may choose to favour, there remains a fundamental problem that applies to each and every one of them and which accounts for why no theory can really regarded as “the be all and end all”. It is that “narrative is not based on, nor can it be reduced to, theoretical structures” (Martin, 1986, p.106) for stories are not created with such considerations in mind, and we can be reasonably certain that none of the anonymous or unknown authors of the tales included in this study set about the task of writing in such a manner. Reading Bal (2004) on narratology provided some interesting insights into the texts chosen for inclusion as it made it possible to view them in a different light. For example, it became apparent on reading her work that a common feature of shamanic stories is they frequently contain embedded texts, often the account of the shamanic journey itself, and that “When the embedded text is spoken–or ‘thought’–by one actor, it is a soliloquy or monologue” (Bal, 2004, p.60). It also became clear that one feature which never appears in shamanic stories is anticipation in the form of a summary at the beginning, where “the rest of the story gives the explanation of the outcome presented at the beginning” (Bal, 2004, p.95), thus suggesting a sense of fatalism or predestination as nothing can be done to change the final result. And in view of the fact that shamanic journeys are frequently undertaken to initiate change, this should come as no surprise. Bal also makes the point that “The greater the fabula’s orientation towards the actual outside world, the greater the number of actors; to the degree in which the fabula is subjective, oriented towards the subject, the number of actors decreases” (Bal, 2004, p.203). This is another feature that is noticeable in the shamanic stories chosen for inclusion in this study–the number of actors in each case is clearly limited, reinforcing the suggestion that will be made that they can all in fact be regarded as accounts of inner journeys. However, as Bal herself admits, structuralists tend to assume “the series of events that is presented in a story answers to the same rules as those controlling human behaviour” (Bal, 2004, p.7) whereas on a

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Chapter One

shamanic journey into other realities the same set of rules do not always apply. There are also clear limits as to what the study of narratology can achieve as though it helps understanding, it does not help when it comes to evaluation. It also has to be remembered that the way we analyse a story does not necessarily have any connection with the way in which it was composed. So while it is acknowledged as a useful tool, it would clearly be unwise to use it on its own when it comes to the interpretation of texts. As to Bal’s suggestion that “Attempts to understand characters’ behaviour often inspire psychological criticism where such criticism is clearly not in order” (Bal, 2004, pp.115-116), in cases where the author frequently intends us to regard the character as real, the Book of Jonah for example (see Berman, 2006), we surely have every right to make such efforts. And the fact that events in biblical narratives may seem to be incongruous to us is no reason for avoiding the issue. Bettelheim applies the psychoanalytical model to the interpretation of fairy tales assuming that they are to be read to a child so not all of what he has to say is strictly relevant to this study. It also has to be remembered that most fairy tales were written long before Freud or Jung were ever conceived of and the psychoanalytical approach is consequently only one of many ways of interpreting the contents of such stories. “In myths the heroes, who are often gods, succeed only because they are exceptional [whereas] in fairy tales the heroes are ordinary persons, whose success inspires emulation”. For this reason, Bettleheim was of the opinion that myths impede psychological growth but fairy tales can help to facilitate it (see Segal, 2004, p.100). According to the Jungian Marie-Louise von Franz, “every fairy tale is a relatively closed system compounding one essential psychological meaning which is expressed in a series of symbolical pictures and events and is discoverable in these” (Franz, 1970, p.1). But is it really that simple? Surely we need to be aware of the individual cultural associations of what appears in the tale and it might well be possible to interpret it on more than one level–as a tale for children on the one hand, and as a tale for adults on the other, for example. Indeed, von Franz herself admits the tale can be interpreted in a number of different ways but limits those to psychological interpretations–referring to the different

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approaches adopted by the thinking type, feeling type, sensation type, and intuitive type (see Franz, 1970, p.11). Though the main focus of her published work on textual analysis deals with the interpretation of fairy tales, much of what she says can be applied to shamanic stories too. Moreover, Interestingly, what von Franz calls archetypal stories, by her own explanation, can also be shamanic stories in that she believes they originate “through individual experiences of an invasion by some unconscious content, either in a dream or in a waking hallucination [and that this] … is always a numinous experience” (Franz, 1970, p.16) in the same way as a shamanic journey would be. In her favour, it has to be said, she is by no means dogmatic, accepting that the future will no doubt bring new interpretations to replace those that might currently be in vogue and that consequently nothing can be set in stone (see Franz, 1970, p.31). Whether all fairy tales invariably originate in the manner she describes is debatable but the suggestion that there can be no definitive interpretation few would argue with. In her Introduction to the Psychology of Fairy Tales (1983), she describes fairy tales as “the purest and simplest expression of collective and unconscious psychic processes” in that they are free from the overlay of cultural material that myths carry with them (see Walker, 2002, p.113). However, if it was agreed that all fairy tales were an attempt to describe the archetype of the Self and deal with the process of individuation, which is what von Franz proposes, the result would be an analysis of the tale on just one level, a reductionist approach, which is not what is being proposed in this study. For it is believed that it is only be considering how tales work on different levels that their significance and complexity can ever be fully appreciated. The meaning of a text cannot be deciphered purely from one single approach, since any approach, taken alone, leaves ambiguities; it is the combination of the various approaches that is likely to lead to results. Consequently a deliberate decision was taken not to follow exclusively any single approach to the interpretation of the texts, merely to use them to assist in the process of arriving at a more comprehensive appreciation of each tale selected. Not surprisingly, a number of the stories that will be presented in this collection come from Siberia, considered by many to be the “home” of shamanism. However, in view of the fact that between the Urals and the Pacific Siberia occupies five million square miles of northern Asia, or a

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twelfth of the world’s landmass, any generalisations made about it serve little purpose, though the following quotation gives some idea of both its vastness and how relatively unpopulated it is: Flying across it from end to end takes seven hours, during six of which, unless you overfly the southerly Trans-Siberian Railway, the bogs and forests below display no sign whatsoever of mankind’s existence. … Winter temperatures average minus 3-40 degrees centigrade, and can plunge into the minus 60s (Reid, 2003, pp.1-2).

As for the recent history of the region, despite the fact that under Russian rule the tsars tried to replace shamans with priests, the Communists ostracised and imprisoned them, and under Stalin they were shot or thrown out of helicopters while being told that if they could fly, now was their chance, miraculously shamanism has managed to survive among some of the tribal peoples albeit it in a very different form to the way in which it was traditionally practised. Those who visit a shaman for divination do so in order to attain a state of health or well-being or to gain needed information–the meaning of a dream or a prediction of the future, for example. Not only does divination provide a sense of personal control that reduces the effects of stress, hence having real curative power, but together with its associated beliefs it also helps to regulate social relations and encapsulates a view of the social world and a moral order (see Colby, Benjamin & Lore, 1981, pp.222-223). Although many people consider divination to be a practice that goes against the grain of traditional Christian beliefs, in both the Old and New Testament we find holy men practising the casting of lots. It is related (Joshua 7:14 sqq.) that Joshua, at the Lord's command, pronounced sentence by lot on Achan who had stolen of the anathema. Again Saul, by drawing lots, found that his son Jonathan had eaten honey (1 Kings 14:58 sqq.). Zacharias was chosen by lot to offer incense (Luke 1:9) and the apostles by drawing lots elected Matthias to the apostleship (Acts 1:26). Therefore it would seem that divination by lots was not unlawful, at least not when practised by those who were considered to have the right to do so. Of course we also know that in biblical times the casting of lots was commonly practised in the Middle East by peoples outside the Judaic and Christian traditions. Take the case of the mariners who transport Jonah

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from Joppa to Tarshish, for example, who cast lots to ascertain the cause of the evil that befalls them (Jonah 1:7). One of the problems we are faced with when it comes to a study of divination is that despite millennia of "field testing," divination has no scientific validation. “Due to lack of controlled observations–the result of academic indifference, it is extremely difficult to refer to well organized field work on the functional outcome of divination practices. Anecdotal reports are more common but have only limited scientific value” (Frecska & Luna, 2007, p.138). Diverging, unsystematic explanations are put forward by academics to account for the recorded successes of divination practices. On the other hand, indigenous healers of different cultures are unequivocal in their interpretation of how divination takes place, firmly and unquestionably believing it to be through the guidance of the spirits (see Frecska & Luna, 2007, p.139), and for the “insider”, this is explanation enough. In any case, as “It is untenable to make statements from one form of consciousness regarding the reality of the other” (Frecska & Luna, 2007, p.143), in one sense it is a question that can never be answered to the satisfaction of all parties involved. The scientific explanation will fail to satisfy the insider, and the explanation offered by the insider will fail to satisfy the scientist. However, if it is accepted that “the whole Universe is an interconnected, entangled totality ... [then it has to be assumed that] consciousness is inherently nonlocal as well” (Frecska & Luna, 2007, p.148). In ASCs (altered states of consciousness) this, by all accounts, is what becomes apparent, which is why indigenous shamans induce such states for various purposes, including that of divination–to serve their communities. Neo-shamanic practitioners enter ASCs too, but not always to serve the community like the indigenous shaman. This is because they do not necessarily form part of such a clearly defined community. Consequently, there may well be times when they serve the individual rather than the group. Either way, the breakdown of ordinary sensibility / cognition that takes place when the shaman enters ASCs is not to be seen as the the ultimate goal, but rather the way to bring about healing.

Chapter One

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From the perspective of system theory, integration needs information to be brought into the system. ... when the [influence of] coping capability of the 'perceptual-cognitive-symbolic' processing is ... eliminated by the use of hallucinogens or [the sound of monotonous drumming, for example,] ... a frame shift occurs, and the "spiritual universe" opens up through the “direct-intuitive-nonlocal” channel (Frecska & Luna, 2007, pp.135-136).

As for the different forms of divination practised, an internet search revealed 163 terms for different forms of divination, the vast majority of which end in 'mancy', from the Greek word for divination, manteia.

DIVINATION AND FORTUNE-TELLING Word acultomancy aeromancy ailuromancy alectormancy

Definition divination using needles divination by means of the weather divination by watching cats’ movements divination by sacrificing a rooster divination by watching a rooster gather corn alectryomancy kernels aleuromancy divination using flour or meal alomancy divination using salt alphitomancy divination using loaves of barley alveromancy divination using sounds ambulomancy divination by taking a walk amniomancy divination by examining afterbirth anthomancy divination using flowers anthracomancy divination using burning coals anthropomancy divination using human entrails apantomancy divination using objects at hand arithmancy divination using numbers armomancy divination by examining one’s shoulders aspidomancy divination by sitting and chanting within a circle astragalomancy divination using dice or knucklebones astromancy divination using stars

Divination and the Shamanic Story

austromancy axinomancy batraquomancy belomancy bibliomancy botanomancy brontomancy capnomancy cartomancy catoptromancy causimancy ceneromancy cephalonomancy ceraunomancy ceraunoscopy ceromancy ceroscopy chaomancy chirognomy chiromancy chronomancy cleidomancy cleromancy conchomancy coscinomancy crithomancy critomancy cromnyomancy crystallomancy crystalomancy cubomancy dactyliomancy dactylomancy

divination using wind divination using an axe or hatchet divination using frogs divination by means of arrows divination by opening a book at random divination using burning branches or plants divination using thunder divination by means of smoke telling fortunes using playing cards divination by examining mirror placed underwater divination by means of fire divination using ashes divination by boiling an ass head divination using thunderbolts divination using lightning divination by means of wax drippings divination using wax divination by examining phenomena of the air divination by studying the hands divination by means of palmistry divination by means of time divination using keys divination using dice divination using shells divination using a sieve and a pair of shears divination by strewing meal over sacrifices divination using viands and cakes divination using onions divination by means of clear objects divination using a crystal globe divination by throwing dice divination by means of a finger divination using rings

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daphnomancy divination using a laurel demonomancy divination using demons dririmancy divination by observing dripping blood emonomancy divination using demons enoptromancy divination using mirrors eromancy divination using water vessels extispicy divination using entrails floromancy belief that flowers have feelings gastromancy divination by sounds from the belly geloscopy fortune-telling by means of laughter geomancy divination by casting earth onto a surface grafology divination by studying writing graptomancy divination by studying handwriting gyromancy divination by falling from dizziness halomancy divination using salt haruspication divination by inspecting animal entrails hematomancy divination using blood hepatoscopy divination by examining animal livers hieromancy divination by studying objects offered in sacrifice hieroscopy divination using entrails hippomancy divination using horses hydromancy divination using water hypnomancy divination using sleep ichnomancy divination using footprints ichthyomancy divination by inspecting fish entrails iconomancy divination using icons idolomancy divination using idols kephalonomancy divination using a baked ass’s head keraunoscopia divination using thunder knissomancy divination using burning incense labiomancy lip reading lampadomancy divination by flame lecanomancy divination using water in a basin or pool

Divination and the Shamanic Story

libanomancy lithomancy logarithmancy logomancy macromancy maculomancy margaritomancy mathemancy meconomancy meteoromancy metopomancy

divination by watching incense smoke divination by stones or meteorites divination by means of algorithms divination using words divination using large objects divination using spots divination using pearls divination by counting divination using sleep divination by studying meteors divination using the forehead or face fortune-telling or judgement of character by the metoposcopy lines of the forehead micromancy divination using small objects myomancy divination from the movements of mice narcomancy divination using sleep necyomancy divination by summoning Satan nomancy divination by examining letters of name odontomancy divination using teeth oenomancy divination by studying appearance of wine oinomancy divination using wine ololygmancy fortune-telling by the howling of dogs omoplatoscopy divination by observing cracks in burning scapulae omphalomancy divination from the knots in the umbilical cord oneiromancy divination by dreams onomancy divination using a donkey or ass onomancy divination using proper names onychomancy divination by the fingernails onymancy divination by the fingernails oomancy divination using eggs ophidiomancy divination using snakes ophiomancy divination by watching snakes ornithomancy divination by observing flight of birds

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Chapter One

oryctomancy divination using excavated objects ossomancy divination using bones osteomancy divination using bones ouranomancy divination using the heavens pedomancy divination by examining the soles of the feet pegomancy divination by springs or fountains pessomancy divination using pebbles phyllomancy divination using leaves or tea leaves physiognomancy divination by studying the face psephomancy divination by drawing lots or markers at random psychomancy divination by means of spirits pyromancy divination using fire retromancy divination by looking over one’s shoulder rhabdomancy divination using a rod or stick rhapsodomancy divination by opening works of poetry at random scapulomancy divination by examining burnt shoulder blade scatomancy divination by studying excrement scatoscopy divination by studying excrement; scatomancy schematomancy divination using the human form sciomancy divination using ghosts scyphomancy divination by means of a cup selenomancy divination by studying the moon divination using stars; divination by burning sideromancy straws sortilege divination by drawing lots spasmatomancy divination by twitching or convulsions of the body spatilomancy divination by means of feces spheromancy divination using a crystal ball spodomancy divination by means of ashes stercomancy fortune-telling by studying seeds in dung divination by picking passages from books at stichomancy random stolisomancy divination by observing how one dresses oneself

Divination and the Shamanic Story

sycomancy tephromancy theomancy thrioboly thumomancy tiromancy topomancy trochomancy tyromancy uranomancy urimancy xenomancy xylomancy zoomancy

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divination using fig leaves divination by ashes divination by means of oracles divination using pebbles divination by means of one's own soul divination using cheese divination using landforms divination by studying wheel tracks divination using cheese divination by studying the heavens divination by observing urine divination using strangers divination by examining wood found in one’s path divination by observing animals

(© 2007 Stephen Chrisomalis. Links to this page may be made without permission. [http://phrontistery.info/divine.html accessed 21/7/07]).

Obviously we cannot possibly explore all of the forms of divination listed above in this study, or all the different cultures in which shamans practise the art. Instead we will focus on the shamanic stories of the Khanty (Ostyaks) from Siberia, the tales told by storytellers in Haiti, the oral narrative tradition of the Yugur from The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, and the folklore of the Yoruba from Nigeria. And by considering the material selected from this spread of cultures in some depth, it should then be possible to draw some general conclusions about the characteristics the samples share in common.

CHAPTER TWO A LITERATURE REVIEW

For the purposes of this review, those who have written on the subject of shamanism have been grouped into five categories–the early “amateurs”, academics that base their work on their reading, academics that have also done work in the field, academics who have done fieldwork but have since dropped out of the academic world for one reason or another, and the “New Age” writers–those who have published popular and pseudo-academic books on the subject. As for Mircea Eliade and Michael Harner, their work will be covered in detail in the main body of this study. As the reading list is so extensive, unfortunately a number of the writers will have to be given no more than a passing reference here due to shortage of space. There will, however, be commentary on what they have to say, where appropriate, in the main body of the text. 1. The first problem we are faced with when it comes to the early “amateurs” is to decide where to start because practitioners of what has become known as shamanism and their followers, according to one recent writer on the subject, “have aroused the curiosity of intellectuals at least since the fifth century B.C., when Herodotus recounted the death-defying feats of the Scythian soothsaying poets Aristeas and Abaris” (Flaherty, 1992, p.3). However, Aristeas was actually a Thracian and Abaris a Hyperborean, so neither in fact were Scythian. Moreover, classicists at present seem to have turned against the idea that either, or Scythians, were anything to do with shamanism so we need to look for a different point of departure (see Hutton, 2001, p.130). The early “amateurs” include the explorer Marco Polo in the 13th century and his contemporaries–the Franciscan missionaries John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck. Then there were the European priests and explorers from the mid-sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, most of whom were staunch Christians. These included the Russian priest

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Avvakum Petrovich and the Dutch traveller Nicolas Witsen in the 17th century, the German scientist Johann Goerg Gmelin, the Russian botanist Stepan Petrovish Krasheninnikov, and the German doctor Daniel Gottlieb Messerchmidt in the 18th century. Their initial reaction, at a time when Christianity was considered to be the one true faith throughout Europe, was to see the practice of shamanism as akin to witchcraft or consorting with the devil. Medicine men of the Americas were being described by European explorers and missionaries as soon as the Continent was discovered and notable figures from that period include the Spanish navigator and natural historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, and a French priest named Andre Thevet. Writing in 1535, Oviedo refers to “revered” old men, held in “high esteem,” who used tobacco in order to “worship the Devil” (Oviedo, 2001, pp. 11-12). And Andre Thevet, who was incidentally the first person to introduce tobacco to France, writing in 1557, describes a group of venerable Brazilian practitioners called the paje, as “witches” who “adore the Devil” (Oviedo, 2001, pp.13 & 15). In the main the shamans or medicine men were described as being either diabolical or fraudulent, even by scholars such as Johann Gottlieb Georgi and also, incidentally, by Catherine the Great (1729-1796). The reason why she supported expeditions was to find out how she could exploit her huge realm economically and bring about unification. In her eyes, practitioners of shamanism were nothing more than charlatans and she had no qualms whatsoever about having them exterminated. In fact, her attitude was no different to the early conquistadores in the Americas, where a similar process took place. By providing information on the peoples that the imperialist powers were attempting to colonize, a number of the early anthropologists referred to above can be said to have been implicated in aiding the process (see Greenwood, 2005, p.27). Moreover, although “No one group of people has the right to foist upon another a cultural viewpoint foreign to their own” (Cowan, 2002, p.viii), that was what often took place during those times, and many would argue it still does. Most eighteenth-century observations of shamanism were written from the point of view of the interested yet disbelieving Western European who, not surprisingly, evaluated things solely on the basis of their own religion, politics, and social customs. Their writing was additionally influenced by their own personal desires for fame and

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fortune, and this was coupled with a disagreeable arrogance that was characteristic of the post-Christian Eurocentric male writing from a secular, Enlightenment perspective. Additionally, what the early explorers could write about in their reports was often controlled by the instructions the patrons they depended on for finance gave them. There were, however, one or two enlightened individuals, that is, enlightened considering the times they were living in. One such example was Joseph Francois Lafitau (1681-1746), a Jesuit who spent many years as a missionary in Canada. In Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, compares aux moeurs des premiers temps (1724), Lafitau argued that it would be unreasonable to discredit such a widespread and deep-rooted phenomenon simply because there were one or two “bad apples” among the pack, as swindlers out to enrich themselves at the expense of others could be found in all walks of life (see Flaherty, 1992, pp.61-62). Another such individual was Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) He explained that the only reason why natives from other parts of the world seemed strange or foolish to the Europeans was “because they have ways of thinking and tastes different from the ones his mama, his dear nurse, and his school buddies implanted in him” (cited in Flaherty, 1992, p.132). “Woe, however, even to the philosopher of the human race and its customs to whom is own scene is the only one and who always mistakes the first as always the worst!” (Flaherty, 1992, p.136). As it is not the purpose of this research to produce a study of “first contact” assessments of shamanism, and as the early writing probably tells us more about the prejudices and ethnocentric attitudes of the writers than it does about shamanism, the writers referred to in this category only receive a brief mention. However, for those who are interested in delving more deeply into this area, samples of the writing of these early amateurs and commentary on them can be found in Flaherty (1992), Narby & Huxley (2001), Stone (2003), and Znamenski (2007). Though the book by Flaherty, in particular, provides a fascinating read, it is unfortunately poorly referenced, which makes it hard to trace the original sources of the material. Diderot’s definition of shamans, cited in Flaherty, is of particular interest though as it really highlights some of the prejudices that were prevalent during the 18th century, and is thus quoted here in full: SHAMANS, noun, masc. plural (Mod.hist.) is the name that the inhabitants of Siberia give to imposters who perform the functions of

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priests, jugglers, sorcerers, and medicine men. These shamans purport to have influence over the Devil, whom they consult to predict the future, to heal illnesses, and to tricks that seem supernatural to an ignorant and superstitious people (Diderot, Encyclopedie, 1765, Vol.14, p.759).

2. Academics whose writing is not based on research they have done in the field include Arnold Van Gennep–whose book The Rites of Passage was first published in 1909 and John Lee Maddox–whose Shamans and Shamanism was originally published in 1923 under the title The Medicine Man: A Sociological Study of the Character and Evolution of Shamanism. It was Van Gennep who first showed how all rites of passage or “transition” can be described as consisting of three phases– separation, margin, and aggregation, a model later to be developed further by Victor Turner. Mention should also be made of Czaplicka, whose book Aboriginal Shamanism was first published in 1914. She was largely responsible for making the findings of the early Russian scientists working in Siberia available in the West and so played an important part in the development of our knowledge of the aboriginal peoples from that region. Mircea Eliade also comes in this category. His book, Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy first published in 1964, is still considered to be a seminal work in the field despite the fact that all it contains is secondhand accounts. Joseph Campbell whose book The Hero with a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 and the works of Jung have had an enormous influence on the New Age movement in the same way as Eliade has, and in view of the influence the New Age movement has had on the way some forms of neo-shamanism have developed, surely neither writer can be passed over regardless of the esteem in which they are currently held. One of Eliade’s major contributions to shamanism (though no longer particularly popular as the trend in the scholarship of non-Western nature beliefs has since become the avoidance of generalizations) was to present it as a global phenomenon, and not merely to restrict it to Siberia, arctic areas and western North America, as his predecessors had done. He can thus be credited with bringing to light the worldwide consistency in shamanic knowledge that Michael Harner based the premise of core shamanism on. For core shamanism “is based on the conviction that, if stripped of its cultural garb, a particular tradition reveals generic crosscultural practices characteristic for shamanisms all over the globe” (Znamenski, 2007, p.238).

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Andrei Znamenski’s Shamanism in Siberia: Russian Records of Indigenous Spirituality, published in 2003, is useful for its summaries of the work of various Russian ethnographers and anthropologists previously unavailable in English. It also provides an insight into how the slant of their work was affected by the attitude of the authorities towards shamanism. For example, we learn from Znamenski how “at first Communists and their sympathizers rarely crusaded against shamanism, preferring Christianity as the object of their attacks” (Znamenski, 2003, p.21), but how in the 1920s shamanism was criticised from the position of modernity. ‘Observers of shamanism tended to underscore the “backward” and “traditionalist” nature of native spiritual and healing practices’ (Znamenski, 2003, p.23). We also learn how in the 1930s “shamans became labelled as ‘class enemies’ and ‘enemies of the people’ selected for complete eradication” (Znamenski, 2003, p.23), and of how, right up to the 1950s, “the assessment of shamans as self-serving opportunists serving the interests of the rich continued to dominate Soviet anthropology scholarship” (Znamenski, 2003, p.27). Today, however, the fact that significant publication and commercial revenue can be made out of Siberian shamanic wisdom has been recognized (with publications such as the Russian psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi’s semi-fictional Entering the Circle, a novel about her apprenticeship with an Altaian shaman), just as the commercial value of Native American and “Celtic” shamanic wisdom has been recognized in the West. It should be pointed out that the fact the people included in this section have done little or no fieldwork does not necessarily mean they do not have anything of significance to add to knowledge. Indeed, academics who do not do fieldwork have the luxury of having the time to synthesise other people’s work and perhaps to see things in the material that a fieldworker (too close to the experience) might not see. 3. The academics who have also done fieldwork include the early anthropologists, among whom can be listed Wencelsas Sieroshevski who wrote on the Yakut, Waldemar Bogoras whose book The Chukchee was first published in 1910, Ilich Jochelson who wrote on the Koryak and the Yakut, and Knud Rasmussen–whose book Across Arctic America: Narrative of the 5th Thule Expedition, was first published in 1927 and whose Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, from vol. VII, no. 1 of

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Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition was first published in 1929. Bogoras and Jochelson were both political exiles who became ethnographers during their involuntary “field experience” in Siberia where they had been sent for their anti-governmental activities. Sieroshevski was a political exile too, banished to Siberia for his revolutionary activities in Poland. It is possible that the marginal status of these political exiles actually worked to their advantage in that it might have helped to create a spiritual bond between them and the Siberian natives, who were themselves marginalized and put down (see Znamenski, 2007, p.74). Waldemar Bogoras was a Polish-Jew who served his term of exile in the far north-eastern tundra. Before the revolution, he had managed to get round the laws that made it hard for Jews to live in Petersburg by declaring himself to be a convert to Lutheranism. Then, ironically, in 1936, “having done his best to turn himself into an orthodox Marxist, 71year-old Bogoras was taken into custody by the NKVD and never seen again” (Reid, 2003, p.165). Other notable figures include Shirokogoroff, a Russian ethnographer,–whose book Psychomental Complex of the Tungus was first published in 1935, Paul Radin–whose Primitive Religion was first published in 1937, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, the noted French anthropologist, who observed shamans conducting curing sessions among the Cuna Indians in Panama. Unfortunately, their descriptions were often biased and inaccurate in that they tended to characterize the people they studied as “primitive” or “savages”, judging them from their own limited Western perspective. However, what they present us with is basically first-hand accounts of what we no longer have the chance to observe in the field. They thus provide us with some of the best data we have access to. The Russian ethnographer Shirokogoroff is of interest for being one of the few who offered an alternative to the scholarly notion that was popular at the time about the pathological nature of shamanism. Instead, practising what is now known as the participant-observation method, he accepted the explanations the Evenki themselves gave for the “hysterical” 

The field research of Lévi-Strauss, for example, has been criticised for being patchy and thin by British standards, and his theoretical writing for being too reliant on secondary sources (see Lewis, 1996, p.2). However, this could well just be “sour grapes” on the part of Lewis judging from his other comments in the same volume on the Frenchman’s work

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type of behaviour that could be observed: custom and habit. He thus came to the conclusion, unlike his contemporaries, that the hysteria was simply an element of culture (see Znamenski, 2007, p.112). In the case of Lévi-Strauss, what he does do effectively is to show the parallels between shamanism and psychoanalysis, and he was the first anthropologist to do so. As he points out, in both cases “the purpose is to bring to a conscious level conflicts and resistances which have remained unconscious, … [thus] permitting their free development and leading to their resolution … [which] is called abreaction in psychoanalysis” (LéviStrauss, 1968, p.198). He then goes on to suggest that the main difference between the two approaches is that whereas the psychoanalyst listens, the shaman speaks. However, in core shamanic counselling as practised and taught by Harner and Horwitz, listening in fact plays a much more important role and the client is encouraged to become his own counsellor. Of particular interest in terms of this study though is “The Effectiveness of Symbols,” a paper by Lévi-Strauss first published in 1949. It consists of an analysis of a shamanic healing ritual for a difficult childbirth, believed to be due to the theft of the purba or “soul” of the mother-to-be, from the Cuna Indians of Central America. His analysis is about how the imagery of the text, in which the shaman undertakes a journey through a mythical world which is also the woman’s body, allows the birthing mother to make sense of, integrate and take control of the chaotic and painful experiences she is undergoing. The myth becomes a way of holding onto and controlling reality. The cure... consists[s]... in making explicit a situation originally existing on the emotional level and in rendering acceptable to the mind pains which the body refuses to tolerate. That the mythology of the shaman does not correspond to an objective reality does not matter. The sick woman believes in the myth and belongs to a society which believes in it (Lévi-Strauss, 1968, p.197).

What the analysis succeeds in showing is the healing power of myth and the role symbols play in the process. Through the use of narrative, “The shaman provides the sick woman with a language, by means of which unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be expressed” (Lévi-Strauss, 1968, p.198). It will be seen as the study unfolds that a number of the shamanic stories chosen for inclusion in this study work in similar ways.

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The Lévi-Strauss model of healing, which Geoffrey Samuel refers to as analogic, is based on the premise that the ritual provides patients with images that enable them to make sense of and control their bodily experience. However, as Samuel points out in his paper “Performance, Vision and Transformation in Shamanic Ritual: Healers, Clients, and Societies,” the imagery might not necessarily have a single correct interpretation that the cure depends on and the participant might well take on a more active role, constructing a personal understanding (as is the case in the approach to shamanic counselling taught by Harner and Horwitz), rather than simply internalizing a prescribed model. Samuel also maintains that we should not expect any framework to fit perfectly in all situations “since there is no reason to believe that all shamanic healing works in precisely the same way” (Samuel, 1995, p.255). Lewis makes a similar point: “Anthropological analyses, for all our fine talk, thus inevitably bear the stamp of the cultures in which they have been forged” (Lewis, 1996, p.13) and are not necessarily universally applicable. Samuel has a much more holistic view of the way in which healing takes place than Lévi-Strauss did, seeing the ritual “as operating simultaneously on the patient’s mind, body and ‘social self,’ since all these are seen as aspects of a single entity” (Samuel, 1995, p.255). This is highly significant, for if we accept that a style of shamanic healing is only able to operate on the “social self” when it fits in well with the symbolic system of the people who use it, what Harner suggests in the following quote cannot possibly be accurate: “The ancient way is powerful, and taps so deeply into the human mind, that one’s usual cultural belief systems and assumptions about reality are essentially irrelevant” (Harner, 1990, p.xii). In fact, the reverse would seem to be the case in that ideally the client and the shaman ideally need to share the same cultural perspective for the healing to be effective. If Lévi-Strauss re-read some of the pronouncements he made in his earlier work, with hindsight they would no doubt leave him highly embarrassed. Take the following quotation, for example: We are able, through scientific thinking, to achieve mastery over nature–I don’t need to elaborate that point, it is obvious enough–while, of course, myth is unsuccessful in giving man more material power over the environment. However, it gives man, very importantly, the illusion that he can understand the universe and that he does understand the universe. It is, of course, only an illusion (Lévi-Strauss, 2001, p.13).

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All we need to do is to look at the destruction wreaked by natural disasters such as tsunamis and the consequences of global warming to see how misguided he was, and as for the suggestion that myth only gives man the illusion he understands the universe, we could equally as well say that is in fact what science does. On the other hand, unlike some of his predecessors, he does at least recognize that “the human mind is everywhere one and the same and that it has the same capacities” (Lévi-Strauss, 2001, p.15). Malinowski, for example, was of the opinion that primitive thought is entirely determined by the basic needs of life. However, as Lévi-Strauss has shown, he is clearly capable of disinterested knowledge too. Indeed, Lévi-Strauss goes to great lengths to demonstrate that not only are the fundamental mental operations that determine the way we think the same all over the world, but that they have always been so. Another academic to be included under heading number three is Professor I.M. Lewis, whose fieldwork was carried out in East Africa and whose book Ecstatic Religion: a study of shamanism and spirit possession was first published in 1971. His work is often referred to when it comes to considering the role of women in shamanism, in particular his theory that symptoms of malevolent spirit possession are an unconscious attempt by women to protest against neglect and oppression in a society largely dominated by men, a theory discounted by his critics as being nothing more than a sweeping generalisation (see Berman, 2006, p.16). The same criticism can be levelled against the following statement: “[W]itchcraft is really a flag of convenience for the powerful tides of jealousy and aggression that well up from the unconscious” (Lewis, 1996, p.21). What Lewis does do successfully, however, is to show how spiritpossession and shamanism, and possession and trance, can occur together in a single cultural setting, as is sometimes the case in Japan for example, and among the Ma’Betisek aborigines of Malaysia (see Lewis, 1996, pp.115-116). Moreover, by defining the African medium as the master of anomaly and chaos, what he did in effect was to recast African spiritual practitioners as shamans (as they have been classified in this volume) and to tie them to their counterparts in other parts of the world (see Znamenski, 2007, p.188). An important scholar active in the 1960s was the Hungarian Vilmos Dioszegi, who did fieldwork among the Buryats and the Abakan Turks,

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and the Karagass and the Soyots in Tuva. “He was among the first in the early sixties … to record and publish his personal experiences and impressions … [which was] considered at the time a revolutionary innovation in anthropological literature” (Hoppal, 1998, p.xii). This helped to make his work particularly readable–his 1968 publication, listed in the bibliography, is recommended in this respect. In view of the fact that the official standpoint of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was that shamanism was extinct and that its research was politically untimely, his presence in the former Soviet Union meant a great deal to his Russian colleagues, who had been struggling against the unhelpful attitude of the authorities up to that time. In his entry on Shamanism in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., 1974, pp.638-641, Dioszegi makes the point that “since ecstasy is a psychosomatic phenomenon that may be brought about at any time by persons with the ability to do so, the essence of shamanism lies not in the general phenomenon but in specific notions, actions, and objects connected with the ecstatic states.” The importance of this remark is that it shows how, contrary to what Eliade and others thought, the ecstatic state is not necessarily the main feature of shamanism. In fact, it will be shown in the course of this study that there are those who can be considered to be shamans who never enter such states. Although the official view that Soviet scholars was expected to take was that shamanism, like all religion, was obsolete, this did not necessarily prevent them from showing how indigenous shamans were able to provide poetry, entertainment, psychotherapy, and sometimes even cures and genuine leadership for their communities (see Balzer, 1990 p.viii). The work of the structuralist Elena Sergeevna Novik is particularly worthy of note in this respect. Novik has extensive field experience in Yaktia and Chukotka and her considerable contribution to anthropology, recognised in the former Soviet Union, surely deserves wider recognition. She views shamans as having a full range of good and bad attributes, just as most human beings do, and in this respect her approach can be seen to be a balanced one. Her search for consistent patterns or “blocs” has led her to conclude that underlying the relations structuring ritual and folklore are three forms of communicative exchanges: of information, power, and values. This plot structure has been described as “a sequence of functional relations between 1) the requestor of the séance and the shaman; 2) the shaman with his helping spirits and the addressee of the

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séance …; 3) the object obtained (valuable) and the requestor of the séance” (Novik, 1989, pp.32-33). It should be pointed out, however, that her work has focussed on Siberian tales, and the points she makes cannot necessarily be applied to examples from other traditions in the same way. She also observes how the stories her research is based on reflect the diversity of human life, revealing a full gamut of emotion, and the same can be said to apply, as will quickly become apparent, to all the tales chosen for inclusion in this study. Novik refers to “shamanic legends”, which she defines as texts that directly describe ritual “in which the hero is the shaman, i.e., the person especially appointed to discharge ritual functions” (Novik, 1989, p.26). However, as even she herself admits, the genre affiliation of these texts is far from clear, with collectors variously referring to them as fables, myths, customary accounts, genealogical or historical traditions, legends, or even “mini-histories”. Consequently, for the purposes of this study, the term “shamanic stories” is preferred–stories in which the hero may, or may not be the shaman, but which are all either based on, or inspired by, a shamanic journey, or contain a number of the elements typical of such a journey. A characteristic of shamanic stories, according to Novik, is the employment of both memorates and fabulates. Memorates are stories which tend to deal with a specific occasion when help was requested from a shaman, and outline his success or lack of it, eyewitness accounts of séances. In fabulates, on the other hand, the emphasis is on the vicissitudes of conflicts in the plot. However, the boundary between the two forms is not fixed and the desire to explain the circumstances of an individual case in as much detail as possible can result in the focus shifting to trivial features and motivating factors, which can turn a memorate into a fabulate (see Novik, 1989, p.32). As the boundary between the two forms is so fluid and as both memorates and fabulates can be found within the same tale, one is left to question whether attempting to draw a distinction between the two is particularly helpful and, for this reason, it was decided not to make use of the terms. In Struktura shamanskikh deistv (1979), summarised in English in Znamenski (2003), Novik proposes that two basic types of shamanic healing séance can be identified. “The first type of séance was centred on the retrieval by a shaman of a patient’s soul which had been stolen by a

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hostile spirit. In the second type, a shaman extracted the spirit of illness from a patient’s body and drove this spirit away” (in Znamenski, 2003, p.190). What her model does not seem to cover, however, is cases of soul loss–when parts of the soul leave the body of a patient to escape from a traumatic situation–so her “blueprint” would thus appear to be incomplete, at least if we consider it on the basis of what neo-shamanic practitioners such as Harner, Horwitz, and Ingerman maintain. On the other hand, her argument that shamanic séances as a special ritual genre can be separated into several elements, also to be found in Struktura shamanskikh deistv, can be applied to both indigenous and neoshamanic séances and a summary of the elements she identifies is provided below: First of all, the object of a séance was always the soul, or in other words, the “value” that could be moved in opposite directions. (1) The shaman retrieved this “value” in the world of spirits and delivered it to the world of people or (2) the shaman extracted the “value” that belonged to a community (a sacrificial animal or a soul of a deceased person) and carried it away to the world of spirits. The hostile spirit that visited people mirrored the same operations. (1) The hostile spirit “planted” itself into the body of a patient, herd, or dwelling, or (2) the hostile spirit extracted a soul from the body of its victim and carried it away to the world of spirits (in Znamenski, 2003, pp.190-191).

Other academics to list in this category include Victor Turner–who did his fieldwork in Africa with his wife and whose best-known work The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure was first published in 1969. Turner was of the opinion that it was the duty of the anthropologist “not only to make structuralist and functionalist analyses of statistical and textual data … but also to prehend experiential structures in the actual processes of social life” (Turner, 1982, p.64) and he refers to the practice in his writing as the anthropology of experience. He questioned the formal structuralist view that sequence is an illusion created out of a permutation of rules and vocabularies already laid down in the deep structures of the brain, and maintained that the successive stages in social dramas are in fact irreversible and that their sequence is no illusion as can be seen from the way in which their unidirectional movement is transformative (see Turner, 1982, p.80). As we shall see, the analysis of the stories presented in this study would seem to support this view.

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Turner writes about the transition rites that take place in rituals, marked by three stages–detachment from a fixed position in the social structure or from an established set of cultural conditions, a liminal period in which the ritual subject is in “no-man’s land,” followed by reentry into the social structure, often at a higher level (see Turner, 1974, p.232). In the periods of liminality in which communitas emerges, people “are free, under ritual exigency, to contemplate for a while the mysteries that confront all men” (Turner, 1974, p.242). Moreover, “exposure to or immersion in communitas seems to be an indispensable human social requirement. People have a real need … to doff the masks, cloaks, apparel, and insignia of status from time to time even if only to don the liberating masks of liminal masquerade” (Turner, 1974, p.243). If this is indeed the case, it follows that successful religions need to be able to provide such opportunities for their members for, as Turner himself points out, “religion is not a cognitive system, a set of dogmas, alone, it is meaningful experience and experienced meaning” (Turner, 1982, p.86). However, his claim that “The great historical religions have …learned how to incorporate enclaves of communitas within their institutionalized structures … and to oxygenate … the ‘mystical body’ by making provision for those ardent souls who wish to live in communitas and poverty all their lives” (Turner, 1974, p.267) is open to question. If the historical religions had succeeded in accomplishing this task, then there would be no reason for people to turn away from them to embrace alternatives, as we know they are now doing in large numbers. Nevertheless, despite this reservation, Turner’s place in the history of anthropology in the twentieth century is undoubtedly assured. As for this particular study, his work is of relevance for the way in which he developed Arnold van Gennep’s basic ritual framework–the tripartite model of separation, testing, and reintegration–which not only shamans can be seen to employ but which storytellers frequently make use of too. The key issue for Turner’s version of the van Gennep scheme is “communitas”, a sociological concept at least as much as an existential one, and one that can be applied to the situation that predominantly prevails in indigenous shamanic communities–“a liminal phenomenon, consisting of a blend of humility and comradeship” (Turner, 1985, p.173). However, it has to be said that communitas loses much of its impact when it is not based in an ongoing village community because the point is the reshaping of social and psychological relationships among participants who are living together on a day to day basis. This is clearly

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not a situation that is likely to pertain to a disparate group of people gathered together for a weekend workshop in neo-shamanism, most of whom will probably never meet up with each other again. Turner identifies three forms of communitas–spontaneous, ideological, and normative. Spontaneous communitas is defined as “a direct, immediate and total confrontation of human identities” which has something “magical” about it (Turner, 1982, p.47), ideological communitas as a set of theoretical concepts used for descriptive purposes, and normative communitas as the attempt by a subculture or group to generate spontaneous communitas on an ongoing basis. He then goes on to suggest that such groups tend to form during periods of religious revival, which is perhaps what occurred in the case of the New Age movement in the 1960s that heralded the growth of interest in shamanism (see Turner, 1982, pp.48 & 49). Instead of seeing ritual performances as projections of an existing system of social relations, and a means of ensuring the system’s survival, Turner regarded them not only as modes of expressing cultural ideas and dispositions, but also as a means of reformulating them. In other words, he can be said to have recognized that ritual performances were not merely a means for ensuring the maintenance of the status quo, but could also serve to change it. Turner regards the social drama as the experiential matrix the many genres of cultural performance have developed from, including both oral and literary narrative (see Turner, 1982, p.78), and it is thus clearly of relevance to this study as narratives are primarily what we are concerned with. In fact, each of the tales selected for inclusion in this study can be regarded as a representation of what Turner refers to as a social drama–a unit of aharmonic or disharmonic process developing out of a conflict situation, consisting of four main phases (see Turner, 1974, pp.37-38). The conflict is followed by a crisis which results in the implementation of redressive mechanisms that lead to reintegration or the recognition of an irreparable impasse (see Turner, 1974, pp. 38-41). This “may involve a dissident minority in seceding from the original community and seeking a new habitat” (Turner, 1982, p.10) and this “Exodus theme” can be found in the shamanic story of The Children of Hameln, for example, when the children are led away from the town, never to return again.

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It has been argued that “the social drama approach focuses too narrowly on ‘the general movement of things’ and neglects the multifarious cultural contents, the symbol systems which embody … specific cultures” (Turner, 1985, p.299). In his defence, Turner counters the argument by pointing out that as the vitality of the performance or narration is found in the drama process, it should remain our main focus of concern. However, it seems to me, as Geertz suggests (see Turner, 1985, p.175), there must surely be a place for textual analysis too, and that in order to obtain a more complete picture we need to consider the tales from more than one angle, which is what will be attempted in this study. Social dramas are described as occurring “within groups bounded by shared values and interests of persons for whom the group which constitutes the field of dramatic action has a high value priority” (Turner, 1982, p.69). Although Turner accepts there could well be other types of processual forms, he maintains that “the social drama is a well-nigh universal processual form, and represents a perpetual challenge to all aspirations to perfection in social and political organization” (Turner, 1982, p.71). It can also be said to represent a perpetual challenge to all aspirations to bring about a balanced modal state, which is what the shaman within indigenous communities can be regarded as being mainly concerned with. Carmen Blacker who studied shamanic practices in Japan, and Laura Kendall who has studied shamanic practices in Korea, are to be included in this category too. Kendall’s approach in Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits (1985) is to render the belief system she participates in and observes in its own terms. Her position is that “women and shamans perform essential ritual tasks that compliment men’s ritual tasks” (Kendall, 1985, p.25) and she rejects the narrow focus on women’s rituals as women’s safety valve that Lewis proposes as she believes it misses their broader social import (see Kendall, 1985, pp. 164-165). Her work also shows how difficult it is to define exactly what shamanism is due to the way in which categories cross, Shamanism and Buddhism, for example. She refers to the way in which one of the shamans she observed and also the shaman’s clients called their shrine worship Pulgyo, “Buddhism,” and how the mansin (shaman) often introduced her (Kendall) as “a student of Buddhism”. To compound matters further, a number of the duties mansin and monk perform are identical, such as

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performing masses, lettering paper charms, dedicating children, and divining (see Kendall, 1985, p.84). In more recent times her work has been criticised for not being a true representation of the current state of affairs as regards the attitude towards shamanism in Korea. “Her [Kendall’s] ethnography does not represent the world most Koreans live in, but the world most Koreans reject” (Kim, 2003, p.83). “She presents shamanic ritual very much in the shamans’ language and terms, giving the impression that the village women as a whole share this understanding of what is happening” (Kim, 2003, p.87). However, most Korean women today, according to Kim, do not view shamanism as “women’s religion” despite what Kendall suggests. Mention should also be made of anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff– whose Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey to the Huichol Indians, published in 1974, describes her experience travelling with the Huichol Indians of Mexico to look for peyote for their ceremonies, Ake Hultkrantz–whose book The Religions of the American Indians was first published in 1979, Chagnon–whose Yanomamo: The Fierce People was first published in 1983 (long before the charity Survival International first started to campaign for the rights of these people), and Vitebsky– whose book The Shaman was first published in Great Britain in 1995 and who has done research among the Sora in India and also in Siberia. Hultkrantz, like Eliade, “refused to reduce religion to its social and cultural context. Instead, … [he] extended his generalizations [over a large cultural landscape] from northeastern Siberia to North America and to South America, work that few mainstream scholars in the United States dared to perform” (Znamenski, 2007, p.226). As for Marlene Dobkin de Rios, although she carried out fieldwork among the Amazonian Mestizos of Peru, certain points she makes can be said to apply universally to indigenous shamanic communities, the belief that illness has a magical causality, for example, and the way in which such peoples call upon their belief systems to account for the “the ubiquitous problems posed by the threat of disease, infirmity, and misfortune” (Dobkin de Rios, 1984, p.175). Western categories that differentiate between healing and religion are irrelevant as far as members of such communities are concerned, “especially when taboo violation, the malevolent spirits of nature, or the evil malice of others may be deemed responsible for the cause of illness within a given social

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context” (Dobkin de Rios, 1984, p.176). Moreover, the focus of such clients’ concerns will clearly not be the same as ours would be. For example, “How one’s body has been attacked by micro-organisms and how illness spreads through it, is not of much interest in a world where causal factors are viewed primarily within a magical framework” (Dobkin de Rios, 1984, p.183). Galina Lindquist, whose doctoral thesis Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene was published in 1997, is also worth reading for her first-hand account of the workshops run by Jonathan Horwitz–who will be referred to frequently in this study. Lindquist, in the abstract to her thesis, defines neo-shamanism as “a set of notions and techniques that originated in the non-Western tribal societies and, within the framework of New Age spirituality, were adapted for the life of contemporary urban dwellers.” However, seid-magic and Celtic Shamanism (even if they are regarded as objectively real, which is highly debatable), did not originate in the non-Western tribal societies, and certain forms of shamanism which do not fit within the framework of New Age spirituality are regularly used by city dwellers, in Korea or Brazil, for example, so her definition as it stands would seem to be inaccurate. Another problem with the definition is that what was formerly indigenous shamanism is now being adapted too as a result of the influence of neo-shamanism. Consequently, it can be argued that to draw a clear dividing line between the two forms is probably no longer possible. Other academics who have also done fieldwork include Jakobsen– whose book Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing was first published in 1999 and whose research was also into the courses run by Horwitz, McClenon–whose Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution, and the Origin of Religion was first published in 2002, Jenny Blain–whose book Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic was first published in 2002, R.J. Wallis, whose Shamans/Neo-shamans was first published in 2003, and Graham Harvey – whose book Shamanism: A Reader, which provides a good overview of the current state of affairs, was first published in 2003. Lindholm, whose Charisma was first published in 1990, is an anthropologist who did fieldwork in North Pakistan, and can also be included in this category. What is found, however, on reading his book, is that his knowledge of shamanism is in fact somewhat limited. For example, although he claims the shaman is “a specialist of trance, generating in himself that state” (Lindholm, 1993, p.158), there are in

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fact also imitative and demonstrative forms of shamanism in which the genuine trance state does not feature. And the suggestion that “The shaman cures others by repeatedly re-experiencing his own trauma in public, exciting a sympathetic outpouring of emotion among the onlookers, who are molded into a unified ecstatic group as they share in the shaman’s expressive revelation” (Lindholm, 1993, p.160) is also inaccurate as this is certainly not the case among neo-shamanic practitioners. The statement “Shamanizing is never a solitary occupation; the shaman exists only in a collective arena, where a responsive audience both witnesses and participates” (Lindholm, 1993, p.161) is problematic too as neo-shamanic practitioners frequently work on their own. There is also a problem with “Initiates are taught to act as if entranced as a road to actually becoming entranced” (Lindholm, 1993, p.167), as there is no evidence to support such an assumption. What Lindholm does succeed in showing, however, is that there are considerable parallels between indigenous shamans and modern charismatic leaders, but he unfortunately fails to show an understanding of all the different aspects of shamanism or to consider them in his analysis. Winkelman, also an anthropologist, makes out a well-argued case for a neurophenomenological approach to shamanism so as to present it in what he believes to be its rightful light “as a set of sophisticated traditions for managing self, emotions, and consciousness” (Winkelman, 2000, p.276). Hopefully, the result of such a well-researched study will be that others will be more inclined to take the subject seriously too. On the other hand, he also suggests “the term shaman should be restricted to those magico-religious practitioners empirically sharing similar characteristics, including their principal presence in hunting-gathering societies, where their activities first arose in sociocultural evolution” (Winkelman, 2000, p.65). This would presumably exclude neo-shamanic practitioners as well as practitioners who do not necessarily access genuine ecstatic trance states and represents a much narrower definition than that which is being proposed in this study. Another problem with Winkelman’s work is the way in which he attempts to relate spirit possession to temporal lobe dysfunction, but without actually citing neurophysiological studies of mediums to support his case (see Walsh, 2007, p.264). What Winkelman does do successfully though is to provide a clear description of what shamanic states of consciousness actually entail based on our current knowledge of how the brain works. He likens them to “waking dreams” which can be produced by a range of biological

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manipulations or by voluntary control of mental purposes. This is believed to involve replacement of the normal waking conditions–sympathetic dominance and desynchronized fast-wave activity of the frontal cortex–with a parasypmpathetic dominant state that is characterized by high-voltage, slow-wave electroencephalogram (EEG) activity originating in the circuits linking the brain stem and the hippocampal-septal area of the limbic system (Winkelman, 2000, p.76).

It should be pointed out that certain writers have produced both academic writings and works meant for a popular audience. Vitebsky, Harvey, and Ripinsky-Naxon all belong to this category. RipinskyNaxon’s article (1992) “Shamanism: Religion or Rite?” in The Journal of Prehistoric Religion, Vol. 6, pp. 37-44 (1992) is an example of his academic writing whereas his book The Nature of Shamanism (1993) is an example of his popular writing. Similarly, Vitebsky’s Paper “Shamanism as Local Knowledge in a Global Setting: from Cosmology to Psychology and Environmentalism” presented at the ASA IV Decenniel Conference (1993) is an example of his academic writing whereas his books The Shaman (2001) and The Reindeer People (2005) are examples of his popular writing. The latter book is of particular interest as it gives an insight into the difficult circumstances that anthropologists such as Vitebsky have to contend with in pursuing their research, including the new skills they are required to master such as learning local languages, how to ride a horse, and how to survive in extreme temperatures. We also learn that studying shamanism in the Soviet era could be a dangerous business: “In 1988 I was roughly arrested on the Leningrad metro by young Communist vigilantes who noticed that I was reading a book on shamanism” (Vitebsky, 2005, p.46). As the author points out in the same volume, “the Soviet persecution of Siberian shamans was so thorough that almost no shamans of … [the] old type exist anywhere today” (Vitebsky, 2005, p.261). Academics from other disciplines have written on the subject of shamanism too, viewing it from a slightly different angle, such as the psychologist Jeanne Achterberg whose Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine was published in 1985, historian Ronald Hutton whose book Shamans was published in 2001, the archaeologist Wallis whose Shamans/Neo-shamans was published in 2003, and the archaeologists Miranda and Stephen Aldhouse-Green whose book The Quest for the Shaman: Shape-shifters, Sorcerers, and Spirit-Healers of

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Ancient Europe was published in 2005. Mention should also be made of Jeannette Gagan, a practising psychologist who now makes use of shamanic techniques, and whose book Journeying: where shamanism and psychology meet was first published in 1998. There are also nonacademics who have carried out fieldwork, such as the explorer Benedict Allen whose book Last of the Medicine Men was published in 2000. Many researchers have now turned to studying shamanic practices by ethnic healers in small towns and even in the cities–a healing practice which anthropologists call ethnomedicine. Among the most well-known of these are Donald Joralemon and Douglas Sharon, who profiled fourteen healers in their book Sorcery and Shamanism: Curanderos and Clients in Northern Peru, published in 1993. This shows how the commonly held belief that shamans can only be found in remote and inaccessible places like the Amazon jungle is in fact a misconception. The reality is that religious movements have regularly centred in urban populations. Indeed, the early Christians were so definitely urban that the very word for non-Christians, namely pagan, originally meant a countryman. In our own times, there are those who call themselves urban shamans and it might well be the case there are more neo-shamanic practitioners to be found within urban areas than there are to be found without. But such research, interesting though it might be, lies beyond the scope of this study. Mention should be made of Susan Greenwood too, who has carried out fieldwork with various shamanic practitioners in the UK. In The Nature of Magic (2005), she shows how nature spiritualities, among which she includes shamanism, are not always inherently ecological, and how in some areas of paganism more emphasis is placed on individual development instead. What nature spiritualities do tend to have in common, however, is the view that “there is an interconnected and sacred universe …experienced through magical consciousness” (Greenwood, 2005, p.ix). She also poses a number of key questions related to storytelling in her book: “[C]an stories teach people to find relevance in nature? Do stories help people to feel indigenous in the sense of seeing themselves as part of nature? And perhaps more importantly, is it possible to engage fully with a surrounding ecology from within a literate culture?” (Greenwood, 2005, p.143). However, though these are all interesting questions to reflect on, they are not the focus of this particular work.

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Gordon MacLellan, whose work is reviewed by Greenwood in her book, describes shamanism as “an ancient spiritual path that explores a way of living in harmony with the world around us” (MacLellan, 1999, p.1-2). It is interesting to note how, like many of his contemporaries, he intentionally avoids using the word “religion” to describe what he practises–a subject dealt with in some length in Berman (2006). MacLellan “uses fairy tales, myths and those ‘other-than-human beings’ to bring the natural world alive in a child’s imagination by building on their animistic thinking, and actively encouraging them to interact with the natural world” (Greenwood, 2005, p.160). However, the way in which MacLellan’s workshops lead to a growing environmental awareness is once again not the focus of this particular study and will consequently only be referred to in passing. 4. The academics that have done fieldwork but have since dropped out of the academic world for one reason or another include Michael Harner, Jonathan Horwitz, Carlos Castaneda, and Alberto Villoldo. Harner’s The Way of the Shaman, first published in 1980, is the starting point for most people who embark on the path of neoshamanism. Admittedly, Harner has come in for a lot of criticism from academics, in particular for the way in which he seems to have reduced shamanism to its lowest common denominator–namely drumming, vision quests and journeying. However, the influence he has had on the development of neo-shamanism is undeniable and he can also be credited with having established the internationally known Foundation for Shamanic Studies, which (according to its website http://www.shamanism.org/) trains over 5,000 people each year. Consequently, his name will be cropping up frequently. Another way into the world of shamanism, and the one that initially drew the author of this study in, is through the writing of Carlos Castaneda–his series of novels about Don Juan, the Yaqui sorcerer based in New Mexico. The first book in the series was published in 1968. Although doubts have been cast over whether Castaneda actually carried out the fieldwork he claims to have done and it has even been suggested his thesis was actually fraudulent, he has been included because of the enormous influence he has undoubtedly had on the upsurge of interest in neo-shamanism in recent years. Castaneda is of importance for another reason too, his belief that “Any phenomenon should be researched in its own light and in the spirit

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of its own internal conditions and regulations” (Castaneda, 1968, p.xii). In other words, he was of the opinion that the only way to understand the shamanic world was by becoming a shaman and to look at it from the inside, a method that has since become known as anthropology of consciousness. As for the work of Jonathan Horwitz, founder of the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies and the neo-shamanic teacher that the author of this work trained with, it will be referred to and discussed in some detail in the main body of this work. Another former academic who dropped out of academia and now offers neo-shamanic training programmes is the medical anthropologist Dr Alberto Villoldo. “As an anthropologist, I believe it’s important to make one’s sources verifiable and transparent. This has been my objection to authors whose work lacks credibility, since no one except they have met their source” (Villoldo, 2001, p.29). This is clearly meant as a dig at Castaneda, and the cynic might well conclude that this could be as a result of the fact that Villoldo regards him as a rival. However, it is questionable as to whether Villoldo’s own sources are that transparent either. We are given some names of healers he claims to have trained and a few personal details about them, but nothing more specific than that. It would initially seem from the following quote that Villoldo does at least recognize the dangers that can be involved in what he does and teaches, the eristic nature of shamanic practices: “There are dangers associated with energy healing, both for the client and for the healer. Far too many poorly trained practitioners dispense energy healing without understanding the mechanics of the human energy field” (Villoldo, 2001, p.2). Villoldo then goes on to pose the following question: “A doctor of Western medicine spends at least five years learning his or her craft. Is it prudent to turn my health care over to someone who has taken a weekend workshop in energy medicine?” (Villoldo, 2001, p.6). Yet if you visit Villoldo’s website, www.thefourwinds.com, as you are encouraged to do at the end of the book the quotes have been taken from, you learn that his “professional training program .. leading to certification in luminous healing and energy medicine … [in which] You will learn the mystery teachings (the work of the Medicine Wheel), the Illumination Process, The Extraction Process, Soul Retrieval, and the Great Rites, ceremonies that assist in one’s life passage” actually consists of only four weeks of training over two years. Although there is an

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additional “requirement to attend three additional Masters Courses for certification”, these only consist of two weeks of additional training each so the total training would consist of no more than ten weeks. Consequently, it has to be said, he clearly fails to put into practice what he preaches. The book is not only of dubious value for the way in which Villoldo criticizes others for what he is guilty of himself but also for how it is full of claims that cannot be substantiated. For example, “Along the surface of the planet run flux lines or cekes, similar to the acupuncture ulfilmen, connecting the major chakras of the Earth” (Villoldo, 2001, p.49). Moreover, and it really goes without saying, the majority of indigenous Peruvian shamans Villoldo trained with would not have used such terminology as “acupuncture meridians” or “chakras” as the concepts come from different traditions. On the other hand, it has to be noted that Eduardo Calderon, one of Villoldo’s teachers in Peru, would actually have been quite capable of doing so, being both literate and eclectic. 5. A notable figure in this group is Sandra Ingerman. The account of her pioneering neo-shamanic work on dealing with cases of soul loss, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self through Shamanic Practice, was first published in 1991 and this was followed by Welcome Home: Following Your Soul’s Journey Home in 1993. In Soul Loss and the Shamanic Story (Berman, 2008) her work is considered in some detail and so will only be mentioned in passing here. Not surprisingly, a lot of questions have been raised about the validity of the shamanic practices claimed by some of the popular writers. For instance, Lynn Andrews maintains that her books are about her experiences with the Sisters of the Shields, who she describes as a group of traditional women healers from various ethnic cultures around the world. But the majority of anthropologists and other professionals question the reality of these teachers and consider her books to be nothing more than popular fiction. Nevertheless, it will be seen that a number of the more popular factual writers on shamanism are referred to in this study, in particular in connection with neo-shamanism. These include the kind of writers whose titles can be found on the shelves of New Age bookshops–Drury (1982 and 1989), Rutherford (1986), Walsh (1990, and 2007), and Larsen (1998). While recognising their limited value from an academic

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standpoint, they do reflect current popular thinking on the subject and were thus considered to be of relevance. Any material drawn from such sources will of course be checked out meticulously to make sure whatever claims are made can be substantiated. Walsh defines shamanism as “a family of traditions whose practitioners focus on voluntarily entering altered states of consciousness in which they experience themselves or their spirit(s) interacting with other entities, often by travelling to other realms, in order to serve their community” (Walsh, 2007, pp.16-17). This definition skirts the question of whether shamanism is a religion or not, ignores the demonstrative and imitative forms of ritual performed by shamans, and takes no account of those neo-shamanists who may well learn the techniques merely for the purposes of self-development rather than for any other reason. On another occasion, still skirting the question of whether shamanism is a religion or not, Walsh refers to shamanism as a conscious-altering discipline: “Consciousness-altering disciplines are practices–such as shamanism, yoga, or contemplation–that can induce beneficial states of consciousness” (Walsh, 2007, p.9) It can be argued, however, that drinking alcohol or taking sedatives can be regarded as conscious-altering disciplines too so this description of shamanism is not particularly helpful either. A major problem with the popular books on shamanism being published today is how syncretistic they tend to be. The boundaries between traditional shamanic and modern techniques have become inextricably tangled and blurred and it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the fact from the fiction. Shamanic techniques are mixed together, often in combination with other New Age methods, many drawn from humanistic and transpersonal psychology. For instance, in Magical Passes, Carlos Castaneda describes a series of bodily movements he claims were physical movements taught for generations for use in rituals, which have now been adapted for a “new generation of practitioners…more interested in efficiency and functionalism” (Castaneda, 1999, p.2). However, the book looks very much like many other New Age fitness and self-development books, even down to the illustrations, and there is no concrete evidence to substantiate the claims that are made. We are told that Don Juan (Castaneda’s teacher) encouraged deep breathing and emphasized importance of focussed intent but so do many other fitness experts who have no connection whatsoever with shamanism.

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Mention should also be made of Caitlín Matthews, whose book Singing the Soul Back Home was published in 1995, and who describes herself as a “midwife of the soul.” Matthews presents shamanism as ‘the heritage of all people’ (Matthews, 1995, p.xvii) and as being compatible with the practice of other religions. It is not my intention to alienate any reader from her spiritual tradition. The practice of shamanism is compatible with the practice of any spirituality: it may provoke a more profound appreciation of your religion’s mystical application or bring you to a wider understanding of certain religious strictures (Matthews, 1995, p.xviii).

What Matthews’s real intention is, however, is open to question, and the cynic might well argue that in fact it is a highly commercial one–namely to increase book sales and to attract the maximum number of clients possible for the workshops she runs. As has already been noted, like the majority of popular writers on the subject, her work is full of claims that cannot be substantiated. For example, “Shamanism has existed since the beginning of time” (Matthews, 1995, p.1) or “The lessons of the Upperworld are discovering peace and harmony, becoming resonant with our destiny” (Matthews, 1995, p.161). Moreover, what she presents as shamanism is in fact a highly individual interpretation, based in part on her own interest in making music rather than any indigenous traditions that can be verified to be authentic practices. What she does do effectively, however, is to show the variety of ways in which soul loss can manifest itself in clients, from soul-parts merely straying, as is the case when we lose our tempers, to death which she refers to as a state of complete soul loss (see Matthews, 1995, p.202). Jane Ely’s book on the subject of soul loss, Remembering the Ancestral Soul: Soul Loss and Recovery, was read with interest, even though it has to be said that a lot of what can be found in her book leads one to regard it with a high degree of suspicion. For example, Ely starts off by saying “In the late 1970’s I met and became apprenticed to a shaman named Tuguk who taught me about soul loss” (Ely, 2005, p.xiii) and this is all we learn about her teacher. Then “I made a commitment to walk the medicine way of my indigenous elders and teachers” (Ely, 2005, p.xiv) but we never learn which tradition these elders and teachers are supposed to have come from. Ely also claims to have a PhD but we never find out where from. In view of the fact she has a D.Min from an

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organisation called The University of Creation Spirituality, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that her doctorate comes from an unrecognized institution too. Another cause for concern is her claim that we are now subject to new forms of soul loss: “In our post-modern culture, we have added a very toxic cause: The intention to harm ourselves, others, and the Earth–our home” (Ely, 2005, p.237). However, does anyone really have a genuine desire to harm the Earth they depend on for life? Agreed they might well do so unintentionally, but in any case what evidence is there to suggest that this has not taken place throughout history in one form or another? Irritating too is the way in which on a number of occasions Ely refers to soul loss as an epidemic. One would suppose this is a misuse of language and what she is in fact trying to say is that soul loss is endemic to our society. Indeed, it has to be said that Ely seems to be unclear about what soul loss actually is. Consider, for example, the following: “Another form of soul loss that has been researched in North American tribal cultures is the loss of spirit and power due to the death of a guardian spirit (in nonordinary reality)” (Ely, 2005, p.15). A guardian spirit, however, is surely a separate entity, and thus cannot be part of anyone else’s soul. What one becomes aware of when reading Ely’s book is that there are undoubtedly a large number of ineffective neo-shamanic practitioners, just as there are weak links in every profession. Consider, for example, the following extract from an interview with Kay Cordell Whitaker, who describes herself as a teller of medicine stories, a seer, healer and a “Thrower of the Bones”: Very often, people from our modern culture get some pieces back and, within a week, have tossed one or more of them off again. It’s our habit; it’s what we are used to. The person then needs to go back on another spirit journey, go back to the land of the animal spirits, and retrieve the piece again. Sometimes, it takes two-three-four journeys retrieving the same piece, bringing it back, going through the same process and by then we re-establish a sustainable integration. It just needs to be repeated until the soul pieces stabilize … Very few people I have worked with have been able to go on just one journey to bring pieces back and have them all stay (Ely, 2005, p.72).

However, the practice of repeating the process several times is not something encountered when reading accounts of séances performed by indigenous shamans, and the cynic has good grounds to argue that the

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reason for the repeats could well be that the retrieval was not carried out effectively in the first place. Despite all the reasons for having reservations about Ely’s work, as the above extract illustrates, her book is of value for the interviews it includes, which serve to illustrate just how shamanic techniques are being mixed together with New Age methods–the syncretism that was alluded to earlier. Books on NRMs (New Religious Movements) have been consulted to help discover the reasons for the current popularity of neo-shamanism. Titles found to be particularly helpful include Feurstein (1991), Heelas (1996), Chryssides (1999), Pearson (2002) Harvey (2003), and Dawson (2003). It was also felt that Carl Jung should be included, because of the indirect influence his work has had on the New Age movement and because of the way in which a lot of what he proposed has in fact been adopted by neo-shamanic practitioners despite their claims to the contrary–that all their teachings stem from indigenous shamanic practices. As Donald F. Sandner points out, Jung realized that shamanism and analytical psychology had much in common in that they both focused on the healing and growth of the psyche. He saw the basic shamanic pattern as an archetype, in other words a universal part of the human psyche, and as a projection of individuation. Therefore he regarded shamanism as one of the cornerstones of analytical psychology (see Sandner & Wong, 1997, pp.3-4).



It has been suggested that “the goal of psychotherapy is to heal the soul, to make it healthy; the aim of religion is something essentially different, to save the soul” (Frankl, 1986, p.xxi). However, this is surely questionable as no priest, rabbi, imam, or any other religious practitioner for that matter, would fail to recognize the importance of a healthy soul and nor would they fail to work towards facilitating such a state in those who turn to them for help. Moreover, it is also highly doubtful whether one could save the soul without healing it first and it would thus seem more accurate to say that the two go hand in hand. It should also be pointed out that not all forms of psychotherapy necessarily aim at healing the soul or even recognize its existence for that matter. However, one form of psychotherapy which does recognize man’s spirit and actually starts from it is logotherapy. Such a therapy directed toward the human spirit will be

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It has been suggested that one of the features that Jungians have in common with shamanism is that “They seek direct experience with an inner world … Perhaps one of the strongest and most subtle connections between shamanism and analytical psychology is this firm insistence on the reality of a separate space to which the psyche has access” (Sandner & Wong, 1997, p.5). However, as in indigenous shamanism what is referred to here as an “inner world” is experienced by the shaman as another reality, just as real as our own, the analogy is not strictly true. On the other hand, what is true is that unlike the majority of writers on the subject (see Berman, 2006, for examples) Jung considered shamanism to be among “the great religions” of the world (see Jung, 1969, p.294) and had the courage to say so. Jung’s suggestion that we possess a common psychic substratum, known as the “collective unconscious” and out of which all conscious imagination and action grow, is of relevance to this study too. For if we accept that this is the case, it then follows that all folktales, from whatever culture, are created out of this and thus share common features which will be considered in the conclusion of this work. . It has to be said, however, that it is not difficult to pick holes in Jung if one should so wish. Take the following quote, for example: “[I]n our civilizations the people who form, psychologically speaking, the lowest stratum, live almost as unconsciously as primitive races” (Jung, 1961, p.227). How is it possible to know that “primitive” races lived unconsciously and what does Jung mean here by “the lowest stratum”? Are some of us better than others due to the fact that we may have higher IQs perhaps? And there follows another example: “[A] spiritual need has produced in our time our ‘discovery’ of psychology. There has never, of course, been a time when the psyche did not manifest itself, but formerly

indicated in cases where a patient turns to a doctor for help in his spiritual distress, which is frequently the reason why a patient will turn to a shaman too. Whereas the aim of psychotherapy is to bring instinctual facts to consciousness, the aim of logotherapy, in the words of the practitioner who first coined the phrase, is “to bring to awareness the spiritual realities” (Frankl, 1986, p.25). It is a form of existential analysis and “aims to bring the person to an understanding of his true life task, for with such understanding he will find it all the easier to cast off his neurosis” (Frankl, 1986, p.177). Therefore if any comparison is sought by the “outsider” to more fully appreciate how shamanic healing works, it would seem to be more helpful to refer to logotherapy rather than psychoanalysis.

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it attracted no attention–no one noticed it” (Jung, 1961, p.232). Perhaps it was not identified as “psychology” and the term “psyche” was not employed either, but what does Jung think shamans and priests have involved themselves in over the centuries if they have not been looking behind physical symptoms for their psychic causes, to discover their psychogenesis? Clearly Jung’s work, if it is to be considered, needs to be read with caution. One can also be critical of Jung for his failure to acknowledge the relation between trauma or psychic shock and soul loss and for failing to recognize the fact that people today (as practitioners such as Harner, Ingerman, and Horwitz frequently point out) are just as susceptible to soul loss as so-called primitives were (see Michael Smith, 1997, p.161). Notwithstanding these criticisms, the fact remains that he was the first major psychologist to take shamanism seriously, and for this reason alone he surely deserves a place in this review however “unfashionable” he might now be. There are other reasons for referring to the work of Jung in this study, not least of which relates to the profound crisis he experienced after his break with Freud. For in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, not only did Jung consider this crisis in his life to have been a form of soul loss but it also resulted in his undertaking the equivalent of a shamanic journey (into his own unconscious) to bring about a recovery. Indeed, Jung’s whole life very much reflected that of the wounded healer which the shaman is often referred to as. His childhood wounds and resulting fantasy life caused to a large extent by his mother’s instability and intermittent availability, his father’s inability to provide him with the intellectual and spiritual guidance that he sought, and the shock of the change from the pastoral background he grew up in to life in the big city that he experienced when he entered the Gymnasium “probably provoked a strong introverted tendency and an attending compensatory preoccupation with the psyche at an early age” (Michael Smith, 1997, p.68) that can be regarded as typical characteristics of a future shaman. Moreover, Jung’s choice of psychiatry as a speciality could well have been determined by his own psychological wounds too. Further parallels between Jung and the figure of the shaman can also be observed. For example, during his psychiatric residency at the asylum at Burgholzli, Jung, like many powerful shamans, showed signs of being highly intuitive and “had a knack for accessing the inner world of his patients” (Michael Smith, 1997, p.74). Other similarities can be found in

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the way he had the equivalent of spirit guides (referred to in his writings as Elijah, Salome, Philemon, and Ka) and how, through his analytic and psychotherapy practice, he was able to facilitate the recovery of souls. His love and respect for nature was another characteristic he shared in common with the shaman. He considered nature to be both alive and sacred and is known to have taken the equivalent of “vision quests” at his Bollingen retreat. Finally, and perhaps the most significant parallel of all, “Like the shaman and the archetypal hero, Jung … was able to return from his journey not only with benefits for his own life but … for his collective tribe (western society) as well” (Michael Smith, 1997, p.84).

CHAPTER THREE THE MANY FACES OF THE SHAMAN

People all over the world are fascinated by messages obtained in trance but standardized tests for hypnotisability in Western settings indicate that only about 15 percent are highly hypnotizable. Consequently, because not everyone can achieve this state, audiences depend on an expert for such spiritual information. The task of dealing with the superior powers of the unseen world is delegated to some person possessed of greater wisdom, knowledge and power–the shaman, the angagok, the voodoo-man, the obi-man, the conjurer, the magician, the wizard, or the sorcerer, –to mention just a few of the many different names he goes under (see Maddox, 2003, pp.23-24). As well as having many different titles, the shaman also plays many different roles: Shamans are healers, seers, and visionaries who have mastered death. They are in communication with the world of gods and spirits. Their bodies can be left behind while they fly to unearthly realms. They are poets and singers. They dance and create works of art. They are not only spiritual leaders but also judges and politicians, the repositories of the knowledge of the culture’s history, both sacred and secular. They are familiar with cosmic as well as physical geography; the ways of plants, animals, and the elements are known to them. They are psychologists, entertainers, and food finders. Above all, however, shamans are technicians of the sacred and masters of ecstasy (Halifax, 1991, pp.3-4).

Shamanism was frequently practised by people with nomadic lifestyles and the practitioners were intimately connected with the land, on which they entirely depended. However, once they stopped travelling from place to place, all this changed. As settlers, they were able to accumulate possessions and then they began fencing these things in–and fencing out the natural world. Man began to require gods that were more human, and to abandon the spirits of the animals and plants that had formerly served his needs. The major religions then moved in, along with

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the hierarchy of priests, and the shamans were lost (see Allen, 2000, pp.105-106). Such a potted history as is presented here can be nothing more than a generalisation. Moreover, to say that the shamans were lost, as Allen does, is not strictly accurate as we know from the fact that shamanism is still being practised. What we can say, however, is that with division of labour, the role of the shaman has become increasingly specialized. The many faces referred to in the title that can be identified include the shaman as religious formulator, counsellor, diviner, prophet, intermediary, healer, performer, ritualist, psychopomp, storyteller, teacher, shape-shifter, figurehead, governor, ecstatic, musician, dancer, and ascetic. And the different roles the shaman has played in the past and can play in the future will now be examined in more detail.

The Shaman as Religious Formulator The term “religious formulator” has been employed as the suggestion that the shaman plays the role of a priest is somewhat erroneous. The shaman has been seen to work in an ecstatic or an imitative trance state whereas priests, generally speaking, work in ordinary reality. Other reasons for differentiating between the priest and the shaman include the fact that the training a priest is required to undergo entails a deliberate course of study of a fixed duration and requires of him no initiatory ordeal such as that experienced by the shaman. “Furthermore, he [the priest] lays claim to no unique, divinely granted gifts and, where the shaman is concerned with the specific human crisis, the priest regards all the crises of life as the result of lapses in the application of an immutable, divinely ordained code” (Rutherford, 1986, p.111). There is also an absence of the hierarchical patterns of social organization found within churches in communities in which shamanism is practised (see Driver, 1991, p.69). According to Radin, primitive man was afraid of “the uncertainties of the struggle of life” and “the religious formulator, at first unconsciously if you will, capitalized on the sense of insecurity of the ordinary man” (Radin, 1957, pp.23-24). Was primitive man necessarily more afraid than we are today? The fact of the matter is we have no way of knowing and all this can be is conjecture. Although he might have been more afraid of thunder and lightning, for example, than we are, we have other reasons to be afraid now–such as the fear of a nuclear disaster. Moreover,

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“unconsciously if you will” seems a strange choice of phrase to use and to consider the religious formulator may have intentionally taken advantage of ordinary man’s sense of insecurity is rather a cynical attitude to take. Radin goes on to suggest that the reason why magic persists in civilizations where elaborate superstructures have been developed, is due, “over and above psychological reasons, to its usefulness in economic exploitation … the primary reason for its consistent employment and for the high degree of systemization it has so frequently attained is economic” (Radin, 1957, p.49). However, it could equally well be argued that magic exists because it is something that man seems to have an innate need for. Whereas it can be accepted that Radin has isolated one of the factors to account for why magic still prevails, it is not the only one and also not necessarily the main one. As evidence to support his case, Radin cites the example of the Eskimo angakok. He claims the well-integrated system that has been established is designed to ensure the contact with the supernatural belongs exclusively to the angakok so that the sense of fear of the ordinary man can be both manipulated and exploited. “What the angakok have really done is to combine the fear of economic insecurity, first, with the magical formulae and taboos and, secondly, with the fear of deceased human beings” (Radin, 1957, pp.52-53). From this Radin concludes that the religious formulator is mainly concerned with “gaining and maintaining power and security, and this is far more easily accomplished by various recombinations and reintegrations of the folklorist-magical background than by refined analyses of spiritual concepts” (Radin, 1957, p.56). However, can it really be that all our religious formulators are primarily motivated by the desire for power as Radin suggests? Can this really be the main reason why people should wish to become shamans? I sincerely hope not. For if this is really the case, the outlook for the future looks extremely bleak.

The Shaman as Counsellor With Harner method courses offered by the counselling has become within the neo-shamanic

training courses and alternatives such as the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies, a full-time profession for some practitioners movement. In an Age when more and more

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people are becoming disillusioned with conventional forms of treatment and turning to alternative forms of therapy instead, the role of the shaman as counsellor is likely to become an increasingly important one. Harner Method Shamanic Counseling, developed by the anthropologist Michael Harner, is a system that enables clients to make their own journeys to non-ordinary reality to obtain guidance in answer to the questions most important in their lives, and the client is counselled to become his or her own shaman for this type of journey. “The use of a drumming tape [played through a set of earphones] … permits the shamanic counsellor to utilize … the technique of simultaneous narration, wherein the client is asked to narrate out loud [into a lapel microphone connected to a recorder] the details of his or her journey as it is happening” (Harner, 1988, p.180). The recording makes it possible to carry out an immediate review and analysis of the experience and of the information gained. Harner regards the system as a method of personal empowerment by means of which we can recognize our own ability to acquire spiritual guidance without having to depend on external mediators. “The whole idea is to return to people what was once taken away from them when state began perpetuating monopolies on access to spiritual knowledge” (Harner, 1988, p.181). The Harner Method can be described as a form of brief therapy that aims to help people to help themselves. Unfortunately, however successful the method is in practice, its respectability is called into question by the fact that the training to become a certified Counsellor (available from the Foundation for Shamanic Studies) cannot be compared to the study involved in becoming a qualified psychotherapist, for example. This is a problem it shares with other forms of alternative or non-conventional treatment, regardless of whether they work or not. Moreover, Harner’s harshest critics might well argue that the Foundation for Shamanic Studies itself can be viewed as “perpetuating monopolies on access to spiritual knowledge”–the very problem that Harner claims to be attempting to combat. One of the questionable claims Harner has made is that it is not necessary for clients to share the cultural perspective of the shaman in order for his / her work to be effective as “The ancient way is powerful, and taps so deeply into the human mind, that one’s usual cultural belief systems and assumptions about reality are essentially irrelevant” (Harner, 1990, p.xii). However, it is difficult to know how anyone can be be

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passionate about something in which they have no involvement, and the cynic might well argue that this is in fact nothing more than just another effort on behalf of Harner to reach the widest possible market for what he is trying to promote. Sandra Ingerman specializes in utilizing the technique of soul retrieval as a form of therapy. Soul in this context can be characterized as being our vital essence, where the emotions, feeling or sentiments are situated. The aim of soul retrieval is to recover the part of the client’s soul that has been lost as this causes an “opening” through which illness can enter. The cause of this loss is believed to be due to an emotional or physical trauma that the client has been through. Ingerman believes it is the shaman’s role to track down the lost soul part in non-ordinary reality and then to return it to the body (see Ingerman, 1993, p.23). To give some idea of what soul retrieval entails, here are a couple of extracts from an account of the procedure: For a soul retrieval, I will ask Anne to let down next to me on my rug in the small room in which I work. I will touch her at the shoulder, hip, and ankle so that the psychic connection between the two of us is strong. I use a tape of drumming so that my own free soul can leave my body and search for Anne’s soul … I pulled that part from nonordinary reality into ordinary reality and proceeded to blow the soul back into Anne’s heart center and then, after sitting her up, into the crown of her head (Ingerman, 1993, pp.25 & 29).

The process does not end at this point because it is re-enforced with follow-up work: Once the healing is performed, the next step is for the client to start to look at life after illness, a process that involves two very crucial questions: What changes do I need to create in my life that will keep me healthy? How do I want to use my creative energy to make something positive in my life? (Ingerman, 1993, p.35).

Once again, as in the case of the Harner Method, the recognition of the efficacy of soul retrieval by the establishment is limited by the nature of the training available, compared to training in more orthodox forms of therapy.

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The Shaman as Diviner / Prophet Divination has been defined as “a means of discovering information which cannot be obtained by ordinary means or in an ordinary state of mind” (Vitebsky, 2001, p.104). This would suggest that an astrologer is not in an ordinary state of mind when he constructs a chart and a palmist is not in an ordinary state of mind when he reads the lines on someone’s hand. However, there is no reason why this should be the case. Consequently, Harner’s definition is to be preferred: “Shamans are especially healers, but they also engage in divination, seeing into the present, past, and future for other members of the community” (Harner, 1990, p.43). To the word “seeing”, however, I would add “with the help of the spirits” for as indigenous and neo-shamans alike have pointed out, they do not make use of their own power for this purpose. The shaman as Diviner may use the method of possession, enter a trance-like state, interpret omens or signs found in events in nature, cast stones, sticks or bones, or he may even look for the patterns in the markings on the liver or the shape of the entrails of an animal. Whatever means he chooses to employ, the underlying belief is always the same– “that the whole universe is interconnected and has a common pattern running through it, so that if the skilled person looks carefully at any one part of it he will be able to read off what is happening in other parts” (Turner, 1971, p.35). The Hebrew word for “prophet” was nahb –“one who is called”. The prophet was a person called by God to be the bearer of his message to men. And as his life was wholly dedicated to serving God, he was often referred to as “the man of God”. According to the biblical accounts of prophets such as Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah and Isaiah, the vocation would come to the prophet spontaneously, and often contrary to both expectation and desire (see Moscati, 1957, p.139). In a similar way, the call to be a shaman was often contrary to expectation and desire and, like the prophet, he would fight against it. In his paper Shamanistic Features in the Old Testament, Arvid Kapelrud describes how The nahbi … were active at Canaanite cult places, where they used to gather in flocks. They used different means to bring themselves into ecstasy: harp, tambourine, flute and lyre are mentioned in I Sam. X: 5. When the spirit came upon them, they prophesied and it is even so

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Despite the fact that the nahbi phenomenon in Israel was of Canaanite origin and was never fully accepted by the most orthodox, at the same time everyone must surely have been familiar with such practices. Moreover, a strong case can be made for the fact that such shamanistic practices had an influence on biblical literature–the Book of Jonah being a prime example. Although prophets and other mystics with a direct experience of god or the spirits are often crucial in the early stages of the development of a world religion, they later become regarded as a threat–a challenge to the established authority. This can be seen, for example, in the Christian Church, which has tended to suppress or marginalize this kind of practice, as has Orthodox Judaism (see Vitebsky, 2001, p.134).

The Shaman as Intermediary “Etymologically, ‘religion’ comes from the Latin word ‘religio’ (religere, which literally means ‘to tie together again,’ i.e., to reunite the creation with the creator)” (Heinze, 1991, p.137). Acting in his / her role as an intermediary, this is what the shaman can be said to do. And it was as an intermediary for others that they traditionally made their living. Not only can the shaman act as an intermediary between the community he / she represents and the spirits but he / she may also be called on at times to act as a mediator between two members of the community in dispute with each other. And where there is no form of centralized government, in small communities which have no other courts, the séance can provide an effective means of both airing and resolving local conflicts (see Lewis, 2003, p.144). As intermediary, the shaman can be said to serve as a bridge or a link–“to facilitate the changing of condition without violent social disruptions or an abrupt cessation of individual and collective life” (Van Gennep, 1977, p.48). Being regarded as an outsider gives the shaman an advantage as it enables him / her to “to criticize all structure-bound personae in terms of a moral order binding on all, and also to mediate between all segments or components of the structured system” (Turner, 1995, p.116-117).

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By communicating with the spirits on soul journeys and bringing back the lessons he / she learns from them, the shaman has traditionally been able to act as “a curber of other people’s crimes” (cf. the quote below) and it is in this way that practitioners have been able to regulate the people they represent. Of course it was not only shamans who performed this role but other religious leaders too. As James observed, whatever deity the prophets, seers, and devotees bore witness to was worth something to them personally because they could use him. “He guided their imagination, warranted their hopes, and controlled their will–or else they required him as a safeguard against the demon and a curber of other people’s crimes. In any case, they chose him for the value of the fruits he seemed to them to yield” (James, 1982, p.329). In his / her role as an intermediary, the shaman can be seen to be responsible for maintaining the balance of the community and for “creating the harmony from which life springs” (Halifax, 1991, p.15). The Desana payé (shaman) provides a good example of just how this can work in practice: The Tukano, one phratry (kin group) of which are the Desana, number around 7,000. They live in scattered dwellings along the rivers and small streams weaving through the vast equatorial rain forests of the northwest Amazon. In this little-explored region of the upper Amazon basin, the traditions of the various Tukano peoples have remained more or less intact. The Desana payé … is the intellectual of his culture as well as a priest and healer. One of the shaman’s main activities, however, is establishing contact with the Master of the Game Animals, who controls the success of hunting efforts and therefore the source of food. The payé is a mediator and moderator between the spirit elements that govern the field of life and the social network that is vulnerable to supernatural forces (Halifax, 1991, pp.137-138).

Lewis cites the example of the shamans among the Krekore Shona of the Zambesi Valley, who deal with the moral order and also with the relations of man to earth: Disputes are taken to him [the shaman] for settlement, as well as to the official secular courts, and he is also asked to decide issues concerning succession to chieftaincy and quarrels between neighbouring chiefs. In these matters it is the judgement of the guardian spirit, very properly sensitive to public opinion, that is delivered by the shaman (Lewis, 2003, p.123).

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Hultkrantz (1996) suggests that the main constituents of shamanism are the ability of the shaman to make contact with the supernatural world, to act as an intermediary between those he / she represents and the supernaturals, to receive inspiration from spirit helpers, and to have ecstatic experiences. However, in practice, the shaman’s duties depend on specific cultural context and these will clearly vary according to time and place. For example, urban shamans in the 21st century clearly have to adapt to the circumstances in which they find themselves in order to ensure both their relevance and their survival.

The Shaman as Healer Not only has the shaman traditionally played the role of a healer, such practices have also had a considerable influence on contemporary forms of healing. “Specific techniques long used in shamanism, such as change in state of consciousness, stress-reduction, visualisation, positive thinking, and assistance from nonordinary sources, are some of the approaches now widely employed in contemporary holisitic practice” (Harner, 1990, p. xiii). Jungian and Gestalt therapists also use guided visualisation with their patients to enable them to access inner wisdom. This often involves the patient having a dialogue with an inner sage or teacher in which he / she is encouraged to ask whatever questions seem to be most helpful, and the process can be compared to the shaman’s journey to find a spirit teacher (see Walsh, 1990, p.132). The person traditionally chosen to be the shaman of a community was often a wounded healer–someone who had been through a near-death experience and who was consequently well suited to helping others through difficult times in their lives. The experience would establish the healer’s warrant to minister to his people’s needs as one who knew how to control disorder. The profession to which the concept of the wounded healer most aptly applies today is probably that of the psychoanalyst and the kind of shamanism that has been practised by tribal peoples through the ages can thus be viewed as a form of pre-scientific psychotherapy (see Lewis, 2003, p.172). According to Harner (1990), in shamanic terms illnesses are not considered to be natural to the body and are usually viewed as power intrusions. To resist them you need to be in possession of guardian spirit power and serious illness is usually only possible when a person has lost this energizing force or it becomes depleted. Ingerman (1993), however,

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maintains there are three possible causes of illness–a person’s power animal leaving without a new one taking its place, soul loss, or spirit intrusion. Cases of soul loss are believed to be the result of an emotional or physical trauma. To cope with such an experience, a piece of our life force is said to separate from the body and travel into nonordinary reality. In psychological terms this is known as dissociation but psychology, unlike shamanism does not address where those parts go when they dissociate. Another cause of soul loss could be the theft of part of our life force by another person. In cases of spiritual intrusion, the shaman removes the intrusion by sucking it out and then places it where it can do no harm in a bowl of water, for example, where its power can be neutralized. It should be remembered that both these explanations for the cause of illness are proposed by neo-shamanic practitioners and they are based on their knowledge of indigenous shamanism practised in a variety of different settings, coupled with what they know about psychology. As for the suggestion that psychologists do not address where the soul parts go when they dissociate, it is not only unsubstantiated but also irrelevant. For what is important in both cases is surely whether the treatment works or not. Being able to put a name to whatever condition a patient is suffering from can be considered to be part of the healing process too. Naming an inauspicious condition is halfway to removing it. Embodying the invisible in a tangible symbol, such as that of soul theft, can be regarded as a big step towards remedying it and, as Turner (1995) points out, is not so far removed from the practice of the modern psychoanalyst. And once something is grasped by the mind, it can then be dealt with and mastered. It is worth mentioning that not only in shamanism has the role of healer traditionally been taken on by religious leaders. Among the Hebrews, for example, only the Levites were allowed to practise medicine and in England, even as late as 1858, it was the Archbishop of Canterbury who granted medical diplomas to newly qualified doctors (Maddox, 2003, p.150). Although emphasis is often placed on the healing of individual illness, either psychological or physical, it should be remembered that another role the shaman can play is in the healing of the community. The human can be revitalized through the use of ceremonies and ritual and this will be looked at in the next section of this chapter.

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The Shaman as Performer / Ritualist The shaman’s effectiveness is dependent on the ability to sweep the audience along with the power of his / her performance. Props and symbols are used by the shaman both to represent the psychic experience he / she undergoes and also to affect the experience of those taking part in the proceedings (see Vitebsky, 2001, p.52). “Everyone likes a good show and many shamans give full value for money, with impressive singing, drumming and dancing, conjuring tricks, and plenty of eye-rolling and melodramatic grimacing. However, it is the shaman’s costume that really grabs the attention” (Stone, 2003, p.66). It should be pointed out that although this might well have been the case in the past, based on the accounts of the early recorders of indigenous shamanic practices, it is less applicable to what takes place in neo-shamanic circles today, where the practitioner might well be dressed in nothing more than a pair of jeans and a sweater. In fact, it is perhaps precisely because the neo-shamanic practitioner does not choose to wear a special costume that clients might turn to him / her in preference to a priest in a dog collar or a doctor in a white gown. What the shaman chooses to wear is really all about “horses for courses” and what works in one setting may fail dismally in another. To a large extent then, the shaman’s popularity and success can be seen to depend on his / her sensitivity as to what will work or not, in just the same way as the success of any performer does. Whether dressed in everyday clothes or in a special costume, what the shaman choses to wear is calculated to act as a suggestive influence upon the minds of those he / she ministers to. The “magical” costume worn by shamans of old represented a religious microcosm qualitatively different from the surrounding profane space, constituting an almost complete symbolic system–a religious hierophany and cosmography. Moreover, the various objects that were attached to the costume were seen to impregnate the costume with spiritual power. Putting it on enabled the shaman to transcend profane space and prepare to enter into contact with the spiritual world (see Eliade, 1989, p.147). In other words, it acted as a prop that enabled the shaman to enter Sacred Space. Sometimes the costume was designed to imitate a skeleton, thus proclaiming the special status of the wearer as someone who had been dead and returned to life again. When it was in the form of a human skeleton, it is believed to have represented the family from which the

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ancestral shamans were successively born. Sometimes it was in the form of the skeleton of a bird. Some say the first shaman was in fact born from the union between an eagle and a woman, and the shaman can thus be regarded as a bird in the sense that, like the bird, he / she has access to the higher regions when he / she journeys to the Upper World (see Eliade, 1989, pp.159-160). In a similar manner, the priests and ministers of religion in our own times adopt, for the most part, various modes of apparel to typify their office and the function which they perform. Liturgical vestments can be regarded as “magical” costumes, though some priests might chose not to wear them for the same reason that a neo-shamanic practitioner might choose to dress in ordinary clothes; and bread, wine, baptismal water, pulpit, and Bible serve as props for Christian worship, in just the same sense as props are used in the theatre (see Driver, 1991, p.178). The use of trickery can have a significant part to play in the performance too, as the following account recorded by Rasmussen shows: During our stay at South Hampton Island I was witness to such a case, where a Shaman named Saraq went out to fight against evil spirits, but I discovered that he had taken some Caribou blood with him beforehand and rubbed himself with this without being discovered by anyone else. When he came in, he stated that the shaman who had been out with him had been unable to hold the evil spirit, but he, Saraq, had grasped it and stabbed it, inflicting a deep wound. It had then made its escape, but the wound was so deep that he could not conceive of the possibility of it surviving. All believed his report, all believed that he had driven the evil spirit which had been troubling the village, and no one was afraid any longer (Rasmussen, 1929, p.429).

It is not uncommon for shamans to use sleight of hand to create the impression that they are extracting various objects from their clients and there are many recorded observations of such instances. The process often entails sucking what is perceived to be a diseased area of the body and then vomiting out any “impurities” that are found. It is interesting to note how Filipino Christian spiritualists after World War II adapted this technique to fit Western images of surgical operations which they claimed to be performing on their patients without any need for anaesthetic and which apparently left no scars (see McClenon, 2002, pp.8-9).

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Harner describes how the Jivaro shaman deposits in his mouth two small twigs of the plant that he knows is the material “home” of the dangerous power that needs to be sucked out of the patient. One twig is used to capture the power, and the other one is used to help. He then goes on to make what seems to me to be a very important point, one that can easily be overlooked. Even if the shaman then removes the plant power object from his mouth and shows it to the patient and audience as evidence, this does not negate what is going on from him in non-ordinary reality. And this is what the outsider can never really appreciate (see Harner, 1990, pp.116-117). When there are no physical or mental peculiarities to set shamans apart from the other members of their community, to make them appear to be special and worthy of respect, they are under constant pressure to perform extraordinary feats which can be seen to exceed the powers of mere mortals, and the practice of trickery is a means of achieving this. The Eskimo angakok, for example, during the Sedna feast, would stab themselves with harpoons, previously having placed under their clothes bladders filled with blood (see Maddox, 2003, pp.51-52). That trickery was, and still is, practised by shamans is undeniable, but perhaps it can be justified if it produces effective results. Tiurai, a Tinguian shaman from a Malayan tribe of the Philippines, has this to say about the use of such tricks: “In order to treat my compatriots, it is necessary to represent the simplest things as though they were the most complicated and it is only by the successful outcome of a treatment that they realize I was right” (Radin, 1957, p.144). There is also an account, in the same volume, of how the Zande Witch Doctor Badobo cures his patients, in which he describes the tricks of the trade he employs (see pp.147-150). The ritual preparation that takes place before the shaman’s performance can be compared to the organisation that takes place in a theatre before a play–the construction of scenery, the choice of props, and the rituals performed by the actors themselves. The timing of the different stages of the shamanic ritual is decided in advance in the same way as the timing of the different stages of the run of a play–with the dress rehearsal, previews, opening night, last night and so on. The offerings made by the shaman, assistants and clients are paralleled by the good luck messages the actors receive from their fans and the box-office takings. The play itself equates to the shaman’s performance, and the start of the reincorporation stage is marked by the applause and curtain

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calls, flowers for the cast, and the first night party (see Stone, 2003, p.90). There are, however, dangers in regarding the shaman as a performer, as Horwitz perceptively points out: The concept of performance itself puts a filter between the observer and the shaman. In many reports the shamanic rite is referred to as a “performance,” and this choice of wording, as well as “audience” and “role,” emphasizes the form, and indicates the bias on the part of the observer. This could be at least partly responsible for later misunderstandings (in Ahlback, 1993, p.43).

What Horwitz is saying here is that the language we use to refer to a process can influence the way we interpret it and, if we hope to be objective, we need to be on our guard against this. Wallis (2003) reinforces what Horwitz has to say when he reminds us that for both shamans and neo-shamans the “spirit world” they interact with is very real indeed, and by comparing what they do to a “performance”, we run the risk of ignoring how seriously such practitioners take what they do and, at the same time, of encouraging people to regard them as nothing more than theatrical charlatans. It has to be admitted, however, that the point being made here perhaps loses some of it validity if we include in our definition of shamanism the imitative and demonstrative forms of practice that do not involve the shaman entering a genuine trance state. In the following account, Blacker describes the feast day of the Bodhisattva Jizo, at the temple known as Osorezan. What is particularly interesting about it is the fact that despite the itako showing no signs of being in a genuine trance state, the performance still had the impact on the audience that it was intended to produce. And in this respect it clearly parallels what can take place in a theatre. It also shows the power of imitative shamanism: In 1959 when I observed the proceedings … It was not difficult to see that not a single one of the itako were in any state resembling trance. They exhibited none of the usual symptoms of stertorous breathing and convulsively shaking hands. The chants they recited, moreover, were easily seen to fall into different fixed forms. … the itako were simply reciting the most suitable among a repertory of fixed chants learnt by heart in the course of their training as purporting to come from the dead. Their performance belonged to the category of geino or folk drama, and

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As the above account illustrates, what may sometimes appear to be true possession is basically a role play in which the shaman impersonates the spirits, sometimes in dialogue form. What sometimes occurs, however, is that the conscious, deliberate action that typifies imitative shamanism can change into an unconscious ecstatic automatism, a visionary dream, which Hultkrantz (1996) claims might be mistaken for a professional state. However, the use of the word “professional” here is surely inappropriate as the fact of the matter is that whether a shaman is a professional or not is dependent on whether they makes a living from what they do rather than on the kind of shamanism they happen to practise. According to Jorgen Podemann Sorensen, ritual can be defined as “representative acts designed to change or maintain their object, thus distinguishing ritual from all other kinds of communication and all other kinds of action” (in Ahlback, 1993, pp.19-20). Horwitz then goes one step further by differentiating the shamanic rite from ritual in general. He defines it as “any action or series of actions made by the shaman with the definite purpose of bringing the power of non-ordinary reality to ordinary reality” (Ahlback, 1993, p.40). According to Horwitz, two levels of action and interaction can be said to operate in the shamanic rite, “the ordinary reality level and the non-ordinary reality level. If the observer consistently acts as if one of the levels does not exist, then a comprehensive understanding of the rite cannot be reached” (Ahlback, 1993, p.44). However, it is difficult to understand how the observer could

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share the awareness of the shaman unless the observer himself / herself was one, and this is a problem we encounter again and again when dealing with this subject. The shaman, as a performer, is involved in conducting, participating in and perhaps creating ritual and, as Campbell (1973) points out, it is the rite, ritual and its imagery that makes religion meaningful for us. Without it the words are nothing more than carriers of concepts that often seem to make no contemporary sense. However, by participating in the drama of the rite we can be brought directly in touch with mythological symbols, as revelations, here and now, of what is always and forever. The mistake that the synagogues and churches make, in Campbell’s view, is to take the interpretation of the symbols out of our hands by telling us what they “mean.” For a rite to be effective it has to leave the participants to their own thoughts, to allow them to personalize, and this process can only be confused by the imposition of dogma and definitions. On the other hand, there are clearly people who like to have everything presented on a plate for them and who would appear to be perfectly happy with the way things are. Campbell makes the mistake of assuming that because it does not work for him it cannot work for anyone else, and the facts do not bear this out. Nevertheless, despite this reservation, that shamanism in all its forms provides the kind of effective rites he is alluding to, is undoubtedly one of the features that attract certain types of people to it and help to account for its appeal. Despite the fact that our longing for ritual is deep, in our culture it is often frustrated. An example of this, referred to by Driver, is the lack of ritual for the occasion of a divorce. There is nothing available to help the couple overcome their guilt feelings and sense of failure or to help the children to adapt to the new situation they find themselves in. “Frustration and anguish hang over everyone like a dismal cloud, and no shaman comes with a billow of witnesses to beat drums, sing loud songs, draw magic circles, and blow that cloud away” (Driver, 1991, p.4). What is particularly interesting about this quote is that it is written by an outsider, a committed Christian. Yet he is objective enough to be able to see how the rituals that are available to us within the more conventional forms of religion seem to have lost touch with the actualities of people’s lives and are consequently no longer effective. This is unfortunate as meaningful rituals can serve the purpose of “making and preserving order, fostering community, and effecting transformation” (Driver, 1991, p.71).

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The power of ritual to bring people together, to create what Turner refers to as “communitas” is recognised by Rappaport (1979) too. He notes that one of the benefits to be derived from rituals is that they can alter consciousness by inducing a feeling of “loss of self”, that sense of separation we often experience in our daily lives, and they thus enable us to experience a feeling of union with other members of the congregation. Three stages of ritual can be identified–preliminal, liminal and postliminal. And the liminality of ritual can be regarded as “a recourse from society’s alienating structures to a generalized bond of unity … that is felt or intuited among humans and other beings” (Driver, 1991, p.162). Heinze applies this three-stage model to shamanism and breaks it down further into seven steps. The process, however, will clearly vary depending on a number of factors, such as who the practitioner is, the needs of the clients, and the cultural setting, so this is offered just as a guideline: 1. The shaman and all those who are invited and have expressed the wish to participate decide on the purpose of the ritual. 2. The shaman determines and consecrates the ritual space. 3. Before anybody enters the ritual space, the shaman and all participants are purified (using certain breathing techniques, water, incense, etc.). 4. The appropriate spiritual entities are evoked. 5. Communication between the sacred and the shaman occurs and all participants benefit from the presence of the Divine. 6. The spiritual entities are feasted and properly sent away. 7. All leave ritually the sacred space and are reintegrated into the routines of daily life (Heinze, 1991, p.179).

Entering the ritual space can be compared to entering a temple because it serves as a focusing lens. When we enter marked-off space everything, at least potentially, assumes significance and even the ordinary becomes sacred by having our attention directed to it in a special way (see Smith, 1982, pp.54-55). It was Eliade’s belief that “A fundamental conception in archaic religions–the repetition of a ritual founded by Divine Beings implies the re-actualization of the original Time when the rite was first performed”

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(Eliade, 2003, p.6). He considered the gestures and operations that succeed one another during a rite to be the repetition of exemplary models that were originally performed, in mythical times, by the founders of the ceremonies. It can be argued this is what makes them sacred and through their periodical reiteration the shaman helps to regenerate the entire religious life of the community he / she serves. It has been suggested that “no society can exist that does not feel the need at regular intervals to sustain and reaffirm the collective feelings and ideas that constitute its unity and its personality” (Durkheim, 2001, p.322). And ritual, whether it may be shamanic or even political for that matter, can be seen as a means of achieving this. The claim that “rituals are ways of acting that are generated only within assembled groups and are meant to stimulate and sustain or recreate certain mental states in these groups” (Durkheim, 2001, p.11) does not stand up to scrutiny though. In reality, rituals are often practised by individuals working on their own, especially in the case of neoshamanism, and there are also solitary witches for that matter. What Durkheim has to say later in the same volume is perhaps more pertinent: Once we are acquitted of our ritual duties, we re-enter profane life with more courage and enthusiasm, not only because we have put ourselves in touch with a higher source of energy, but also because our forces have been reinvigorated by living briefly a life that is more relaxed, more free and easy. In this way, religion has a charm that is not the least of its attractions Durkheim, 2001, p.285).

However, it seems to me that what is being referred to here is what takes place in ceremony rather than religion and the two are not necessarily related. According to Maurice Bloch (1992), most of what is conventionally referred to as religious experience is fundamentally a ritual process by which people create and recreate the transcendental as a permanent reality to help them come to terms with the unanswerable questions that they are faced with. The ritual death of apprentice shamans in initiation rites, for example, “constitutes a symbolic denial of the natural process of birth, growth and decay, and at the same time it serves as an acknowledgement of a transcendental life constructed out of that natural process” (Braun & McCutcheon, (eds.), 2000, p.133). What Bloch refers to as “recreating the transcendental as a permanent reality” is what Eliade refers to as taking place when we enter “sacred primordial Time”. Another way of explaining what takes place is that once we leave profane

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time behind by entering the liminal stage in the ritual process, it is as if time stands still and the reality of our impermanence is no longer an issue for us. The importance of ritual, however, can perhaps be overstated, which is why it might be appropriate at this point to include the following anecdote provided by Horwitz: One of my teachers in this reality, Pahponee, a Kickapoo medicine woman and shaman, one told that her Grandmother, in the spirit world, told her, “You know these rituals are only needed when humans have lost their understanding of the greatest ceremony–Life itself. These things you already know. The greatest ceremony you can do is to live each day in a sacred way. Then you will be well off and so will those around you”’ (in Ahlback, 1993, pp.49-50).

Admirable sentiments indeed, but not see easy, unfortunately, to put into practice!

The Shaman as Psychopomp Shamanic practitioners are uniquely suited to acting as psychopomps because of their familiarity with the terrain of the Land of the Dead. In Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Eliade provides an example of a Lower World journey taken by an Alaskan shaman, one of the most striking features of which is the warning not to eat food while in the Land of the Dead. There are parallels between this and the mythological tale of Hades and Persephone who, because she had been tricked into eating pomegranate seeds, was forever after unable to return fully to the world above and to her mother Demeter (see Fritz, 2003, pp.49-50). The Land of the Dead played a significant part in the belief system of the Ancient Egyptians too, as can be seen from the texts of the so called Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Pert em hru, which reveal the unalterable belief of the Egyptians in the immortality of the soul, resurrection, and life after death The sacred temple mysteries of Isis and Osiris gave initiates the opportunity to come to terms with death long before old age or disease made it obligatory to do so, and to conquer it by discovering their own immortality (see Grof, 1994, pp.9-11).

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The rituals carried out by the shaman serve a similar purpose, as can be seen from how the angakkog, the Greenlandic shaman, deals with the souls of the dead: As death is surrounded by fear the angakkoq’s dealing with the souls of the dead is of great importance to the society. He is the mediator between the invisible world of the dead and that of the living. He is able, with the assistance of his helping spirits, to control the unpredictable consequences of the retaliation of the dead, guide the behaviour of the people involved and keep society from becoming the victim of evil forces. By his ritual death [during his initiation] he has overcome the fear of death and has thereby obtained the power of handling what is fearsome, fearlessly (Jakobsen, 1999, p.102).

In Christianity the shamanic function of psychopomp has been taken over by the priest. In Greek Orthodoxy, for example, it is believed that the soul of the dead person only departs when released by the priest at the funeral mass (see Rutherford, 1986, p.57). The same belief can actually be found in Georgian Orthodoxy too and in Orthodox Christianity in all its other forms–Russian, Ukrainian and so on.

The Shaman as Storyteller / Teacher The shaman’s journey is followed by his / her account of the experience–the story of the ascent to the Upper World or the decent to the world below, how the spirits encountered along the way were dealt with, and how the return was achieved. And as Eliade noted, “Probably a large number of epic “subjects” or motifs, as well as many characters, images, and clichés of epic literature ... were borrowed from the narratives of shamans describing their journeys and adventures in the superhuman worlds” (Eliade, 1989, p.510). Evidence to support this claim can be found in the biblical story of Jonah, for example (see Berman, 2007), which can be interpreted as a spiritual journey to the Lower World, or the ascent to the Upper World in the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. A cosmology serves to orient a community to its world by defining the place of its people in the universal scheme of things. It tells the members of the community who they are and where they stand in relation to the rest of creation (see Mathews, 1994, p.12). Such cosmologies are presented in the stories that are told by shamans in that they account for the origin and nature of the world and so help us to make sense of it. Moreover, the telling of such tales by the shaman confirms his / her

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mastery of the skills required to deal with the spirits and inspires the community’s confidence. Through shamanistic imagery and rites, mythology can be seen to provide us with a sense of numen in relation to human existence and also to the universe: The organized structure of the cosmos offers comprehensible images, which help define a person’s place within it, thus validating the social order and the very essence of society itself. Perhaps, more importantly, myths serve as guidelines for the individual, through the various crises and traumas arising from the need to conform to social mores, to lead a beneficial existence more or less in balance with the perennial cycles of the universe (Ripinsky-Naxon, 1993, p.194).

To this list, however, can be added the power of mythology to transform our lives and even, it can be argued, the social order itself. This will become clearer when we look at the ways in which such stories can be used for teaching purposes. Myths can be regarded as fictional stories that originated in early human communities “to explain commonplace but mysterious events in the natural world … based on the premise that one can somehow perceive and distinguish between reality as it really is … and reality as it happens to be (mis)represented” (Braun & McCutcheon, 2000, p.190). At the same time, a myth can be seen to convey, in some veiled, encoded or symbolic form, a social group’s deepest personal and social values, a viewpoint endorsed by Eliade. It is also, in the words of Doniger, “a story shared by a group of people who find [or “fabricate” as McCutcheon suggests] their most important meanings in it” (Braun & McCutcheon, 2000, p.2). It is thus apparent that as the mythologue of the community, the shaman’s role is of great significance. “Liminality, marginality and structural inferiority are conditions in which are frequently generated myths, symbols, rituals, philosophical systems, and works of art” (Turner, 1995, pp.128-9). It is during the liminal stage referred to by Turner that the shaman undertakes the “journey” and the account of the experience then follows. Turner sees this stage as a movement from structure to anti-structure. However, it can in fact be argued that the liminal stage has a structure of its own, just as the “journey” which takes place during the liminal stage does.

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Maddox, writing in the 1920s, clearly doubted the effectiveness of the shaman as an intermediary between the people and the higher powers, as can be seen from the quote that follows. But he did recognize the importance of the shaman as an educator: Whatever good he accomplished as physician and counsellor, his efforts in interceding with the higher powers were of course futile. But the medicine man gradually became the teacher of the young men of the nation, and the almoner of the race. Almost down to the present time, education and charity are largely in the hands of the religious class (Maddox, 2003, p.286).

And it can be argued that it is in this role, perhaps more effectively than in any other, that the shaman can have a significant part to play in our future too.

The Shaman as Figurehead / Governor In the absence of law and order, recourse to justice can be found by calling on the spirits, as the vodou medicine man does, in order to govern the shanty towns and the community (see Allen, 2000, p.153). The process works by shifting responsibility away from the self on to outside influences to externalize evil, thus encouraging a fatalistic approach. According to Allen, the belief that the spirits are responsible for anything and everything affecting our lives is also a feature of shamanism. The implication is that this provides members of such communities with convenient excuses for their failings (see Allen, 2000, p.180). There is, however, no evidence to support this. In fact, on neoshamanic workshops participants are encouraged to believe just the opposite–which is that they have the power to take control of their own lives through the techniques they learn and consequently no longer need to regard themselves as the victims of circumstance. On the other hand, the fact that the shaman can take on the role of figurehead is not in dispute, and can be exemplified by the present-day neo-shaman Kenin-Lopsan in Siberia. Indeed, so powerful is his reputation that some regard him as a living cult: He was a new Joseph Stalin, a new Vladimir Lenin. The ladies were queuing as if just to be in his presence, though actually he gave them divinations; he would scatter forty-one pebbles across his desk and use his power to tell the future. The citizens of Tuva had lost faith in

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It is evident that despite the rise in health care and literacy during the fifty years of Soviet control, people’s belief in the khams has not been dented, and, for the average person, there is still something beyond the rational which plays a significant part in their lives. In Eskimo Communities, which tend to be small and loosely structured, the shaman in the role of figurehead acts as the public diagnostician and curer of afflictions. These afflictions are generally believed to be caused by offences committed against natural forces and attributed to the spirits. And they have to be confessed before a cure can be affected. The séance that the shaman conducts at which the confessions take place is a mechanism of social control through which he can be seen to exercise both political and legal functions (see Lewis, 2003 pp.146-151). In communities such as these, where chieftainship is weak, “the knowledge brought back by the shaman from other worlds is particularly important and authoritative as a source of morality and social control” (Vitebsky, 2001, p.49). Even when there are political leaders, as among the Tungus reindeer herders of Siberia, the shaman’s position as the interpreter of clan morality and the person responsible for the clan’s well-being, can still be important. In fact, under Soviet rule, the position of the shaman actually grew in importance as possession became the vehicle for Tungus cultural nationalism and protest against the policies that were being imposed upon them, and the shamans joined forces with the kulaks (the political leaders) as agents of local resistance (see Lewis, 2003, p.141). In our own (some would say) over-regulated society, however, the role the shaman plays as a source of morality and social control is clearly a lot less significant. On the other hand, he / she could still well be an agent of local resistance and disaffection, leading protest against the building of new motorways or the damage being done to the environment (see Harvey, 2003, for examples). It has to be said, however, that although caring about the environment is commendable, by campaigning in this manner there is a danger of merely reinforcing the “primitive” image associated with shamanism. Many are likely to see such action as being indicative of the fact that shamanism is nothing but an archaic practice, fixed in the past, that stands in the way of what is perceived as “progress”, which is just what “insiders” such as Gordon MacLellan,

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who calls himself an environmental activist, are surely supposed to be fighting against.

The Shaman as Shape-shifter Shape-shifting can be viewed as the imitation of the actions and voices of animals, though shamans themselves would certainly not describe what they do in such terms. During his / her apprenticeship, the future shaman has to learn the secret language that is required to communicate with the animal spirits and how to take possession of them, and this is often the “animal language” itself or a form of language derived from animal cries. It is regarded as equivalent to knowing the secrets of nature and hence evidence of the ability to be able to prophesy. By sharing in the animal mode of being, the shaman can be seen to be reestablishing the situation that existed in mythical times, when man and animal were one (see Eliade, 1989, pp.96-98). There are many accounts of the incredible feats supposedly performed by shamans. For example, it was said of the Lapp shamans, the noiaidi, that as well as having the power to summon herds of wild reindeer, they were also able to transform themselves into animal forms–such as a wolf, a bear, a reindeer, or a fish (see Ripinsky-Naxon, 1993, p.63). According to Philip “Greywolf” Shallcrass, described as a Druid shaman, shape-shifters, also known as “theriomorphs”, can be found in both the Irish and the Welsh traditions too. Fintan mac Bochra, for example, regarded as a fount of wisdom by the Irish filidh, transforms into an eagle, a salmon and a stag. And in the Welsh Mabinogion, Lleu Llaw Gyffes transforms into an eagle, while other characters become deer or wolves. Then there is the Story of Taliesin, which has the bard and the goddess Ceridwen both going through a series of animal transformations (cited in Wallis, 2003, pp.86-87). The belief in a human’s ability to change into an animal form also flourished in Renaissance Italy. Among the authors of the many learned and respected books that were published on the subject was one by a friend and colleague of Galileo, Giovanni Batista Porta. His book Naturall Magick described the process of metamorphosis by the use of psychotropic substances (see Ripinsky-Naxon, 1993, pp.63-64). The Brother Grimm’s fairy tale The Three Languages is all about learning the language of the animals, and then showing how it comes in

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useful–the way the two white doves teach the new Pope to say Mass, for example. And if we take a view of reality in which everything is understood to be inhabited by a spirit similar to all other spirits, there is no problem in believing that man can change into an animal, or the other way around (see Bettelheim, 1991, pp.46-47). As in the case of voodoo, shape-shifting can be seen as a way of shifting responsibility away from the self and externalizing evil. The ballad of Reynardine, which was printed on broadsides in England and Ireland in the 19th Century, provides a good example of this–the animal is seen as responsible for perpetrating the crime, not the “shaman” who shape-shifts into that form. The version presented below was taken from http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/reynard.html [accessed 10/10/04]. Reynardine One night upon my rambles Two miles below Fermoy I met a farmer’s daughter All on the mountains high. I said, My pretty fair maid Your beauty shines so clear All on these lonesome mountains, I’m glad to meet you here. She said, Kind sir be civil, My company forsake, For in my own opinion I fear you are a rake. And if my parents they should know, My life they would destroy For keeping of your company All on the mountains high. He said, My dear I am no rake Brought up in Venus’ train, But I’m seeking for concealment All on the lonesome plain. Your beauty so enticed me I could not pass it by, So it’s with my gun I’ll guard you, All on the mountain high. Her cherry cheek and ruby lips They lost their former dye.

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She fainted in his arms there All on the mountain high. They hadn’t kissed but once or twice Till she came to again, With that she kindly asked him, Pray tell to me your name. If by chance you look for me Perhaps you’ll not me find, For I’ll be in my castle– Enquire for Reynardine. Sun and dark she followed him, His teeth did brightly shine, And he led her over the mountains, That sly, bold Reynardine.

In contrast to the traditional ballad presented above, there follows an account of a present-day shape-shifter: One of the Malay shamans I worked with in Pattani (southern Thailand) offered to transform himself into a tiger. … After forty minutes of evocative chanting during which he called several animal spirits but also Muslim sages, he indeed “became a tiger.” Although he did not physically change his shape, his facial expressions became tigerlike and he moved and jumped like a tiger in a way no human being would have been able to do during a normal waking state (Heinze, 1991, p.15).

Through shape-shifting shamans can be said to be “identifying themselves with the very powers that deeply threaten them, and … enhancing their own powers by the very power that threatens to enfeeble them” (Turner, 1995, p.174) and this parallels what children unconsciously do when they play games. Shape-shifting can still be seen to be taking place, even in our own times, in the way shamans have evolved and survived into the 21st century by developing preservation strategies. This has enabled them to adapt to the new situations they find themselves in and so remain relevant to the communities they serve.

The Shaman as Ecstatic Shamans, whether chosen by Superhuman Beings or whether they themselves seek to attract their attention and obtain their favours, can be defined as specialists in the sacred who succeed in having mystical

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experiences which are expressed in the shaman’s trance. Consequently, they can be regarded as primarily ecstatics who learn, through their initiation, how to orient themselves in the other regions which they enter during trance and how to explore the new planes of existence which are thus revealed to them (see Eliade, 2003, p.95). It should be noted, however, that not all shamans have this ability and genuine ecstatic shamanism needs to be differentiated from both the imitative and demonstrative forms referred to by Hultrantz. In the archaic religions, the shaman and the medicine man play the role of the mystics in developed religions; hence they constitute an exemplary model for the rest of the community precisely because they have realized transcendence and freedom, and have, by that fact, become like spirits and other Supernatural Beings (Eliade, 2003, pp.100-101).

Although the value-laden term “developed religions” that Eliade employs here would not be to everyone’s liking these days, that shamans act as role models is plain to see for otherwise the community would clearly not be able to look up to them. The shaman as an ecstatic has at times been confused with the shaman as a madman or neurotic. But as Eliade points out, “Often when the shaman’s or medicine man’s vocation is revealed through an illness or an epileptoid attack, the initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure” (Eliade, 1989, p.27). It should also be taken into account that the shamanic initiation proper includes “a course of theoretical and practical instruction too complicated to be within the grasp of a neurotic” (Eliade, 1989, p.31). In any case, even if such an episode were indeed a schizophrenic breakdown, it could be viewed as an inner journey “to recover something missed or lost, and to restore, thereby, a vital balance” (Campbell, 1973, p.203) and thus be seen as something positive. Laing believed it is the so-called normal person who really suffers because he is alienated from the spiritual process of life, and that a person is only neurotic or psychotic within the framework of a specific culture. In another culture the same behaviour may be considered the norm. In other words, “What appears as a terrible breakdown of the personality, may, from certain cultural perspectives, include elements of a genuine breakthrough” (Feurstein, 1991, p.235). One way of inducing the ecstatic state is by making use of drugs. For example, the priests of ancient Mexico made an ointment or a drink from olloliuhqui seeds which induced visions and delirium, the Samoyeds of

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Siberia and some tribes of California used the poisonous toadstool, and the priestess of Delphi are believed to have inhaled stupefying vapours from a deep fissure in the ground (see Maddox, 2003, pp.45-46). Winkelman uses the terms “psychointegrators” rather than “hallucinogens” to refer to such drugs “to call attention to their commonality in stimulating emotional, mental, and experiential transformations and integrations” (Winkelman, 2000, p.211). The problem with the term “psychointegrators”, however, is that it suggests the effects of such drugs are always positive, which is of course not necessarily the case. In many forms of shamanism drugs are not used at all, including the method taught by Harner, which “typically utilizes monotonous percussion sound to enter an altered state of consciousness. This classic drug-free method is remarkably safe. If practitioners do not maintain focus and discipline, they simply return to the ordinary state of consciousness” (Harner, 1990, p.31). This emphasis on the safety aspect that is apparent in promotional literature for neo-shamanic courses has already been noted and it serves two purposes. It helps to make such practices more acceptable to outsiders and to ensure the courses appeal to the widest possible market. Another way of inducing the ecstatic state can be through dancing: Powerfulness is either attained by dancing, or else superfluous power is danced away. … Dancing and mystical losing of self, dancing and ecstatic reeling, are so closely connected that the dance may even become the symbol of mystic unity with God; as Jalaluddin Rumi says: “He who knows the power of the dance dwells in God, for he knows that love slays”’ (Van Der Leeuw, 1938, p.375-376).

In Lommel’s paper on shamanism in Australia, he describes how the shaman journeys to the Land of the Dead and enters into relation with the spirits of the dead so as to become artistically productive: His wife may then notice that his soul leaves the body every night … the shaman will tell her that he goes to the spirits to learn dances. Then he will first explain the dances to his wife and sing them to her, and after that he will teach them to everyone else. That is how the magnificent pantomimic dances of the aborigines come into being (in Heinze, 1991, pp.190-191).

As Eliade recognised, the attraction of the ecstatic state is that it is a means of transcending the profane, individual condition and attaining a transpersonal perspective:

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Chapter Three Whether there is a re-immersion in primordial life in order to obtain a spiritual renewal of the entire being or (as in Buddhist mysticism and Eskimo shamanism) a deliverance from the illusions of the flesh, the result is the same–a certain recovery of the very source of spiritual existence, which is at once “truth” and “life” (Eliade, 1989, p.64).

And in our urban jungles where stress is endemic in that it has become a way of life, it is just this sort of spiritual renewal that people hunger for. Neo-shamanic weekend workshops and the ongoing drumming circles the participants can subsequently join cater for this need by providing them with just the sort of outlet they are after.

The Shaman as Musician While shamans cannot actually be said to make music, they do make use of musical instruments, a drum, or musical bow–to help them enter altered states of consciousness. Rattles may also be employed and sometimes shaken over the client to ascertain where the problem may lie. It is the drum, however, that has the primary role in ceremonies in many different cultures where it is indispensable for conducting the shamanic séance, “whether it carries the shaman to the ‘Center of the World,’ or enables him to fly through the air, or summons and ‘imprisons’ the spirits, or, finally, if the drumming enables the shaman to concentrate and regain contact with the spiritual world through which he is preparing to travel” (Eliade, 1989, p.168). It is said to be from a branch of the Cosmic Tree which stands in the Centre of the World, that the shaman makes the shell of his / her drum, and by the fact that it is made from this source, the shaman, through drumming, is believed to be magically projected into the vicinity of the Tree in the Centre of the World, from where he / she can ascend to the sky. The drumming to call the spirits at the beginning of the séance provides the preparation for the ecstatic journey, which is probably why (among the Yakut and the Buryat) the drum was called the “shaman’s horse” (see Eliade, 1989, pp.168-173). The drum is not only spoken of as “the shaman’s horse” but also, if he has to cross water, as “the shaman’s boat”. In one case the drumstick will be the shaman’s lash and the drum might be made with a horse’s hide to represent the animal; in the other, the paddle for the shaman’s canoe. The use of some kind of spirit boat in the shamanic journey “occurs in Siberia as well as in Malaysia and Indonesia, where it is related to the ‘boat of

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the dead.’ Often the spirit canoe is in the form of a serpent, as in aboriginal Australia, or as in the ‘Snake-Canoe’ of the Desana Indians of the South American tropical forest” (Harner, 1990, p.71). Another name for the drum is the “shaman’s bow”, as it is known among the Yurak of the tundra. This could be because it was originally used to drive away evil spirits, when it might have served as a weapon like the archer’s bow. Alternatively, it could be because the bow dispatches an arrow which flies through the air, just as the shaman is thought to fly during his journey, and an example of shamanic flight being likened to that of an arrow is that of the Greek god Apollo (see Rutherford, 1986, pp.49-50). Neo-shamans make use of the drum for journeying too: A drumming tempo of about 205 to 220 beats per minute is usually effective … Allow yourself about ten minutes for the journey. Instruct your assistant to stop drumming at the end of ten minutes, striking the drum sharply four times to signal to you that it is time to return. Then your assistant should immediately beat the drum very rapidly for about half a minute to accompany you on the return journey, concluding with four more sharp strikes of the drum to signal that the journey is over (Harner, 1990, p.31).

Fashions change, however, and these days would-be shamans have the option of buying “vegetarian” drums made with synthetic skins, just as there are synthetic furs. Drumming probably facilitates shamanic states and journeying in several ways: First, it may act as a concentration device that continuously reminds the shaman of her purpose and reduces the mind’s incessant tendency to wander. It also probably drowns out other distracting stimuli and enables the shaman to focus attention inward. … Drumming and other loud noises may also act as destabilizing factors that disrupt the ongoing psychological process by which we continuously maintain our usual state of consciousness. Charles Tart says that in his experience a sufficiently loud drumbeat feels as though it rapidly overwhelms stabilizing forces, making an abrupt change of state very easy (Walsh, 1990, pp.174-176).

There have in fact been many attempts to explain how rhythmic drumming affects us, both speculative as in the case just quoted and also more scientific efforts. Neher’s (1961) investigations demonstrated that drumming could induce theta wave EEG frequency, Maxfield (1994) found that theta brain waves were synchronized with monotonous

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drumbeats of 3 to 6 cycles per second, and S. Harner and Tyron (1996) noted trends toward enhanced positive mood states and an increase in positive immune response to be the results of such drumming (see Krippner, 2002). Others point out that as the same shamanic states can be accessed by other means too and the healing can be affected through other forms of perceptual flooding, perhaps the use of drumming is in fact not so significant after all. Opinion remains divided and further research into the matter is clearly warranted. It should be pointed out that it is not only the shaman who takes on the role of musician–assistants may also play a part in the process. Ethnic Malay, Javanese, and Balinese shamans, for example, use a small gamelan orchestra and northern Thai shamans have a traditional orchestra to play for them too (see Heinze, 1991, p.177). Not only do shamans make use of musical instruments but they also incorporate what are known as power songs. These are used to contact helpers in the spirit world and to assist in healing and other work (see Harner, 1990, p.72). And this is what Annette Host from the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies has to say about song in her article The Staff and the Song on the Centre’s website: Song and chanting has been a dimension in shamanic practice always and everywhere, and song shows up all by itself for anyone who starts on the path of shamanism. It is said that the seidr song was ecstatic song. To me ecstasy means a state where you have let go so much of ego, control, and convention that the power of the universe flushes through you unhindered. And that is the first trait of shamanic singing: that you sing from a source that is bigger than yourself, and let power flow through you as song. In other words, the song is sung in an altered state of awareness, or in trance. And when we start to sing like that, we can experience a marvellous shift in our voice, our breathing and endurance, the power and effect of our utterance. The song sings us. There is a second trait of the ecstatic song that makes it shamanic: the song has a definite purpose. We sing open the doors to the otherworld. We sing out to our spirit helpers, so they may know we’re calling them. We sing to a tree to honour its beautiful power. We sing the invisible threads between us and our spirit helpers stronger. We sing a mound open, so we can talk with our ancestors. We sing pains and spirits of illness away. We sing thanks to the plants we harvest.

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This gets us to the third trait. Shamanic songs or chants are not composed or constructed. They are found, heard, gotten, when we are inspired. They arrive, arise, unfold. And then they burst from me, when I am full, full, and cannot contain them any longer. The songs visit us. Sometimes they stay with us for a long time, sometimes they leave again fast. Sometimes they have words, sometimes just sounds.

Song might well have been “a dimension in shamanic practice always and everywhere”, but the statement needs to be substantiated with evidence to carry any weight and who says the seidr song was ecstatic? Unfortunately this is a characteristic of popular writing on shamanism and helps to explain why it is not taken seriously by academics working in the same field. What does come across, however, is the sincerity of the writer and what we are presented with here is very much an insider’s view of the power of song. Songs are also used in rituals for healing purposes, as in the Republic of Georgia where they are still chanted over sick children even today, despite the fact that the vast majority of the population are devout members of the Georgian Orthodox church. The bat’onebi are spirits who are believed to live beyond the Black Sea and they are sent out by their superior in all directions, in order to test the loyalty of mankind. During the daytime, the bat’onebi move about on mules. In the evening, however, they return to the houses of the sick and reside in the bodies of the stricken. Bat’onebi are to be obeyed without question, as resistance only enrages them. Nonetheless, their hearts can be conquered with tenderness and caresses; thus, it is possible to protect oneself from calamity. They are said to enjoy gentle songs and the bright sound of instrumental music. The blisters from chickenpox (qvavili, literally: flowers) and the redness from measles (ts’itela, literally: redness) are signs of the arrival of the bat’onebi. In preparation for the ritual, the patient’s bed and room are decorated with colourful fabrics and flowers. Visitors wear red or white garments and walk around the sick person with presents for the bat’onebi in their hands. A table full of sweets and a kind of Christmas tree are prepared for them too. If the illness becomes worse, the family of the patient turn to the ritual of “asking-for-pardon” (sabodisho) and a mebodishe (a woman who has access to the bat’onebi and acts as a mediator) is invited to contact them to find out what they want and to win them over. Once the patient recovers, the bat’onebi have to be escorted on their way, back to where they came from.

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A translation of the lyrics to one of these songs is presented below. Laynany was collected in 1987 at Akhalsopeli (a district of Qvareli) by members of Ensemble Mzetamze, an ensemble dedicated exclusively to the musical traditions of Georgian women, and the lyrics were translated by my partner Ketevan Kalandadze: Iavnana, vardos Nana, Iavnanina, Nana da Nana, vardo (my rose), Nana, Iavnanina. We are seven sisters and brothers, Iavnanina. We travelled through seven villages, Iavnanina. We entered the villages so quietly, Iavnanina that not even a single dog barked, Iavnanina. We entered the yard so quietly, Iavnanina, And got into the beds of the ill, Iavnanina, So that the mother did not notice, Iavnanina, Nobody noticed, Iavnaina. I picked violets and made a bouquet of roses, Iavnanina. I spread them over our ill ones, Iavnanina. Iavnana, Vardos Nana, Iavnanina.

The Shaman as Dancer Among the Manchu people, the dance performed by shamans is known as “Tiaojiashen” (inviting gods of the house) or “Shaoqixiang” (the bannermen rather than the Han people invite the gods). The Shaman ties a long bell to his waist in performance and holds a drum. Gods in charge of different sectors of people’s lives are invited to attend to the sound of the drums and the bells. After each god arrives, the Shaman will imitate the movements of the god. For instance, if he has invited the God of Hawk, he will imitate flying and pecking at the food on the table; if he has invited the God of the Tiger, he will have to jump, scratch, spring and communicate with people on the spot; or he should play with burned incense in magical darkness, showing that the God of the Golden Flower has arrived. In Mongolia the dance performed by shamans is known as the “Bo” or “Bo Dance”. In the past, the shaman always wore a cap with a hawk-shaped ornament, a skirt with ribbons and nine bronze mirrors around his waist to show his power, and the musical instrument was a one-sided drum. One shaman would be the major performer, while the other one or two beat drums as an accompaniment. The dance movements were imitation of birds, beasts or all kinds of spirits. The highly ulfi dancers could turn round and round continuously and although such performances remain today,

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apparently the dancers no longer spin that well (adapted from Welcome to dance http://english.ccnt.com.cn [accessed 5/2/2005]). The use of dance as a means of accessing a trancelike state is not an exclusive feature of shamanism. The Whirling (Mevlevi) Dervishes, for example, use it too. The dancers perform the final stages of the ritual spinning in circles, with revolutions per minute varying from thirty to sixty-five and above. With rigid bodies, and tranquil faces, the men whirl and whirl until they enter hal, a state of trance which they believe enables them to achieve fusion with “the divine harmony” (see Ripinsky-Naxon, 1993, p.53). And in his article The Secret Life of Trance: Investigating the Cross-Cultural Connection between Music and Religious Experience, Robin Sylvan writes about the West African traditions: In the shamanistic trance state, the shaman’s spirit travels out of the body into the spiritual worlds. In the possession dances of cultures like the Fon and the Yoruba of West Africa, this directionality is reversed: the spirit beings travel from their worlds into the body of the dancer so that they can be physically incarnated and present in this world. In these musicreligious traditions, the rhythm of the drums also plays a central role. Gods or deities (called loa among the Fon or orisha among the Yoruba) have their own distinctive rhythm and chant that is played by a small drum ensemble. The priests and priestesses dance for long periods of time, entering into trance states, until one or more of them is possessed by a deity, usually signalled by shaking that comes over the possessed dancer. The personality of the dancer disappears and is replaced by that of the deity. The dancer’s face, body language, movements, and ulfilmen change dramatically. When the head priest or priestess identifies the possessing deity the possessed dancer is dressed in the appropriate clothes of that deity and will then conduct healings, consultations, or divinations. Many dancers can be possessed at the same time and the proceedings can get quite intense. After returning from the possession state, the dancer has no memory of what happened.

An important figure in neo-shamanism, as far as dance is concerned, is Gabrielle Roth. The following information about her and her dancework has been adapted from her website: Gabrielle Roth is the author of Maps to Ecstasy, Sweat Your Prayers, and her latest book, Connections. She is the artistic director of her dance/theatre/music company, The Mirrors; and through her recording company Raven Recording (co-founded with her husband, Robert Ansell) has produced more than twenty music compilations, considered to be on the cutting edge of shamanic trance dance music. Through the 5Rhythms™, her self-styled form of ecstatic trance dance, Roth uses

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“Put your psyche in motion”, Roth says, “and it will heal itself”, which makes it all sound very simple. However, as we all know only too well, in practice it is unlikely to be so. Nevertheless, what her work does show is how indigenous practices are successfully being adapted to suit the needs and interests of people living in our own times. What is known as “Techno-Shamanism” provides another example of this–a form of music for dancing to that makes use of new technologies to enhance the sounds of certain instruments–such as drums. To quote from a New Age website, http://www.crystalinks.com/shamanism.html [accessed 23/2/205], “Many of these people hope to link the newer sounds and vibrations with ET civilizations–such as those from Sirius. They see this as a form of communication.” It is, of course, language like this that gives “New Age” movements such a bad name in academic circles and provides the perfect example of everything serious “insiders” should be fighting against and trying to disassociate themselves from. Claims that cannot be substantiated and the imprecise use of language can also be found on the website http://www.trancedance.com [accessed 23/3/05]: TranceDance is a unique blend of healing sounds, dynamic percussive rhythms, transformational breathing techniques and the innovative use of a blindfold or bandana–together stimulating a “trance” state that promotes spiritual awakenings, mental clarity, physical stamina and emotional wellbeing. … Our contemporary approach to Trance Dance brings together the richness of these ancient rituals with some startlingly effective modern techniques. One of these is the use of a blindfold or bandana which covers the eyes, thereby shutting down the major source of distractions to the brain and stimulating an “inner vision” that reveals hidden meanings and answers to many of life’s most compelling questions.

Can the use of a blindfold really be described as a “startlingly effective” modern technique? Has it really only just been discovered? Has nobody ever danced in the dark before? And if what is being sold here really provides all the benefits it is claimed to do, it is impossible to understand

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why it has not already been made a compulsory subject to be studied in every school worldwide.

The Shaman as Ascetic It has been observed that no one can engage in a religious ceremony of any importance without submitting to a kind of preparatory initiation that introduces him gradually into the sacred world. This can take the form of anointings, purifications, and blessings–all essentially positive operations. But the same result can be achieved through fasts, vigils, retreat, and silence, that is by ritual abstinences that are nothing more than the practical application of specific prohibitions (Durkheim, 2001, p.230).

In other words, ascetic practices can be a means of setting the scene prior to entering sacred space, the first of the three stages of ceremony. To abstain from something that is useful or that answers to some human need clearly entails discomfort, and this becomes asceticism proper when practised as a way of life. Normally the negative cult serves only as a form of preparation for the positive cult, and an example of this would be the rites of puberty or the initiatory rites that the apprentice shaman has to undergo. And it is of course not only the goals pursued by apprentice shamans that call for ascetic practices to bring about transmutation–the same is required of other mystics too, such as yogis. According to James, asceticism symbolizes “the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which is neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal to the soul’s heroic resources, and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering” (James, 1982, p.362). However, for initiates it has no such symbolism. It is merely their apprenticeship, part of a necessary process before they can become accepted by both their teachers and the people they will ultimately represent. The following details of the Eskimo shaman lgjugarjuk’s gruelling initiation in isolation, thirty days of cold and fasting in the depth of winter, gives some indication of the kind of privations apprentices were expected to endure. Indeed, Igjugarjuk himself declared that the strain was so severe that he “sometimes died a little”. During all that time, he thought only of the Great Spirit, and fulfilment to keep his mind free from all memory of human beings and everyday things. Toward the end of the thirty days there came to him a helping spirit in the shape of a woman. She came while he was asleep and seemed

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Ordeals the apprentice might be required to undergo in non-ordinary reality during his / her initiation could include torture and violent dismemberment of the body, the scraping away of the flesh until the body is reduced to a skeleton, the substitution of viscera and renewal of the blood, and even a period spent in Hell during which the future shaman is taught by the souls of dead shamans and by demons (see Eliade, 2003, p.96). The process of dismemberment culminating in consumption can be seen as a survival from the hunting phase, since it mirrors what a hunter does to his quarry: By offering himself as a sacrificial victim the shaman is repaying the debt humans have incurred by their slaughter of animals. In the words of Ramusen’s Eskimo, “All the creatures we have to kill and eat, all those we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, as we have” (Rutherford, 1986, p.37).

Nostalgia for an initiatory renewal can be regarded as “the modern formulation of man’s eternal longing to find a positive meaning in death, to accept death as a transition rite to a higher mode of being … not subject to the destroying actions of Time” (Eliade, 2003, p.136). Indeed, it can be argued that it is only in initiation that death is given a positive value. The practitioners of neo-shamanism, by attempting to make the techniques accessible to everyone rather than just an elite few, enable us to experience such a process for ourselves. The “pattern of sacramental death and rebirth is universal. It occurs not only among shamanistic hunting societies but also among the planting societies, where it is incorporated into the cycle of the crops, and the dying god is equivalent to the ear of corn that falls into the ground to die, and is born again in the new growth” (Larsen, 1998, p.63). In the Babylonian myth of creation, the vegetation that dries up and withers during the dry season is interpreted as Tammuz’ descent to the underworld, and when rain and fertility return to the land Tammuz is resurrected and the cosmos is created anew (see Otzen, Gottlieb, and

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Jeppesen, 1980, p.15). The same motif is evident in the Ba’al myth in Ugarit, in which Mot represents the ripened grain, and Anat deals with him accordingly so the cycle continues. It can also be found recorded in our own tradition, in the ballad of John Barleycorn: The Ballad of John Barleycorn There was three men come out of the West Their fortunes for to try And these three men made a solemn vow John Barleycorn must die. They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in Throwing clods all on his head And these three men made a solemn vow John Barleycorn was Dead. They’ve left him in the ground for a very long time Till the rains from heaven did fall Then little Sir John’s sprung up his head And so amazed them all They’ve left him in the ground till the Midsummer Till he’s grown both pale and wan Then little Sir John’s grown a long, long beard And so become a man. They hire’d men with their scythes so sharp To cut him off at the knee. They’ve bound him and tied him around the waist Serving him most barb’rously. They hire’d men with their sharp pitch-forks To prick him to the heart But the drover he served him worse than that For he’s bound him to the cart. They’ve rolled him around and around the field Till they came unto a barn And there they made a solemn mow Of Little Sir John Barleycorn They’ve hire’d men with their crab-tree sticks To strip him skin from bone But the miller, he served him worse than that, For he’s ground him between two stones.

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Chapter Three Here’s Little sir John in the nut-brown bowl And brandy in the glass But Little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl’s Proved the stronger man at last For the hunts man he can’t hunt the fox Nor so loudly blow his horn And the tinker, he can’t mend Kettles or pots Without a little of Sir John Barleycorn.

The shaman can be said to have pursued submission to the world of the spirit, often combined with severe ascetism in the same way as was adopted by the holy fools in Christianity and in Sufism. In Japan, for example, shamans can only obtain the special powers they need to bridge the gap between the two worlds through ascetic practices known in general as gyo–fasting, cold water treatments, and the recitation of words of power (see Blacker, 1999, p.85). The demonstrations that are organised by yamabushi to convince the community that the discipline has risen above the ordinary human state include hi-watari or firewalking, yudate or pouring boiling water over the body, and more rarely katana-watari or climbing up a ladder of swords. The ladder of swords symbolizes the ladder to heaven, and only the shaman can mount it. Excessive heating of the body can be seen as a means of assimilating sacred power and the ability to withstand extreme heat is one of the characteristic marks of shamans. “In whatever cultural context it appears, the syndrome of magical heat proclaims that the profane human condition has been abolished and that one shares in a transcendent mode of being, that of the Gods” (Eliade, 2003, p.72). Throughout history, spiritual practitioners have resorted to the metaphor of heat or fire to describe the process of transformation that leads to enlightenment, and there are many examples of stories about heat-immunity feats in Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. For example, D1841.3, “Burning magically evaded” and D1841.3.2.3, “red hot iron carried with bare hands without harm to saint” (see McClenon, 2002, p.71). It would seem that what appear to be magical feats capture people’s attention so that they subconsciously accept therapeutic suggestions. Their belief in the performer’s ideology is enhanced by what they observe and placebo effects are thus reinforced. It has been suggested that practising sexual abstinence made it easier for the medicine man to enter the ecstatic state and that “repression of sex impulses is sometimes concomitant with the stimulation of religious auto-

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intoxication” (Maddox, 2003, pp.47-48). However, no evidence is presented to support this hypothesis. On the other hand, what is known is that “The ecstatic state can be induced by abstinence from food. Fasting, indeed, is one of the strongest means of interfering with the healthy action of bodily and mental functions, and so of producing visions of delight” (Maddox, 2003, p.49). The example is given of the Boulian of North Queensland who, after fasting for three days, is rewarded with the vision of a malkari. This nature-spirit then inserts pebbles, bones or quartz-crystals into the Boulian’s body to turn him into a medicine man. Although the Native American Sun Dance ceremony, like the Ghost Dance, was not strictly speaking shamanic in that it was open to being performed by the whole community and not only shamans, it is still worthy of inclusion as another form of ascetic practice. In preparation for the ceremony, the devotee’s skin would be pierced with sharp skewers and fastened by strong thongs to a centre pole. For many hours he would then dance into the centre, then out again, thereby tugging on the thongs until they broke his flesh. As well as the numerous roles that have been examined in this Chapter, in certain myths the shaman even appears as the Creator himself: According to the myths of the Ostyak people who inhabit the banks of the Yenisei River in Siberia the entire creation is the work of the Great Shaman Doh. Hovering over the waters with a company of waterfowl and finding nowhere to rest he orders a diving bird to go to the bottom and bring up a little mud. Its tiny beak can hold a mere grain, but out of it the Great Shaman makes an island which, spreading like algae over the surface of the water, becomes the earth (Rutherford, 1986, p.89).

After considering in some detail all the different roles the shaman plays, we are left with the question of what makes a shaman and of how to account for the special gifts such people are endowed with. [S]tudies [by McClenon in 1994 and Targ, Schlitz & Irwin in 2000] indicate a constellation of psychological variables that imply the existence of a shamanic syndrome characterized by hypnotisability, dissociative ability, propensity for anomalous experience, fantasy proneness, temporal-lobe signs (measured by questionnaire items regarding unusual experiences associated with temporal lobe epilepsy), temporal lobe lability (measured by EEG), and thinness of cognitive boundaries (measured by Ernest Hartmann’s boundary questionnaire) (McClenon, 2002, p.134).

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Like many others before him and no doubt like many others who will follow, McClenon goes to great pains to find an explanation for the shaman’s special gifts, unable just to accept them for what they are, as an “insider” would be able to do, and thus unable to derive maximum benefit from the practitioner’s skills and knowledge. As for the effect of shamanic rituals on the participants or “clients” the shaman administers to, McClenon hypothesises that they “constitute hypnotic inductions, that shamanic performances provide suggestions, that client responses are equivalent to responses produced by hypnosis, and that responses to shamanic treatment are correlated with patient hypnotisability” (McClenon, 2002, p.79). Although there may be an element of truth in what he proposes, it is more than likely to be a gross oversimplification of what actually takes place and removes all the “magic” associated with the process. It is undoubtedly true that the faith one has in the practitioner may exert a powerful healing or placebo effect. “The environment, the physician’s status, and the rituals involved in giving and taking medicine can be almost as important as the drug itself’ and ‘the expectations of both patient and therapist tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies” (Walsh, 1990, pp.104-105). To conclude from these observations, however, that this is the only way in which shamanic healing achieves its effects is once again more than likely a gross oversimplification. The truth is that we just do not know enough at this point in time about the way the process works to make such a sweeping statement.

CHAPTER FOUR TWO KHANTY (OSTYAK) TALES

The Khanty (Ostyaks) and the Mansi (Voguls), collectively known as the Ob-Ugrians, live in the Tyumen area of Siberia, by the river Ob and its tributaries. According to the 2002 consensus, the population of the Khanty and Mansi exceeded 40,000–of which 11,573 was the population of the Mansi and 28,773 was the population of the Khanty. This means they are an insignificant minority in their own homeland, compared to the Russian speaking settlers who now live in the area. The district features swampy lowland with major oil and natural-gas deposits, and taiga coniferous forest, and the capital is Khanty-Mansisk. Explorers from Novgorod encountered these nomadic indigenous Finno-Ugric speaking peoples in the 11th century and exacted tribute of fur pelts. The area was annexed by Russia in the 16th century and the Ostyak-Vogul National Region of the USSR came into being in late 1930. In 1940 the OstjakoVogulskij natsionalnyj okrug of the Omsk district was renamed the Khanty-Mansijskij natsionalnyj okrug (the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug), and it became part of independent Russia in 1991. Although the Khanty culture is that of “an early horse breeding society, the way of the life of the present Khanty resembles that of the neighbouring Siberian groups, …with classical practices of Siberian shamanism and an archaic type of economic life based on hunting, fishing and reindeer herding” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.9). And, as we shall see, this can be found reflected in their folktales. As for The Shaman’s Drum, it was told by Leonid Mikhailovich Sopochin in June 1992 in the village of Voki-rap-yagun (Surgut district). The first half was written down and translated by Raisa Ivanovna Yermakova in June 1993 in the village of Ugut. The second half was dictated and interpreted by Dimitri Ivanovich Kechimov in July 1996 beside the Chikli Yagun stream (Lazar, 1997, p.76). Dr Marta Csepregi, who then interpreted the text and had it published in several languages, has kindly given me permission to include it here.

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The Shaman’s Drum Once upon a time, at that time, in those manly times of men, in those famous times of many a man once there was a little boy dried in a cradle. This little boy dried in the bottom of a cradle was in the bottom of the moss-cradle, in the bottom of the stone-cradle. He was born: he lived drinking rainwater, he lived drinking stormwater. Living this way divine father gives rain to divine boy. Sprinkles rainwater from above, rainwater drops into his mouth, his belly gets full. Perhaps two days later, perhaps three days later the singing man, tale-telling man, his hands began to strengthen, his legs began to strengthen. He gets up, he unties himself. He looks around, he is sitting in the centre of a village. Beside him stonewindows broken, a big house, tall house by height, sizeable house by size. And so this divine boy was sitting, until he changed into rain. The divine father sprinkles rainwater from above and the rainwater is dropping into his mouth, so his belly gets full. When he was strong enough to get out of the cradle, he got out of the cradle and crawled to the house, because he could crawl by then. He went in and saw the house had no tie-beams, he looked around and saw there were no tie-beams in the house. The house had a door opening, the house had a roof-window. How many days and how many nights did he spend in this house with a door-opening, in this house with a roof-window–who knows? The he crawled further. He says to himself: “How come there is nobody around except me? I am alone like God of the Earth, like God of the Heaven having no mother, having no father.” After having crawled long, after having crawled for a short time he reached a food-providing rivulet, he reached a fish-providing rivulet and at the side of this small river there was a drag-net. There was a woody marsh there good for elks, good for reindeer bulls. When he reached, crawling, the edge of this marsh he saw a big wild reindeer bull its hide shining, its fur shining as it stood there in the middle of this marsh. The bull stood there and grazed weed and grazed grass and was looking for food with its fore legs it grazed. There was autumn. As for thinking the little boy thinks: “How shall I do it, how shall I bring down this bull?” Guess what, he bit out a small bone from his foot and made a bow. He made a bow or rather an arrow. He took out a sinew from his leg and

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made string out of it for his bow. He drew this bow made of his foot-bone with the string made of the sinew of his leg and crawled closer. He shot his arrow which pierced through the heart of the reindeer and the bull fell. With the bone-tip of the arrow he skilfully skinned the bull. He skinned the big-headed and long-haired wild bull leaving its legs unskinned. The unskinned legs of the bull and its hide with meat or without it he took home. In the right side of the house, beside the bad-site there lay an axe, its size being as big as the shoulder-blade of an elk, as large as the shoulder-blade of a reindeer. And under the dish-shelve there is a whetstone, its size being as big as the shoulder-bone of a reindeer. He took out the whetstone, he took out the axe and sharpened one side of the blade. Having done so, he sharpened also the other side of the blade. When you lay down the axe on its one side, it cuts the horsehair in two, when you lay down this axe on its other side, it cuts the blade of grass in two. The boy crawled out and went behind the house to the site of the praying cottage, to the centre of the central cottage, to a woody place, to a grassy place he went. Then he fell[ed] a spruce-tree there. Out of one part of the spruce-tree he made a drum-stick and the other part of it he bent into a frame for drum and then he started to dry it. Meanwhile he soaked the hide and removed the hair from the legs and the hide of the bull. Then he stretched it on the frame of the drum. He couldn’t wait until it was dry, but started to beat it immediately. How wonderful, how good it was! No married woman turned to wife needs anything else, no married man turned to husband needs anything else. Beating the drum he shamanized. By the time the drum was perfectly dry, the snow fell and a cold autumn came with frost. There was an autumn without fish, an autumn without game. The boy took his drum and headed to the food-providing rivulet, to the fish-providing rivulet crawling along the rivulet while drawing his drum. Having crawled for long or having crawled for just a short time while drawing his reindeer-hide drum along this foodproviding rivulet, along this fish-providing rivulet the boy was just crawling and crawling along the meandering rivulet, along the rivulet full of basses, until he came to a wide meadow where bulls lived, where elks lived. He looked at the upper end of the meadow and saw tents standing there: high tents by height, sizeable tents by size. There were seven of them. So the boy crawled there carrying his drum. He went closer and came to a slippery opening. Having arrived at the edge of that slippery opening trodden by reindeers he thought: “What a shame! A guest came and brought a drum with himself. I swear I’ll leave my drum here in this

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place trodden by reindeers.” He stacked it there in the snow behind that slippery place. He went further crawling. He crawled and crawled and reached the entrance of the first tent and crawled in. “What a shame–he thinks–there came a guest and he enters crawling.” So he stood up at the entrance, he stood up on his feet and entered the door. He entered and stepping along the bed-site he took steps, crawling along the bed-site he crawled. An old man and an old woman was sitting at the bed-site. On the other side of the bed there hung a curtain. The boy sat down on the bed and greeted the old couple. And there hung a curtain on the other side of the bed and from behind this curtain one could hear breathing, one could hear groaning. It was such a faint breathing that could not have blown away a blade of grass. The old couple set the table full of elk-fat, full of reindeer bull-fat. If they had fine food, they put fine food on the table, if they had poor food, they put poor food on the table. The boy drank some tea or something like that. Six men came in from outside. Six men came in and sat down to the place for men, to the unoccupied place of the bed-site in the back side of the tent. The old man asked: –Where did you come from, my boy? Maybe you are a dream-reader, maybe you can practise magic. You know we have–he says–a little daughter after our six sons and she is our last child at the breast. She fell seriously ill yesterday. Her breathing is guarded by the tip of a blade of grass, by the tip of a blade of grass from the barren peak. (Only her breathing tells us she is alive.) She takes breath gasping. Maybe you can see a dream about her, maybe you can foretell the future. Maybe you can say a prayer for her. –How could I know–says the boy–whether I have a magic power or not. As to myself I came here crawling. How could I do the deeds of a shaman? And I can’t pray either–says he. –But you have her as your only daughter, haven’t you? And I have a drum. I left this drum at the edge of a trodden place. I felt it was a shame to bring in here the drum. But if you bring it in here for me, just for the sake of its sound I can beat it once or twice. The old man speaks to one of his sons, the oldest one or the youngest one saying: –Come now, my son, and bring in here the drum for our guest! So his first son went out and stayed there for a long time. When he did not return for long, the next son of the old man went out. Then went the third man, the third son. And so went the fourth, then the fifth and the

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six son, too. Suddenly at once, a heavy noise of groaning was heard. It came from outside. They opened the door and saw the six men dragging and rolling the drum. Seeing all this our little boy stood up, jumped to the door-opening and grabbed the drum and lifted it with his one hand and put it down in the back side of the tent. What six men together could not do, our little boy accomplished alone. Inside the warm house they put the drum, the drum made of raw wood, the new drum with the newly stretched hide on it, the hide dried at home, the drum to be dried was drying outside for long. They took the bull-hide with legs, made the bed and our boy sat down to the hide; he began to shamanize and was going to get in trance. Having shamanized long or haing shamanized only for a short time, having beaten his drum for long or having beaten it for just a short time he began to speak out like this: –The days ordered by Mother Puges, the days ordered by Mother Keltas, the days ordered by Mother Shining Heaven, the days of human beings are long. In between she fell seriously ill, she fell mortally ill. Maybe after two days or maybe after three days she grows better–says he. In the evening the girl has a bit of food, has a sip of water. After his shamanizing, her groaning has stopped. She did not gasp for breath so much, her breath was heard much less. In the evening her mother gave her a bit of food, gave her a sip of water. She took some food, she took some fish and began to talk and said cheerful words. Next day she grew much better. The third day she carries her watery burden, she carried her woody burden. She chopped wood, she carried water. Her hands are busy, her legs are busy. During these days the little boy was there as their guest. The old man began to speak: Oh, dear son! If you had not come here, we would have been left without our daughter. We have almost lost our only child, our suckling– says the old man. –Take her. You can have her without paying kalim for her. She will make tea for you. If you will be our relative, you will take more than one step, you will kill more then one ermine. You see we have lots of sons. Once a girl has grabbed her needle, once a girl has put on her thimble, she wants to go to another house, she wants to move into another house. We shall make you our son-in-law, if you want it. We shall treat you as one of our sons and then we’ll have seven sons. So he became their son-in-law and began to live in their house as a man who paid his kalim. After having lived this way for long or just for a

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short time they set out for game, they set out for fish and began to harness their reindeers. His wife says: –You go together hunting. My brother will catch a few reindeers for you, but you shouldn’t accept these. I will catch reindeers for you. They dressed up and went out. They went out to find wild reindeers. Her brothers are hurling their lasso where the reindeers are resting, a man or two would catch them. But he does not move to harness them. When all their sleds were ready to go, his wife came out. She caught two small, shaggy, razor-backed reindeers, with a catching sack, then she harnessed them for him and said: –Now you shall go. I have to tell you my brothers are not honest people. In the forest you will see wild reindeers running, but you shouldn’t shoot them. My brothers will force you to shoot, but you should resist, let them do shooting. They are wandering through the forest, they are walking through a swamp having no trees, having no grass. They are wandering long, they are wandering for a short time, then they send the boy ahead. His wife gave him an advice. “Never go in front!” When they send him ahead, he says: –It is an unknown place for me and I can move free only in my waters, only in my grounds. You are coming from this land, you go ahead. So he doesn’t go in front. Once they ran into a herd of reindeers. –Well now, our little brother-in-law, shoot them. –I never killed wild reindeers. You shoot them. And they were shooting and shooting, they shot all their arrows, but killed no reindeers. The herd ran away and hid. And then when they ran out of arrows they found another herd of reindeers. –Well now, our little brother-in-law, you have a lot of arrows, what do you keep them for? We don’t have any more arrows to place on the string of our bows. You shoot now.

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He took an arrow and aimed at the running reindeers. When he shot his first arrow, two reindeers fell, three reindeers fell. When he shot his second arrow, three reindeers fell, four reindeers fell. He used only half his arrows, but killed so many reindeers, who knows how many reindeers. When he aims at a reindeer, his arrow pierces through two bulls, pierces through six bulls. “Come on, people, shoot now!” After a while he got enough [of shooting]. They skinned these bulls and headed home with the sleds full of meat, full of hides. His brothers-in-law have a talk between each other: “Our little son-in-law doesn’t let us approach him. If we disturb him, he’ll get angry. He’ll make an end to our days. We are afraid of him.” Whether they lived this way long or they lived for a short time, once the little boy addresses his father-in-law. –Oh–says he–I am a man having a house of my own, I am a man having a land of my own. I want to go home. If you give me your daughter, it is all right, if you don’t give me your daughter, it is your decision. I shall not give a needle for your daughter–says he. –Of course we give you our daughter, you are our beloved child, you are our beloved son-in-law. Our daughter haven’t learned the art of sewing, haven’t learned the art of preparing animal hide two days ago or three days ago. You should join twenty sleds. The reindeers know the way and they run themselves, they are smart. You get as many reindeers, as you can take. When you are making the caravan [of sleds], don’t touch the reindeers. The animals that follow you will be yours. So they make a caravan of twenty or thirty sleds, his father-in-law put four more white reindeer oxen in front of the caravan. They join the sleds with a rope doubled twice, with a rope tripled thrice, they took their leave and went away. So they were going and behind the caravan the reindeers followed them as a lash. Half of the reindeers of that land went together with them. After having gone long or just for a short time they arrived home at the sable river, at the turf river, at that little river. One morning after having spent there one day or two days or three days the boy said to his wife: –Now I set out for forest game, I set out for forest fish. He put on his skies covered with otter-skin and went. He went downstream across a forest. He walked long or he walked just for a short

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time, he looked forward and saw a ski-track. One of them could have been made by a piece of larch-wood cut in two, the other of them could have been made by a piece of spruce-wood cut in two. Maybe someone was there on larch-wood skis, on spruce-wood skis the previous day. The boy followed this track. Looking ahead once at the end of the road lined by larch-trees, lined by spruce-trees he saw a large house made of sprucetree timbers, a large house made of larch-tree timbers standing. Arriving at the opening in front of the house he could not see any skis. He entered the garden-gate and threw his skis into a sled, then he entered the house, but found no one in there. Someone had given the house a good sweeping with feathers of a bird-wing. He went out, walked around the house and noticed that someone had fled that place in that morning. He saw a skitrack, one half made by larch-wood skis, the other half made by sprucewood skis. He put on his skis and followed the track. Did he go for long or just for a short time who knows? Anyway, he looks ahead: in the middle of the day, precisely at noon someone comes towards him. Coming closer he can see it is a one-headed forest giant. He does not seem to look ahead or to look back. They boy discovered a thick tree and quickly stood behind it, then he took out an arrow and placed it on the string of his bow. This giant was a spirit in corslet, a spirit with a sabre. And when he came even closer, the boy saw a mesh is missing from is coat of mail, he saw the uppermost button of the giant’s shirt is missing. Then he shot the giant at his collar-bone who fell immediately. The boy who drew out his arrow or he did not draw it out from him, anyway, he went on. He arrived at a house. Entered, found no one inside. He went around in the yard and saw that someone had hastily fled the house in that morning on larch-wood skis, on spruce-wood skis. In the middle of the day, precisely at noon he went on further. He went on and on in a forest full of elks, in a forest full of reindeers and suddenly he looked ahead: a two-headed forest giant was coming toward him. The snow was just whirling after his larch-wood skis, after his spruce-wood skis as if it was smoking. The giant does not look ahead and does not look back. The boy discovered a thick tree and stood behind it. He took out an arrow and placed it on the string of his bow. The uppermost button of the giant’s coat of mail was missing, but it wasn’t known whether he had put on a double-meshed coat of mail or a triple-meshed coat of mail. The boy shot him anyway at his collar-bone and the giant immediately fell. The boy drew out his arrow or he did not draw it out from him, anyway he went on further. He didn’t go long, he didn’t go for a short time until he saw a large house made of long larch-tree timbers, a large house made of long spruce-tree timbers. He looked around, there was no one in the yard. He

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went in, untied his skis and took them off, he saw neither skis, nor boots around. He entered the house and found an old woman sitting, tears were flowing down on one of her cheeks, tears were flowing down to the ground. My dear son, what kind of song, what kind of tale brought you here? I can see you have not been killed, you are not dead and have come here alive. Then his mother hugged him and kissed him. Feeding him with good food she fed him with good food, feeding him with bade food she fed him with bad food, after having consumed all that fish and food she said to her son: –Go away, if your step-father comes it will be bad for you. In this large forest full of elks three forest-giants have been living. Those ones whom you killed were his younger brothers. The oldest brother is away now and looks after the fence for elks, the fence for reindeers. He will soon be back. –Be damned the cock of his father, be damned the cunt of his mother– he says–this dog killed my paternal ancestors. But he won’t kill me, no way. He said these words, he spoke this sentence and stayed no longer, but went out. He listened to the forest of elks, to the forest of reindeers. And heard the crackle of thin twigs and heard the crackle of thick twigs. Thin twigs are falling down. He is listening and listening until he hears a voice approaching. –Oh–says somebody–this large forest of mine full of elks, this large forest of mine full of reindeers has become a frightening place as if it had eyes, as if it had ears. Oh–says he–those days when I ate his paternal ancestors, the boy remained back as if dried to the bottom of his cradle, as if dried to the bottom of his basket, as if dried to the dirty bottom of his cradle. Is it his ghost who has come back to haunt me? One of the boy’s eyes looked ahead, the other of his eyes looks back, so he can see the three-headed forest-giant coming. He is dashing along on his larch-wood skis, on his spruce-wood skis so fast that the snow is smoking after him. He is moving at such a speed that even his head is in smoke. He is coming so fast he cannot see ahead, he cannot see back. The

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boy stands at the garden-gate and places an iron-headed arrow on the string of his bow. He can see: the giant does not look ahead, does not look back and it seems the giant cannot see the tree either under the cover of which the boy is hiding. The uppermost button of the giant’s coat of mail is missing. The giant put on a seven-meshed or a six-meshed coat of mail. Then boy shot and the giant fell on his back. –Oh, boy, I would have never thought you can be so mean to me. The boy went up to him and hit him on his head with the flat side of his sabre saying: –Wasn’t it you who ate my ancestors? Be damned the cock of your father, be damned the cunt of your mother, you dog! It was nothing you’ve got for your deeds! For the tenderness of my hands you hadn’t eaten me, for the tenderness of my legs you hadn’t eaten me and you won’t eat me now either! Together with his mother the boy made a big larch-tree fire, he made a big spruce-tree fire and they put the giant onto it. Meanwhile evening came, so they spent the night there. They slept there together with his mother. Next morning they went home. The large house inhabited by the giants and everything and all the money, silver and gold these had they brought home. And with all this fortune and richness they went on living. And this high house by height, that sizeable house by size with all that fortune and richness is still standing. Explanation: “The days ordered by Mother Puges, the days ordered by Mother Keltas, the days ordered by Mother Shining Heaven” is a stylistic parallelism in which the same divine being is called by her three distinct titles: Angki Pugos, Keltash Angki, and Sornyi Angki. This protective spirit of women in childbirth and the children yet to be born is one of the most revered of the female gods. She is also believed to determine in advance the lifespan of each person. *** In order to provide some background to the tale, let us start by outlining the cosmology of the Surgut Ostyaks. They believe the world consists of three regions–the sky, the earth and the underworld–and all three are full of both gods and spirits. The supreme and most powerful god is the creator Torum, who lives in the highest sky and determines

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how many years each person will live. His wife is Torum anki, the earth mother, who lives under the earth (see Kerezsi, 1997, p.35) As for the Khanty language, it belongs to the Finno-Ugrian family and consists of several dialects. Statistics show that about one third of the people today speak their mother tongue, those who lead a traditional rather than a so-called “civilised” way of life. However, the number of native speakers is constantly declining, partly due to the low status the language has, and partly due to the fact that “the Ostyak language, whose extremely rich vocabulary makes it possible to express each nuance of the traditional life in the most exact manner, is not suited to describe the manifold phenomena of city life” (Csepregi, 1997, p.9). It should also be pointed out that the various dialects spoken differ from each other to such a degree that a case can be made for referring to spoken languages (countable) rather than language. There is however only one written language, which was created out of the four dialects most widely spoken. As it was in the 19th century, the basic unit of society is still the family among those Ostyaks of the Surgut region, at least among those who have remained in the taiga and still follow the traditional way of life. Their settlement areas are small, consisting of one to four closely related households (Kerezsi, 1997, pp.14-15). And, not surprisingly, everyone and everything has a strictly determined place in such a small “house”, consisting of just a single room. However, unlike their ancestors in the the 19th century who respected unwritten laws regarding their territorial rights, the four thousand or so Ostyaks of the Surgut region who still follow the traditional ways “increasingly feel the need for the legal regulation of land ownership, the permanent designation of concrete land borders, the granting of land ownership and specification of their rights. [For] without this, they are unable to defend themselves from the rapidly expanding oil production” (Kerezsi, 1997, p.15) There is actually no word in the Ostyak language for shaman as such. In his case study of the Khanty who live along the Vakh, Vasyugan, and Middle Ob rivers J.M. Kulemzin (1976) has demonstrated that the various roles “of healing, fortune-telling, and dream-reading, etc., were divided among different persons .... singers-narrators, arekhta-ku; dreamreaders and sooth-sayers, alomverta-ku or pan-kal-ku; conjurers, foretellers of hunting luck, nyukul'ta-ku; healers, isylta-ku; and shamans, elta-ku” (Sokolova, 1989, p.155) Our man, in that case, would seem to be a Jack-of all-trades, or a literary amalgam of the different persons referred to above, created for dramatic effect.

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The families living beside the Tromyegan call their shaman “chirte ho” if he is a man and “chirte ne” in the case of a woman (Kerezsi, 1997, p.44). The principal way of becoming a shaman was by being chosen, and this was often the result of having good fortune in hunting or fishing, as the young boy in our story did, unlike his brothers-in-law. As for learning what to do and how to approach the different spirits, this often took place in dreams or through visions, which is what happened here. It should be noted that there was also probably a hereditary path to becoming a shaman among the Surgut Ostyaks because it is generally the case that shamans come from families where there have already been such people (see Kerezsi, 1997, p.45). In the large Khanty speech area, which comprises the 2,000kilometre-long stretch of the River Ob with its tributaries from the River Vasiugan to the Arctic Ocean, there are various forms of shamanism. Khanty shamans “are called on to tell the future, find lost objects and animals, and determine the intentions of the spirits. They are often called to sick people; however, they do not cure directly, but plead the cause of the sick with the spirits” (Csepregi, 2007, p.8). And that is what the boy does in the The Shaman’s Drum. For the Khanty, death is not seen as the end of life, but as another variant of life itself . The death of an object gives birth to another thing; so life and death is an endless rotation of different states of affairs … Water in a river is alive, but it dies when it changes into ice… Thus, when water is the discussion theme in folklore, it is always described with adjectives or idioms that are in harmony with its general meaning (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.54).

An example of this can be found in the opening paragraph of the tale: “He was born: he lived drinking rainwater, he lived drinking stormwater. Living this way divine father gives rain to divine boy. Sprinkles rainwater from above, rainwater drops into his mouth, his belly gets full” What helps to make the story special, apart from anything else, is the quality of the imagery: “It was such a faint breathing that could not have blown away a blade of grass.” What also comes across in the tale is the hospitality of the people, and how they were people without any airs or graces: “If they had fine food, they put fine food on the table, if they had poor food, they put poor food on the table.”

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The skill of the storyteller is to be appreciated too, how he builds up the story cumulatively: “Six men came in from outside. Six men came in and sat down to the place for men, to the unoccupied place of the bed-site in the back side of the tent.” This is in fact typical of the Khanty oral tradition, special features of which include the use of “stable formulas, an abundance of parallelisms, a rhythm system, alliteration, epithets, a repetition of words, metaphors, and euphemisms” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, pp.16-17). Also worthy of note is all the trouble the boy goes to in the story in order to produce the drum referred to in the title, the personal cost involved–a bone from his foot and a sinew from his leg–just to obtain the reindeer required for the skin of the drum, and then all the trouble the boy goes to in order to cut down the spruce tree to make the drum-stick and the frame. Notice how it takes the six sons of the old man to carry it, whereas the boy can do so with only one hand–evidence of the boy’s special powers. Little wonder then why such a drum would be so highly valued for its properties by both the shaman and his / her community. To look at, however, Khanty drums tend to be “quite simple, having no decoration at all: they have no drawings, their Y-shaped handles are made of wood; and the drums themselves are small and oval” (Nagy, 2007, p.31). Tunguz (Evenki) drums, on the other hand, can be highly decorated. Incidentally, the Siberian peoples, especially the EvenkiManchu people, practised the tradition of cutting the shaman’s drum on his death, cutting the drum’s skin at its top–at the “head”, so to speak. And ‘among the Vasiugan river Khantys a shaman who is not able to name a successor has to “kill” his drum by cutting it’ (Nagy, 2007, p.30). This probably explains why drums in museums are so often seen with their skins cut, and why intact drums on display are relatively rare. The detailed description of all the work and effort that goes into the construction of both the bow and the drum by the boy can perhaps be better appreciated in the light of the following explanation: Traditionally the Khanty do not have any equipment–even the most modest–which has only a practical function. All objects have many functions. Every single object–a boat, a sled, skis, and a bow–require certain rules for using, handling, keeping, giving and receiving as a gift and inheritance. Everything that belongs to a single person, to a family or to the community defines the social status of its owner and shows his membership in a certain social group. This concerns also the parts of a certain object, or the raw-material, of which it is intended to be produced. Objects are more reliable than human beings. For example, future

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We also learn from the story how the unusual circumstances of the boy’s birth and how he grew up mark him out from an early age as a future shaman. Notice too how the old man picks up on the fact that he is a shaman from the moment the boy enters his tent. We are also made aware of the boy’s self-doubts, a typical attribute of shamans just starting out: “How could I do the deeds of a shaman? And I can’t pray either– says he” Notice also the magic in his arrows, how they kill so many reindeer, another sign that marks him out as being someone who stands out from the crowd. Evidence of the boy’s ability to entered altered states of consciousness is provided in the following quote, as it shows how clock time differs from time in an altered state, and how the duration of clock time becomes difficult to calculate: “Having crawled for long or having crawled for just a short time while drawing his reindeer-hide drum along this food-providing rivulet...” Further examples can be found throughout the tale: “Having shamanized long or having shamanized only for a short time”, and “having beaten his drum for long or having beaten it for just a short time.” This is a device always used in Ostyak tales, and one which here serves to remind us of the fact that in the world of such shamanic stories time is never what it seems to be In traditional Khanty society, if somebody wanted to ask for health or well-being for himself or his family from Torum or another divinity, he would go in search of a shaman. The old man recognises the boy to be one, which is why he turns to him. “A shaman, who is a mediator between people and divine beings, and who is chosen by spirits and deities, can begin contact with the highest beings without any sacrifices (objects). But the ordinary community members have only one way to be in contact with them, that is, through gifts (objects)” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, pp.39-40). This offers further support to the case for the boy being a shaman for, as we can see from the tale, he offers no gifts when he shamanizes in the tent for the old couple’s daughter. The story would appear to have taken place a very long time ago, when reindeer were still plentiful. As the journalist Anna Reid explains, once the people were diverted from food-gathering by having to pay

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tribute to the Russian officials who ruled their land (in the form of the skins of fur-bearing animals), “native Siberians became dependent on Russian vodka, tobacco, bread and sugar, increasingly so as sable ran out” (Reid, 2003, p.45). Although wild reindeer are now extinct in the Surgut region and hunters no longer use bows and arrows, the environment in Ostyak folktales is otherwise described “with almost ethnographic authenticity: the area behind the cottage or tent is still the place of prayer and the place where sacrifices are made, while the men sit along the rear wall of the cottage or tent and keep their tools on the side bench. The descriptions of how the shaman’s drum is made or reindeer are caught are similarly authentic” (Csepregi, 2007, p.75), though, it has to be added, clearly somewhat exaggerated in the case of the boy in our particular tale. That there are seven tents in the story is unlikely to be due to pure chance. The number seven is highly significant for the Ostyaks as Eliade, paraphrasing Mikhailowski, points out: Ostyak and Yaruk shamans of the Taz River region speak of their marvellous flight among flowering roses; they go so high in the sky that they see the tundra for a distance of seven versts; very far away, they see the place where their masters long ago made their drums (actually, they see the “Center of the World.”) They finally reach the sky and, after many adventures, enter an iron hut, where they fall asleep among purple clouds. They return to earth by a river. And the song ends with a hym of adoration to all the divinities, beginning with the Sky God (Eliade, 1989, p.226).

Eliade points out other associations for the Ostyak with the number seven too. For example, “The Ostyak believe that a goddess, seated on a seven-storey celestial mountain, writes a man’s fate, as soon as he is born, on a tree with seven branches” (Eliade, 1989, p.273), and “In the case of the Ostyak and the Vogul it has been shown that the importance of the number 7 is due to definite influences from the ancient East” (Eliade, 1989, p.278). It should be noted that although the number seven can have special significance, as it does in this particular tale, the pairs 4/5 and 6/7 are quite commonly found in tales too as they are in fact formulaic elements in Ob-Ugrian poetics. Eliade also writes about the ritual songs of the Ostyak and the YurakSamoyed shamans that were recorded by Tretyakov during healing seances, in which the ecstatic journey undertaken for the patient’s benefit

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is generally recounted at length. And this is what he has to say about them: But these songs have already acquired a certain autonomy in relation to the cure proper; the shaman boasts of his own adventures in the highest sky, and we get the impression that the search for the patient’s soul-the primary reason for such an ecstatic journey-has receded into the background and even been forgotten. For the subject of the song is more the shaman’s own ecstatic experiences, and it is not hard to see in these exploits the repetition of an exemplary model-that, particularly, of the shaman’s initiatory journey to the underworld and his ascent to the sky (Eliade, 1989, p.225-226)

However, what perhaps is not appreciated here by Eliade is that if the shaman does tend to “to blow his or her own trumpet” in the ritual songs, it also serves to give his / her credibility a boost and to reassure the patient that the cure can be accomplished. In any case, in The Shaman’s Drum, there is no evidence to suggest that this took place. In fact, the opposite is the case, especially when he first starts out. The boy starts his shamanizing with the following words: “The days ordered by Mother Puges, the days ordered by Mother Keltas, the days ordered by Mother Shining Heaven, the days of human beings are long”. The names Kaltesh, Kaltesh anki, Kaltash imi, or Anki-Pugos, all refer to the same goddess who helps in childbirth, one of the seven daughters of the divine couple (see Kerezsi, 1997, p.35). There is a song that evokes the goddess Kaltesh anki, which tells of how the child of Tores nay, mother of fire, is in the cradle and her mother is rocking her. Suddenly, the child unties the cradle and climbs out of it. While the mother turns around to put the cradle on the ground, the child grows. It is clear from this that the child is no ordinary child but has a task from Torum. She must seat those who will live a long while in the light half of the house, and those who can only live half of their life in the dark half. It is not she who gives them their life, she simply separates the cradles of those who will have a long life and others who will have a short life life (Kerezsi, 1997, p.37).

In The Shaman’s Drum, it is the boy who appears to have a task from Torum, to ensure the daughter of the old couple is given the opportunity to have a long life.

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Although the boy uses the drum for shamanising in this particular tale, which was the traditional method employed for healing serious illness, other methods were used too. When shamanizing with an axe or sacred chest, they spread out a clean cloth, place the axe or chest on it and begin to ask the spirits the questions to which they are seeking an answer. Under normal circumstances, the axe or small chest can be lifted with one hand. The shaman asks the questions and after each question lifts the chest. If he can lift it, the answer to the question is negative. If the axe or chest adheres to the ground and ... the shaman is unable to lift it, the answer of the spirits is yes (Kerezsi, 1997, p.49).

The old couple, to express their gratitude, offer their daughter to the boy: “Take her. You can have her without paying kalim for her”. In olden times, and in our times too, “The girl’s parents receive money, furs and reindeer from the groom’s parents for the bride”, a custom that can be “regarded as a trace of matriarchy among the Ostyaks of the Surgut region” (Kerezsi, 1997, p.53). As well as a kalim being required, it was customary for a special wedding stick, a “sovu yuh” to be made: This was a stick of birch wood, roughly the height of a man, decorated with patterns created by removing the white bark in places. Coloured shawls and furs were fixed to the top. The young man tok this in his hand when he went to the girl the second time. When he was close to the house he began to strike the ground so that he could be heard coming. If the girl’s parents did not like the prospective groom they threw the stick out of the house (Kerezsi, 1997, p.53).

However, with the old couple being so grateful, a sovu yuh was not required by the boy, any more than a kalim was. In connection with the number seven, the following quote from the story should be considered too: “We shall treat you as one of our sons and then we’ll have seven sons”. According to the beliefs of the Surgut Ostyaks, the marriage of the divine couple Torum and Torum anki produced seven sons and seven daughters, and once again the choice of the number seven would seem to be intentional, serving the purpose of provding a link to the creation myth and thus giving the significance of the story more weight. . Although a lot of hunting for meat seems to take place in the story, the Ostyaks, like many tribal peoples, have traditionally made full use of

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what they catch and, as we can see from the following quote, nothing goes to waste: The Ostyaks of the Surgut region do not eat reindeer meat regularky. They generally slaughter animals only on special occasions, for example for sacrificial ceremonies ... Practically every part of the reindeer is used even today. They sleep on the skinned but untreated hide or place it on the sled when travelling. Clothes and various implements are made from the soft, treated leather. The skin is removed from the head intact and used to make a hood for the children’s fur coats. The fur from the forehead is used for the sole of boots or the bottom of bags. The fur on the body of the reindeer is the best for women’s and men’s coats. The fur on the legs is used to cover skis or to make boots and gloves. Summer footwear or the shaman’s drum are made from leater cleaned of the fur.The other parts of the reindeer are also used. The women dry the tendons, plit them into strips and twist them into thread used to sew all fur clothing and objects (Kerezsi, 1997, p.23-24).

It has to be said that there are parts of this story that initially readers might find to be of little interest, at least those of us unfamiliar with Ostyak ways. However, when one considers the reasons for the storyteller providing such details as the marks left in the snow by skis, for example, one can then appreciate their relevance, and understand why they were included. Peoples in the tundra and taiga belts get a sense of orientation by making use of various natural objects, such as the Sun, Moon, stars, wind, rivers, and trees. However, manmade landmarks are made use of too, such as the tracks of skis, as is the case in our particular tale. And evidence to support this supposition can be found in the fact that “The Khants living around the Salym River, Yugan River and partly around the Pim River, have used skis with carved backs. This detail enabled determination of ownership” (Leete, 1997). When the boy finally meets up with, and confronts, the third of the giants, we learn that he “stands at the garden-gate and places an ironheaded arrow on the string of his bow”. The type of arrow the boy chose would have been important to the listeners, as this attention to detail would have added credibility to the tale: “Different types of arrow were used for each kind of animal. A lance-like arrow was used for large game, a double-headed arrow for birds and a blunt-headed arrow for fur animals to avoid damaging the valuable fur” (Kerezsi, 1997, p.20). These days, however, the bow that was traditionally used has given way to the gun.

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The story, though a translation, also gives us an insight into the Khant languages, which it could now be too late to save. Olga Ossipova, an ethnolinguist from Tomsk University, explained to the journalist Anna Reid that the Khant saw the world in minutely observed physical detail, like a precise but perspectiveless scientific drawing. … Eighty per cent of their vocabulary consisted of verbs- there were different ones for sitting on a log’, sitting on a stump’ and ‘sitting on the ground’–and they obsessed an extraordinary range of terms to do with sound. ‘The noise a bear makes walking through cranberry bushes’ had its own word, as did ‘the noise a duck makes landing quietly on water’. Abstract nouns were few. ‘When I ask them how to translate “abundance”,’ Olga said, ‘they come up with something like “many berries”. “Happiness” is “my heart enjoys itself” (Reid, 2003, pp.54-55).

In The Shaman’ Drum, the description of the breathing of the old couple’s sick daughter very much exemplifies the way in which the Khant observe physical detail, and the range of terms they have to describe different sounds. Unfortunately, however, as Olga Ossipova explains to Anna Reid, the Khant languages are dying, due to the Soviets’ removal of indigenous children to Russian-speaking State boarding schools and the mid-twentieth century influx of newcomers to the region: “Back in the 1960s ... it had been possible to find whole Khant-speaking villages. Now [she was speaking in 1999], only old people spoke the languages fluently. Middle-aged ones usually understood a few words, but the young people knew none at all” (Reid, 2003, p.54). The style of storytelling most frequently employed in shamanic stories is that of magic realism, in which although “the point of departure is ‘realistic’ (recognizable events in chronological succession, everyday atmosphere, verisimilitude, characters with more or less predictable psychological reactions), … soon strange discontinuities or gaps appear in the ‘normal,’ true-to-life texture of the narrative” (Calinescu, 1978, p.386). However, The Shaman’s Drum is an exception in that the point of departure is not at all realistic. Right from the opening paragraph we learn the boy is far from being an ordinary child, and it is an opening that makes us sit up and notice. And it is a story that, once heard, we are unlikely to forget in a hurry, which of course was the storyteller’s intention. ***

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The Squirrel Woman is an Obdorsk Ostyak tale. The Obdorsk Ostyaks live today in the Priuralsk district of the Jamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region in the lower Ob Basin and are the most northern group of Ostyaks. The story was collected in 1990 in Katrravozh from Irina M. Siazi, who was born in 1937 in the settlement of Pelvozh. (The tale had no title in Nikolaeva’s book, but I took the liberty of adding one for reference purposes). The Northern Khanty were apparently divided into two phatries (kin groups), Por and MoĞ. The ancestor of the former was considered to be the bear and the ancestor of the latter was the woman KaltaĞ, who took the form of a hare, or a female goose (see Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.19). In this story however, she takes the form of a squirrel.

The Squirrel Woman 1. There were demons that made war. Ther was a big village, there was a big town, they ate up all the people. Everybody perished, one boy stayed in the corner of a house. One boy stayed, he lived in the town for a long time, for a short time. He saw no demons after he stayed, he saw no spirits. He lived, lived, grew up to be a man, grew up to be a hunter and a fisher. He lived in the forest and the abandoned town. He hunted and fished. Once while he was going through the woods, little pieces of something fell on his shoulders. He did not care. He took his cap off. He did not care. He went on. 2. He came home, hung up his fur coat. He hung up his fur coat and a whole hat-full of cones fell out of it, he did not want to open them. He took them and put them in a corner of the house. They lay, he said “Let them lie, perhaps in the days when I will be very hungry, perhaps in grief when I will be in my woods, when my heart knows woe.” He went, he went again, and came home. He started to hang up his fur coat again, once again cones fell, a whole hat-full from his coat. He gathered them up again and put them down. He went for the third time. He went for the third time, it was a large forest, in the middle of this forest there was something, but he had not seen it his whole life. He had grown to be a big man, he had grown to be a stout man. But he had not seen it. Well, fine. 3. He went for the third time, suddenly a squirrel jumped on the top of a tree and talked in the Ostyak language, chatted. It said: “Wait a bit, poor man, whose people died. I have good words for you, if you keep on living, if you can continue to live according to my words.” Then he

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stopped. He said: “I am going. As long as I have lived, while my bones were growing, while my body was growing, I have spoken my mother tongue to no one. I have no companion.” The squirrel said: “You’re going home now, going home, how many cones did you find?” “How many cones did I find? I,” he said, “found cones in groups of seven four times and put them somewhere. I put them somewhere.” The woman said: “You’re going home now, you’ll get home, the way your house and benches have become so nice, you’ll get more. Open the cones four times in groups of seven.” 4. The man went on. He went on. The squirrel said: When day breaks tomorrow, I will be here. Here there is a big forest, while you were growing, you never went into this forest, there are no traces of you.” Well, fine. The man came home. He came home, rested. And sure enough, he took seven cones. He took seven cones and broke them open. Then he looked on both sides and his benches had become so beautiful, animals were lying on them, sables were lying. He thought: “Where will I put so much? Everything is here.” He opened up another seven cones and in these seven cones were golden rings. He put them on his fingers, it started to glitter. He thought: “I must have fallen onto riches.” 5. After short or long the morning of tales arrived. He thought for a long or a short time and left. He went on the same path. He went on the same path and the animals, sables just fell, he hunted so well. Again he came to the same squirrel. Actually it was a woman. He did not know that it was a woman. The squirrel talked, they greeted one another, they hailed one another. She said: “How did you fulfil my words?” “I,” he said, “fulfilled your words somehow.” “What do you intend to do now? Your mind,” she said, “has become very good.” “If I were to take the path of my mother, the path of my father.” He hunted for a long or a short time, the squirrel said: “Go still, break open another seven cones. Put two more groups of seven cones in your pocket. Put them into a ocket or some such opening you have, start carrying them, don’t break them open. Tomorrow you’ll catch fish, go into the forest where you have never been.” 6. He thought and broke open another seven cones, nothing more, and again looked on both sides. He was happy and started to live on like he had lived. How he had lived before, everything had ended. The next day broke, he went off again. He thought: “I killed no game, I’ll go into the forest.” He went into the big forest, and there he found a house like in a town, a place like that and there were people, he could see them coming

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and going. Suddenly the squirrel jumped out of the forest. It jumped out, threw the squirrel skin into a corner of the house and became a woman, glittering like gold. He said: “While I have lived on the earth, I have looked for a life-companion to live with, a companion for living on the bench, a companion for living by day, but I have found none all my life.” She said: “This is the place for us to live. Here we will live.” 7. The man agreed, he had been living alone and was tired of it. They went into the house and cooked a sable, they cooked animals and feasted. They sat and talked. The man started to live like this, started to go like this. They lived for a long time or a short time and a child appeared. A son was born. The man of tales, the man of songs shone with gold. He said: “Maybe he was born instead of the father.” Then the woman said: “Don’t think that. Don’t think of your father. In whose place he was born, there will be a path.” 8. They lived and lived, the child of tales grew for a long or a short time, it already started to jump and run. Then it came into the house and said: “I’m thinking of grandfather.” His mother said: “What grandfather are you thinking of?” “What grandfather am I thinking of? I’ve started to think of my father’s father.” Then the woman said: “Don’t think of anything. Until your own mother, the mother whose breasts fed you says so, don’t think.” The child would not let up. Then the mother said: “How can we bear this child? People-eating demons are still at large.” Then the child said: “When I get big, I will wipe all the people-eating demons off the face of the earth.” The father said: “Right, if our chld strarts killing demons what will happen? My father and mother were eaten, but I couldn’t kill the demons.” The woman said: “go back to your house. Go to your house, but don’t enter it right away. Make noise, knock the skis together. Knock at the corner of the house.” 9. He went. He went and had the feeling that there was someobody, as if there were somebody and he was even more frightened. He started to become frightened. He started to become frightened, went into the house, a man from somewhere was sitting there. He scraped the snow from his feet, scraped the snow from his chest. He turned around. Suddenly a woman came out of the larger corner. She came up and said: “Hubby, this is the one who was born to ruin us, to take our strength.” He said: “Old man, I have come home. I have come home to opur town, to our village. I came to live together with you in his place.” Suddenly he looked and her husband, the old man, was putting up a house and was building a town, one like a village. He was chopping with an axe. Wood chips were flying.

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She looked properly: grandfather and grandson were making a house, were building. 10. The man spoke. He went home, at home he said to his wife: “It’s true, our son builds poorly. If he is going to live like that, every demon will find him.” Then she said: “Why are you talking like that about your poor child? Our child will put up a country.” Suddenly a horrible winged hawk appeared. The winged hawk appeared, it could be heard blowing its nose, a clanking sound was heard. A clanking sound was heard, it said: “I ate your mothers and I ate your fathers, children have appeared. There seems to be a new-born child.” The lad lifted a bow and shot that winged hawk with a foot arrow. Whirling down, the hawk fell. The place where the winged hawk fell turned into a lake. 11. the lad said: “After I killed it, after this the grieving people will give birth again tomorrow. Mothers, fathers, do not fear, I have killed the demon.” It became good to live. They killed animals, they caught fish, they had riches, they made money. What the magic woman, the woman of Tales did not have, they had. They began to live happily. My tale is at an end. *** Traditionally such tales as the ones presented here would have been told “in the evenings when all were relaxing. Sometimes, it has been said, that it was forbidden to tell folk tales in daytime; however it was practiced in spite of this prohibition. For example, they were told in order to “shorten the journey” during long trips by boat” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.25). The most likely explanation as to why stories were mainly told after dark is that work for the day by then had been finished, and the darkenss also helped to create a sense of atmosphere and occasion. Although there were no professional storytellers among the Khanty, as can be found in Haiti for example, the Khanty did have did have well-known narrators and these were mostly men. “A belief in the reality of all the events related is typical of the Khanty folklore tradition, as is the case other indigenous cultures, and this “identification of the oral popular creative work with the real everyday life is reflected in the formula, ‘If my folk tale will continue’, which meant, ‘If I will be alive’” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.26). Of the Ostyaks’ folklore, it has been said that “like that of other Finnish stems, it is imbued with a feeling of natural poetry, and reflects

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also the sadness, or even the despair, which has been noticed among them” (see www.biodatabase.de/Ostiaks [accessed 10/08/07]). And what we have in both of the stories included here is a hero who is “a loner”, cut off from the rest of the community who, through his quest, eventually becomes reintegrated into it. It is perhaps worth pointing out that this is something the indigenous shaman never achieves. Though they might be accepted by the community for the vital role they play in the people’s lifes, they are destined to always remain outsiders by the very nature of their jobs. In The Shaman’s Drum, there were seven tents, and in The Squirrel Woman, there were cones in groups of seven. Seven is a mystic or sacred number in many different traditions. Among the Babylonians and Egyptians, there were believed to be seven planets, and the alchemists recognized seven planets too. In the Old Testament there are seven days in creation, and for the Hebrews every seventh year was Sabbatical too. There are seven seven virtues, seven sins, seven ages in the life of man, seven wonders of the world, and the number seven repeatedly occurs in the Apocalypse as well. The Muslims talk of there being seven heavens, with the seventh being formed of divine light that is beyond the power of words to describe, and the Kabbalists also believe there are seven heavens–each arising above the other, with the seventh being the abode of God. And there are also conceptions about some, usually seven, heavenly layers where gods live among the Khanty (see Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.57). Also in both stories, we find that ideas are repeated and then expanded upon. For example: “He came home, hung up his fur coat. He hung up his fur coat and a whole hat-full of cones fell out of it.” And further on into the tale: “He went. He went and had the feeling that there was someobody, as if there were somebody and he was even more frightened.” From the two stories included here, this would appear to be a typical device used by Ostyak storytellers, and no doubt helped them to memorize the tales they told.



We know that among the Ostyaks “Hunting is generally done individually or by a single family” and that when hunting for fur, “... The hunter is often away from home for two or three days and only returns when he has shot a sufficient quantity of animals” (Kerezsi, !997, p.20). So the hunter would have been used to being on his own.

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The squirrel is generally noted for its ability to gather, plan and hoard. In The Squirrel Woman, however, it is the hunter who gathers and hoards the cones, and the squirrel who advises him as to what to do with them. As is typical in shamanic stories, it is through the hero’s ability to understand the language of the animals that he achieves the outcome he desires. Another feature that occurs regularly in such tales is shapeshifting. Here it is the squirrel that in fact turns out to be a woman. The fact that the animal is a squirrel could well be significant for another reason too, especially if it was a flying squirrel: The flying squirrel (Ptetomys volans L.) is a curious small rodent endowed with qualities that would seem to make it inherently like to be connected with shamanistic conceptions. The animal lives most of its life on trees, makes its nest in hollow trunks, hides in the daytime and is active in the night. Its most conspicuous adaptational feature is its ability to glide or “fly” long distance in the air with the help of special folds of skin between the fore and hind legs (Janhunen, 1989, p.185).

And in the same article, further evidence is presented to indicate that the use of the squirrel in this shamanic tale is more than merely a coincidence: Concrete specimans of the flying squirrel have been found among other shamanistic paraphernalia. Thus, an untanned pelt of the animal was present in a box containing the attributes of a Vasyugan Khanty shaman, while a similar box of a Vakh Kanty shaman contained a miniature woman's dress with a pelt of the flying squirrel attached to it (Janhunen 1989, p.186)

Although the man was a hunter, the flying squirrel would have been in no danger of becoming his prey as “it has never had any economic value, for its specific ways of living as well as its relative rarity and small size make it a difficult and unlikely prey for both traditional hunters and professional trappers” (Janhunen, 1989, p.185). Therefore even though the shamanic association with the squirrel cannot be proved conclusively, it was a wise choice of animal for this reason alone. On a number of occasions in the text, the hunter refers to the bench in his home–where he keeps the animal furs, and where he would like to have a companion to share his life with. This would be a raised area, facing the entrance, and about two metres from it, “which runs right up to the opposite wall. This is the actual living area where the inhabitants eat, sleep, and live” (Kerezsi, p.28).

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What we can see in each of the Khanty stories considered here is that the resolution leads to a reintegration of the main characters into the community from which they were separated at the start of the action. This is very much in keeping with what would have been expected because in traditional Khanty society, “an individual is an inseparable part of a collective, and an individual’s interest is part of a common interest” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.45). In other words, “The behavior of an individual must absolutely be in harmony with the opinion of the family, the kin and the whole social collective” (Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 2006, p.46). What we find in practice is that “the vast majority of ritual ceremonies are primarily concerned with healing in a general sense. They exert influence on physical well-being, heighten identity, enhance interpersonal cohesion, reintegrate community into the environment, and mitigate perceived conflicts with 'supernatural' powers” (Frecska & Luna, 2007, p.137). And in view of the fact that bringing about such a process, what Winkelman (2000) terms “psycho-integration”, has traditionally been the role played by the indigenous shaman, that this is reflected in the subject matter of the majority of the stories in this collection is only to be expected.

CHAPTER FIVE TWO HAITIAN TALES

Let us start by presenting a picture of the setting for these stories: “Over half of Haiti’s children suffer from malnutrition; 15 per cent die before their fifth birthday; only thirty-eight out of a thousand will ever complete high school. The average yearly income in Haiti is lower than the average weekly income in the United States and Great Britain” (Kenaz, 2007, p.12). Consequently, in view of the conditions that most of the people on the island have to contend with, the fact that both stories presented here are about the quest for riches should come as no surprise. As for the source of the tales, they were collected in Haiti by the storyteller Diane Wolkstein and can be found in The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales, which was first published in 1978. The tradition in Haiti is for the storyteller to call out “Cric?” when she or he has a story to tell, and if the audience want to hear it they respond with “Crac!” We are informed in the notes that accompany the stories that “In Haiti, Catholics, Voodooists, and Protestants take seriously the messages in their dreams” (Wolkstein, 1997, p.72), and the first of our two tales provides a good illustration of this. [D]reams remain one of the major ways by which the lwa [the deities] communicate with their servants. Vodouisants [people who practise Vodou] believe that in dreams, the ti bon ange (“little good angel,” the part of the human soul that represents us in the human world) leaves the body and goes wandering in the heavenly realms. There it can commune with the lwa and receive blessings, warnings, and advice (Kenaz, 2007, p.199).

In fact, vodouisants attach so much importance to their dreams that in times of trouble they will prepare an iluminayson (a ceremony used to seek guidance in a dream) to encourage the lwa to visit them while they sleep (see Kenaz, 2007, p.200).

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It is said that “Supernatural beings seen in dreams usually have a human form [and] ... readily assume the appearance of a friend or relation ... The dreamer [however] is not deceived: one detail of dress, a symbolic object or simply his own inner certainty reveals to him the identitiy of his nocturnal visitor” (Metraux, 1989, p.143). There is a view held that shamanism cannot be understood via Western paradigms, and the proponents of neo-shamanism even go so far as to suggest that the only way to really grasp what it is all about is to participate. This is because for the shaman, the journey he / she undertakes is "exosomatic" (outside the body), whereas for the outsider it is nothing more than "imaginal" (mind-related imagery). For this reason perhaps the account of such an experience can only be fully understood by outsiders if it is seen to be some kind of dream, and this might well explain why so many stories based on or inspired by shamanic journeys are presented to us in this form. As for the importance of dreams, in the words of Eliade, “Dreams, waking dreams, the images of his nostalgia and of his enthusiasms, etc., are so many forces that may project the historically-conditioned human being into a spiritual world that is infinitely richer than the closed world of his own ‘historic moment’” (Eliade, 1991, p.13). Joseph Campbell (1973) suggested that myths (for which we could substitute “shamanic stories”) are public dreams and that dreams are private myths, and dreams can be regarded as an integral part of shamanism. Indeed, one of the ways shamans have traditionally entered their vocations is through initiatory dreams, the common themes of which are dismemberment, death, and rebirth (see Krippner, 1989, p.382). Not only can such nighttime dreams assume an important role in the “call” to the shamanic profession, but also, in the shaman’s treatment of clients. For dreams are powerful divinatory tools in that they give the healer access to the spiritual world and, as the Tungus anecdote that follows shows, the purpose of divination through dreams was frequently to give guidance on the outcome of hunting trips. One of the Tunguses said: “In a dream a bear passed beside me and Lva (a Tungus guide to the expedition). When the bear saw that it had met men, it stopped. A headman, who had noticed the bear, came forward and used his gun. The gun missed fire twice, but the third time a shot resounded; nevertheless, the bear was unhurt. Then the bear took from under its arm a gun, with the intention of firing at the headman. I woke. When I related my dream to the headman and Lva, the latter said that in

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the opinion of the Tunguses, this was not a bear, but the soul of a shaman. The headman explained that this dream referred to himself, and predicted that he, the headman, would presently fall ill, or that some disaster would occur to him; for the failure of a gun, of an axe, or of a knife in a dream, meant that the owner of the weapon would fall ill. At least, such was the headman’s experience. Moreover, if he happened to kill a man in a dream, he found that later he, without fail, would kill a bear.” (from the Russian of The Living Past, 1911, p.351, cited in Fillingham Coxwell, 1925, p.137).

Not surprisingly, being able to foretell the outcome of hunting trips was an attribute valued in numerous tribal cultures that depended on the hunt for their survival. For example, the Ainu believed that if a man about to start on a hunting expedition dreamed of meeting in the mountains a god to whom he made obeisance and gave presents, he was certain to kill a bear. And among the Euahlayi tribe, in Australia, one of the greatest warnings of coming evil was for a man to see his totem in a dream as such a sign was a warning of misfortune to the dreamer or to a member of his immediate family (see Fillingham Coxwell, 1925, p.139). Of course the guidance made available through dreaming was, and is not solely about hunting though, especially in societies where other forms of material success are valued, as in the case of The One who would not listen to his Own Dream, where gold is what is being sought. Knud Rasmussen, the Arctic explorer, asked an Eskimo acquaintance if he was an angakok (or shaman). The man replied he had never been ill, never remembered his dreams, and so he could not possibly be one (see Halifax, 1982, p.72). Although this is only one particular society’s definition of what being a shaman entails, members of other tribal societies express similar views. “It is apparent that shamans represent not only the oldest profession, but are the original professional practitioners endowed with the responsibility to understand dreams–their own and those of their clients” (Krippner, 1989, pp.389-390). Just as the ability to understand dreams can prove to be a great asset, the inability to comprehend their meaning can prove to be disastrous, which is what we find in this particular tale:

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The One who would not listen to his Own Dream Once, two friends were walking across the countryside. They were both very poor and thought that if they settled in another village, their fortunes might change. They walked across land, over sand, over stone, over water. Day after day they walked, until one of the friends could go no further and lay down to rest. The other continued. He walked up a small hill and finally he too lay down to sleep under an orange tree. As he slept, he dreamt an in his dream a voice came to him and said, “The princess is ill. Take a leaf from the orange tree, make a tea with it, and she will be cured.” When the man woke in the morning, he broke off a large leaf from the tree and continued on his way. In the next town he came to the king’s house. On the door of the house was a sign: Quiet! The princess is ill. He knocked on the door and the king answered it. “Honor, I have come to cure the princess.” “My dear sir,” said the king, “if the great doctors in Haiti have not been able to cure her, how will a poor man like you do it?” “That is why I have come.” The king had no answer to that so he let him in. The young man went to the princess’s room. He divided the orange leaf into many tiny pieces. For threee days and three nights he spoon-fed orange-leaf tea to the princess, and at the end of that time she was cured. The king was so pleased he gave the young man three-quarters of his fortune, and the princess and the young man were married. The man lived happily with the princess and she with him. But he had a good memory and did not forget his friend. After a time he travelled over the mountains to the village where he had last seen his friend. He asked for him and soon found him. The friend was as poor as when they had separated. The man then told his friend all that had happened to him, how he had continued on and fallen asleep under an orange tree, how a voice had come to him, telling him how he

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might cure the princess, and how he was now married to the princess. At the end of his story, he gave his friend a large sack with gold and wished him well. The he went home to his wife. But the friend was not satisfied. He thought to himself: “If he can hear voices, so can I.” He walked to the hill his friend had described and lay down under the same orange tree. He fell asleep. During the night a voice came to him and said, “Go away.” But the man only turned over. The voice spoke to him again. “Go away,” it said. But the man would not listen. A third time the voice warned him: “Go away.” The man would not listen to his own dream. He stayed. And in the morning he was found, eaten by wild dogs, demons, and loup-garou.* *** The loup-garou (pronounced “lu garu”) is said to be a vampire– “human in form but sheds her skin and assumes animal forms at night when she roams the countryside seeking a victim. Salt is her nemesis. Should her human skin be found and salt sprinkled inside it, she would not be able to put it back on, and would be destroyed” (Courlander, 1985, p.98). Most of the Africans in Haiti originally came from the region of Dahomey, Togoland, Nigeria, and the Congo River basin. Among them the Dahomeans were the most numerous, and it was they who provided the framework for the Afro-Haitian religious system. [In fact,] The word Vodoun itself is Dahomean in origin. Among the Fon-speaking people of West Africa it signified “spirit” or “deity.” (Courlander, 1985, p.8).

However, the background of the Europeans who controlled what used to be the colony of Haiti, first the Spanish, and then the French, was Catholic, and the church’s attitude of tolerance-by-neccesity won for it most of the country’s souls. So much so that the situation now is that many Haitians who participate in the rites of Vodoun on Saturday also worship in Catholic chapels on Sunday (Courlander, 1985, see p.6). Incidentally, much the same state of affairs exists in Brazil, where those who practise Macumba or Candomble also regard themselves as Catholics.

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Vodoun can be said to democratic in concept in that any man or woman may have direct contact with the deities or dead ancestors without the intervention of the cult priest, who is usually referred to as a houngan. Though in neo-shamanic circles anyone can have direct contact with the spirits, this is not generally the case in indigenous shamanic communities, where only the shaman makes contact with the spirits. Though the rituals that are practised in Vodoun ceremonies vary from hounfar (cult establishment) to hounfar, a common element is possession, the “mounting” of the human body by one of the loa (deities), who arrive during religious rituals or dances. They come by way of the po’teau mitan, the centre pole which supports the roof of the peristyle, that is the vodoun equivalent of the World Tree (see Courlander, pp.19-20). As for the peristyle, it is typically a low building with a hard-packed dirt floor that is whitewashed and decorated with images connected with the loa. The loa are referred to as the misté or “mysteries” because it is believed they cannot be known or understood in a logical manner, which means by using the kind of terms we normally employ to describe beings encountered in this reality. And as they are not seen as gods, but as servants of God, vodouisants have no qualms about bargaining with them, and in return for serving the spirits, they expect the spirits to return the favour and serve them (see Kenaz, 2007, pp. 28-29). As for the belief that the shaman has control over the spirits he / she works with whereas the servitor in Vodoun does not, it would appear to be a misconception as Though the loa is a powerful ruling force in the life of the individual, the human “horse” has controls over his deity too. He may reproach or admonish his loa for bad behavior of for failing to protect him. He may expose the loa’s irresponsibility in public through the use of songs in religious rites. And though the loa is frequently encouraged to “enter,” steps may be taken to restrain him from possession. This is called marré loa –“tying the loa” (Courlander, 1985, p.22).

If the “horse”, like the shaman, really does have this element of control over what takes place, then vodoun and shamanism clearly have a lot more in common than was previously believed to have been the case. Voudon shares something else with shamanism too, its eristic nature, for the loa are not always benevolent and servitors are vulnerable to attack by houngans who “work with two hands”, in other words houngans who use their powers for evil purposes, as well as by other supernatural

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figures such as the djablesse, the revenant, and the lutin (see Courlander pp. 93-104). The fact of the matter is that the healer who saves a sick child with herbal medicine is part of Vodou, but so too are the Tonton Macoutes. “At its best, Vodou has served to preserve a community and its history in the face of oppression and privation. At its worst, Vodou has become an instrument of oppression and privation” (Kenaz, 2007, p.12). Apart from the control the the servitor has over the spirits in Vodoun and its eristic nature, there are in fact further grounds for regarding Vodoun as a form of shamanism, or at least for pairing the two practices together. For example, “In Vodou it is the loa who are powerful; the Houngan merely serves, creating the sacred space in which the spirits may manifest, and sometimes offering his very body to them in service so they may bring their gifts of healing to the people of their community” (Heaven, 2003, p.53). Similarly, in shamanism it is the spirits who are powerful too, and the shaman acts as an intermediary between them and the people he or she serves. The “call” is a feature common to both practices too: As is often the case with traditional spirituality, people are called by the spirits themselves to become Houngans. Usually, the person chosen undergoes a life- or lifestyle-threatening illness, which may be physical, mental or emotional in nature but always has a spiritual cause at its center. Where the cause is physical, death is often prevented only by the intervention of the spirits themselves, as the condition will normally arrive suddenly and be so severe that medical science cannot cure it or in many cases even understand it (Heaven, 2003, p.54).

Ross Heaven, who is a Western initiate of Haitian Vodoun, then goes on to give the account of houngan Luc Gedeon’s “call” as described by Mambo Racine, Heaven’s own initiatory houngan: Luc had a normal childhood, but at the age of twelve, whie in a Catholic Church service with is family in Haiti, he was sufddenly possessed by one of the Vodou loa. This episode was as traumatic and embarrassing for Luc’s conservative and locally respected family as it was for Luc himself, and he was subsequently immersed in Catholicism as a spiritual barier to the loa, in order to prevent a repeat of this event. But only, it seems, with limited success.

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Chapter Five “Luc gradually found that the pull of the loa was irresistible. The more he fought against it, the more he became tired and overwrought. In 1972 he suffered a crisis, and spent 22 days sleeping under the bushes on the Champs de mars in the middle of downtown Port-au-Prince. This was the final blow to his family. When Luc returned to his home, he was permitted to serve the loa.” As soon as Luc intiated as a Houngan he was never again bothered by mental or nervous problems (Heaven, 2003, p.55).

Then there is the porteau mitan, the Vodoun equivalent of the World Tree, which in the Kabbalah is known as the Tree of Life, and which is a feature found in the cosmology of the Yakut, Tungus and Buryat peoples, to name just a few of the many indigenous peoples who practise, or who have practised shamanism. The second of the two stories selected for inclusion in this Chapter features a hungan (pronounced hooĔ-gahn). “To find out which spirit is angry, and why, a hungan or mambo will be consulted. These shamans then either speak to the dead themselves or will arrange for a ceremony during which the ancestral spirits can contact their children” (Wolkstein, 1997, p.66). In the story of The Gizzard, the hungan appears in three different roles: the hungan-diviner who uses cards; the hungan, man of wealth, who needs no charity; and the hungan as healer. In the early days the hungan or mambo (female Priestess) grew into their positions with age or knowledge. These people were in direct contact with their family spirits and cured family members of their illnesses. They did not claim to be hungans, only servants of the spirits, and they usually worked at other trades to earn money. The modern hungan, who is concerned principally with healing the sick, is in this tradition. Hungan-healer, he is known as the hungan-makout because of the straw bag he carries over his shoulder, which contains his herbs and medicaments. There is another hungan now, the hungan-asson. He has bought his powers from spirits who are not his family spirits. With his arrival there is more black magic and sorcery. He always uses an asson, a gourd rattle made from snakebobnes, in performing his ceremonies. It is from this rattle that his powers derive, for he obtained it during his own initiation ceremonies. When the princess ... goes to see a hungan, it is probably a hungan-asson. She follows the usual procedure. She brings with her payment, normally a bottle of clairin and a candle, but as she is a princess, three sacks of silver

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is quite fitting. The hungan then divines why she has come, either by reading cards or by a candle flame held over a tin of water. The princess chooses cards and wisely waits for his divination of her problem. She then pays him for his diagnosis. If she had come to be treated for illness, she would have had to return another time or to have consulted another hungan, probably a hungan-makout, who would be involved in the curing ceremony (Wolkstein, 1997, pp.100-101).

Another means of divination is made use of too: Certain houngans use the instrument known as the gembo as a divining device. This is a small shell about the size of a lemon, through which a long cord is passed. When there is no tension in the cord, the shell can easily be slid back and forth. When the cord is taut, the shell will not slide. The houngan holds one end of the cord under his foot, the other end with his hand above it. He starts his divination with the shell at the top and the cord taut. Shaking his asson with the other hand, he talks langage and asks questions. To indicate a “yes” answer he relaxes the tension on the cord and the shell slips downward an inch or so. The typical gembo is decorated with beads, old coins, religious medals, snake bones, and a fragment of mirror (Courlander, 1985, p.100).

It should be pointed out however that the obí (reading by casting coconut pieces), diloggún (cowrie reading), or table of Ifá never really became part of Haitian culture as they did in Cuba, and these days a client is more likely to hire a houngan or mambo to do a card reading– which is typically done with ordinary playing cards (see Kenaz, 2007, p.232). Other forms of divination known to be used include examining leaves, coffee grounds, cinders in a glass, the flame of a candle, and by using the L’ange Conducteur–a book considered to be holy and published in France. Although it is strongly disapproved of by the clergy, hungan have been known to use it for “turn the leaves” (passer pages) or “dot book” (piquer livre)–turning up at random some passage in the book and then consulting it for the answer to the question asked (see Metraux, 1989, p.322).

The Gizzard There was once a mother who had three sons. She was very poor and worked all the time. But one day she stopped for a moment and said to herself: “I do not have three boys so that I can do all the work. They must

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work too. They must have some trade. Yet it would make no sense for me to choose a trade for them without asking them.” So she called her oldest boy to her and said to him: “My child, what trade would you like to do?” “Mama,” he answered, “I would like to be a sailor, working on the sea.” “I shall send you there,” she said and called her second son. “Mama, I would like to be a carpenter,” he said. The mother agreed and called her third son. “My child, what trade would you like?” “Mama, what I would like most in the world is to walk in the fields and hunt and take what the Good Lord gives me.” The mother agreed. She sent her oldest son off to the sea. She apprenticed her second son to a carpeneter, and the youngest son lived at home. In the mornings, the youngest son would rise early and take his gun and go hunting. Sometimes he returned that evening, sometimes the next night, but he always brought back food for himself and his mother. It must have been that the Good Lord approved of hunting as the trade for her third son. It seemed especially so as, within the next year, the first son was drowned at sea and the second son was killed at work by a hammer, leaving only the the third son to live at home and fight with his mother against poverty. One morning, the boy woke up early and left for the woods. When he was high in the hills, he saw a small, pretty bird with a mark of pink under the neck. The bird was beautiful, so beautiful, the boy said to himself: “How can I kill this little bird? But then, how can I not kill it? Isn’t hunting the trade the Good Lord gave me?” The boy took his gun and aimed at the bird and shot it. The bird fell to the ground as if dead. But it wasn’t dead, for the boy had shot it, not to kill it, but to graze it. He ran to the bird and picked it up and stroked it

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gently. He talked to it and caressed its feathers, and then he blew lightly under its feathers. Whh h h. And the bird revived. The boy took the bird home and said to his mother: “Mamma, all the animals I bring you are for us to eat. But you must never eat this bird. Even if you are dying of hunger, you must never eat it. We must respect this bird and consider it different.” The boy made a cage for the bird and bought some grain. Before he left in the morning he fed the bird and told his mother to feed the bird again at eleven o’ clock and to give the bird as much grain as it wanted. The bird grew and became beautiful. It groomed itself and cleaned its feathers and looked very much like a pigeon. One morning a white man was driving in his car past the house and saw the bird in its cage. He immediately recognized the pink marking under the throat where the gizzard was. This was a special bird, and anyone who would eat its gizzard would become so rich that his house would fill to the ceiling with silver. It didn’t take the man long to stop his car and go through the gate and knock on the woman’s door. “Madame,” he said, “may I ask you for a glass of water?” Oh, These white people, they were always needing special things. Knives, forks, spoons, glasses. She didn’t own any glasses. “Excuse me,” she said, “I willl have to go next door to my neighbor and borrow a glass“ “No, no,” said the man. “I only want a little water to clear my throat.” The woman then offered him the jug. He poured some water into a cup, swishes it around in his mouth and spit it out. “Madame,” he said, “I did not come to you because I needed water, but rather because I saw how poor you are and I have come to make a bargain with you. I would like to eat the gizzard of that little bird in the courtyard. If you will kill it and cook it for me, the minute I eat it, I shall marry you.”

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Oh! The woman nearly became crazy. She ran here and there telling everyone that she was getting married! The the white man put his hand in his pocket and took out a fifty-dollar bill. “Buy whatever is needed,” he said. “Tomorrow we are getting married.” The woman hurried to buy chickens, beans, rice, and bananas. She invited everyone she knew. Early the next morning she bought a small pot with three legs. She killed the bird and set it to cook in the pot in the courtyard. She stayed in the house busying herself preparing all the dishes for the guests. It must have been that the Good Lord was watching out for that boy, for he decided to stop hunting and return home. As he walked down the street he heard people talking about his mother. “She is going to marry a rich man!” “What difference does it make?” he thought to himself. “If you are not born to be rich, you never will be.” Still, as he came near his house and saw so many people standing around, he wondered why his mother had not told him, not even one word, about getting married. He entered the courtyard and saw some meat cooking in a small pot with three legs. He reached in the pot and took out a small piece. He didn’t even know what it was. Plop. He swallowed it. Then he left. What had he eaten? The gizzard, of course! Some of the guests were standing around the table, some were seated. Soon the white man came in and sat down in front of a plate that had been especially prepared for him. He examined the meat, poking here and there. He could not find the gizzard. He stood up and said: “Madame, there will be no marriage.” Plop. Madame fainted. Fortunately there was Four Flowers Vinegar in the house, which someone found and poured into her ear and she woke up. “Madame,” said the white man, “there was no gizzard in the small bird and that was what I needed. I am therefore not obliged to marry you.”

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The man walked out of the house and got into his car. Madame ran after him and saw her son coming up the street. “Child,” he cried. “Did you take anything that was cooking in the three-legged pot in the courtyard?” “Yes, Mama, I just took a small piece-” Oh-oh. I cannot repeat to you the words that mother then used to her son. But I will tell you that she went into the house, took out everything the boy owned, and threw it on the street. “Never come back in theis courtyard again,” she said. The boy began to cry. He picked up his clothes and things and walked down the street toward the hills. All day he hunted. But in the evening he realized he had no matches to make a fire. Then in the distance he saw a fire and walked toward its light. He came to a house, entered the courtyard, and knocked on the door. An old woman, who was a witch, answered. “Old woman,” said the boy, “I have been hunting since the afternoon but I have no matches to cook my meat. I saw your fire and have come to ask you if I can use some of your fire to roast my meat.” “Child,” said the old woman in a low voice, “you are a small boy. This house is yours, but as for the animals, throw them away. When an old woman prepares dinner, she prepares everything: meat, rice, beans, bananas. Dinner will soon be ready and I will give you your portion.” The boy ate and ate and ate. His stomach grew and grew and grew, until he could eat no more. “Little boy,” the old woman said, “you will stay with me until you die.” She meant that she and her son, who was also a witch, would eat him the next morning. But this was not to be–for this boy was lucky–and things always went well for him. The next morning when the boy woke up he was covered with silver. The entire floor was covered with silver. Oh. The boy ran to the old woman and told her what had happened. Oh-oh. She ran to the room and

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saw the silver–all the silver. She scooped it up and after many trips put it all in the trunk in her room. Then she told her son, and when he saw all the silver in the trunk, he said: “Mother, we cannot eat this boy. We must respect him.” Then he went into the boy’s room and hugged him, saying: “We shall be brothers. I am the older and you are the younger.” So the boy lived with the two witches a long time. Every evening his room would fill with silver and soon there were no empty containers in the house. They bought the boy all kinds of clothes. He had more than one hundred pairs of shoes. They gave him such rich food to eat that he became fat. Then they gave him a pair of glasses, even though he didn’t need them. But the boy never left the courtyard because the old woman had warned him that there were devils living nearby who would eat him. Still, as the time passed and the boy grew older, he began to dream of girls. One Sunday, the boy washed himself and put on his finest suit. He looked at himself in the mirror and said: “The time has come for you to marry.” He went to the old woman and said he was going to take a stroll in the courtyard. As he walked in the courtyard he watched the old woman, and the minute she turned her head–whoosht–he was over the gate and into the street. He stopped awhile to catch his breath and collect himself. Then he began to saunter. The boy bwas dressed in no ordinary costume and he knew it. He strolled down the street and passed the king’s house. Now the king had a daughter who often sat in her balcony watching the men go by. But if any man tried to talk to her, she would never answer. The instant she saw that young man she said: “That one is for me.” She sent word to her father that the guards should stop the young man who was passing in the street, for she wanted to marry him and no other, and if she did not marry him, it would be the king’s fault. The king immediately sent two strong guards to chase after the young man. “Mister,” they called. But the young man did not turn to the right or the left. He had gone out to find a woman and those were men who were calling him.

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“Mister! Mister!” the guards cried, catching up to him. The young man looked at them from under his glasses and said: “What is troubling you?” (You know how certain people are when they have a little money. They think they’re so important.) “The king has sent for you.” (And you know what that boy said?) “Which king?” “The king. The king wants to speak with you.” So the young man returned to the king’s house. “Hello, King,” he said waving his hand. The king began to explain at once: “I have a daughter who has fallen in love with you from watching you pass by in the street. She says she will die, and it will be my fault, if she does not marry you. I ask you, for my sake, marry my daughter.” “My dear king, I would be happy to be married, but at the moment I have no money.” “Oh, don’t let that trouble you. I have plenty of money.” “Well, if that is how it is, I should like to be married tonight.” You can imagine how many phone calls the king had to make and in so short time, but everyone was at the wedding that evening. The next morning when the princess woke up, she saw their room was filled with silver. “Papa, papa,” she went running to her father. “I have married a man richer than you are.” “Nonsense, my child, I am the richest man there is, and should any man be richer than I am, he would be king of all Haiti.” But the princess insisted that the king come to their room to see for himself. Oh-oh. The floor was covered with silver. And every evening, more and more.

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It became too much for the princess. And one day she took three sacks of silver, put them in the back seat of her car, and drove out into the country to see a hungan. She asked the hungan to read her cards. “Yes, I see,” said the hungan. “You have come about your husband. He receives money in a magical way.” “Yes, hungan. But how?” “What happens that he receives money like that–what happens–it is the gizzard of a small bird he has swallowed. Even if he dies, the gizzard will still be in his body, and he will receive money, even under the earth. He will receive money all his life.” “Hungan, how can I get the gizzard?” “Have you ever taken a bath with your husband at the holy spring at four o’ clock in the morning?” “No.” “Good. Then ask your husband to do so. And buy yourself a bottle of regurgitive and a bottle of rum.” The husband agreed to take such a bath. And when he stepped out of the holy spring, brrr he was chilly. “Quick, drink this,” said the princess. “It will warm you up.” But it was the regurgitive she gave him. And it made him throw up. The third time, out came the gizzard. The princess grabbed it up and swallowed it. Then they both drank several glasses of rum and went home. When they woke in the morning, it was the princess who was rich, and the young man who was poor. How long did she allow him to stay? Two days. The he was sent away. The grand young man walked in the streets. He still had friends who invited him to eat and drink, to dance and parties. But as he had only one suit, the more he wore it, the more shabby it became, and soon it had holes, and then he was truly poor. He developed an infection in his eyes. Then he became blind. He walked along, with his eyes closed, his hand out, asking: “give charity to a poor man.” He was so poor he didn’t even have a young child to guide him.

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Once, as he was walking up a small hill, he said to himself, “I am tired. I shall find a tree and lie down in the shade.” He soon fell asleep. Plop! Something fell and hit him on the face. “Ah,” he said, “I must have been sleeping under a mango tree.” He reached for his cane and slid it along the earth looking for the mango. Tok. The cane struck something. He reached down, picked it up and ate it. “Why this isn’t a mango,” he said, “it’s an apple. Good Lord! I can see. I can see! Thank you, Good Lord. Thank you, life. Now I shall become a hungan and never have to ask for charity again.” He picked up the apples under the tree and squeezed their juice into his calabash. Then he noticed another apple tree with even more beautiful apples. He went to that tree and picked up an apple and ate it. At first, it tasted delicious, but then he began to feel strange. His eyes hurt. He was blind again. But then he rubbed some of the juice from his calabash over his eyes. He could see. He shook apples from the tree that made him blind until he had a great quantity. He walked to the road with the apples and waited for a girl who was returning from the marketplace. “Young girl,” he called out. The girl ignored him. “Young girl,” he called again. “Look at me, I am in no shape to chase after girls. I am asking you for a favour and one that can help you too.” The girl came closer and listened. “I want you to sell these apples for me. You can sell them for five dollars or for whatever price you want. Keep the money; I don’t want the money. But I want you to sell them at the house of the king, and none other. And should anyone on the way try to buy these apples, you are to refuse. These apples are only for the king’s house.” The girl agreed and took the apples. As she walked toward the king’s house, several people asked her how much the apples were, but she didn’t answer. As soon as she reached the king’s house, she called out: “Apples.

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Foreign apples. Apples.” The princess asked her how much she wanted for her apples. “I am selling them for ten dollars,” she said. “They are foreign apples.” She was paid ten dollars. Everyone ate the apples: the king, the queen, the princess, the children; even the turkeys, they ate the apple pits. And everyone became blind. Fortuntaely the guards had not eaten the apples so they could help the royal family about. Many of them went all over the country looking for a hungan who could cure the royal family, but no one could. Soon the young man presented himself at the house. He claimed he was a hungan and rubbed the juice over the king’s eyes. The king could see. Then he put the juice over the eyes of the queen, and the children. They could see again. But he said to the king: “There is something that is preventing the princess from seeing. She needs a bath at the holy spring. I shall take her myself.” And at four o’ clock in the morning, when the princess emerged from the spring, he gave her the regurgitive. Out came the gizzard. The young man picked it up and swallowed it. Then he rubbed the juice over her eyes and told her: “You can go.” The king asked him how many thousands of dollars he wanted for having cured them. “I need no money,” he answered, “for I am richer than you are.” Whether he stayed with the rioyal family or not, I don’t know. Whatever he did, wherever he went, he always had money. The boy himself had said: “If you are not born to be rich, you never will be.” But the hungan had said: “He will have money all his life.” And he did. ***

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Incidentally, as well as having standard beginnings, many Haitian stories have standard endings too. The storyteller, especially when telling tales to children, generally uses a variant of: “I was there and saw it. And Malice gave me a kick and sent me all the way here to tell you about it.” Or: “So I have run all the way here to tell it to you. “That’s the story, and if you don’t believe me, tafia will never kill you.” Or: “They gave me a blow, and I have just come to my senses.” Or again: “So he kicked me over the house and here I am.” (Courlander, 1985, p.173).

The Good Lord is mentioned three times in the story: “It must have been that the Good Lord approved of hunting as the trade for her third son”. / “It must have been that the Good Lord was watching out for that boy, for he decided to stop hunting and return home”. / “Good Lord! I can see. I can see! Thank you, Good Lord. Thank you, life”. Although in vodoun there are multiple deities, God still comes first. However, as in West Africa, “he is less immediate than the loa. He is identified with destiny; yet within the framework of that destiny man’s lot can be bettered or worsened through dealings with the dead, the baka and lougaros (demons and vampires), and the cult priests” (Courlander, 1985, p.23). Water features prominently in the tale too, the water the white man asks the woman for and the holy spring where the third son and the princess bathe. In view of the significance fresh water has to most of the Vodoun deities, this should come as no surprise. The route to the land where the loa live is believed to be through water, and “under the water” specifically means under the springs, the rivers, and the fresh-water lakes. Because the spring is the primary source of fresh water, it is the most direct means of contact with the land of the loa. Tales are heard everywhere of persons who, drawing water from the spring at night, heard the voices of loa or the sound ofi singing and drumming coming up from somewhere below. And virtually all the tales about human beings who visited the land of the loa describe them as descending into a river or disappearing into a waterfall ... Thus the houngan constantly uses water to entice and invite the deities. He holds a glass or a pitcher of water at the center pole of his peristyle. He extends it toward the four cardinal points. He spills water at the foot of the center pole. He spills water in the hounfar at the fot of the pé, or altar. He sets a pitcher of water at the gateway of his habitation. And often, during a service, he pours a pathway of water in the dust from his gateway into his peristyle. Within nearly every hounfar there is at least one bassin, or pool, dedicated to the

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Baptism is consequently not a concept that is foreign to Vodoun. The lavé tête ritual (also known as the sevic tet or “service for the head”), which is carried out on someone’s death, is an act performed in propitiation of the loa and the loa in the ritual is described as being “baptized”. It is said to strengthen the particular lwa who guards the vodouisant, and to sends away any negative spirits or bad energy that may have become attached to the person. Drums, yams, and even the hounfar itself can be “baptized” too. When the princess turns to the hungan for help, she is advised to take a regurgitive with her when she accompanies her husband to the holy spring. This could well have been the drink that is prepared for what is known as a gad migan or stomach guard–a ceremony performed to provide protection against illness, injury, bad luck, and enemies: One of the most famous of these is prepared by [the lwa] Ezili Danto after she kills a pig. She places the pig’s blood in a basin, and then adds some Florida water and a few other ingredients. Those present will each drink three teaspoons of this nauseating mixture. Afterward, it is believed that the gad migan will cause them to vomit up any poison, spiritual or physical, that they consume. Many Haitians have a great fear of being poisoned. Cautionary tales abound of people who died after taking food from strangers, or who were poisoned by jealous neighbors or relatives. The gad migan is widely sought as protection against the evil intent of others. Much as they might take repulsive-tasting medicine. Vodouisants will overcome their gag reflex in exchange for the benefit it provides (Kenaz, 2007, p.214).

Another important shamanic element in the story is the pot in which the gizzard of the bird is cooked. Iit can be interpreted as representing the cauldron that confers immortality, resurrecting the initiate after the symbolic death. In this case the transformation of the son is effected through his eating of the gizzard, and takes the form of his being blessed with material riches beyond his wildest dreams: “This was a special bird, and anyone who would eat its gizzard would become so rich that his house would fill to the ceiling with silver.”

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The theme of the magical cauldron of renewal is well documented in both legends and myths, and of course the transformation need not only result in material gains as it does in this particular story. For the cauldrons ‘conferred intelligence, foresight, knowledge; they moved men closer to the divine, changing their perception of the world, inducing in them an altered state of mind’ (Ruck, Staples, et al., 2007, p.238). However, given the difficult circumstances most Haitians have had to contend with, having a house filled with silver would of course have been most welcome. Given the history of Haiti, it is not surprising that a powerful assimilation from many cultures is apparent in the tales. “There are stories of European and African derivation, and countless others that are to be found in one form or another in the Middle East, Asia, and throughout the Americas. The precise origins of many of these stories probably will never be known” (Courlander, 1985, p.170). However, what we can say, generally speaking, is that “the tales are often used to express the democratic equality of the small person with the great. In many instances it is the small man who triumphs over the powerful and rich” (Courlander, 1985, p.170). In the case of The Gizzard for example, it is the triumph of the young man of humble origins over the king. As for moral points of the kind commonly made in African tales, the Yoruba stories in this study for example, except for what can be found in proverbs, they have almost entirely disappeared. Instead what we find is that “If the good wins over the bad that is simply an accident of fate; for the bad wins over the good just as frequently” (Courlander, 1985, p.173) The Vodou practised in Haiti has also developed from an eclectic mix of traditions, incorporating the acknowledgement of the Kongo deities of southeastern Africa, the Rada Iwa of the Fon and Ewe tribes of Dahomey (present-day Benin), the Nago spirits of the Yoruba, indigenous Arawak and Taino practices such as that of sand-painting preserved in the creation of vévés (ceremonial drawings used to symbolize and to call upon the lwa), and the adoption from Roman Catholicism of the names of some of the Saints. The influence of the European mystery tradition of Freemasonry can even be identified too, in the Haitian practice of establishing secret societies such as the Sanpwel (see Kenaz, 2007, pp.15-16).

CHAPTER SIX SHAMANIC STORIES FROM THE WESTERN YUGHUR STEPPE

The Western Yughur steppe is the home of the Western Yughur or Yellow Uyghur people, one of China’s 56 officially recognized nationalities, who live in an area where four different language groups, Turkic, Mongolic, Chinese and Tibetan converge. The Yughur nationality itself consists in fact of four linguistically different groups. Chinese is the language of contact between the different linguistic groups, and functions as written medium, with both Western and Eastern Yughur being unwritten languages. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is situated in the northwestern corner of the People’s Republic of China and makes up approximately one-sixth of the country’s total area. However, in spite of its size and strategic importance as a border area, its population is relatively small, 19.63 million in at the end of 2004. As for the people, they constitute the second largest Muslim group in China and the nominal majority in Xinjiang, with their lingustic and religious affiliation providing the basis of their ethnic identity. The situation at the end of the nineteenth century was that even if people were illiterate, they were familiar with the Koran through its magical use by the fortune-teller. Although other methods of soothsaying were also practised, using the Koran was the most widespread technique. The client was asked to close his/her eyes and the Koran was put into his/her hands. Starting from the page where the Koran was opened, seven pages were turned, and on this page the seventh line was found and the diviner said something like “If your lost property is not found today, it will be found tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow”. After this he prayed (Bellér-Hann, 2000, p.22).

The use of the Koran and other sacred texts for divination was also widespread elsewhere in the Islamic world at that time. In Iran, for

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example, the poetry collection of Hafiz was used for the purpose (see Bellér-Hann, 2000, p.23). We know that traditionally, the Yughur people adhered to the Buddhist-Lamaist faith, mixed with shamanist elements and that shamanism was thus being practised in the region before the conversion to Islam. Given that divination is not something that is normally encouraged in the Islamic world (or in Judaism for that matter), it could well be the case that it was introduced to satsfy the demand of the shamanists who were accustomed to consulting shamans for such purposes, in an attempt by the followers of Islam to win them over.

The Story of the Cow There was an old woman. The old woman had raised a cow. She used not to pasture the cow. Every day, she used to drive it out to pasture. Every day, as it became evening, this cow returned. Every day, the old woman used to milk one pail of milk. One day her cow did not return. Then the old woman put her pail into the hearth, braided a short rope and looked at the omen. When she looked at her omen, she saw that the cow was not moving. It would tell useful news. The next day morning, the old woman took along her stick, pressed her milk pail under the arm and went to look for her cow. While she was walking, when she arrived in the mountains, she met with a wolf. Then the old woman asked the wolf about it. The wolf said thus: “I have devoured your cow. Tonight I will come to eat you too!” Then the old woman went home, crying for fear. While she was walking, halfway she met with an old man with white hair. “Why are you crying?” he asked the old woman. Then the old woman said: “I had a cow. Every day I drove it out to pasture. When it returned in the evening, I milked a pail of milk. Yesterday my cow did not return. As I went to look for it today, I met with a wolf between those mountains. The wolf said thus: ‘I have devoured your cow. Tonight I will eat you too!’ he said. I am crying because I don’t know what to do today.”

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Then the old man with the white hair said: “There is no problem. Just you go and don’t lock your door tonight. Bury a piece of dung in the hearth. Bury an egg next to the dung. Stick an awl into the hearth. Put a hammer next to your head. Tonight, when the wolf comes, just you sleep quietly. When the wolf has entered, he will first walk to the hearth. When he walks back from the hearth, you beat him with the hammer. Then he certainly cannot eat you.” Then the old woman went home, put everything thus, and went to sleep in the evening. Hardly had she gone to sleep, when the wolf opened the door and entered. He entered, went to the hearth, and, intending to light a fire, gave a blow into the hearth. Then the egg burst, got into his eyes, and blinded his eyes. When he sat down on his backside, the awl stabbed his buttocks. Then the wolf walked towards the kang to eat the old woman. While he was walking, when he got near the bottom of kang, the old woman made the wolf fall down with one blow of the hammer. Then the old woman beat him relentlessly. When she had beaten him for a moment, the wolf died. When he had died, the old woman skinned the wolf’s hide and made a mattress. She took his flesh and bones away and buried them. *** The Story of the Cow was recorded April 1958 in Liánhua, and was published in Tenishev, È. R. (1976) Stroj saryg-jugurskogo jazyka, Moscow. 250-251. no. 8 (from the website The Western Yugur Steppe www.home.arcor.de/marcmarti/yugur/index.htm [accessed 20/7/07]). Western Yughur literature is transmitted orally, and the folk-tales resemble those of the Chinese and Mongols. Several were reported in Russian by C.E. Malov on an expedition for demarcation of the boundary between Russia and China, in 1909, and the style of the tales, which were written down from the mouth of the storytellers, is both vivid and direct. Tales of magic, like The Story of the Cow, are stories in which the protagonist sets out on a quest; after initial failure s/he succeeds in overcoming the encountered villain or other difficulties, usually with the help of a magical agent. Often the tale concludes with the marriage of the protagonist. An elaborate analysis of the structure of tales of magic was presented by Propp. The theme of many tales of magic is

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the process of maturation of the protagonist, the path s/he has to walk to find his or her happiness. In Western Yugur folktales, the hero or heroine is usually a poor person. As magical helper the white-haired old man can make his appearance (www.home.arcor.de/marcmarti/yugur/index.htm [accessed 20/7/07]).

“Shamanism is a magic (wushu) religion of special form. Not only is the magic activity of the shaman connected with the cult of spirits, his authority is also strengthened by his power of prophecy. Yughur folktales include instances in which this power is referred to” (Jinwen, 1995, p.65). In The Story of the Cow, for example, we learn that the old woman braids a short rope and looks at the omen. In other words, she practises a form of divination. And the old man with the white hair predicts to the old woman what the wolf will do too. Both prophecy and divination can thus be seen to play an important part in Yughur folklore and reflect the cultural beliefs and practices of the people. The next story is about a Manggys and was told by the storyteller Khunjis on 13 September 1995 in Peking and found on the website http://home.arcor.de/marcmarti/yugur/folktale/folktale.htm [accessed 11/9/07]. Young folk and old people alike are familiar with the ugly appearance and wicked nature of the Manggys or Mangus, and the character is very ancient and a familiar figure with all the nomadic tribes of North China. [H]e belongs among the demons (jingling) of the shamanic pantheon. ... bodiless souls, occurring in great numbers and possessing great powers, who live alongside gods and men. They can speak, they have emotions and they are active; in certain tales they associate with men and they were believed by our ancestors to be similar to men. When, under certain conditions, a shaman is abandoned by his demon it means the loss of his power (Jinwen, 1995, p.63).

In other words, they can be the equivalent of the Helpers in other realities that neo-shamanic practitioners turn to for guidance.

Mangqys Grandmother Once upon a time there was a woman. The woman had three daughters. One day this woman went outside to look for food. When she went to look for it, she met with a mangqys. She said thus to the mangqys: "I have three daughters. In the house there is no food left. We are all starving from hunger. Give me a little bit of food!"

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The mangqys asked: "Where is your house?" The woman told everything. Then the mangqys devoured this woman. The mangqys got dressed in the woman's clothes and arrived at her house. The mangqys arrived at the door and knocked at the door: "Girls, come to open the door!" The youngest girl opened the door: "Our mother has come back!" When the two big girls looked, she did not resemble their mother. They said nothing. The mangqys said thus: "Girls, let us bake beans." Then they all baked beans. When they had baked them, they ate and went to sleep. The youngest girl said: "Let me sleep at mother's bosom!" The two big girls slept along the foot end of the kang. While they were sleeping, at midnight, mangqys Grandmother ate something, nibbling quickly. The two big girls asked: "Mother, mother, it is this late, what are you eating?" "I am eating beans." The two girls said: "Give me two!" Then she gave each one person two beans and one little finger of the youngest girl. Then the two girls knew: "This is not our mother, this is a mangqys." Then the two girls said: "Mother, I have to go to pee!" "Pee on the floor!" she said. "On the floor is the deity of the floor. How could we pee?" "Go! Pee in this kitchen garden!" she said. The two girls said thus: "In the kitchen garden is the deity of the kitchen garden. How could we pee?" The mangqys said thus: "Pee in the sheep's pen!" "In the sheep's pen is the deity of the sheep. How could we pee?"

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"In that case, where will you pee?" "We are used to pee behind the fence." "In that case, go to pee!" she said. Then the two girls grabbed their clothes and ran. Behind the fence was a high tree. The two girls climbed up the tree and invoked Heaven. This mangqys had been waiting in the house, but the two girls did not come. Then she knew that the two girls had run away. The mangqys came looking for them behind the fence. She was not able to climb up the big tree. Then she gnawed at it with a tooth. The two girls were afraid and vehemently invoked Heaven: "Heaven, Heaven, will you throw a chain or will you throw a girdle?" Mangqys Grandmother had almost finished digging. A fox came and said: "Let me dig for you! Give one of your teeth!" he said. Then the mangqys gave one of her teeth and then she fell asleep. The fox dug a bit, and looked - the mangqys had fallen asleep. When she had fallen asleep, he shitted a piece of shit and dashed off. Then the mangqys woke up and the tree was still thick. Again she had almost finished digging. When again she had almost finished digging, a hare came. "Let me dig for you, give me one of your teeth!" he said. "Before, a fox came, shitted a piece of shit and dashed off. He has also taken along my tooth." The hare said thus: "That was a fox. But I am a hare. I will dig well for you," he said. Then mangqys Grandmother gave a tooth, and while the hare dug, the mangqys again fell asleep. The hare too shitted a piece of shit and dashed off. When mangqys Grandmother woke up, he too had shitted a piece of shit. Then she dug, becoming more and more angry. When she had almost finished digging out the tree, the girls became afraid and again invoked Heaven: "Blue Heaven, Blue Heaven, will you throw a chain or will you

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throw a girdle?" With a tinkling sound, it threw down a chain. The two girls got hold of it and climbed up to Heaven's top. Mangqys Grandmother became impatient and called: "Blue Heaven, will you throw a chain or will you throw a girdle?" Then it threw down a girdle. Mangqys Grandmother climbed up and when she arrived at its middle, a crow* came, holding in its mouth a glowing piece of dung, and set fire at the middle of the girdle. Mangqys Grandmother fell down and died. * The crow is the girls' mother. *** Shamanism represents a traditional way of thinking that pervades Yughur folklore and this tale proves to be no exception. In the story, the two girls refer to the deity of the floor, the deity of the sheep, and the deity of the kitchen garden. It is a basic tenet of shamanism that all things, both animate and inanimate, have souls (ling) and this is reflected in the tale. Mangqys Grandmother is outwitted by the fox, the hare, and the crow in the tale. In the age of hunting and fishing, it was not uncommon for people to be hurt by their prey or even sometimes to be devoured by them in their struggle for survival. In the course of this struggle for existence with the beasts, people were constantly reminded of their own weakness by the dangers that faced them, and this is probably how the cult of animals arose. Many Yughur tales deal with this topic and Mangqys Grandmother provides a good example. “The majority of animals appear as endowed with divine powers, as far wiser than men or as benevolent and upright. In these tales animals play a decisive role and cannot be dispensed with” (Jinwen, 1995, p.59). From their folklore we know that animals were treated with a great deal of respect by the Yughur. For example, when living a nomadic lifestyle, they would choose a leader from among their animals which they would then address as “divine horse / ox / sheep”. The chosen one would be dressed with a red scarf on its shoulder and was not allowed to be killed, eaten or even mounted. Moreover, “Among Yughurs it is forbidden to eat the meat of animals ‘with a pointed muzzle and a round

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paw’, i.e. of the ass, the horse and the dog–a taboo that is connected with the cult of these animals” (Jinwen, 1995, p.60). As for the appearance of the crow in the tale, birds occupy a special place in shamanism, and the peoples in Northern China consider birds before all as incarnations of shamans or their helpers. The common element of the tales about birds is that a character is carried into the skies, where he is brought up to a life in the air and masters various skills. This aspect reflects the divine power, the magic skills of the shamans. It is generally held that shamans are the “envoys” of the divine world among men. The word for shaman in the language of the Westgern Yughur is eldzi–akin to the old Turkic elþi, which is, in fact the same word, meaning “envoy.” (Jinwen, 1995, pp.61-62).

Being a mediator between gods and men entails journeying between heaven and earth, and it is thus assumed by shamanists that shamans are capable of flying. It is also believed things which are close to the sky, such as high hills or tall trees, are “heavenly ladders” that provide access to the Upper World. Perhaps what this story illustrates, above all else, is the eristic nature of shamanism. Contrary to what is given prominence on neo-shamanic workshops run by oranisations such as the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, namely the safe nature of the techniques that are taught, shamanic practices can in fact be highly dangerous, in that the shamanic world-view openly acknowledges the role of battle against the spirits, and of the risks involved in such actions (see Berman, 2007, pp.11-12). Before moving on, it is interesting to note that Zhong Jinwen, whose research into Yughur folklore has been frequently referred to in this analysis, was the first student from the Uyghur Autonomous County of southern Gansu to obtain a doctorate. Interviewed for an article on People’s Daily Online, this is what he had to say about the changes taking place in his hometown: When I returned home each time in the past few years, I found things changed quite a lot. When I just entered the university, almost all of those who failed in the entrance examinations remained in their hometown. Now, except for those who join the army or take entrance exams, others have gone elsewhere to work or do business, and this is a common practice. Only with the common prosperity of various nationalities can long-term peace and tranquility of the country be guaranteed and the great

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Chapter Six rejuvenation of the Chinese nation be realized www.English.peopledaily.com.cn [accessed 11/9/07]).

(taken

from

The next tale, The Idler's Adventure, was told by Anjang Sanyshkap, 12 November 1910, and published in Malov, S. E. 1967. Jazyk zheltyx ujgurov. Teksty i perevody. Moscow. 78-80, no. 85. One of the` reasons for its inclusion is that it shows how not all shamanic stories are necessarily moralisic. Indeed, this one could be described as somewhat frivolous in nature. At the same time, it also provides an opportunity to highlight the importance of the cult of water that the Yughur cult of the god of heaven is based on. According to Yughur mythology, “the world was created by the god of heaven, who filled up the sea with loess and supported the sky with four pillars to hold it aloft” (Jinwen, 1995, p.55). An important idea in Yughur thinking is that. since heaven and water were once connected, heaven and earth originally formed a chaotic unity (Jinwen, 1995, p.55). Heaven is called tengri (or khan tengri) by the national minorities of northern China. The word is rather similar to the Turkic dengiz, meaning ‘sea’ (in Yughur dengiz has been substituted by the Mongolian word dalai). It is clear from this connection that the cult of the god of heaven is in fact based on the cult of water–and water is the symbol of the origin of life (Jinwen, 1995, p.5556).

The Idler's Adventure There was a household, a husband and wife. There were two sons. They said thus to their sons: "Just you go. Just you go and earn silver." The two sons set off. While they were going, they arrived at a place. The youngest son learned artistry: he could play the kongys, he could sing. This is the youngest son. The eldest son learned mending shoes, and earned silver. Then the eldest son came home, and gave his father his silver. The youngest son too came home. He came and his father looked: what he wore on his body was bad, and he was not even wearing shoes at his feet. He had come home, carrying only his kongys. His father became very angry. When the son said to his father: "Let me have a celebration," his father became even more angry.

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So this beggar thought to go to steal at somebody's house. As they were sleeping at night, the man did thus, he arrived at the shore of a large lake. "Ay, I have learned only this! Let me play the kongys, sing a song, and then drop into the water and die," he said. He sang. The pyhrqans in the water heard it. The pyhrqans came to invite him. "This pyrqhan invites you," they said. "Ah! Even if he would not invite me, I will go". "You were about to fall into the water." The pyhrqans in the water: "Go sit between our horns. After you have done thus, you will get there." He sat down. In a flash they got there. The pyhrqans said to him: "Go sing!" Eh! He sang for three days and nights. As he sang, it was beautiful. Now the pyhrqans said thus: "Now you go. Let me give you silver, and let me give you gold too. Take it along with you and go." When he said: "I will not take silver, nor will I take gold. I myself had once put a red bowl in front of that pyhrqan image of you. Give that to me." When he said it, the pyhrqan looked into the omens: the bowl is the pyhrqan's daughter, this artisan young man is the pyhrqan's son-in-law. The pyhrqan gave the bowl, and the young man set off. Along the way, he became hungry. “‘Let me give silver’ the pyhrqan said to me, but I did not take it. If it was silver, I could eat whatever I liked." Angrily, he threw the bowl away. He walked and walked, and looked back: the bowl looked beautiful. Then he picked it up again, and continued his way carrying it again. The bowl was a wishing treasure: the bowl gives whatever one wants to take from the inside. "Ah! Give me a good garment. Give me an ambler from the best horses. Now bring me silver." Then he put on the garment, he mounted the horse. Then he set off. Then he got home. His father became afraid. "Yo! My artisan son must have plundered somebody's house!" he thought.

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A writing had come from the khan: "You must get a hundred and eight foals born from a stallion," it said. Then the young man said: "Let me give them." "When will you give them?" the khan said. "Let me give them to you in three days' time," he said. Two days passed, yet he did not look for them. The people said thus: "Every day he is drinking liquor. Just when will he go looking for them?" thus they thought. The next day, the khan called him: "Where are the horses you got for me?" he said. "I gave birth to a child", he said. Then the khan said: "What kind of man gives birth to a child?" he said. But the young man answered thus: "Whose stallion gives birth to a foal!" he said. Then the khan did not find anything to say. That is the end. *** According to Malov (1957:58), the Yughur were no longer familiar with the musical instrument kongys; in fact, he did not see any instuments at all, and the number hundred and eight is the number of beads of a Buddhist rosary.

CHAPTER SEVEN THREE YORUBA TALES

Nigeria was artificially created in 1914 when colonial rule came to an end. In theory it is a secular state, with non-favouritism of, and nondiscrimination against religions. However, since 1986 the country has been a member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (an Association consisting of 56 Islamic States promoting Muslim solidarity), and some states in northern Nigeria have even declared sharia law. Muslims have been sponsored to go on pilgrimages to Mecca with state funds, and now Christians are being sponsored to go on pilgrimages too. And while Christianity and Islam compete for dominance, African traditional religions have no official spokesperson to ensure their visibility and no forum through which they can express themselves. In practice, religion has thus become the root of conflict in the country. As for the Yoruba People, of whom there are more than twenty-five million, they occupy the southwestern corner of Nigeria along the Dahomey border and can be found in Dahomey too. To the east and north the Yoruba culture reaches its approximate limits in the region of the Niger River. Portuguese explorers first "discovered" the Yoruba cities and kingdoms in the fifteenth century. However, cities such as Ife and Benin had in fact been standing at the sites they now occupy for at least five hundred years before the European arrival, and archaeological evidence indicates that a technologically and artistically advanced, proto-Yoruba (Nok), were already living somewhat north of the Niger in the first millennium B.C. The Yoruba tradition of living in cities makes them unique not only among African societies, but among nonliterate peoples all over the world. The origins of the culture are uncertain. Similarities to Jewish customs have been noted, with the Yoruba even being identified as one of the ten “lost tribes” of Israel. “The Yoruba’s own version of the origin is charmingly ethnocentric. Not only did they originate at the city of Ife, but

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the earth and the first human beings were created there. This origin myth is widely known and has been recorded in many different variants” (Bascom, 1984, p.9). It is said that Olorun (Olodumare), the Sky God, gave Odua, Creator of the Earth the right to own the earth and rule over it, and he became the first King of Ife. The Yoruba people thus a sense of unity through a common origin; “because all Yoruba people claim an ultimate descent from Odua, or Oduduwa, and the Yoruba kings validate their right to rule by claiming lineal descent from him through one of his sixteen sons” (Bascom, 1984, pp.10-11). As Ellis (1894) points out, Olorun is not the kind of omnipotent God that we are familiar with in the Western world. Instead, he is considered too distant, or too indifferent, to interfere in the affairs of the world, and as he does not concern himself with exercising any control over earthly affairs, man on his part reserves his worship and sacrifice for more active agents, and though, in times of calamity, or affliction, as a last resort, he might be invoked, such occasions are rare. The Yoruba believe in many gods and the total number has never been recorded. “Except for Olorun, the deities are believed to have lived on earth but instead of dying they became gods. ... The worship of deities completely overshadows the worship of the ancestors, which is so important in most African societies” (Bascom, 1984, p.77). Orisha worship (worship of the deities) spread to the new world through the slave trade. In order to preserve their religious traditions against Catholic repression, the African slaves “disguised” the gods by giving them the names of Catholic saints. Thus Shango came to be depicted as Santa Barbara; Obatala as Our Lady of Mercy, etc. The religion took deep hold in African communities in Brazil and Cuba, and eventually spread to mixed race and European-American communities in these countries. After the Cuban revolution of 1959 the religion, known in Spanish as Santeria or La Regla de Ocha, spread to the United States (especially New York City and Florida), Puerto Rico and Venezuela. As Bogunmbe points out in the Preface to Tales from Ifa Literary Corpus which the tale that follows was taken from, for the ancestors of the Yoruba, Ifa (the words of Orunmila) has the status of a sacred text, and belief in the Power of Ifa is absolute. This is because Ifa is believed to contain the words of Olorun, also known as Olodumare.

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Olorun is the Sky God and has been syncretized with the Christian God and the Muslim Allah. He is also believed to be the deity who assigns and controls the individual destinies of mankind. As for Olorun’s words, they are believed to have been transmitted to man through Ifa the God of divination, also known as Orunmila and Agbonniregun. [A]ll believers in the Yoruba religion turn to Ifa in time of trouble, and on the advice of the babalawo all sacrifice to Eshu [the divine messenger and enforcer] and through him to Olorun. This important trinity ... assist humans to achieve their destinies which are assigned to each individual before his ancestral guardian soul is reborn (Bascom, 1984, p.80).

***

Okus – The Taboo Meat (From Ogundadi, Chapter 140) Okanbi the son and heir of Olofin had a special diviner, Okusu. Okusu was not only a diviner, he was also a water spirit and a wizard. On one occasion, Okanbi wanted to know if he would prosper in life so he consulted Okusu. Okusu’s divination prescribed that Okanbi must always show gratitude to his benefactors. His sacrifices were the pigeon, cock, sheep, goat and six bags of cowries. Okanbi provided them. Soon Okanbi became the Olofin. His power and position soon climbed all over his eyes. He assembled all the hunters in the town and asked them to go on a hunting expedition for him. They returned empty-handed for six consecutive days. On the seventh day the voice of Okusu caught their ears and they rushed back to tell the king that Okusu was the only available animal. Okanbi did not blink an eyelid. “Go and bring it here,” he thundered at the head hunter. The hunters hurried back and trailed Okusu. When they pointed their guns at him Okusu started a song: Hold your guns This animal is not for killing An animal that talks

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Is not game. .

Kill Okusu and Prepare for the land of the dead. The hunters were dumbfounded. Their hands fell limply to their sides. “This kind of message is not for only our ears, Olofin must know of it”, they said. But Olofin wouldn’t believe them. He insisted on seeing the mysterious animal. When Okusu was brought to him, it still sang but Olofin was more than keen on tasting the strange animal. He had it cut up and cooked. But the meat went on crying This animal is not for killing An animal that talks Is not game. Kill Okusu and Prepare for the land of the dead. Olofin swallowed the meat and dropped dead. The talking meat had taken him on the long journey. *** The Olofin or the Aláàfin of Òyó, was once the Emperor of Yoruba. At the height of his powers, long before the coming of the British, he is said to have controlled three quarters of Yorubaland, and the people were required to pay tribute to him (see Abimbola, 1997, p.97). As for Okusu, though we learn from the tale that he is an animal, “The verses of the Ifà tell us that in those ancient times some animals and birds understood and spoke the languages of human beings and some humans also spoke and understood the languages of birds and animals” (Abimbola, 1997, p.15). This of course is not peculiar to the Yoruba, but is found in the folklore of many other peoples too.

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The sacrifice Okanbi is required to make, of a pigeon, cock, sheep, goat and six bags of cowries, would have been taken to the kind of place where supernatural spirits are believed to gather, at a crossroads, for example, for healing can only take place once the necessary sacrifice has been made. “The Yorùbá believe that proper sacrifice must be offered to the deities in order to avert calamities and to also propitiate the gods for their offences and mistakes that may incur the wrath of the deities upon them” (Olusola, 2005, p. 168). Most sacrifices are offerings to supernatural forces, either the orisa or even to malevolent agents. “It is assumed by the diviner and the client that these offerings (ebo) are ‘substitutes’ that Ifa spiritual forces are persuaded to take in return for the release of a person they otherwise vow to destroy” (Olupona, 2004, p.104). A Yoruba diviner is known as a babalawo, which can be translated as "Father who has the secret." The babalawo are responsible for mediating between humans and the supernatural world. Through their training they acquire a significant body of esoteric knowledge and this is what they are valued for. ...what makes a babalawo is the knowledge of the Odù, that is the verses from the sacred literary corpus of Ifá (which is organised into 256 chapters with an estimated 600-800 verses in each), the knowledge of herbs and leaves, and the knowledge of how to perform sacrifice (see Abimbola, 1997, p.28). There are three stages to the Ifa divination process–consultation, diagnosis, and prescription of the appropriate remedy. This usually consists of a sacrificial ritual, and medicinal herbs to cure the illness. “The client sits on a mat in front of the babalawo, who lays out the divination paraphernalia, consisting of a divinatory chain (a string on which is tied eight halves of nuts) and a tray spread with a yellowish wood dust” (Olupona, 2004, p.106). As for the nature of the pronouncement the babalawo then makes on the basis of the divination, this is how Dr Wande Abimbola describes it, who is himself a babalawo and also the President of the International Congress of Orisa Tradition and Culture: When a person divines, Ifá will speak about something related to his present, past, and future condition. When you know what your future hoolds in store for you, you will know what sacrifices to make, so as to change any elements there which may not be so good. If there is an

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Not only is meat-eating common among indigenous people, but in certain regions, in Siberia for example, it could well be all that is available. However, the choice as to which animals can be slaughtered, the manner in which it is done, and the uses to which the animals’ parts are put are often strictly controlled. And if the taboos are broken, the consequences can be fatal, as they are in this particular tale. Among the Yoruba, these controls include, for example, “the taboo of killing a mating animal. The Yorùbá explain this restriction by drawing parallels with the sexual relationship between humans, which should also never be disturbed” (Olusola, 2005, p. 157). And hunters believe if they violate the taboo, they may then have a similar experience when with their own wives. Although the Yoruba believe in the welfare of animals, they do not necessarily believe in their rights. This is understandable in view of the various functions they derive from them, for “the Yorùbá rely extensively on animals for their own well-being. Next to using the animals in various rituals and sacrifices, they also play a central role in Yorùbá traditional medicine. Medicines are made of a whole animal or part of it” (Olusola, 2005, p.169). There is, for example, “a particular rat, called edá, which is used by folk healers to cure infertility because of its nature to reproduce within a very short time” (Olusola, 2005, p.169). In fact, as our story shows, animals have played a fundamental role in the religious, social, economic, and political lives of the Yorùbá peoples, and still do even today. It is the Yorùbá philosophy that animal meat is the carrier of food from the mouth to the oesophagus and finally to the stomach. Hence, they call animal meat Aláàárù–the Carrier. Some dishes are considered substandard and unpalatable without meat. They even believe that people who do not eat meat are eating àsán “emptiness” (Olusola, 2005, p. 166).

In earlier days however, meat was a food just for ceremonies and special occasions. “Only the wealthy could afford to buy meat regularly in the market or to kill domestic animals simply for food. In common with many Africans elsewhere, many Yoruba ate meat only when an animal died or was sacrificed” (Bascom, 1984, p.18).

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Of particular importance among the Yoruba is the relationship between hunters and animals, which is deep, complex and mysterious. Hunters believe that some animals are spirits, and that they transform into humans at nights when the hunters go to their hunting expeditions. Furthermore, they teach the hunters traditional Yorùbá folk medicine, which is, in turn, very useful to them and their society. Yorùbá hunters believe that not every animal that they encounter must be killed, because some of them are powerful and show their real colour during the night to the hunters (Olusola, 2005, p. 164).

Among the Yoruba deity, there is even a patron of hunters known as Oshosi, who came from Yemaja. It is said that Orungan fell in love with his mother Yemaja and that one day, taking advantage of his father's absence, he ravished her. Immediately after the act Yemaja, horrified by what had happened, sprang to her feet and fled from the place, but Orungan pursued her. He tried to console her by saying that no one would ever know about it, and by suggesting that she should live from then on with two husbands, one acknowledged, and the other in secret. But she rejected all his proposals with loathing, and continued to run away. Orungan, however, rapidly caught up with Yemaja, and was just about to grab hold of her when she fell backwards to the ground. Then her body immediately began to swell alarmingly, two streams of water gushed from her breasts, and her abdomen burst open. The two streams joined and formed a lagoon, and from her gaping body came forth both gods and goddeses, including Oshosi. Oshosi is said to live in the forest, and drives the game into the traps of his faithful followers, whom he also protects in return for their sacrifices to him. It is precisely because the hunters in our story are persuaded to break their strict codes of behaviour by Okanbi, and choose to ignore Okusu’s warning, that Olofin pays for the transgression with his life. It is the belief of the Yoruba that when you get to the gate between heaven and earth, you are judged, and this is what Olofin was warned to prepare for. And on this Day of Judgement, “If you did well, you will be rewarded, and you may come back again as an ancestor. Those who didn’t do well will not come back again, and will be lingering in what we call Òrun àpáàdì. This is the nearest to the Christian hell in our own belief” (Abimbola, 1997, p.35). ***

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The second tale selected for inclusion in this Chapter comes from the collection Fourteen Hundred Cowries: Traditional Stories of the Yoruba, by Abayomi Fuja, published in 1984.

The Wooden Spoon and the Whip When famine once came to the land a certain man called Ajayi, finding there was nothing to eat in or near his town, went farther afield in search of food.He came to a river and wandered along its bank till he came to an oil palm that overhung the river. Ajayi was overjoyed to find some plam nuts growing over the water. He climbed up the tree and out over the water and was just about to pick the palm nuts when they fell into the river. They all sank immediately except for one, which continued to float and was carried down stream. Ajayi climbed down from the tree and followed along the bank, all the time watching for the palm nut to be carried close to the bank. However, it remained, bobbing up and down in the middle of the stream, and was slowly carried down to the sea. Seeing that he was about to lose the one remaining nut, Ajayi tool off his clothes and jumped into the sea, but as he reached it, the nut sank, and Ajayi, more determined then ever, dived down after it. The next moment a wonderful thing happened, for he suddenly found himself in a great palace under the sea, and there before him, in magnificent robes, sat Olokun, god of the sea, “What brings you to my palace, Ajayi?” asked the Sea God. Ajayi explained how he had gone out to search for food and had found and followed a plam nut, which had led him before Olokun. “Stay with me and I will see that you are fed” said Olokun. “My family is starving at home,” replied Ajayi. The Sea God stood up and going top a wooden chest, which stood in one corner of his room, he opened it and brought out a strange-looking wooden spoon. “Ajayi,” he said, “take this wooden spoon back to your family and keep it safely, and you and your family will never want for food. All you have to do is to ask the spoon what its duty is, and it will always provide you with food.”

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Ajayi thanked the Sea God for his great kindness, and having paid his respects, he was led out through one of the many passages that led off from Olokun’s hall. Presently, Ajayi found himself outrside and standing on the seashore. He went home as quickly as he could and showed his family the wonderful spoon. “What is your duty?” Ajayi asked the spoon. “To feed,” replied the spoon, and immediately there was plenty of food prepared and ready for eating, and Ajayi and his family ate to satisfaction. Ajayi was a good man and wanted to help his people. He went to the king and showed him the spoon. The king called all his people together and they all came and sat down in his compound and had as much food as they required. Having fed all the people, the king and Ajayi next decided to feed all the starving animals, so all the animals were summoned to the palace, and they all came and ate till their great hunger was satisfied. At the end of the feast, a tortoise came up to Ajayi and asked him how he had managed to get the wonderful spoon. Ajayi related the story of the palm nut and how it had led him eventually to the Sea God Olokun. The tortoise thanked Ajayi and then went off to the spoon and said, “What is your duty?” “To feed,” replied the spoon. “Then get me a palm nut,” replied the tortoise. Immediatealy a palm nut was placed before the tortoise. He picked it up, and having thanked the king, he left the palace. The tortoise set out for the river, and when he reached the water’s edge he threw the plam nut in and watched it as it floated slowly down toward the sea. The tortoise followed. When the nut reached the sea, the toprtoise dived in after it and followed it down as it sank. The next minute the tortoise found himself standing before the Sea God Olokun. “What brings you here, tortoise?” asked Olokun. The tortoise related how he had seen some palm nuts growing on a tree by the river, and feeling hungry, he had tried to pick them, but they had

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suddenly fallen from the tree into the water and one had continued to float downstream till it had led him before the Sea God. “Having come before me, what do you want?” demanded Olokun. “I want you to give me a wooden spoon so that I can feed my starving family,” replied the tortoise. “I have no spoons left,” replied the Sea God, getting up and opening his wooden chest. “However, since you have taken so much trouble to see me, I will give you a whip instead, and it will help you and your family for the rest of your lives.” The tortoise thanked Olokun for his great kindness and, taking the whip, he was led out through the passage till he found himself standing outside on the seashore. He hurried home, and going inside with his family, he locked the door to keep people from seeing his magic whip. “Now,” said the tortoise, “I have as good a gift as Ajayi. This whip will provide us with everything. Whip, what is youd duty?” asked the tortoise. “To flog,” replied the whip, and immediately it commenced to flog the tortoise and his family. The tortoise was very sorry he had locked the door and it was a long time before he could escape from the whip. The next day, he determined to have his revenge, and took the whip to the king. He explained that it was as good as Ajayi’s spoon and could work wonders. He presented the whip to the king. The king then summoned all the people to a great feast, and when they had gathered, he explained that Olokun had sent them another gift. The turning to the whip he said, “What is your duty, whip?” “To flog,” replied the whip, and it commenced to flog everybody present including the king. The tortoise had in the meantime concealed himself in a mortar in the cornerre of the king’s compound and was safe. He greatly enjoyed the joke as the people ran around crying for help and trying to escape from the whip. At last the whip lay down and was still. The sore and angry people heard somebody laughing in the mortar and they went and dragged the tortoise out of his hiding place and took him before the king. He was promptly executed for his great impudence. ***

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Olokun is the Yoruba god of the sea. He or she (in some traditions Olokun is female) lives in a huge underwater palace with both humans and fish as his servants, and is considered to be the patron orisa of the descendants of Africans that were carried away during the Maafa, or what is sometimes referred to as the Transatlantic Slave Trade or Middle Passage. Olokun works closely with Oya (Deity of Sudden Change)and Egungun (Collective Ancestral Spirits) to herald the way for those that pass to ancestorship, as it plays a critical role in Death (Iku), Life and the transition of human beings and spirits between these two planes. As well as being one of many Orisa known to help women that want children, Olokun is also worshipped by those who seek political or social advancement. As man worships that which he has most to fear, or what he hopes to receive the greatest benefits from, the inland tribes pay little attention to Olokun, who is, however, the chief god of fishermen and of all others whose business take them upon the sea. When Olokun is angry he makes the sea rough and it is he who drowns men and causes shipwrecks. Ordinarily, animals are sacrificed to Olokun, but in the past when the condition of the surf prevented canoes from putting to sea for many days at a time, a human victim would be offered to placate him (see Ellis, 1894, Chapter III). When making a request to the spirits or the gods, having the right intent is crucial when it comes to ascertaining whether our wishes will be granted or not, as the tortoise discovers to his cost in this tale. It is the belief of the Yoruba that the day of our death can never be postponed, though what the future holds for us can be modified by the choices we make in life as well as by external forces. “If one has the full support and protection of his ancestral guardian soul, of Olorun, and of the other deities, he will enjoy the destiny promised him and live out his allotted span of life; if not, he may forfeit blessings destined for him or die before his time” (Bascom, 1984, p.72). It can be observed that whether the principal characters are humans or animals, the stories here are predominantly moralisitic in intent, though it does not necessarily follow that all shamanic tales are. The fact that the journey undertaken is initiated by Ajayi’s attempt to pick a palm nut is far from being an unimportant detail in this tale for palm nuts are what the babalawo, the priests of Ifa, use for divination.

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Chapter Seven A babalawo consults Ifa by manipulating sixteen palm nuts ... there is a total of 16x16 or 256 complete figures in this complex and reigidly defined system of divination ... Having arrived at the correct figure, the babalawo recites its verses, one of which is selected as relevant to his client’s problem as in the Chinese I Ching. The verse prescribes the sacrifice required to insure a desired blessing or to avert an impending misfortune. Before a babalawo’s apprenticeship is ended in Ife, he must have memorized over a thousand Ifa verses, at least four for each of the 256 figures, and he continues to learn new verses from his colleagues throughout his life (Bascom, 1984, pp.70-71).

What we find in The Wooden Spoon and the Whip is that both Ajayi and the tortoise attempt to take control of their own destinies by means of the nut, but with very different results. And the results very much correspond to their motives. The king, who was distinguished by the right to wear a beaded crown, was not a figure to take lightly as the tortoise found out, but someone held in great awe by the people: He appeared in public only once a year, at the major sacrifice to Ogun, the God of Iron, and even then he was concealed behind cloths held by his messengers so that only his crown and its white egret feather could be seen. During the festival of Orishala he made three trips from the papalce to the shrine, but on these occasions all the townspeople of Ife had to remain in their houses with their windows clopsed and the women worshippers waiting at the shrine had to lie down with cloths over their heads so that he would not be seen (Bascom, 1984, p.31).

*** The third and final story in this Chapter was found on the website of the Internet Sacred Text archive (www.sacred-texts.com [accessed 14/9/07]) and comes from a 1929 collection entitled Yoruba Legends by M.I. Ogumefu.

Moremi A nobleman of Ile-Ife had a beautiful and virtuous wife named Moremi, and a handsome young son, Ela. The country of the Ifes was at that time subject to fierce raids by a tribe called the Igbos, who were of such an uncanny appearance in battle that the Ifes thought them not human, but a visitation sent by the gods in

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punishment for some evil. In vain did they offer sacrifices to the gods; the raids of these strange beings continued, and the land was thrown into a state of pamc. Now the heroic Moremi, desiring to bring an end to this condition of affairs, resolved to let herself be captured during one of the raids, so that she might be carried as a prisoner to the land of the Igbos and learn all their secrets. Bidding farewell to her husband and her little son, she went to a certain stream and promised the god of the stream that, if her attempt was successful, she would offer to him the richest sacrifice she could afford. As she had planned, she was captured by the Igbos and carried away to their capital as a prisoner. On account of her beauty she was given to the King of the Igbos as a slave; and on account of her intelligence and noble heart she soon gained the respect of all and rose to a position of importance. Before she had been in the country very long, she had learnt all the secrets of her enemies. She found that they were not gods but ordinary men. On going into battle they wore strange mantles of grass and bamboo fibre, and this accounted for their unnatural appearance. She also learned that because of these mantles of dry grass, they were much afraid of fire, and that if the Ifes were to rush among them with lighted torches, they would quickly be defeated. As soon as it was possible, she escaped from the palace and from the territory of the Igbos and returned to her own people. Her tidings were joyfully received at Ile-Ife, and shortly afterwards the Igbos were utterly defeated by the trick Moremi had suggested. Moremi now went to the stream and made a great sacrifice of sheep, fowls, and bullocks; but the god of the stream was not satisfied and demanded the life of her son. Sorrowing, Moremi was forced to consent, and sacrificed the handsome boy Ela. The Ifes wept to see this sad spectacle, and they promised to be her sons and daughters for ever, to make up for her loss. But lo! Ela as he lay upon the ground was only half dead, and when the people had departed, he recovered consciousness and sprang up. Making

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a rope of grass, he climbed up to heaven, and it is certain that he will some day return to reap the benefits of his mother’s noble sacrifice. *** The rope of grass that Ela makes is the equivalent of Jacob’s Ladder, a cosmic mountain or the Tree of Life, in that it provides the means of accessing the Upper World. At death the ancestral guardian soul (eleda, iponri), the breath (emi), and the shadow soul (ojiji) are believed to leave the body and normally they reach heaven, where they remain until the ancestral guardian soul is reincarnated (see Bascom, 1984, p.71) When the three souls reach heaven the ancestral guardian soul gives an account of all the good and bad deeds done on earth ... and Olorun judges his case. If a man has been good and kind on earth [as Ela was] his souls are sent to the “good heaven” (orun rere); but if he has been cruel or wicked ... he is condemned to the “bad heaven” (orun buburu, orun buruku) as punishment (Bascom, 1984, p.75).

Odudua, the chief goddess of the Yoruba who represents the earth and is married to the anthropomorphic sky-god Obatala, is said to have had two children, a boy and a girl, Aganju and Yemaja. The name Aganju means uninhabited tract of country, wilderness, plain, or forest, and Yemaja, "Mother of fish" (yeye, mother; eja, fish). The offspring of the union of Heaven and Earth, that is, of Obatala and Odudua, may thus be said to represent Land and Water. Yemaja is the goddess of brooks and streams, and presides over ordeals by water (see Ellis, 1894, Chapter II). In our story, however, we learn that Moremi makes a sacrifice to the god, not goddess, of the stream so we cannot be sure which orisha is being alluded to. This because there are numerous river gods and goddesses worshipped by the Yoruba–including Oya the Goddess of the Niger River, Yemaja the Goddess of the Ogun River, and Erinle the deity of a small river near llobu, Oshun the Yoruba Venus, Oba, Yewa, Ondo, and Are (see Bascom, 1984, pp.87-91). So we cannot be sure from the information in the story which deity Moremi made the sacrifice to. However, the lesson to be learnt is clear–that sometimes the price to be paid to the orisha for the granting of favours is so very great that recourse to such supernatural powers should only be considered when all else has failed, and perhaps not even then.

CHAPTER EIGHT CONCLUSIONS

Having considered the variety of ways in which divination is practised, we are now in a position to make some general observations on the cross-cultural features of divination. What we can conclude is: x

Divination is a human universal that has withstood the test of time and persists even in our present day and age. And if it did not work, then it clearly would not persist.

x

From an indigenous perspective, the interaction between the diviner and client is regarded as a means of obtaining access to the real, which is not necessarily the case when divination takes place in other contexts.

x

Divinations, and other shamanic practices such as soul retrievals, are traditionally effected not through the shaman’s own power but through the power of the shaman’s spirit helper(s).

x

In indigenous communities, the diviner tends to consider the sickness of a patient to be an indication of the fact that something is wrong in the corporate body, and that “The patient will not get better until all the tensions and aggressions in the group’s interrelations have been brought to light and exposed to ritual treatment” (Turner, 1964, p.262). Neo-shamanic practitioners, however, tend to focus more on the individual.

x

Divination frequently, though not always, entails “the engagement of an altered state of consciousness that establishes relations with the spirits, [and this is now considered to be the result of] … the production of slow-wave brain discharges in the serotonergic connections between the limbic system and the brain stem regions” (Winkelman & Peek, 2004, p.12).

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x

Divination begins with the processes of diagnosis. This frequently, though not always, involves the shaman consulting his or her helping spirit(s). Generally speaking, the shaman who performs the diagnosis is also the person who performs the healing ceremony. However, some cultures have diagnostic specialists to perform the initial diagnosis.

x

Diagnosis entails naming and locating an ailment. It places the condition within a cultural context, a larger framework of meaning, helping to reassure the client that there is a solution to his or her problem and that healing can thus take place (see Winkelman & Peek, 2004, p.25).

x

Individuals who can talk about their problems tend to have fewer bodily symptoms and illnesses than those who keep them suppressed and the diagnosis stage of the divination process provides the client with an opportunity for this.

x

It is often considered necessary that divination should take place at a fixed time and place in order to be effective.

x

The diviner frequently, though not always, wears special clothes, makes use of special divinatory apparatus, and then uses several divinatory mechanisms to cross check that the information received is accurate.

x

In indigenous communities, the purpose of divination is not only to diagnose a patient’s symptoms with the intent of getting rid of them but also to search out the initial cause(s) of the symptoms, in the belief that the client needs to be healed as well as cured. American Indian divinations for illnesses, for example, “often include a prognosis that includes changes the patient must make in his or her personal life once the cure is achieved. Otherwise, the illness (symptoms) will return” (Lyon, 2004, p.133).

x

Rather then being “a process that becomes more prevalent in times of social instability and change [that] … is seized upon by the public under these circumstances to provide assistance and aid in making life decisions” (Neumann Fridman, 2004, p.141), history indicates that divination has always been popular, probably because it caters for a basic and universal human desire to be able to remove uncertainty and to predict the future.

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It has been suggested that “divination may be an inherently conservative process, linking the individual and present circumstances with an interpretative psychosocial framework of past social norms and traditions” (Winkelman & Peek, 2004, p.7). However, as well as providing a mechanism for maintaining the existing social order within a community, at other times divination may provide the stimulus required to bring about significant changes in an individual’s life.

An important point that needs to be made is that shamanic stories such as those included in this study should not necessarily be taken to represent a mirror of what takes place in reality. Indeed, no fiction should. For this reason, to draw conclusions about the way in which rituals were carried out from their representation in tales would be extremely inadvisable. In any case, ritual appearing as the focus of a story is a situation very seldom encountered. What we tend to find instead is that accounts of rituals found in stories tend to have more of a functional nature suited to the situation (see Novik, 1989, p.24). In the words of Lévi-Strauss, “The myth is certainly related to given (empirical) facts, but not as a re-presentation of them. The relationship is of a dialectic kind, and the institutions described in the myths can be the very opposite of the real institutions” (Lévi-Strauss, 1967, p.29). Indeed, instead of being an attempt to depict reality, such material is often used to show its limitations or shortcomings, and extreme positions may well be depicted in such tales only to show that they are untenable in practice (see Lévi-Strauss, 1967, p.30). As examples of the shamanic story, a story that has either been based on or inspired by a shamanic journey or one that contains a number of the elements typical of such a journey, all the tales in this study can be said to have certain aspects in common. However, at the same time it should be pointed out that what is being proposed here is a polythetic definition. In other words, a class is being defined not all of whose members have all attributes of the definition in common, but nevertheless a sufficient number of them to be able to maintain that they belong to the class. The majority of the stories tend to contain embedded texts (often the account of the shamanic journey itself) and the number of actors is clearly limited as one would expect in subjective accounts of what can be regarded as inner journeys. They can often be used for healing purposes too in that giving a name to a condition is the first step towards resolving

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the problem or, at least, coming to terms with it. Another point worth making is that whereas “Most of the psychological themes underlying fairy tales involve the concerns of young people” (Jones, 2002, p.19), this is certainly not the case with shamanic stories. Additionally, we have also seen how shamanic stories have the potential to provide a medium through which psychic states that might otherwise be difficult to put into words can be expressed. Finally, they are all examples of what Kremer defines as “tales of power”, conscious verbal constructions based on numinous experiences in non-ordinary reality, designed to guide individuals and help them to integrate all aspects of their experience in meaningful and fulfilling ways (see Kremer, 1988, p.192). Although in literary fiction considerable care is given to describing characters, their appearance, and what they think or feel, such passages are missing in the folk tale [and also, generally speaking, in the shamanic story]. Characters are called good, bad, young, old, clever, stupid, or by some other general term. They are said to be frightened, angry, happy, or suspicious, for example, but their emotions are apparent more through their behaviour than because of comment (Meyer, 1973, p.98).

Of course, when the tale is told, the storyteller can add much of what has been omitted through facial expressions, changes in voice, tempo, and gestures. The tale reduced to the printed page, however, appears to be rather flat in its dimensions, which is why the readers (by making use of their imagination) have to supply the missing detail for themselves. So here we have another feature that shamanic tales share in common. It can also be observed how shamanic stories can end both positively (with victory, elimination of a deficiency, avoidance of misfortune) or negatively (with defeat, loss, a new misfortune). This differentiates them from rituals proper, where the intention is always to model a favourable result for those who participate in the process (see Novik, 1990, p.173). The fact that such stories can end negatively should come as no surprise for indigenous shamanism, as has already been pointed out, is in fact eristic in that the shamanic world-view openly acknowledges the role of battle against the spirits and of the risk involved in the course of such action. We find this reflected in a number of the stories–The Shaman’s Drum for example, in which the shaman is regarded as a hero who courageously intervenes into cosmic processes on behalf of those he / she represents.

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In addition to enumerating what shamanic stories have in common with each other, perhaps we should also consider the differences that exist between them. “Since shamanism is so widespread, it is self-evident that the tales told about shamans will be coloured by the narrative traits and modes of cultural expression specific to the various regions. In this respect, shaman tales tally with the other tales investigated by folklorists” (Hultkrantz, 1993, p.41). Although folk tales that have grown up around shamans are being referred to here, the same can clearly be applied to what we have defined as shamanic stories. We have also seen how the style of storytelling most frequently employed in shamanic stories is that of magic realism, in which although “the point of departure is ‘realistic’ (recognizable events in chronological succession, everyday atmosphere, verisimilitude, characters with more or less predictable psychological reactions), … soon strange discontinuities or gaps appear in the ‘normal,’ true-to-life texture of the narrative” (Calinescu, 1978, p.386). This style is nothing new as can be seen from the fact that it is in evidence both in the folktales selected for inclusion and also in literary and biblical examples of the genre. Another feature that the stories share in common is the way in which most of them have an etiological function. This includes not just “an explanation of the origin of things, but rather a declaration of object ‘displacing’, ‘transferral’, or ‘obtaining’ [with the texts describing] … not only the fact of the contact / conflict between two characters and its outcome, but also the meaning of this outcome for the narrator and his listeners” (Novik, 1989, p.74). In other words, what we have here are more than just stories but teaching tales too. Additionally, a number of them can also be described as sacred texts in that they serve the purpose of conveying “messages addressed by spirits to people” (Novik, 1990, p.178), as in Okus–The Taboo Meat for example. It can be observed too that all the tales in this collection emphasize how fragile we are and how vulnerable we are to attack–from the sleeping man in The One who would not listen to his own Dream to the tortoise in The Wooden Spoon and the Whip–they all show how we can be certain of nothing in this world, and consequently help us to value what we have more highly and to fight to hang on to what we have. In the words of Marie-Louise von Franz, “through the realization of the dark side of God … [and the precarious nature of the situation we find ourselves in, we can become] more tolerant and understanding, realizing

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that we are all poor devils struggling with a difficult fate, the beginning and end of which we do not know” (Franz, 1980, p.47). To suggest otherwise, that the tales were designed as a form of psychotherapy can be nothing more than presumptious–when such terms never even existed at the time when they were first told. Though most shamanic stories can be said to include the confronting of a problem (frequently by the undertaking of a quest) they do not necessarily result in the entirely successful resolution of that problem (a happy ending) and thus differ from what would find in a fairy tale. On the other hand, what they do share in common with fairy tales is that they both “depict magic or marvellous events of phenomena as a valid part of human experience” (Jones, 2002, p.9). They can thus both be said to provide “a testament to the existence of another dimension to our existence” (Jones, 2002, p.13). Another feature they share in common with fairy-tales is described in the following quote: If we dilute the descriptions of the dark powers or leave them out altogether, we take from the fairy-tale its power of awakening, even though this power works unconsciously. For knowledge of evil calls up the power of the good in human hearts. The way in which true fairy-tales deal with light and darkness creates in the listener a healthy sense of reality (Meyer, 1988, p.140).

And although they are clearly not all examples of fairy-tales, the same can be said of the shamanic stories that deal with divination in this study too. Perhaps the most significant feature the stories have in common is the way in which the hero / heroine of each tale is psychologically out of balance, open to attack from hostile forces, and thus vulnerable. From the shamanic point of view, such people are prone to illness, accidents, and bad luck because they lack spiritual power and, in the words of Harner, this spiritual power is something analogous to a spiritual immune defense system, but I wouldn't make a one-to one equivalence. It's an analog. The power makes one resistant to illness. If somebody is repeatedly ill, then it's clear that they need a power connection. A healthy person who is not sick might go on a vision quest to get this power connection, but one of the shaman's jobs is to help people who are in no condition to do that for

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themselves’ (taken from Shamanism, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring-Summer) 1997 on the website www.shamanism.org/articles/857415539.htm [accessed 7/3/2006]).

It is also interesting to note that in a number of the tales no recovery is affected, reflecting the eristic nature of indigenous shamanism that, as has already been commented upon, neo-shamans tend to gloss over. One of the seven basic plots Booker (2004) refers to is that of the Quest. Far away, there is believed to be a “priceless goal, worth any effort to achieve: a treasure, a promised land; something of infinite value” (Booker, 2004, p.69), and the hero or heroine, driven by an overwhelming compulsion, leaves home in order to find it. Along the way the he / she is likely to encounter monsters, temptations, the need to travel “an exact and a perilous path between two great opposing dangers”, and even a journey to the Land of the Dead (Booker, 2004, p.76), and a feature common to such tales is that the hero is not usually alone in his adventures. Then, “[a]fter a last ‘thrilling escape from death’, the kingdom, the ‘Princess’ or the life-transforming treasure are finally won: with an assurance of renewed life stretching indefinitely into the future” (Booker, 2004, p.83). In a sense, all our lives involve a form of quest, “a journey towards the ultimate goal of wholeness and self-realisation” (Booker, 2004, p.221). Moreover, shamans meet “Helpers” on their journeys that assist them in their work, and journeys to the Land of the Dead are, on occasions, part of their work too. Thus even though the quest in some cases might be for nothing more than material wealth, the majority of the stories in this collection can be said to feature quests too. Another of the seven basic plots Booker refers to is that of the Voyage and Return: The hero or heroine … travel out of their familiar, everyday “normal” surroundings into another world completely cut off from the first, where everything seems disconcertingly abnormal. At first the strangeness of this new world, with its freaks and marvels, may seem diverting, even exhilarating … But gradually a shadow intrudes. The hero or heroine feel increasingly threatened, even trapped, until eventually … they are released from the abnormal world, and can return to the safety of the familiar world where they began (Booker, 2004, p.87).

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Unlike the hero of the quest, drawn by an overwhelming sense of compulsion in search of a specific goal, the heroes of the Voyage and Return story have no such sense of purpose (Booker, 2004, pp.95-96). According to Booker, “The ‘other world’ is never wholly real to them– even though the experience of being there may eventually seem to threaten their very survival” (Booker, 2004, p.98). It should be pointed out that although this may be true in the case of a character in a tale, it would not be the case for the shaman who undertakes such a journey. The difference being that for him / her, as an “insider”, it would be regarded as real. In the case of the complete happy ending to the story, the hero can be seen to have moved from ignorance to knowledge and to have made a switch from dark to light. [S]o changed have they been by their encounter with the unknown that their relationship is quite different. They have escaped from their original state of limited consciousness and learned to “see whole”. They have discovered who they are. They have grown up (Booker, 2004, p.223).

All the tales in the sub-genre of shamanic stories that is being considered in this study can be said to involve a journey, either outer or inner, but not all of them can be said to involve a return to this reality–the case of Ela, for example, in Moremi. Therefore it can be seen that although Booker’s suggestion there are only seven basic plots is too reductionist to actually work in practice, his Voyage and Return outline does help us to isolate more clearly the specific features that all the tales in the sub-genre have in common, and in that sense it has proved to be useful. Something else that is evident in all the tales is that regardless of whether happiness ever after or doom forever more is forecast, the predictions made invariably come true. This is only to be expected in that the cultures represented by, and reflected in, the stories are all examples of ones which respect and value such practices. As to whether shamanic stories that deal with divination can be said to be “authentic” or fictitious, the determination of this is probably best left to the peoples the stories belong to as they have their own means of classifying tales. The Chukchi, to give but one example, “divide narratives into the tottomgatken pynylty–‘accounts of the time of creation’ …, akalyletken pynylty–‘accounts of the time of discord’ …, and lyepynyl–‘true accounts’ …, all of which are contrasted with the

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nonauthentic (from their perspective) stories, or lymnyl” (Novik, 1989, p.30). Finally, as to the importance of the shamanic story, such tales are undoubtedly a great deal more than just irresponsible creations of the psyche. In the words of Eliade, “they respond to a need and fulfil a function, that of bringing to light the most hidden modalities of being. Consequently, the study of them enables us to reach a better understanding of man–of man ‘as he is’, before he has come to terms with the conditions of History” (Eliade, 1991, p.12).

APPENDIX A DIVINATION IN THE CLASSROOM

Divination is defined in the Introduction to Loewe and Blacker’s Divination and Oracles (1981) as “the attempt to elicit from some higher power or supernatural being the answers to questions beyond the range of ordinary human understanding”. And if we concur with the belief that such techniques enable us to catalyze our own unconscious knowledge (see Von Franz, 1980, p.38), then divination can also be claimed to be the attempt to elicit the answers to such questions from what is commonly referred to in New Age texts as the “inner shaman”. The practice of divination can be traced back into the distant past and by biblical times it was clearly widespread. Despite the warning given to the people of Israel not to follow the “abominable practices” of neighbouring nations, which included human sacrifice, divination, soothsaying, sorcery, mediumship, and necromancy, (see Deuteronomy 18:9-11) we now know that “Israelite divination corresponded broadly in the range of its uses to the utilisation of divination in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the Near Eastern environment” (Cryer, 1994, p.324). And there is actually “no reason to believe that the various phenomena which the Israelites banned as ‘practices of the peoples’ were actually derived from Israel’s neighbours” (Cryer, 1994, p.326). Historical linguistics suggests that the forms of magic used in Israel were in all likelihood domestic (see Cryer, 1994, p.262). A good example of this is the gorallot, for which there is no useful extra-Israelite etymology from the early pre-exilic period. So how come practices forbidden by God were not only utilised by the people of Israel but are also likely to have been domestic rather than the foreign imports they were previously believed to have been by scholars. The answer is simple. The strictures against certain types of divination were probably a “means of restricting the practice to those who were ‘entitled’ to employ it … to the central cult figures who enjoyed the warrants of power, prestige and, not least, education” (Cryer, 1994, p.327). Cryer’s explanation makes perfect sense for if the practice had not been restricted to the chosen few, then the cult figures would no

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longer have been cult figures and would have had to look for alternative employment. As Lama Chime Radha Rinpoche points out, one can scarcely expect such a process will be totally convincing to someone who has never experienced the reality of divination … and whose culture conditions him to an almost instinctive and unthinking rejection of everything relating to magic, mystery and the operation of forces and principles which are not at present recognised by modern Western science, [though] … Jungian psychology, with its concepts of the supra-individual reaches of the unconscious mind, and of intuition as a function of equal validity to that of reason, offers the easiest way for the modern sceptic to arrive at an intellectually respectable position (Loewe & Blacker, 1981, pp.12-13).

It can also be argued that if divination had not been sufficiently successful over the years, it would not still be practised so widely. There remains the possibility, however, that when people are desperate, as a last resort, they are prepared to try anything and that this is the real explanation for its appeal. Clearly more convincing arguments need to be found in order to justify its use. Kim suggests that “Instead of trying to rationalize away the irrational nature of shamanism, we need to see that it is precisely its irrationality which gives it its value and its healing power. Irrationality is important in the field of misfortune, since the experience of misfortune does not really make sense to the sufferer in rational terms” (Kim, 2003, p.224). The same argument could be applied to the use of divination. It would seem to me to be doubtful, however, that experience of misfortune or the results of divination would make any more sense were they to be explained in irrational terms, and that consequently the suggestion is not particularly helpful to our cause. So let us instead consider the “Jungian” position in more depth by turning to the work of one of his followers, the psychotherapist Von Franz. She points out how the belief that a statistical truth is the truth is in fact a fallacy as all we are really handling is an abstract concept, not reality itself. And then goes on to add that if we make the mistake of imagining we are dealing with absolute laws in the field of mathematics, we can then be open to the criticism that we are identifying ourselves with the godhead (see Von Franz, 1980, p.32). On the other hand, people who live on the level of the magic view of the world, such as

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practitioners of divination, never believe that magic is like an absolute law (see Von Franz, 1980, p.37). Incidentally, nor do they talk about magic in such terms, unless they happen to be unprofessional charlatans. Von Fanz defines oracle techniques as attempts to get at structures which condition certain psychological probabilities–generally collective patterns of behaviour which lead to us reacting in certain predictable ways in certain situations and she refers to these as archetypes (see Von Fanz, 1980, pp.54&56), and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli thought that by knowing which archetype is being constellated, we can then predict what is likely to follow (see Von Fanz, 1980, p.77). Evidence to support this hypothesis can be seen from the way in which we can have the precognition, without knowing the story, of what will happen next in archetypal stories such as fairy tales (see Von Franz, 1980, p.79). Whether or not we use the word “archetype” to describe such structures is not particularly important. What we can conclude, however, is that we tend to behave in certain ways when certain circumstances prevail and what diviners do is to refer to these tendencies. And, viewed in this light, the practice of divination surely becomes a lot more acceptable in the eyes of “non-believers”. Let us now go on to consider the part intuition plays in the process. There is a strong likelihood that what we believe to be is our intuition at work is in fact the activation of our unconscious knowledge. “Our minds process vast amounts of information outside of consciousness, beyond language” (Myer, 2002, p.29) and thoughts, even when they are outside of awareness, clearly influence other thoughts or actions. Consider, for example, what happens when you go shopping for toothpaste and of how, when you reach the shop, a certain brand name comes into your head. The awakening of such associations is known as priming. Unattended stimuli can subtly affect the way we behave in that “implanted ideas and images can automatically–unintentionally, effortlessly, and without awareness–prime how we interpret and recall events” (Myer, 2002, p.26) Timothy Wilson argues that the metal processes that control the way we behave are distinct from the mental processes we use to explain our behaviour. Often, what seems to happen is that our gut-level attitudes guide our actions, and then our rational mind attempts to make sense of them. From this Wilson concludes that we are often unaware of why we feel the way we do (see Myer, 2002, pp.33-34). We might say, for example we asked for the “Colgate” brand because we know it’s good for the teeth, though the real reason could be the effect of the adverts we

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have seen. “Reflecting on the reasons for our feelings draws our attention to plausible but possibly erroneous factors” (Myer, 2002, pp.33-34). Focusing is something people can do “for themselves and with each other” (Gendlin, 2003, p.6), something the process shares in common with the technique of “journeying” at least as far as neo-shamanic practitioners are concerned. It has been described “a process in which you make contact with a special kind of internal bodily awareness” (Gendlin, 2003, p.10) and it is said to be able to profoundly influence our lives and help us reach personal goals. Gendlin claims that “When your felt sense of a situation changes, you change–and therefore, so does your life” (Gendlin, 2003, p.32). The six movements consist of clearing a space, experiencing a felt sense, identifying a handle for it, checking to make sure the felt sense and the word resonate with each other, asking about its qualities, and receiving whatever comes with a shift and staying with it for a while (see Gendlin, 2003, pp.43-45). Not only is focusing useful as a form of self-help, it can also be adapted for use by learners in other contexts. It can be used to tap into our unconscious storehouse of knowledge when learning a foreign language–when we are unsure of which possibility to opt for in a multiple-choice vocabulary test, for example. We know our passive knowledge of a language is greater than our active use of it and, once we reach a certain level of competence, we are able to tap into that unconscious linguistic sense to find the solutions we seek. The problem is that most of us lack the confidence to take such an apparently illogical approach to the problems of choice we are faced with and so need encouragement and practice in doing so. And once the results are seen to be positive, this fear then naturally disappears. The suggested way of going about this is, after clearing a space by making use of relaxation techniques, to say each of the possibilities aloud to oneself, and by this process to identify which one feels right, thus tapping into the unconscious storehouse of knowledge. For it is more than likely you will have heard this word or collocation before once you have attained a high level in the language being studied. It has to be pointed out, however, this is less likely to work in the initial stages of studying a language. One way of tappng into our hidden knowledge can be through what is known as “automatic writing”. In fact, there is even evidence to suggest that certain religious texts were composed in this way. For example, parts

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of the Zohar may well have been the product of automatic writing as the technique of meditating on a divine name, entering a trance, and then writing whatever came to mind was one frequently employed by kabbalists. This can be made use of in the classroom by inviting learners to write a key question with the hand they normally use for writing, then to put the pen down, pick it up with the other hand, and then write whatever comes to mind by way of an answer. Questions can include such examples as “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going in life?” Another means by which divination can be facilitated is by paying heed to our dreams. Indeed, “according to the Talmud, ‘Fire is onesixtieth of hell; honey is one-sixtieth of manna; the Sabbath is onesixtieth of the world that is coming; sleep is one-sixtieth of death; a dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy’” (Matt, 2002, p.38). If it can be accepted that we are all part of the same totality, there is no reason to consider premonitions or the power of telepathy to be something out of the ordinary. Although belief in such possibilities might result in our being ridiculed by others, being open to such experiences could be well worth the effort. It certainly was in the following case–a true story from World War 1. The story was taken from Chinese Folk Tales collected by Howard Giskin–NTC Publishing Group 1997. They say that love can move mountains and in this story it really does!

Can Dreams Save Lives? There are many old castles in southern Heilongjiang. In this region there lived a young girl in a small village who was in love with a soldier. During World War I, he had to leave her to fight against the Japanese.

 The Sepher Ha-Zohar, the Book of Radiance, is considered to be the main text of the Kabbalah. This is a collection of dialogues, monologues and other writings containing mystical commentaries on the Torah, the five books of Moses. On the subject of the Zohar, it is interesting to note that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, in the second century, wrote that the knowledge it contained would remain concealed for 1,200 years, (100 years for each of the 12 Tribes of Israel) beginning from the time of the destruction of the Holy Temple. The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 B.C.E and Rabbi Moses Deleon revealed the Zohar in the year 1270–1,200 years later, just as Rabbi Shimon had anticipated (see Berg, 2003, p.239).

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Later on, the girl began to dream about him. Her first dream came about a month before the end of the war. In this dream, she saw him in a dark place among some rocks. He was trying to move some of the rocks, but he could not. He stopped trying and sat down on the ground alone in the dark. The girl had this dream several times. The following summer, her dream changed. In the new dream, she saw a castle on a hill. Part of the castle had fallen down, and there were many stones on the ground below the broken part. She went toward these stones in her dream, and she heard the voice of her boyfriend coming from under the stones. She tried to lift some of the stones, but she was too weak to do so and had to go away sadly. The second dream replaced the previous one, and she saw the same stones several times in her sleep on other nights. She told her mother about it, and a lot of people in the village heard about her dream, but most of them did not much care. A girl’s dreams were not important to other people. Finally the girl decided that she had to find the castle. She was quite sure that it was a real one, but there were many old castles in that part of the country, so she had few hopes of finding the one in her dreams. Her dreams continued, however, and one day she could not bear it any longer. She began a long journey on foot in search of the castle in her dreams. Day after day, she went onward, looking for the castle. She slept on the ground beside the road, and sometimes farmers gave her something to eat. For them, her story was only another sad tale from the war, but they were kind-hearted. One day in the spring, she came to a small town, where a castle stood on top of a hill. It was the one she had often seen in her dreams. She ran toward it, collapsing on the ground in front of the castle. A crowd gathered to listen to her story, but the people had little interest in her dream or the castle, because they saw the castle every day. Recovering her strength, she went to the fallen stones at the bottom of the castle wall, accompanied by some of the villagers. She asked them to lift the stones, and they did so only out of curiosity at her strange request. Though they did not think that her dreams meant anything, they supposed that lifting a few stones would do no harm.

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The first day the villagers found nothing, but on the second day they heard a man’s voice calling from below. The girl knew the voice; it was her boyfriend. The men quickly enlarged the hole and soon were able to lift them out. The boyfriend had been in the darkness for two years, and at first the light of the sun blinded him. After some time, however, he was able to look around with surprise at the people who were standing there. The boyfriend told the story of how he had survived underground for so long. During the war, he had entered the castle for protection, but part of the castle was hit by a bomb, trapping him. He had lived on food he had found in the castle. Only his girlfriend’s dreams saved him. What made her have these dreams? How did she know about the castle where he was trapped, a castle she had never seen? Yet her dreams saved his life.

Notes for Teachers What do you think made the girl have these dreams? How do you think she knew about the castle where he was trapped, a castle she had never seen? The learners can discuss the questions raised in the story in groups, then report back to the class with their conclusions. What’s your dream in life and how do you intend to make it come true? The students can work in pairs and describe their ambitions to each other or produce a written answer to the question for homework. *** It is interesting to note that Heilongjiang, where the events in the story are said to have taken place, is located in what is known as Manchuria. The Manchu nationality is one of the larger minorities in today's China, about four and a half million, with a particularly strong historical awareness because the emperor of the last imperial dynasty came from Manchuria. Shamanism has very ancient traditions in the region, and it serves the purpose of helping to maintain ethnicity, family and kinship relations on the occasion of large family gatherings. Recent ethnographic documentary film made in the early nineties show that this is a living tradition, and not only among the older generation. A number of shamans appeared simultaneously at larger gatherings and the series of ceremonies were held in conjunction with clan prosperity.

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The fact that for centuries the Manchu shamans had hand-written ceremonial books ... almost certainly contributed to the continuous preservation of the Manchu shaman traditions... [which] survived the period of communist ideological repression relatively well (Hoppal, 1996, http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vols/hoppal.htm [accessed 5/08/07]).

There are two types of Manchu shaman. The bolongzi or clan shaman is the typical example of a shaman priest. Their duties traditionally entailed directing and performing religious activities, the most important of which were the sacrifices to heaven and to the ancestors. The wuwate or healer shaman, on the other hand, is not confined to a single clan, and is responsible for exorcising demons and warding off evil influences. Originally both kinds were mainly women but now men are in the majority and the female ones are called udayuþi. Traditionally the status of the clan shaman was the higher of the two, but the importance of healer shamans has grown in recent years and they are still active in the whole territory of the north-east. The clan shamans, on the other hand, have mainly given up their religious activities but have contributed to the preservation of traditional Manchu culture by providing information to researchers in the field (see Wu, 1989, p.263-264). In conclusion, what has been proposed here is that effective diviners point out the way in which we tend to behave in certain ways when certain circumstances prevail, and at the same time tap into their vast storehouse of unconscious knowledge. Moreover, it is a technique that, contrary to common belief, all of us, when provided with necessary training, are able to make use of.

APPENDIX B HOW TO ACCOUNT FOR THE APPEAL OF NEO-SHAMANISM

When considering shamanism in a post-modern age, it has been suggested that two main classes of phenomena can be identified: “one contains those cultures in which shamanism as an autochthonous phenomenon has survived more or less continuously up to the present, while the other group of phenomena consists of neo-shamanism (or urban shamanism) which has arisen mainly in an urban context” (Hoppal, 1996). That there are two main classes is evident. However, it is not so certain that “urban shamanism” is necessarily an apt description for the latter type. In this country for example, practitioners can be found in all sorts of locations, frequently operating outside the big cities, which is why the term neo-shamanism has been used here. It has been proposed, and justifiably so, that “The variety of neoshamanic (and shamanic) practices makes them too elusive to neatly fit any rigid framework of an academic classification” (Znamenski, 2007, p.xii). Nevertheless, given that it is human nature to put labels on everything, and attempts will be made to do so regardless of how inadequate such labels might be, neo-shamanism can perhaps best be described as an individualist religious movement. And one of the consequences of its loose structure and the individualized nature of its spiritual practices is that neo-shamanic groups generally tend to both amorphous and short-lived (see Znamenski, 2007, p.260). Having said this however, it should be pointed out that there is a shamanic drumming group that has been meeting on a regular basis in the Vauxhall area of London for thirteen years now, and there probably always will be such exceptions that disprove the rule. What is being proposed here therefore can only be offered as a general guideline. Leo Rutherford, who founded Eagle’s Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism based in London, worked in industry for twenty years, and

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for the last twelve years of that was a Managing Director of a manufacturing company which made tin cans and drums, before he turned to shamanism. And Leo’s mid-life change of direction is far from being a unique case among present-day shamans. Michael Harner, founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, was formerly an academic and Jonathan Horwitz, founder of the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies, is a Viet Nam War Veteran. Heinze suggests that: Becoming a shaman in mid-life is predominantly found in multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies where the choice of life patterns are so manifold that individuals grope for the right one by the method of trial and error. Another possible explanation is that in the twentieth century the resistance to accepting the “call” and the reluctance to become a shaman is stronger than in previous times (Heinze, 1991, p.150).

Whereas the first explanation would seem to be feasible, in a society where more or less everything has become acceptable the second seems rather suspect. According to Townsend, the kind of people who are attracted to neoshamanic practices are frequently not only disenchanted with the major religions but also with Western society. Although they tend not to be practising members of any organized religion, at the same time they are looking for new ways to organize their spiritual lives in a more satisfying manner (see Doore, 1988, p.78). For such people shamanism is seen as possessing important mystical truths and the potential for the transcendent experiences for which they are so desperately searching (see Doore, 1988, p.82). However, this attempt to explain why people today are turning away from traditional forms of religion in search of alternatives is rather simplistic, nothing more than an unsubstantiated generalisation, and the question really needs to be considered in more depth as there are surely other factors involved. It seems to me that Jung encapsulated one of the most important of these by recognising that it is only by looking within that we can make our religious life truly meaningful: There is in the psyche a process that seeks its own goal independently of external factors. … If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing. … If the soul no longer has any part to play, religious life congeals into externals and formalities. … In an outward form of religion where all the emphasis is on the outward figure (hence where we are

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Appendix B dealing with a more or less complete projection), the archetype is identical with externalized ideas but remains unconscious as a psychic factor. When an unconscious content is replaced by a projected image to that extent, it is cut off from all participation in and influence on the conscious mind (Jung, 1968, pp.5-11).

The result of this is that “Far too many people are incapable of establishing a connection between the sacred figures and their own psyche: they cannot see to what extent the equivalent images are lying dormant in their own unconscious” (Jung, 1968, p.13). And this is surely one of the main reasons why people today are turning to alternatives such as neo-shamanism–as it provides them with the techniques for looking within in a more effective and appealing manner than the traditional religions seem able to do, and this factor goes a long way to explaining the growing popularity of such movements. Another factor that helps to account for the popularity of neoshamanism is that it is possible to achieve in just a few hours experiences that might otherwise take years of silent meditation, prayer, or chanting to master, which makes it ideally suited to the contemporary life of busy people (see Harner, 1990, p. xii). The basic training is short enough to fit into a weekend workshop, which is just the kind of thing we are looking for in a society that is obsessed with time. “It is a truism that anything known becomes so familiar and hackneyed by frequent use that it gradually loses its meaning and hence its effect; whereas anything strange and unknown … can open doors hitherto locked and new possibilities of understanding” (Jung, 1977, p.698). The neo-shamanic movement that has sprung up in recent times, with its exotic aura, can be seen to be doing just that. Tell your colleagues on a Monday morning that you have spent the weekend on a shamanic workshop and it could well make you a lot more interesting as a person in their eyes. It has to be said, however, it could work the other way too, and make them rather suspicious of you–depending on the kind of colleagues you work with! It is of relevance to how we can account for the appeal of neoshamanism to note what Driver has to say. He suggests: [The] revitalization of religious ritual in Westernized societies today would require overcoming the dominance of the priestly type by moving again toward the shamanic. This in turn means to set free the performative power of ritual which is corseted by liturgical rigidities,

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many of them cherished by conservative communities precisely because they keep the performative and transformative power of ritual under wraps (Driver, 1991, p.75).

The point being made is that what ultimately attracts people to shamanism is what they find missing in the religions they defect from. And if those religions were more sympathetic towards what people are looking for and made more of an effort to provide it, they would be holding on to their congregations. However, it is clearly not such a simple matter as to do so could well involve making changes that would be considered by those in power to be unacceptably radical. According to Joseph Campbell: [E]very one of the great traditions is today in profound disorder. What have been taught as their basic truths seem no longer to hold. Yet there is a great religious fervour and ferment evident among not only young people but old and middle-aged as well. The fervour, however, is in a mystical direction, and the teachers who seem to be saying most to many are those who have come to us from a world that was formerly regarded as having been left altogether behind in the great press forward of modern civilization, representing only archaic, outlived manners of thinking (Campbell, 1973, pp.86-87).

The suggestion that “every one of the great traditions is today in profound disorder” is clearly an exaggeration and in fact a number of the traditional religions can be seen to be attracting growing support in certain parts of the world. Yet the “fervour … in a mystical direction” that Campbell highlights cannot be denied. He then goes on to refer to gurus from India, roshis from Japan, and lamas from Tibet. The practitioners who have been the subject of this chapter, even though they are not mentioned by name, could also be included as examples. What about the kind of people who are attracted to neo-shamanism or other New Religious Movements for that matter? It has been suggested that many young people today who apprentice themselves to some guru or who in some other fashion escape from reality, were prematurely pressed to view reality in an adult way by never having had the opportunity to listen to fairy stories when they were younger (see Bettelheim, 1991, p.51). While this can certainly be regarded as a factor worthy of being taken into account, it is surely one of several rather than the only one.

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According to the Canadian psychiatrist Saul Levine: [T]he young people who join NRMs [New Religious Movements] … are distinguished by their curious inability to effect the kind of separation from their families consonant with passage into young adulthood, they are psychological “children” trapped in a dilemma that our fragmented and indulgent society may have induced. They wish to sever the parental bond and achieve independence, but they lack a sufficient sense of self to do so (Dawson, 2003, pp.124-125).

If we take this to be true, it would seem that whatever rites of passage these young people passed through in the communities they were born into seem to have been unsuccessful, and this helps to explain why they turn to such alternatives. On the other hand, a large number of participants on neo-shamanic workshops tend to be middle-aged, so there must be other factors involved in their cases. Stone finds it no surprise that in recent years shamanism has become such a potent expression of spirituality in the West. He believes that it not only offers a spiritual dimension to ecologically driven politics, but also a personal experience of divinity that the Christian churches seem unable to provide. He also suggests: [T]he rise of neo-shamanism parallels that of “charismatic” Christianity, to which it bears some resemblance. Shamanism legitimises the use of drugs as facilitators of spirit journey, or as a means of making contact with spirits or gods. Importantly, it is also seen as a way of getting in touch with deep cultural roots and returning to the earth-centred religion of our ancestors (Stone, 2003, p.9).

The idea that the Christian churches are unable to provide a personal experience of divinity can be hotly contested in the light of innovations that have been introduced by the more progressive priests and just how neo-shamanism resembles charismatic Christianity is difficult to understand but a convincing case can be made for the other claims he makes. Turner sees society as a process rather than a thing–“a dialectical process with successive phases of structure and communitas” and he 

For further insight into the reasons why people attend such workshops, see Jakobsen (1999) who was a participant observer on a number of workshops run by Horwitz and describes these in some detail in the second half of her book.

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maintains there is “a human ‘need’ to participate in both modalities. Persons starved of one [either structure or communitas] in their functional day-to-day activities seek it in ritual liminality” (Turner, 1995, p.203). In the cutthroat world that many of us live in, where the law of the jungle prevails, the ritual aspect of shamanism gives us the opportunity to find the “release” we crave and so retain our sanity. It provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the central values and axioms of the culture we operate in on a daily basis and we can then return to it revitalized by the experience. It seems only fitting that the last words of all on the subject should go to Eliade, probably more responsible than any other figure for revitalising interest in the field: What the shaman can do today in ecstasy, could, at the dawn of time, be done by all human beings in concreto; they went up to heaven and came down again without recourse to trance. Temporarily and for a limited number of persons–the shamans–ecstasy re-establishes the primordial condition of all mankind. In this respect, the mystical experience of the “primitives” is a return to origins, a reversion to the mystical age of the lost paradise (Eliade, 1964, p.486).

Writing from personal experience, this is just as true for neoshamanic practitioners today as it was for the classic shamans of old. However, it is also important to show how the concepts and techniques of the “sacred” can persist in the contemporary world, not only as nostalgia for the archaic past (which is what Eliade harked back to), but also as a vehicle to ease us into the future–in the form of useful techniques that can



The nostalgia for a lost paradise is a theme that Eliade keeps returning to. For example, in his paper The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition, the words might be different but the idea remains the same: “through the exercise of special techniques the shaman tries to overcome the actual conditions of human life–those affecting ‘fallen man’–and to reconstitute the state of primordial man as we know it by the ‘paradisial myths’ ” (Murray, 1968, p.63). Shamanism “reveals the wish to abolish everything which has changed in the structure of the Cosmos itself and in the manner of man’s existence since the primordial break” (Murray, 1968, p.68). In reality, we have no way of knowing whether it ever really existed. However, perhaps it is an innate characteristic of human beings to yearn for such a state. For as Eliade goes on to point out, “It was the yearning for Paradise, which haunted the minds of Isaiah and of Virgil, sustained the sainthood of the Fathers of the Church and cam to glorious flower in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi” (Murray, 1968, p.74).

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be adapted for teaching purposes, for example (see Rothenberg, 1985, p.488).

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INDEX

Abimbola, W., 160, 161, 162, 163 Achterberg, J., 46 acupuncture meridians, 50 African traditional religions, 157 Ahlback, T., 71, 72, 76 Aldhouse-Green, M., & AldhouseGreen, S., 46 Allen, B., 47, 59, 79, 80 altered states of consciousness, 21, 51, 86, 112 analytical psychology, 54, 55 ancestral guardian soul, 159, 167, 170 Andrews, L., 50 angakok, 60, 70, 77, 127 anthropology of consciousness, 49 apprentice, 75, 93, 19, 182 archetype(s), 19, 54, 182, 190 asceticism, 93 babalawo, 159, 161, 167, 168 Bal, M., 17, 18 Balzer, M.M., 13, 37 Bascom, W., 158, 159, 162, 167, 168, 170 bat’onebi, 89 Bellér-Hann, I., 146, 147 Berman, M. 2, 3, 11, 13, 16, 18, 36, 48, 50, 55, 77, 153 Bettelheim, B., 13, 18, 82, 191 binary oppositions, 14, 15 Blacker, C., 42, 71, 72, 96, 180, 181 Blain, J., 44 Bloch, M., 75 Bogoras, W., 32, 33 Bogunmbe, A., 158 Booker, C., 16, 17, 177, 178 Braun, W., 9, 75, 78 Buddhism, 11, 42

Calinescu, M., 117, 175 Campbell, J., 13, 31, 73, 84, 126, 191 Castaneda, C., 48, 49, 51 Catherine the Great, 29 Celtic Shamanism, 44 Centre of the World, 86 Chagnon, N.A., 43 chakras, 50 charisma, 7 Chryssides, G.D., , 54 Colby, Benjamin & Lore, 20 collective unconscious, 13, 55 communitas, 40, 41, 74, 192 core shamanism, 31 corroboree, 5, 6 cosmic mountain, 170 Cosmic Tree, 86 cosmology, 2, 77, 108, 132 costume, 68, 138 Courlander, H., 129, 130, 131, 133, 143, 144, 145 Cowan, J., 29 Cryer, F.H., 180 Csepregi, M., 109, 110, 113 cult of water, 154 Czaplicka, M.A., 31 D’Andrade, R.G., 15 Dawson, L., 54, 192 demonstrative, 1, 45, 51, 71, 84 Desana, 65, 87 Diderot, 30, 31 Dioszegi, V., 36, 37 dissociation, 67 divination, 1, 4, 7, 13, 20, 21, 22, 27, 63, 126, 133, 146, 147, 149, 159, 161, 167, 168, 171, 172, 173, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 184

222 Divinations, 171 Dobkin de Rios, M., 43 Doniger, W., 78 Doore, G., 189 Driver, T.F., 10, 59, 69, 73, 74, 190, 191 drumming, 22, 48, 61, 62, 68, 86, 87, 143, 188 Drury, N., 50 Dundes, A., 14, 15 Durkheim, E., 5, 6, 7, 11, 75, 93 Eagle’s Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism, 188 ecstasy, 31, 37, 58, 63, 88, 92, 193 ecstatic, 1, 7, 37, 45, 59, 66, 72, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 96, 113, 114 ecstatic state, 37, 97 Edsman, C.M., 64 Egyptian Book of the Dead, 76 Ellis, A.B., 158, 167, 170 Ely, J., 52, 53, 54 embedded text(s), 3, 17, 173 Ensemble Mzetamze, 90 eristic, 49, 130, 131, 153, 174, 177 ethnomedicine, 47 fairy tale(s), 2, 14, 18, 19, 48, 77, 81, 174, 176, 182 Feurstein, G., 54, 84 Filipino Christian spiritualists, 69 Fillingham Coxwell, C., 127 Fitzgerald, T., 8, 9 Flaherty, G., 28, 30 flying squirrel, 123 Focusing, 183 Foundation for Shamanic Studies, 48, 61, 153, 189 Frankl, V., 11, 54, 55 Franz, M. von, 13, 18, 19, 175, 176, 180, 181, 182 Frazer, J., 2 Frecska E., & Luna, L.E., 21, 22, 124 Freud, S., 18, 56 Fritz, F.J., 76 Fuja, A., 164 gad migan, 144

Index Gagan, J.M., 47 Geertz, C., 42 gembo, 133 Gendlin, E., 183 Georgi, J.G., 29 Giskin, H., 184 Gmelin, J.G., 29 Gray, J., 10 Greenwood, S., 29, 47, 48 Grof, S., 76 Guthrie, S.E., 10 Halifax, J., 58, 65, 127 Hamilton, M., 9 Harner, M., 7, 28, 31, 34, 35, 39, 48, 56, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 70, 85, 87, 88, 176, 189, 190 Harner Method Shamanic Counseling, 61 Harvey, G., 1, 9, 44, 46, 54, 80 Heaven, R., 131, 132 Heelas, P., 54 Hegel, 14 Heinze, R.I., 64, 74, 83, 85, 88, 189 Helpers, 149, 177 Herder, J.G., 30 Hinduism, 10 Hoppal, M., 37, 187, 188 Horwitz, J., 7, 34, 35, 39, 44, 48, 49, 56, 71, 72, 76, 189, 192 Host, A., 88 hounfar, 130, 143 houngan(s), 130, 131, 133, 143 Huichol Indians, 43 Hultkrantz, A., 12, 16, 43, 66, 72, 175 hungan, 132, 133, 144 hungan-asson, 132 hungan-makout, 132, 133 Hutton, R., 28, 46 Ifa, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167, 168 imitative, 1, 45, 51, 59, 71, 72, 84 indigenous shamanism, 7, 44, 55, 67, 174, 177 Indigenous shamans, 7 Ingerman, S., 39, 50, 56, 62, 66 inner shaman, 180

Divination and the Shamanic Story insider, 21, 89, 98, 178 Islam, 10, 147, 157 itako, 71 Jacob’s Ladder, 170 Jakobsen, M.D., 44, 77, 192 James, W., 2, 65, 93 Janhunen, J., 123 Jinwen, Z., 149, 152, 153, 154 Jivaro, 70 Jochelson, W., 32 Johansen, U., 12 John Barleycorn, 95, 96 Jonah, 18, 20, 63, 64, 77 Jones, R.A., 14, 174, 176 Joralemon, D., 47 journeying, 48, 87, 153, 183 Judaism, 11, 64, 147 Jung, C.G., 13, 18, 31, 54, 55, 56, 189, 190 KaltaĞ, 118 Kaltesh anki, 114 Kant, 7 Kapelrud, A., 63 Kenaz, F., 125, 130, 131, 133, 144, 145 Kendall, L., 42, 43 Kenin-Lopsan, 79 Kerezsi, A., 99, 109, 110, 114, 115, 116, 122, 123 Khant(y), 99, 109, 110, 111, 112, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124 Kim, T., 43, 181 Knott, K., 9 Koran, 146 Krasheninnikov, S.P., 29 Krekore Shona, 65 Kremer, J.W., 4, 174 Krippner, S.C., 88, 126, 127 Kulemzin, V., 99, 109, 110, 111, 112, 118, 121, 122, 124 Kulemzin, Lukina, et al., 99, 110, 111, 112, 118, 121, 122, 124 Lafitau, J., 30 Laing, 84 Lama Chime Radha Rinpoche, 181 Land of the Dead, 76, 85, 177

223

Larsen, S., 50, 94 Leete, A., 116 Leo Rutherford, 188 Levine, S., 192 Lévi-Strauss, C., 4, 14, 15, 33, 34, 35, 36, 173 Lewis, I.M., 33, 35, 36, 42, 64, 65, 66, 80 liminal, 40, 74, 76, 78 liminality, 40, 74, 78, 193 Lindholm, C., 44 Lindquist, G., 44 loa, 91, 130, 131, 132, 143, 144 logotherapy, 54 Lopez Jr. D.S.,, 5 lou-garos, 143 loup-garou, 129 Lower World, 76, 77 lwa, 125, 144, 145 Lyle, E., 2 Lyon, W.S., 172 MacLellan, G., 48, 80 Maddox, J.L., 31, 58, 67, 70, 79, 85, 97 magic, 60, 73, 98, 102, 112, 117, 121, 132, 148, 149, 153, 166, 175, 176, 180, 181 Malay shamans, 83 malevolent spirit possession, 36 Malinowski, B., 36 Malov, C.E., 148, 154, 156 mambo, 132, 133 Manchu, 90, 111, 186, 187 Manggys, 149 Mansi, 99 mansin, 42 Marco Polo, 28 Martin, W., 14, 17 Mathews, F., 77 Matt, D.C., 184 Matthews, C., 52 McClenon, J., 44, 69, 96, 97, 98 mebodishe, 89 Meletinsky, E.M., 15 Messerchmidt, D.G., 29 Metraux, A., 126, 133

224 Meyer, R., 174 Mikhailowski, 113 Morrison, K., 8 Murray, H., 193 Myerhoff, B., 43 mystics, 64, 84, 93 myth(s), 2, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 34, 35, 36, 38, 48, 72, 78, 94, 97, 115, 126, 145, 158, 173, 193 Nagy, Z., 111 nahbi, 63, 64 Narby J., & Huxley, F., 30 narrative theory, 17 neo-shamanic practitioners, 6, 7, 39, 45, 47, 53, 54, 67, 149, 183, 193 neo-shamanic workshops, 79, 153, 192 neo-shamanism, 6, 31, 41, 44, 48, 50, 54, 75, 91, 94, 126, 188, 190, 191, 192 neo-shamans, 12, 63, 71, 80, 177 Neumann Fridman, 172 New Age, 28, 31, 41, 44, 50, 51, 54, 92, 180 New Religious Movements, 54, 191, 192 Nigeria, 27, 129, 157 noiaidi, 81 non-ordinary reality, 4, 10, 53, 61, 62, 70, 72, 94, 174 Novik, E.S., 37, 38, 173, 174, 175, 179 numen, 78 Ob-Ugrian(s), 99, 113 Oedipus, 15, 16 Olokun, 164, 165, 166, 167 Olorun, 158, 159, 167, 170 Olupona, J.K., 161 Olusola, A.G., 161, 162, 163 oracle techniques, 182 ordinary reality, 59, 62, 72 oris(h)a, 91, 158, 161, 167, 170 Orthodox Christianity, 77 Oshosi, 163

Index Ostyak(s), 27, 97, 99, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 121, 122 Otzen, B., Gottlieb, H., & Jeppesen, K., 95 outsider, 12, 55, 64, 70, 73, 126 Oviedo, 29 Pearson, J., 54 Pentikäinen, J., 11 Petrovich, A., 29 placebo effect(s), 96, 98 porteau mitan, 132 power intrusions, 66 power songs, 88 prophecies, 98 prophecy, 149, 184 Propp, V., 13, 14, 15, 148 psychoanalysis, 34, 55 psychoanalytical approach, 13, 18 psychointegrators, 85 psychopomp(s), 59, 76, 77 psychotherapy, 37, 54, 57, 66, 176 Radin, P., 33, 59, 60, 70 Rappaport,R., 74 Rasmussen, K., 32, 69, 94, 127 Reid, A., 20, 33, 112, 117 reindeer, 80, 81, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116 religion, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 29, 37, 40, 43, 48, 51, 52, 54, 64, 69, 73, 75, 149, 157, 158, 159, 189, 192 religions, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 40, 52, 55, 58, 74, 84, 157, 189, 190, 191 religious formulator(s), 59, 60 religious studies, 8 Republic of Georgia, 89 Reynardine, 82, 83 Ripinsky-Naxon, M., 46, 78, 81, 91 ritual, 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 51, 67, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 89, 91, 93, 113, 114, 124, 144, 161, 171, 173, 190, 193 ritual observance, 10

Divination and the Shamanic Story rituals, 6, 10, 11, 40, 42, 51, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 89, 92, 98, 130, 162, 173, 174 Roth, G., 91, 92 Ruck, Staples, 145 Rumi, 85 Rutherford, W., 50, 59, 77, 87, 94, 97 Sacred Space, 68 Sacred Teacher, 6 Samuel, G., 35 Sandner, D.F., 54, 55 Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies, 49, 60, 88, 189 Schechner, R., 10, 16 Segal, R.A., 3, 13, 18 seid-magic, 44 Shallcrass, 81 shamanhood, 11 shamanic counselling, 34, 35 shamanic healing, 34, 35, 38, 55, 98 shamanic initiation, 84 shamanic journey, 3, 17, 18, 19, 38, 56, 86, 173 shamanic legends, 38 shamanic stories, 4, 12, 13, 17, 19, 27, 34, 38, 112, 117, 123, 126, 154, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178 shamanic story, 3, 4, 16, 41, 173, 174, 179 shape-shifter(s), 59, 81, 83 shape-shifting, 81, 82, 83, 123 Sharon, D., 47 Shinto, 10, 11 Shirokogoroff, S.M., 33 Siberia, 19, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 43, 79, 80, 85, 86, 97, 99, 162 Siberian, 1, 11, 20, 32, 33, 38, 46, 99, 111 Siberian shamanism, 99 Sieroshevski, W., 32 Smith, J.Z., 4, 56, 74 social drama(s), 41, 42 Sokolova, Z.P., 109 Sorensen, J.P., 72

225

sortie du temps, 3 soul loss, 39, 50, 52, 53, 56, 67 soul retrieval(s), 49, 50, 62, 171 soul theft, 67 spirit possession, 36, 45 squirrel, 118, 123 Stone, A., 30, 68, 71, 192 structural analysis, 14, 15 Sufism, 96 Sun Dance ceremony, 97 Surgut, 99, 108, 109, 110, 113, 115, 116 Swann Jones, S., 14 tales of power, 4, 174 Taube, E., 1, 2 Techno-Shamanism, 92 the “call”, 126, 131, 189 the number seven, 113, 115, 122 Thevet, A., 29 Tibetan Buddhism, 10 Torum, 108, 112, 114, 115 trance state(s), 1, 45, 59, 71, 91 TranceDance, 92 transition rites, 40 Tree of Life, 132, 170 Tungus, 33, 80, 126, 132 Tunguz (Evenki), 111 Turner, V., 3, 6, 13, 31, 39, 40, 41, 42, 63, 64, 67, 74, 78, 83, 171, 192 Upper World, 6, 69, 77, 153, 170 Uyghur, 27, 146, 153 Van Der Leeuw, G., 85 Van Gennep, A., 13, 31, 40, 64 Villoldo, A., 48, 49, 50 vision quests, 48, 57 Vitebsky, P., 43, 46, 63, 64, 68, 80 vodouisants, 125, 130, 144 Vodou(n), 125, 129, 130, 131, 132, 143, 144, 145 Voguls, 99 Voodooists, 125 waking dreams, 45, 126 Wallis, R.J., 44, 46, 71, 81 Walsh, R., 7, 45, 50, 51, 66, 87, 98 Weber, M., 7, 8

226 Whirling (Mevlevi) Dervishes, 91 Whitaker, 53 Wicca, 11 Winkelman, M., 15, 45, 46, 85, 124, 171, 172, 173 Witsen, N., 29 Wolkstein, D., 125, 132, 133 World Tree, 130, 132 wounded healer, 56, 66

Index Wu, Bing-an, 187 Yoruba, 27, 91, 145, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170 Yughur, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 156 Znamenski, A.A., 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 43, 188 Zohar, 184