Shamanism

eye to eye by Drew Brayshaw

Shamanism

The practice and anthropological study of the shaman.

Some say the word shamanism is an academic construct and a sort of umbrella term applying to a wide range of phenomena.

It’s clear that different people use the term for distinct ideas and purposes.

In her forward to Shamanism, Jean Houston, for example, hopes that

[the book's] scope and depth…will cause us to rethink our tendency to label and pathologize that which may be one of the most valuable and courageous forms of our human condition (Shirley Nicholson ed., Shamanism, Wheaton, Il.: A Quest Book, 1988, p. xiii).

Meanwhile, Michael Harner, who at his web site now emphasizes the healing and creative aspects of shamanism, didn’t always do so. In the 1970’s Harner defined the shaman as

A man or woman who is in direct contact with the spirit world through a trance state and has one or more spirits at his command to carry out his bidding for good or evil (Michael Harner, Hallicinogens and Shamanism, 1973, cited in Michael C. Howard, Contemporary Cultural Anthropology, 2^nd ed., Toronto: Little, Brown and Co. , 1986, p. 448).

Terrence McKenna says that shamanic cosmologies surpass current scientific models which, like any hegemonic idea, almost dogmatically influence our culture and ways of thinking.

An excerpt from Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence McKenna - originally uploaded by oceandesetoiles

The word shamanism, however, extends beyond the worlds of academia and book publishing.

Jim Morrison from the 1960s to early 70s rock group The Doors was interested in shamanism, at times envisioning himself as a kind of flower power shaman. The group wrote successful songs like “Shaman’s Blues,” “Break on Through” and “Celebration of the Lizard” that pointed to shamanic ideas.

Meanwhile, artists such as the Canadian Norval Morrisseau use the word shaman to describe themselves and promote their work.

Me at The Shamanism Centre by Heidi Reyes

And graphic artist Heidi Reyes puts an interesting twist on the idea of shamanism with her work “Me at The Shamanism Centre.”

This image (pictured right) seems to imply that shamanism can live in virtual reality without having to be grounded within any specific earthly location.

At Earthpages.org

• Shaman Elder Maggie Wahls’ 50th Anniversary Teaching
• Why Study Shamanism
• Alchemy, Egypt, and Shamanism
• Spirit Guides & Totems
• The Shaman’s Journey: Impeccability
• The Shaman’s Journey: Intent
• The Shaman’s Journey: The Value of Emotional Control

» Animism, Controlled Dreaming, Eliade (Mircea), Evil, Fasting, Soul Loss, Spiritual Attack, Witch

On the Web:

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Emic-Etic

Aboriginal art on a man hole by Ole Reidar Johansen

Emic-Etic

This is a debate originating from the work of linguist Kenneth L. Pike, sometimes called the insider-outsider issue.

The emic-etic debate has far-reaching implications for the social sciences.

In anthropology, the emic model refers to an indigenous people’s understanding of their own cultural representations, whereas the etic model is the outsider’s perspective of those indigenous cultural representations.

These categories have been roundly critiqued. Emic models are often said to have been “discovered” by an outside researcher but current trends question the neutrality of external observers. Thus formalized statements made by external observers are seen as exogenous constructions, making any supposed emic theory unavoidably etic.

This notion that theories developed within the humanities and social sciences are social constructions instead of uncovered, formerly hidden universal truths leads to the area of poststructuralism and postmodernism.

Other questions arise that are seldom addressed by social scientists. For instance, we cannot be certain that each member of an indigenous community believes in their group’s cultural representations, or if each believes in the same way. Could some be pretending to believe for material security or social expedience? And in the case of religious officials, some might secretly doubt but feign certainty not just for the aforementioned reasons but perhaps for fear of being wrong and offending a deity.

» Power

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Totem

National Museum of Anthropology by Jami Dwyer

Totem

This is a symbol of the spiritual ancestor for a group in aboriginal Australia and North America.

The totem usually takes the form of an animal or sacred plant.

Normally there are taboos against slaying or eating the totem.

Most theorists probably project their own ideas onto the meaning of the totem.

The French sociologist Durkheim argued that the totem is nothing more than an emblematic center for a social group. For Durkheim the aboriginal’s belief in ancestral spirits is incorrect but the totem nevertheless plays a crucial role in ensuring the social cohesion of the clan.

Freud used the totem to create a rather fanciful mythic history of mankind that served his own ideas about the Oedipus Complex and the development of the superego.

Anthropologists have forwarded so many different ideas about the totem that one anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, has questioned the validity of the term.

However, the numerous and conflicting interpretations of the totem have raised some salient questions: May one cultural system really understand another? Does everyone in a given culture hold the same beliefs? What is a cultural system? Could a researcher ever answer these questions with certainty?  » Emic-Etic, Levels of Knowledge, Lévi-Bruhl (Lucien), Totem Pole

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Vampires

Day Fourteen: I heart vampires

Originally uploaded by MargauxV

Vampires

Legends about vampires or vampire-like beings have flourished throughout world folklore, to include the regions of India, China and Greece.

The current incarnation of the vampire is usually traced back to Eastern European myths and superstitions that inspired several vampire novels, the most enduring being Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).

In the eighteenth-century, Eastern European reports of vampirism ran high, taking two sometimes related forms of

1. Physical vampirism – robbing another person’s vitality by drinking their blood.
2. Spiritual vampirism – psychic possession of another person’s free-will and theft of their vitality.

Traditionally, vampires are said to reside in or around graveyards, having a strong aversion to daylight. They rise only at night to freely select their victims.

Repelled by the cross, these agents of darkness are known as the ‘undead.’

In the 1970s and ’80s moviegoers dressed up as characters and recited lines from the film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, perhaps entering into a state of consciousness which anthropologist Lévi-Bruhl called participation mystique.

A more recent newspaper report of alleged vampirism in Toronto tells of a man who forcefully cut and drank the blood of a young woman.

At first the woman was horrified and pressed charges, resulting in the aggressor’s imprisonment. Over time, however, she began to feel united and in love with him, visiting him in prison on a daily basis.

Paranormal researchers and psychics generally explain vampirism in terms of a restless earth-bound spirit or so-called ‘tramp soul’ that gains control of psychologically weak and vulnerable individuals.

By way of contrast, vampire nightclubs seem to be harmless, non-violent and socially acceptable outlets for individuals seeking to experience the numinous aura of the Jungian shadow.

A comparable situation might be the upstanding priest who enjoys horror movies during his off-hours.

But clearly not everyone can keep a mature, adult perspective on vampires. Violent murders have been committed by teens in vampire cults who take the Goth lifestyle to its tragic extreme.

» Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Lycanthropy, Swedenborg (Emanuel), Transmigration, Werewolf

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Witch

Witch in Trouble

Originally uploaded by
Remara Photography

Witch

The word witch comes from the Old English wicca (male) and wicce (female).

From his study of African witchcraft, the anthropologist E. E. Evans Pritchard distinguished witchcraft from sorcery: Witches are physically born as such while a person may become a sorcerer later in life.

Both are traditionally associated with evil.

In legend witches use magical spells and potions to work their malice. Legends also tell of good “white witches,” as found in shamanism or fairy tales.

European witch hysteria became so pronounced in the 14^th century that mass witch trials began in 1397 in Lucerne.

In 1326 Pope John XXII responded to Dominican pressure by proclaiming witchcraft a heresy.

In 1486 two Dominican monks wrote the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches or Witches Hammer). The book was a grisly, perverse ‘manual’ on how to identify and force confessions out of suspected witches, who in most cases were deemed guilty before their arrest.

Statistics reveal that in Essex of Southwest England 91% of the 271 accused of sorcery from 1560 – 1680 were women.

The Church could legally claim the land and economic holdings of convicted witches. Some believe that in convicting so-called witches, perverse clergy were more interested in worldly than spiritual gain. Most of the condemned were vulnerable women and therefore scapegoats–the poor, the single and those deemed unattractive or different.

In this regard, Carl Jung says the persecution of witches in Europe and North America was a mass projection of the shadow.

Witchcraft today has become a complicated phenomenon.

Many recognize it as an alternative religion. Aspiring women witches join covens and many practice what they believe is white magic.

A variety of commercial occult products has grown alongside the modern practice of witchcraft.

The idea of the ethically ambiguous witch has also been popularized and, to some degree, normalized through film and TV productions, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the TV version of Buffy, the character Willow originally uses witchcraft for the good but becomes consumed by a quest for magical power and eventually allows evil to dominate her.

Although many religious fundamentalists might deplore such an apparently ‘evil’ program, the TV series closes with Willow regaining her humility (and humanity) by allowing love to enter into her life again.

» Ancestor Cults, Archetypal Image, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Glamour, Haensel and Gretel, Latin, Lewis (C. S.), Macbeth, Madness, Neo-Paganism, Odyssey, Psychosis, Scholarship, Walker (Barbara G.)

On the Web:

John Paul II revived the Inquisition» http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/11/john-paul-ii-revived-inquisition.html

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Yoni

LINGGA & YONI at CETO Temple

Originally uploaded by *Gabisa Motonia

Yoni In Hinduism this is the female organ of all creation.

In Hindu temple art female genitalia are often emphasized to symbolize the Great Mother’s crucial meta-physical role in giving birth to all that is.

F. A. Marglin notes that, on a more personal scale, the yoni is said to invigorate the male through sexual intercourse.

Popular Hindu Indian folk belief maintains that during intercourse vaginal fluids enter the male generative organ, symbolically known as the linga (roughly parallel to the phallus of the Western mythos). This mingling of bodily fluids is believed to give the male his wife’s spiritual power (shakti).

Ancient Kings thus had several concubines as their divine right–this not only for the gratification of lust but also, so the belief goes, for an increase in spiritual power.¹

As the yoni and especially sexual-erotic scenes appearing on Hindu temple engravings are often interpreted by outsiders as an inferior, crass type of spiritual representation, Hindus (and Jungians) tend to say that those who see it that way are merely projecting their own shadow.

The yoni is sometimes depicted as a triangle with apex facing downwards. V. K. Chari says

These geometrical figures have symbolic meanings: the triangle with the apex turned upwards (called vahni kona or cone of fire) may represent male energy, the one with the apex turned downwards female energy (yoni), the matrix of creation, and so forth-which the adept are to meditate upon.²

» Jung (Carl Gustav), Linga, Siva

—

¹F. A. Marglin in The Encyclopedia of Religion. Eliade, Mircea (ed). New York: 1987, Collier Macmillan, Vol. 15, pp. 530-535.

²V. K. Chari, “Representation in India’s Sacred Images: Objective vs. Metaphysical Reference” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2002: 52-73, pp. 65-66.

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Afterlife

Fayum Mummy of Artemidorus

Originally uploaded by mharrsch

Afterlife The belief that the spirit or soul continues after death.

This belief arguably dates back to prehistoric times (115,000 – 200,000 years ago) where evidence points to Homo neanderthalensis in Israel and Spain buried with food items, tools and possibly weapons in hand, often in fetal position facing sunrise or sunset.

Some scholars maintain that we cannot know the precise meaning of these ancient burial practices. Others suggest that they point to a belief in the afterlife.

Historically, most if not all world religions are premised on the belief in life after death. Most include some kind of cosmological vision of heavens and hells.

Recent studies on near death experiences (NDEs) support the idea of an afterlife, although skeptical scientists say that NDEs are hallucinations caused by oxygen shortage.

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Animism

a couple of large spirit houses in the woods
@ mae wok

Originally uploaded by doctor paradox

Animism The belief that natural objects like rivers, mountains and trees, as well as animals and people have a spiritual, animating principle.

Sir E. B. Tylor developed a theory of animism to try to explain the origins of religion.

Tylor believed that so-called primitive man developed a belief in spirits existing in nature from the actual experience of sleep, dreams and breathing.

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Anthropology

Museum of Anthropology

Originally uploaded by masabumasabu

Anthropology (Greek anthropos: humans + logos: thought).

Anthropology is the all-inclusive study of human beings.

Its two main branches are physical and cultural anthropology. The former deals mostly with physiological issues while the latter examines cultural development.

The systematic study of language, art and myth emerged from cultural anthropology.

In the 1930’s a further distinction between cultural and social anthropology was commonly accepted.

Cultural anthropology came to mean a holistic view of how social acts relate to larger systems, whereas social anthropology became the study of specific social practices.

Also related to anthropology is archaeology and its various attempts to recreate historical societies and accurately date uncovered artifacts. » Carbon Dating

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