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Blog
entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and
reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer
have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent
essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them
with all who are interested.
If
you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a
note: sam@macspeno.com
Post
#129 is a sharing of the notes I wrote out for a small shamanism discussion
group I was part of 20 year ago. It's about what is probably Joseph Campbell's most significant book.
===
THE WAY OF THE ANIMAL POWERS, Joseph Campbell (San Francisco,
1983)
This is one of several (at least three) projected volumes dealing
with the religions and mythologies of Paleolithic hunter-gathers, Neolithic
planters, and the "higher" [civilization] cultures.
It is envisioned as an atlas and features some very useful maps.
It's official title is The Way of the Animal Powers (The Historical Atlas of
World Mythology, Vol. 1).
How lucky we are that Campbell was able to finish this first
volume! It deals nearly exclusively with shamanism and its hunting culture
matrix.
This is not a book. It is an experience. Any and every part if
worth careful attention, reading and discussion.
Just about every topic that has come up in our shamanism 'seminar'
is mentioned. Much is clarified, and expectations are raised to higher levels!
===
The first fifty pages are devoted to the cosmic evolution process
in its geological, biological and physical anthropology phases. [2012 note: An
early version of what's now being called "Big History" and the
"New Cosmology."]
It is followed by three sections dealing with the religion and
mythologies, respectively, of the primitive hunting culture. And of its
'blossoming' in what Campbell calls "The Great Hunt" and of the Great Hunt's
'twilight' in North America.
The scope is overwhelming. Campbell points out, for example, that
the 'flowering' period of hunting spirituality lasted at least twice as long as
from the end of the last ice age until now.
The distinction between the time of the primitive hunters and that
of what Campbell calls the Great Hunt is important.
The primitive period (Early Paleolithic) is that of Neanderthal
people (now being thought of, apparently, as an early form of Homo sapiens rather than as a
totally different species).
This formative phase lasted approximately from 70,000 to 40,000
BP. Its primary characteristics are burials and bear cults. The Master of
Animals dates from this period! (And he is the bear! See below.)
The second phase (Late Paleolithic) dates from 30,000 to 10,000 BP
and ends with the retreat of the glaciers ushering in humanity's agricultural
period.
The people here are Cro-magnon ("modern" humans, Homo
sapiens sapiens) and the main characteristic of the period is shamanic cave art.
With regard to Cave Art, an especially significant indication of
shamanism is the X-ray style; it can be used to track the spread of shamanism.
(Shamanism probably did, it seems, get to Polynesia via Southeast Asia, as we
surmised.)
===
During the 20,000 year period of the Great Hunt, two distinct art
styles and traditions developed, says Campbell. One is cave art (with an
essentially male/hunter/sun spirituality); the other is the art of the rock
shelters (with a female/fertility/moon focus).
Campbell uses the famous Venus of Lassel to represent the
lunar-feminine tradition, and the dancing shaman in the Trois Frere cave to
represent the solar-male tradition.
He thinks that the Trois Frere sorcerer is a lion (and that the
antlers added later). It/he is the Owner of Animals, still known today as King
of the Beasts and still identified with the sun.
Hunters are understood to have solar mentality: the sun shoots its
rays at and 'kills' the night's stars, just as the hunter shoots arrows at and
kills animals.
What may ultimately characterize the time of the Great Hunt,
Campbell hints-- maybe more than hints but I didn't get it in my reading-- is
the complementarity of sun, male, and game (i.e., "death") with moon,
female, and fertility (i.e., "life").
===
The rest of what follows are first impressions and odds and ends.
The Master of Animals is the bear. (My personal inner experience
has insisted on this. It was delightful to see it in print.)
Humanity's oldest religious evidence is the cave sanctuaries in
the Alps-- which feature bear skulls and bones in tabernacles or shrines.
The bear is called Old Man, Great Man, Owner of the Earth (of the
Woods, Forest, Mountains). Among the Plains Cree of Saskatchewan he is known as
"son of the Chief." (An interesting coincidence there; those words
are also the meaning of the Scotch name "Mackintosh.")
Hunting spirituality is essentially that of a covenant: the game
willingly gives itself at the direction of the Lord of the Animals; in its
life-giving death it must be honored: attended, thanked, appreciated, not
wasted, never treated other than with care.
It seems especially clear how shamanism evolves from this
spirituality of the animal powers.
Prior even to this hunting covenant, however, at least logically,
is the experience of death as change of form of existence rather than
extinction.
===
Campbell's section, "American/Siberian Shaman Lore,"
presents an excellent summary of shamanism as we worked it out in our
discussions.
He maintains that shamanism is evident nearly pan-globally and the
"shamanic crisis" (the early adolescent breakdown, as it experienced
in some cultures) surely must be archetypal activity, found universally to the
human psyche.
Eurasian shamanism's essential features include dance, animal
costume, identification with bird (or stag or bull), trance, role as Master of
Animals and role as MC.
Probably also to be included, although with less certitude, are
the presence of a wand or staff, of the helping-spirits and of animal
sacrifice.
===
After shamanism crossed Beringland, new developments took place in
Asia and America.
Fixing the date of the shamanic crossing is difficult: Campbell
seems to indicate 15,000 to 12,000 BP.
His main point, in any case, is that despite the later cultural
'branchings,' there is a uniformity in shamanism that is not only circumpolar
but also extends from Alaska to the very bottom of South America.
===
The essence of shamanism is the trance or ecstasy experience; this
"primary phenomenon" is "fundamental to the human
condition" and "known to the whole of archaic humanity." (The
quote is from M. Eliade.)
[2012 note: Today we can much more easily identify this
"primary phenomenon" with the use of the Jungian Intuition function
of consciousness (also called "Imagery" and "Imaginalis"). It is indeed
"fundamental to the human condition"!]
Campbell notes that the character of the experience is little
affected by social or cultural conditioning. What does change from age and age
and place to place is "how the experience is interpreted and
evaluated."
[2012 note: For many centuries Western culture either ignored it
or considered it pathological.]
Siberian horse sacrifice came into shamanism from Indo-european
Aryans (and is related to Vedic sacrifices). The radical dualism of mutually
exclusive good and bad (with "up" indicating good, and
"down" indicating bad) comes from Persian Zoroastrianism.
===
But the immemorial tradition is essentially the shamanic
"crisis" and its aftermath-- the call or inaugural spirit encounter
(in our discussions, we faulted Grim somewhat about this language) and its
ritual anamnesis.
In the Ona and Yamana peoples at the tip of South America--
descendants most likely of the earliest migrants across Beringland-- shamanism
is essentially inspired and motivated by "helping spirits acquired via
vision quest which is radically transformative."
Here Campbell's point is that we can see from these peoples what
shamanism was like at the time when it crossed Beringland. He makes special
note of the fact that these people happen to have a high god, but that it/he
has nothing to do with shamanism.
===
One story about what happens when a person is called to shamanism
caught my attention: the negative results that often follow from the call. But
the feelings of being tired, faint, fatigued, disempowered, ill, helpless,
afraid are not the final word.
I thought of the "Mary Tall Mountain" story: when
accepted, all this changes. "You will grow strong and well. You will lose
fear. You will cure and counsel." It is a "Gift of the Mystery."
(Sounds like a shamanic chrismation rite!)
===
Another aspect of the primitive hunter experience of shamanism
which caught my attention is that following the experience of the call and the
vision quest presentation of power song by a helping spirit (an experience that
can not be ignored) comes "a long season of training and preparation which
is effected, says Campbell, via "inward physical transubstantiation."
but "inward
physical transubstantiation" is in fact exactly right in terms of my own
present (summer, 90) personal experience!)
I would have never thought to use the term Campbell does, but
"inward physical transubstantiation" is in fact exactly right to describe
my own personal experience in the summer of 1990.
===
Four levels of shamanic 'thought':
Mystical level: ultimate ground
Psychological level: helpers and guardians (culturally and
autobiographically conditioned)
Sociological-historical level: popular, created by shaman but also
influences him-- and which is the proper focus of this book, says Campbell.
Exploitative-manipulative level: gimmicks and tricks used for
self-defense by the shaman.
Campbell says of this last level that in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
tradition everything else-- "in its racial, institutional and
masculine-sexual accents"-- is structured to support it.
===
Drums and the world tree apparently are post-migration
developments.
Another late development, this one from the Near East, is the
male-female polarity (by which I think he means conflicting or mutually
exclusive, rather than complementary, polarity).
This mutually exclusive "polarity" is especially
indicated by presence of an androgynous source (like Shiva) and castrated and
transvestite priests.
Hunters scrupulously distinguish between the sexes, while the
androgynous creator is a Neolithic planters concept which originally appeared
in Mesopotamia.
The first appearance of these "an-andries" (i.e.,
"non-men") and transvestites is in the rites of the Universal
Goddess.
It is known that this ideas came to Siberia via Scythia around the
5th c. BC, and that it crossed Beringia around 100 AD. There are levels of the
sex change: the priests wearing female braids, wearing female dress, and acting
in female ways.
Other late shamanic developments in Asia include the horse
sacrifice, identification of the drum with the world tree and with animal
sacrifices, and a radical dualism-- where "up" becomes the path of
the tree, the drum, the sacrifice, and the shaman.
Along with all this, and it seems to fit, is what Campbell calls
[....]
[2012 note: My notes end here in mid-sentence. After two decades,
I can't even guess what that something else might be.]
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