Demystifying Shamans and Their World

J. Rock Adam

Description

Shamanism can be described as a group of techniques by which its practitioners enter the "spirit world," purportedly obtaining information that is used to help and to heal members of their social group. Despite a resurgence of interest in shamanism and shamanic states of consciousness, these phenomena are neither well-defined nor sufficiently understood. This multi-disciplinary study draws on the fields of psychology, philosophy and anthropology with the aim of demystifying shamanism. The authors analyse conflicting perspectives regarding shamanism, the epistemology of shamanic states of consciousness, and the nature of the mental imagery encountered during these states.

Sujets

• Mysticism
• Shamanism

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 14 octobre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845403324
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
DEMYSTIFYING SHAMANS AND THEIR WORLD
A Multidisciplinary Study
Adam J. Rock & Stanley Krippner



Publisher Information
Copyright © Adam J. Rock & Stanley Krippner, 2011
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Originally published in the UK by Imprint Academic
PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Originally published in the USA by Imprint Academic
Philosophy Documentation Center
PO Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147, USA
Digital version converted and published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com



Acknowledgements
The authors express their gratitude to Jürgen Kremer, Stephen Brown, Rosemary Coffey, Steve Hart, and Cheryl Fracasso for their editorial assistance, and the Saybrook University Chair for the Study of Consciousness for its support in the preparation of this book.



Permissions
Portions of this book were originally published as articles in American Psychologist (2002, vol. 57, pp. 962 – 977), International Journal of Transpersonal Studies (2008, vol. 27, pp. 12 – 19), Journal of Consciousness Studies (2000, vol. 7, pp. 93 – 118), Journal of Shamanic Practice (2009, vol. 2, 33 – 40), Transpersonal Psychology Review (2008, vol. 12, pp. 23 – 31), North American Journal of Psychology (2007, vol. 9, pp. 485 – 500), Psi Research (1984, vol. 3, pp. 4 – 16), and Journal of Scientific Exploration (2008, vol. 22, pp. 215 – 226).

Permission to reprint has been granted by the publishers.



Dedication
This book is dedicated to
Michael and Sandra Harner
and to shamans past, present and future

Michael Harner, Ph.D. is an anthropologist and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, an international nonprofit organisation dedicated to preserving shamanic knowledge.

Sandra Harner, Ph.D. served as co-founder and Vice President of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and also serves on its international teaching faculty.

Both of these visionaries recognised the importance of preserving shamanic traditions and adapting them to help contemporary people face the ecological and existential crises of the 21st century.



Preface: Why Attention Must Be Paid To Shamanism
Albert Einstein once wrote, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Einstein’s comments certainly apply to scholarly studies of shamanism, a composite of spiritual practices and rituals found worldwide. After reviewing the literature on this topic, Narby and Huxley (2001) concluded, “Even after five hundred years of reports on shamanism, its core remains a mystery. One thing that has changed…, however, is the gaze of the observers. It has opened up. And understanding is starting to flower” (p. 8).
Much of the mystery surrounding the phenomenon of shamanism is perhaps attributable to the fact that it emerged during a time of preliteracy. Thus little is known about its origins. Although the term “shaman” is of uncertain derivation, it is often traced to the language of the Tungus reindeer herders of Siberia, where the word šaman translates into “one who is excited, moved, or raised” (Casanowicz, 1924; Lewis, 1990, pp. 10–12). An alternative translation for the Tungus word is “inner heat,” and an alternative etymology is the Sanskrit word saman or “song” (Hoppal, 1987). Each of these terms applies to the activities of shamans, past and present, who enter what is sometimes described as “an ecstatic state” in order to engage in spiritual rituals and psychological practices for the benefit of their community (Hoppal, 1987, pp. 91–92; Krippner, 1992).
When Eliade (1989) called shamans “technicians of ecstasy”, he used the term ecstasy to describe “a trance during which his soul is believed to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld” (p. 5). However, not all shamans undertake this type of “ecstatic journey”; in many cases, the shaman might incorporate a spirit, an animal ally, or some other discarnate entity in order to obtain information of value to his or her social group (Peters & Price-Williams, 1980). Voluntary incorporation is not to be confused with involuntary possession. A member of the shaman’s community might be “possessed” by a demon or malicious spirit, and this condition might require shamanic intervention of one type of another. However, shamans are in control of whatever agency they incorporate, even if it is a demon they have tricked into leaving the body of its victim in favour of that of the shaman, who eventually disposes of it in one way or another. This process usually involves a struggle that is far from “ecstatic”. Neither is the “dark night of the soul” experienced as being “ecstatic”, even though it is part of many shamanic initiations. Hence, “technicians of ecstasy” is far from inclusive as a term that describes shamans.
The adaptive character of shamanism is confirmed by its appearance around the world, not only in hunter-gatherer and fishing societies, but in more centralised societies as well. A hallmark of shamanism is its ubiquity, even though its cultural diversity is obvious to anyone who makes a serious study of the topic. Shamans are labelled differently in different cultures, and their roles have evolved in tandem with the needs of those cultures. Eliade provided a list of what he considered universal functions of shamans, but Heinze (1991) found many exceptions. Contrary to Eliade, she identified shamans who did not claim to control animals, to have immunity to fire, to have experienced “dismemberment”, or to have had a near-fatal illness that constituted a shamanic “call”. Heinze did find a universal response to community needs among the shamans she interviewed, and these needs often required mediation between the living and the dead, between the sacred and the profane, between the “upper world” and the “lower world”, and even between shamans’ own masculine and feminine attributes. Wearing clothes of the opposite gender is a common practice in many shamanic traditions; indeed, it was a custom that alarmed European visitors to Siberia and the Americas because it violated their conventional gender boundaries. Furthermore, shamans often play the role of “tricksters” who violate borders and cross limits in order to challenge a person, a family, or a community for a variety of reasons, among them to force their onlookers to conceptualise problems in novel ways. Indeed, it is noteworthy that shamanism is currently attracting increasing interest as an alternative or complementary therapeutic technique in the disciplines of psychotherapy and medicine (Bittman et al., 2001).
Winkelman (2010) maintained that shamanism has emerged worldwide and has survived because it involves adaptive potentials derived from the structure of the brain and the evolution of consciousness (p. 4). Nonetheless, Hubbard (2003) pointed out that mainstream science has tended to dismiss shamanism as manifesting psychopathology, charlatanism, or both. Indeed, the present book was born of the conviction that attention must be paid to shamanism because it is a worthwhile academic study. Consequently, this in no sense is a book that belittles shamans or their contributions. In addition, it is our contention that, in order for academics to grasp the nature of shamanic phenomena, there are useful research strategies, such as those exemplified by this book. Each chapter in this book whittles away at one or more shamanic “mysteries” by placing shamanic imagery, shamanic journeying, shamanic incorporation, shamanic healing, and so on into terms more understandable from a multidisciplinary perspective. However, we must emphasise that our aim is not to reduce the authority and utility of these phenomena; we are merely recasting them.
Although so-called neo-shamanism is becoming faddish in the West (Taylor & Piedilato, 2002), indigenous shamans are becoming increasingly endangered (Walsh, 1990a, p. 267). It is crucial to learn what shamanism has to offer the social and behavioural sciences before archival research in libraries replaces field research as the best available method for investigating these prototypical psychologists.



Introduction: An Overview of the Chapters
In Chapter 1 we attempt to demonstrate that Western perspectives on shamanism have changed and clashed over the centuries. This chapter presents points and counterpoints regarding what might be termed the demonic model, the charlatan model, the mental illness model, the soul flight model, the decadent and crude technology model, and the deconstructionist model of shamanism. Indeed, Western interpretations of shamanism often reveal more about the observer than they do about the observed. In addressing this challenge, we note that the study of shamanism could make contributions to cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, psychological therapy, and ecological psychology.
In Chapter 2 we contend that the shamans’ epistemology, or ways of knowing, depended on deliberately altering their awareness and/or heightening their perception to contact “spiritual entities” in “upper worlds”, “lower worlds”, and “middle earth” (i.e., ordinary reality). For the shaman, the totality of inner and outer reality is fundamentally an immense signal system , and the shaman’s entries into so-called “shamanic states of consciousness” were the first steps toward deciphering this signal system. We point out that Homo sapiens w