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An examination of the role of the shaman begins with an understanding of the myth. Myth is the shaman’s power base as it sustains the drive and power of the shaman’s service to himself and others. Literal Functions of Myth These theories are all alike in that they attempt to provide a complete explanation of myth’s function. While they apply to a portion of the whole, it is difficult to accept only one of them as the sole function of myth. In their attempt to define all, they fulfill the role of the scientist. As we shall see later, this is a role that the shaman does not embrace.Euhemerism: myth is successfully distorted of the real. Joseph Campbell suggests a model that is much for flexible, allowing for multiple functions of myth: The 2nd and 3rd functions are associated with orientation, while the 1st and 4th are associated with psychological guidance.Mystical function: waken and maintain sense of awe and gratitude. Mythology, as its most basic level, works on two assumptions: the universe
is all alive (animism) and the universe responds to our wishes (egocentricity).
These themes are present in all of us during the early childhood years.
The mythic identity is very strong at that time, but it is gradually replaced
with rational processes. In the "primitive" or ritually oriented society,
the mythic type of consciousness is engaged and brought into the social
group. Mythic meaning and social meaning are brought together, as the community
becomes "mythological instructed". In demythologized society, myth is repressed
and surfaces through fantasy and dreams – when the consciousness is taking
time off. When the intelligent quota drops, we become more mythic creatures.
Modes of the Mythic Experience: Mythic imagination prefers presentations in form that touches inner primary meaning, and does not accurately reflect and describe reality. In the presence of primary meaning, consciousness changes tracks. It is no longer interested in labeling, categorizing or manipulating the universe. Instead it stands in speechless contentment to behold the cosmic mystery. In this role, the meaning of myth is to be experienced. This is representative of Campbell’s first function of myth.Primary Meaning: pre-analysis – encompasses sacred beings and events "In these things I behold naught save divine power" Navajo Indian Song of Sacred Awareness: In beauty I walk With beauty before me I walk With beauty behind me I walk With beauty above me I walk With beauty above and about me I walk It is finished in beauty It is finished in beauty Ramakrishna: "Whatever I saw I worshipped". Myth is understood when one enters an "altered state of consciousness".
Myth may be the trigger or catapult to the experience. An example: a festival
of masks and lights draws in a person, and then alters the person so they
can experience the primary meaning. When the ritual mask is used, we know
a person is behind it, but choose to experience the apparition of the mythical
being.
Five Stages of Mythical Engagement: Mythic Identity (Possession). The mythic imagination is activated with little or no relationship to actual properties of "outer reality". In practice, Saints don’t eat, the non-reality based schizophrenic is hit by the unseen car, and the oracle is possessed.
The function of religious experiences, meditation and inward questioning spring from an experience of mythic identity that that comes unasked. It may take its form from unconscious problems, fragments of systems and past history. Lacking a "symbolic musculature", the individual may become psychotic, as all parts of the unprepared psyche are "supercharged". When taping the primary level of mythic identity, the following states may be achieved based on acceptance by society: The definition of mental disorder is made on the society level. An orthodox or popular unorthodox mythic identity carries a transpersonal message. The core of the mythic identity is valid for the individual and others. Some questions that may be asked to determine the "validity" of the mythic identity are:Orthodox acceptance: appointed local seer, oracle or saint. When a mythic identity is personal instead of transpersonal, a state of personal mythic seizure occurs. A wonderful example is the story about Ram Dass (Richard Albert) visiting his brother in a mental institution. The brother was a ward because of his belief that he was Jesus Christ. Ram Dass, dressed in full Hindu guru garb, was outwardly the odd-man. His brother looks at Ram Dass, and in a moment of clarity, asks "and why am I the one that is locked up?" Consider that for the average person, their idea of God is coterminous with their private vision of perfection, and their conception of the Devil must always resemble their own personal fears and loathing. The more entangled with personal problems, the more subjective and purely private someone’s mythology must be. Paranoid schizophrenia is most difficult to cure of all schizoid disorders: the paranoid projects their psychomythology on the outside world, entirely losing the ability to differentiate projection from actuality. Hence, the intensely personal mythic identity is more likely the institutionalization rather than messiahship.What does the particular belief mean for this particular individual? When one or more person believes, there becomes a religion. When a religion is formed, ideas previously thought fanciful are embraced. Some examples are: . earthly paradise is here, but located under the earth . last judgement will fall stars and open tombs . teenagers are world messiahs
Possession Possession is one of the purest forms of mythic identity. Ego is suspended. Entity is recognized as personification appearing in local mythology. In the non-mythic culture, schizophrenia becomes possession, and the answer is exorcism. Possession is a religious experience that may entail tests to confirm
the sincerity of the individual (strong drink, walking on or handling blades).
Religious possession is cultivated and ritualized, and may often be bound
in an orthodox mythical tradition. One is "mad" in the service of the community,
with their ritualized approval.
The Shaman’s Vocation: The shaman is the archetypal technician of the sacred, and his profession is precisely the relationship between mythic imagination and ordinary consciousness. Conventionally, there are two different ways to be called: The spontaneous vocation of the shaman may begin with the shaman becoming extremely nervous and withdrawn. Is this a cuddling of the psychological ill? The difference lies in that both the sick man and the shaman are projected into a vital plane. This shows them the fundamental data of human experience, that is, solitude danger and the hostility of the surrounding world. The shaman is not only a sick man at this point, they are above all a sick person who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing themselves.Hereditary – ancestors were shamans. A "lesser" shaman that is designated by the social community. The initiation can be very harsh. The illness removes the past – reveals the "data of human existence" while the ritual initiation (plunged into freezing water, slashed with quartz knives, left to fast alone) brings the shaman fact to face with death and beyond. The shaman must "attain to intimacy with the supernatural by visions of death". The old must die so the new can be reborn. Another interesting element is that death is a sacrifice – the blood sacrifice by the shaman unites him with the sacred order of being, beyond dimension of this or that person in their particular body. The world religions of Tibetan Tantrism, Buddhism, and Christianity all share an element of blood sacrifice. There are some common themes to the spontaneous initiation of the shaman. The shaman plunges into the realm of the primary mythic identity through the realm of archetypes. The structure of the primary experience is mediated by the local mythic symbols that functions a kind of mythological vocabulary. Through the vocabulary the individual may better understand and relate their own experiences, and may also transmit their import to others. In this capacity, the shaman is the "technician of the sacred".Vertical movement of spirit. Visions of vertical caves, rainbows, and birds are often featured. A shaman can see things others can’t. In our culture, this is a symptom
regarded as a psychotic episode. Yet, the shaman is not psychotic. He is
a fully functional member of his local social order, and is amongst the
most intelligent and creative people of the community. The issue with our
society is that there is little symbolic vocabulary, no grounded mythological
tradition to make our own experiences comprehensible to us. No senior shamans
are there to ensure that our dismemberment is followed by a rebirth.
Shamanism and Dreaming The Iroquois have a relation to dreaming that is shared across the shamanic spectrum. Some philosophies that are shared are: In the application of dreams to therapy, there are three types of illness:The dream is recognized as the only available access or key to inner life, and this inner life is as real as waking consciousness. Dreams are used as the oracle for ritualizing the primary mythic identity. Black Elk’s vision is a good example of the "big dream or vision". Black Elk was recognized for his calling after the dream of a ritual using horses came to him in a "dream".Problems caused by natural events The shaman is the full-time specialist who ensures the doorway between
the mythic imaginings and the daylight world is kept open.
The Priest, Scientist and Yogis
The Priest – Belief and Orthodology (Stage 2) Mythic identity is ecstatic but unstable. The ecstatic vision asks us for enactment in the objective world, and the mythic identity leads most often, even when we don’t want it to, to orthodoxy. A monotheistic and heavily orthodox belief system exerts a powerful stability and organizing effect on the psyche. This same stability holds myth as being literally true or not true at all. There is no room to turn ecstatic experience inward – it is instead projected outward. When the established orthodox is in decline, a substitute is sought to save us from madness. If the substitute is also approached in the literal ways of the past, the results may be dire. An example of this is the person on the drug high believing they can fly, and falling to their deaths. The polytheistic orthodox allow the psyche a polymorphous perversity.
Sharp distinctions between good and evil are harder to find.
The Scientist – Phase Three Science is any theory or belief which proposes to interpret or explain the totality of things. When there is no religious orientation (phase 2), the religious archetype is still active but remains primitive, and is thus attached to any life activity or belief that assumes a central role for the individual. A religious intensity is given to the non-religious function. Some people keep a convenient split between science and religion while others experience alienation, depression and the existential emptiness. Science orthodoxy makes the mythic orthodoxy impossible and creates
what we what we call "myth". Science provides a baseline, outside all other
beliefs are regulated to the fictional "myth" definition. Science and myth
need not be antagonists. Events in this world are metaphors for an ultimately
more real, sacred order of being, ciphers of a psychological language.
Yogi – Suspended Engagement (Stage 4) Yoga is the prototype philosophy of disengagement. Its basic assumption is that when man has truly recognized that being, as he experiences it, is a mirage. Then his only recourse is to seek liberation from the state of mind that remains fascinated under the spell of illusion. It is the intentional stopping of the involuntary movements of mind substance. The way of the shaman captures something vial for our own tradition
that the yogi has missed or forgotten. It is the technique of relating
to, rather than vanquishing, the living substance of one’s psyche.
Myths of Relationship and Integration The great shamans see beyond the myths that are heaps of broken images or our own limited spiritual sight that seems unable to penetrate beyond the personal level. The collective myth is fragmented, dismembered, and the responsibility of finding a meaningful place within the universe falls back onto the individual. When past shamans were dismembered by their encounter with primary mythic identity, as we are now, the looked forward to the process of recreation. Our task is daunting given the far flung mythic images devoid of an official structure to lend cohesion. Some themes that may be used for recreation: Whole Earth – Whole Body Whole Earth – Whole Body The best myths speak to your inner and outer levels. In this theme, the larger (world) and the smaller (us) must be healthy and integrated for the whole to be healthy. The ills we feel are from a part of the system possessing a "little vision" and overstepping its part of the relationship, making moves in a unilateral manner. The result is war, ecological crisis, cancer or psychosis. The "little vision" is a product of outer myth, a myth that gives it power and justification. Where did the outer myth originate? One location is the biblical expulsion form the garden of Eden – a result of patriarchal legal principles. The other myth is much older. The Babylonian myth features a masculine god, Marduk. Marduk slays Tiamat, the Mother Goddess, when he sides with the new gods. From the corpse of Tiamat, Marduk creates and orders the world. This was a departure from past myths (matriarchal) as the mail god does not give birth or create, except as a consort to the goddess. Secondly, it is the male god who was previously slain as the hero. Through his sacrifice, he is absorbed by the mother and reborn. The ecology movement now sees the horror that results from slaying the
mother. As we are connected to the earth, her dismemberment is ours as
well. Our aggression must be turned inward, to ourselves, body and psyche.
Our body is the only thing we have complete claim to. During this fight
we regain the sense of connectiveness with out physical selves, and it
is projected to a connection to the outside. We regain the stewardship
over ourselves and the world – an awesome responsibility of caring for
planet that has been placed in our hands.
Dialogue: The Two Snakes of Aquarius Dialogue is impossible during unilateral action or authoritarian action. This courts disaster as we forsake dialogue on every level of human relationship: man/nature, man/other men, man/himself, man/woman, and parent/child. The Aquarian age, during which mythologies emerged, is typified by two lines undulating in parallel with each other. The Piscean Age, whose two millennia of conflict has been obvious enough, has two forces that are parallel but turned away from each other. The lines are dialogues: spirit/matter, conscious/unconscious, man/women, innocence/experience. During the first two stages (identity and orthodology), primary imagination has been dominant. Proclamations of shamans, possessed oracles, and edicts of popes had been taken in importance over the reasoning of man. Consciousness, reason and self-determination is disadvantaged. In the other two modes (science and suspended engagement) the principles of consciousness is declared against the unconscious. This is achieved by discipline and resistance to myth. Science is the result of outward vision, yogi the result of inward vision. The directions are opposite, but there is a similarity in method: both make desperate attempt to argue the naturalness of life. In the extreme, both lead to its own kind of fanaticism and sterility. As we embrace these, what can be done? The answer is a method of transcendent function. Transcendent function involves both the turning inward of attention (yogi) and the treating the inward as "other" (science). The relationship is a dialogue with the inner "other". A combination of introvert and extrovert is formed. What is the thing that dialogues? The thing is something born out of the relationship. This is the new technology of the sacred: the fifth stage of mythic engagement. Psychology is one avenue: "that branch of knowledge that deals with the human soul, that knowledge of the mind which we derive from a careful examination of the facts of consciousness; the nature of the mind. The result: the explorers of the psyche now take up everything from Zen macrobiotics to astral travel – all disciplines with a psychological and mystical gist. There is no longer a narrow concentration – as we flirt with yoga, astrology, tarot, macrobiotics and palmistry. Through this journey the psyche has been developing a mystic vocabulary for inner dialogue. A lower and upper dialogue is formed. The lower is vain, shallow and
controlling, and largely exists because of a lack of dialogue. In essence,
it is the definition of evil. The upper is open and responsive to wishes,
a conduit of knowledge. To transcend the lower, a dialogue and struggle
to penetrate the mysteries ensues. When successful, we achieve the dialogue
of the upper and our view of who and what we are is profoundly changed.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice The technician of the sacred relies upon the myth to change – he does not manipulate reality directly. The secular technician manipulates reality directly, and tries to exclude commerce with myth. The scientist is a magician of a powerful order. The scientist fast becomes the madman, as he has lost contact with his nature, his own and those around him. He is the magician of the daytime world. The sorcerer’s apprentice is on a quest to learn again the mechanics
of the mythic imagination, to acquire the technology of the sacred. Witchcraft
is an example is again flourishing. The tendency is to learn from a teacher
versed in the vocabulary and dynamics of a particular mythic system.
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Mythology: Doorway of the Shaman