The Metaphorical Shaman

THE METAPHORICAL SHAMAN, AND MORE BESIDES

Dave, good to talk to you on your birthday. I was particularly interested by our brief discussion on the development of man since the ancient Greeks. How he moved from a state of thoughtfulness into the complexities of Roman life, which subsequently  collapsed with the barbarian invasions. Out of this, miraculously, Christianity flourished, became institutionalised, then, regrettably, set about stifling thought outside its own confines. It monopolized the right to it. The original message almost became secondary, and attempts have been made to revive it by various groups who have often put their own interpretation on it. Throughout history it (the message) has had to accommodate other vested interests, monarchies, aristocracies, merchants, politicians.                                                                                                              

Now, at this point, I am going to an article that I wrote some time ago and you will have to bear with me before I return to the subject of our discussion.           Forgive me if I start with a statement which you are unlikely to find challenging. I believe that one way man distinguishes himself from other animals is by trying to understand the world he lives in so that he can change it to suit himself. This has had a downside as well as an upside, but was always going to be easier if the day to day business of survival was sorted out first, yet the survival bit was facilitated by the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. Quite simply it was a case of chicken and egg.

It is apparent that once settled he needed to know how and when to plant things, the migratory patterns of the animals he hunted, and all sorts of other things that happened on a seasonal basis, and for this he needed a calendar; hence the creation of monuments or devices to establish the precise time of year. The study of the sun was an obvious starting point, although it is interesting to note here that there are a host of animals that do things on a seasonal basis without being able to count or measure, or create monuments. Apparently man needed to know exactly where he was in time and probably reckoned it gave him a better chance of survival. If he did it for some other reason then we still have some thinking to do!

However, this much is generally accepted by pre-historians. The reasons for studying the planets and the stars, naming them and attributing meaning to them is less apparent and displays more complex human needs. It was a case of giving meaning to the unknown, and it is the shifting over time of the line between the known and the unknown which affected human behaviour and cultural change.

Life was subject to random events which could turn organisation into chaos. Storms, floods and droughts needed to be understood in order to be controlled or provided for. It may have been inevitable that they were to be regarded as punishment for something, if indeed the notion of punishment existed at that time as it is a concept peculiar to man in his social state. If it did, then the notion of reward must have come with it. But who was punishing and who was rewarding? I can see how the idea of an invisible force, outside human control and superior to it, developed from here. This force, or forces were called God, and he, them, or it, would only be made redundant when the random events which created the chaos could be explained.

So, understanding and explaining were always paramount, and these processes were not just restricted to our scientific age. They have accelerated in our more recent history, but have been there since mans brain became big enough to cope with them. And the same brain has always had the capacity to embrace the idea of magic.

Magic included the miraculous. Germination, and by implication fertility and fecundity, were miraculous, and desirable. Because of their desirability in an agrarian society they were worthy of study, yet once explained they would cease to be magic. Mankind has for thousands of years been intent on transforming magic into the explicable. Yet certain things persistently remain beyond explanation. Inspired thinking and the creative force are just two, or are they the same thing? The creative force may be out there at the end of the universe, or it may be somewhere in our brains. I would suggest that in prehistory the shamans, and later the prophets, might have had some insight into the nature of it. We may have to revise our opinion of prophets as being rigid authoritarian figures predicting chaos and doom into figures more fluid, allowing themselves to drift in and out of reality, exploring the outer limits of their imaginations. I’m sure that the shaman of prehistory became the prophet of the Old Testament, although his social function may have shifted. The former may have functioned within the tribe to help make certain decisions, the latter to warn of impending doom, perhaps if his tribe failed to engage its collective mind.

Let us pretend that in our prehistoric tribe we have a dominant Shaman, whose accepted role is to illuminate the actions of his tribe. Within the tribe are a group who are perfecting their knowledge of geometry and another group who are studying the germination of seeds. There may, or will also be toolmakers, engineers (stone movers?), stoneworkers, herbalists. We may assume that gender was no barrier to activity although we cannot be sure. We cannot assume that the pattern of activity is the same as for a ‘modern’ stone-age tribe in New Guinea for instance, who may be in a state of regression.

This tribe is intent on progressing its knowledge and the Shaman has to stimulate that. As things move from the inexplicable (or magic?) to the explicable his attentions may shift. So as the seed germinators discover that seeds are best germinated at a certain phase of the moon, or when placed next to a lump of rock like quartz with a strong electro-magnetic field around it, then he moves on to the next problem. He doesn’t necessarily solve it himself, but he prepares the minds of those working on it, he nurtures the creative force. He also explores other boundaries, he knows that death is not simply explained in terms of being or non-being. It is the point when the spirit moves into another world. If he deals in the currency of other-worldliness then how can he believe in the finality of anything? He also advises or determines the way in which tribal life is related to the natural world. He believes that there is a powerful force generated by the actions of man in the face of nature, and that he has a sacred duty to respect that force. So that the moment man interferes with nature something mysterious happens; for as man moves, marks or models the stones, he adds his energy to them. The shaman knows that the stones contain energy, are the product of huge amounts of it, and they become the way man conveys his message. They have a permanence like nothing else.

Sometimes the Shaman will see fit  to leave natural features exactly as they are and set up his own works, using of course natural materials , alongside them. Divination, both in the practical and the religious sense, may feature here. The mountain, with a pile of shattered rocks on its summit is a frequent choice, and is so obviously the product of a massive amount of energy that it is deemed too sacred to interfere with. It may well attract the works of man in its proximity, be they dolmens, avenues of stones or menhirs shaped to mirror the mountain, but the mountain is respected, the subject of awe, for the power within it may be the power of destruction. Where works are carried out close to nature they are subjected to the discipline of the geometers, as if in contrast to the chaos of nature. Man probably discovered geometry when he set about determining the solar calendar and its application became a sacred rite in subsequent works. This tension between what was understood, what you were trying to understand, and the random and chaotic, must have demanded that you imposed your own kind of sophisticated order where you could.

I realise I have been using the idea of the dominant Shaman in a metaphorical sense, for he is not a singular character, but the spirit of enquiry and illumination. All these discoveries and developments took place over a long period of time and involved many different people although there must have been great leaps in the acquisition of knowledge. I believe that we have been wrong in describing early man as primitive and superstitious, as if man was just waiting for the arrival of science before he came to his senses.  Before science many people believed that we were awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. Apparently we await revelation, the revealing of truth. Mostly we realise that truth arrives by degrees, but it is also possible that revelation requires dispensing with old inhibitions imposed by rigid, accepted patterns of belief, be they religious or scientific. My ideal shaman knew this and instructed and inspired the members of his tribe accordingly. His perceived duty was not to impose social order, or to police the spiritual thoughts of his tribe, more to release them.

Two weeks later …….

I’ve come back to this as I realise it might be seen as a statement of religious belief; that God grew out of ignorance and will disappear when we have all the answers. It might also be construed that I have been indulging in some wishful thinking, by retreating into an imaginary tribal time when the world was populated by small cohesive groups without major human failings, like greed or bellicosity. I have been inclined for many years to think that our world would function better if divided into smaller units (ever the village romantic). I’ve also been inclined to think that a better understanding of the past would improve our chances of dealing with the future, but only in the sense that we might learn from our mistakes, not attempt to recreate a historical world.

Now, a month later (February 2010) I am thinking that if my metaphorical  Shaman was worthy of becoming myth how would I set about it? I have said that he is not a singular character, but the spirit of enquiry and illumination, and he has given me a clue how the idea of the Messiah might seize the human Imagination. It starts as an idea, as pure spirit, but by a process which might be magic, is made into substance by giving it form.                           

It might also be construed as my belief that we need messianic or shamanic figures to lead us out of our messes by promoting creative thought within our tribe. Actually I believe that those figures are potentially there, but that by and large they are shouting, or maybe just whispering into the void.  It may be argued that creativity is only part of being human and that other emotional and intellectual characteristics like the ability to love, co-operate, compromise, question, consider, examine, etc, are just as essential.

Most religions seem to assume that if we accept a fixed set of beliefs and adopt certain patterns of behaviour then all will be fine. How many talk about resourcefulness, inventivity, or the need to change and adapt? My belief is that we will not solve the major problems afflicting the human race by simply loving and believing in God but by using all our human powers (but not I hasten to add, the destructive ones), so I suppose that makes me a humanist rather than a Buddhist, Christian, Pagan, or anything else, although I have to admit that certain aspects of most religions (sculpture, art, architecture, mind altering techniques?) appeal to some of my human needs.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Sebastian Faulks, because it’s at least partly relevant to what I’ve been talking about:

“Like language, art struggles with what is common, to disturb the individual habit of perception and, by disturbing it, to enable men to see what has been lived and seen by others. By upsetting, therefore, it tries to soothe, because it hopes to free each person from the tyranny of solitude.”