Shamanism

[artanaro]

NOTE: The following general overview of shamanism is not intended to be the last word or the definitive work on this subject. Rather it is, as its title implies, intended to provide the participant or reader with a set of guidelines that will familiarize them with the general use of the terms shamanism, shaman and shamanic in the trends, study and practice of historic, traditional and contemporary shamanic experience. The word shaman comes to English from the Tungus language via Russian. Among the Tungus of Siberia it is both a noun and a verb. While the Tungus have no word for shamanism, it has come into usage by anthropologists, historians of religion and others in contemporary society to designate the experience and the practices of the shaman. Its usage has grown to include similar experiences and practices in cultures outside of the original Siberian cultures from which the term shaman originated. Thus shamanism is not the name of a religion or group of religions. Particular attention should be paid to the use of qualifying words such a may or usually. They indicate examples or tendencies and are not, in any way, intended to represent rigid standards Please send comments to [e-mail] (Dean Edwards).

Shamanism-General Overview-Frequently Asked Questions
© November, 1993, 1994, 1995 by Dean Edwards



1. Why were the terms used in this FAQ selected and do they have special meanings?
There is an extensive literature about shamanism that has been compiled since the late Eighteenth Century. Like any field of study and religious practice, shamanism has developed a specialized vocabulary. Please note that some of the words used in the material that follows are drawn from scholars who have a solid background in shamanic studies and may have meanings that are specific and less general than is often the case in popular usage. Consulting a good dictionary should clear up any points of confusion.
2. What is Shamanism?
Shamanism is classified by anthropologists as an archaic magico-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the great master of ecstasy. Shamanism itself, was defined by the late Mircea Eliade as a technique of ecstasy. A shaman may exhibit a particular magical specialty (such as control over fire, wind or magical flight). When a specialization is present the most common is as a healer. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an ecstatic trance state in which the soul of the shaman is believed to leave the body and ascend to the sky (heavens) or descend into the earth (underworld). The shaman makes use of spirit helpers, with whom he or she communicates, all the while retaining control over his or her own consciousness. (Examples of possession occur, but are the exception, rather than the rule.) It is also important to note that while most shamans in traditional societies are men, either women or men may and have become shamans.
There are a number of relatively common practices and experiences in traditional shamanism which are being investigated by modern researchers. While the older traditional practices are ignored by some researchers, others have begun to explore these older techniques. The emergence of the new field of the "anthropology of consciousness" and the establishment of Transpersonal Psychology as a "Fourth Force" in psychology have opened up the investigation of research into the nature and history of consciousness in ways not previously possible. Outside of academic circles a growing number of people have begun to make serious inquiries into ancient shamanic techniques for entering into altered states of consciousness.

Traditional shamans developed techniques for lucid dreaming and what is today called the out-of-the-body experience (oobe). These methods for exploring the inner landscape are being investigated by a wide range of people. Some are academics, some come from traditional societies and others are modern practitioners of non-traditional shamanism or neo-shamanism. Along with these techniques, the NDE or near-death-experience have played a significant role in shamanic practice and initiation for millenia. There is extensive document- ation of this in ethnographic studies of traditional shamanism. With this renewed interest in these older traditions these shamanic methods of working with dreams and being conscious and awake while dreaming are receiving increased attention.

The ability to consciously move beyond the physical body is the particular specialty of the traditional shaman. These journeys of Soul may take the shaman into the nether realms, higher levels of existence or to parallel physical worlds or other regions of this world. Shamanic Flight, is in most instances, an experience not of an inner imaginary landscape, but is reported to be the shamans flight beyond the limitations of the physical body.

As noted in this article, the Call to shamanize is often directly related to a near death experience by the prospective shaman. Among the traditional examples are being struck by lightning, a fall from a height, a serious life-threatening illness or lucid dream experiences in which the candidate dies or has some organs consumed and replaced and is thus reborn. Survival of these initial inner and outer brushes with death provides the shaman with personal experiences which strengthen his or her ability to work effectively with others. Having experienced something, a shaman is more likely to understand what must be done to correct a condition or situation.

Post-Shamanic: While shamanism may be readily identified among many hunting and gathering peoples and in some traditional herding societies, identifying specific groups of individuals who might be called shamans is a difficult task in more stratified agricultural and manufacturing based societies. A society may be said to be Post- Shamanic when there are the presence of shamanic motifs in its traditional folklore or spiritual practices indicate a clear pattern of traditions of ascent into the heavens, descent into the nether- worlds, movement between this world and a parallel Otherworld, are present in its history. Such a society or tradition may have become very specialized and recombined aspects of mysticism, prophecy and shamanism into more specialized or more "fully developed" practices and may have assigned those to highly specialized functionaries. When such practices and functionaries are present or have teplaced the traditional shamans found in historical or traditional shamanism the use of Post-shamanic is appropriate.

More specifically, a society may be said to be Post-Shamanic when at least 6 of the following 8 conditions have been met:

Shamanic ecstasy is still present, but light trance techniques are also used to access the Otherworld.
Agriculture and some forms of manufacturing/crafts have replaced hunting and gathering as the primary basis for the economic life of the community.
The society has developed a highly stratified social structure and very specialized occupations.
Religion and spiritual methodology has become more fully developed and can no longer be properly referred to as "archaic." This is expecially important for rituals, ceremonies and ecstatic techniques which had traditionally been the domain of the shamans.
Mystical ecstasy and unitive visions have become at least as important esoteric experiences and doctrines as shamanic ecstasy, ascension and descent in the religious and spiritual life of the community.
The shaman is no longer the primary escort for the souls of the dead into their place in the next world (psychopomp). This role generally either passes onto the priestcraft or clergy to perform through ritual, is an object of individual or group prayer, or is beleived to be done by gods of guardian spirits, angels or demons.
A professional clergy is present which regulates the religious life of the community.
Other forms of healing, divining and counseling are present have replaced shamans as the primary source of such services.
Post-shamanic motifs are found among many Indo-Eruopean, Asian, African and some native peoples of North America. The use of Post-Shamanic as a term makes examination of these parallel traditons and possible survivals of earlier shamanic traditions easier.

3. What is Shamanic Ecstasy and how does it compare with other forms of ecstasy?
From the Greek ekstasis, ecstasy literally means to be placed outside, or to be placed. This is a state of exaltation in which a person stands outside of or transcends his or herself. Ecstasy may range from the seizure of the body by a spirit or the seizure of a person by the divine, from the magical transformation or flight of consciousness to psychiatric remedies of distress.
Three types of Ecstasy are specified in the literature on the subject:

Shamanic Ecstasy

Prophetic Ecstasy

Mystical Ecstasy
Shamanic ecstasy is provoked by the ascension of the soul of the shaman into the heavens or its descent into the underworld. These states of ecstatic exaltation are usually achieved after great and strenuous training and initiation, often under distressing circumstances. The resulting contact by the shaman with the higher or lower regions and their inhabitants, and also with nature spirits enables him or her to accomplish such tasks as accompanying the soul of a deceased into its proper place in the next world, affect the well-being of the sick and to convey the story of their inner travels upon their return to the mundane awareness.
The utterances of the shaman are in contrast with those of prophetic and mystical ecstasy. The prophet literally speaks for God, while the mystic reports an overwhelming divine presence. In mysticism, the direct knowledge or experience of the divine ultimate reality, is perceptible in two ways, emotional and intuitive. While these three varieties of ecstatic experience are useful for the purposes of analysis and discussion, it is not unusual for more than one form of ecstasy to be present in an individual's experience.

However, it can be argued that, generally speaking, there are three perceptive levels of ecstasy.

The physiological response, in which the mind becomes absorbed in and focused on a dominant idea, the attention is withdrawn and the nervous system itself is in part cut off from physical sensory input. The body exhibits reflex inertia, involuntary nervous responses, frenzy.
Emotional perception of ecstasy refers to overwhelming feelings of awe, anxiety, joy, sadness, fear, astonishment, passion, etc.
Intuitive perception communicates a direct experience and understanding of the transpersonal experience of expanded states of awareness or consciousness.
While the physiological response is always present, the emotional response may or may not be significant when intuition is the principal means of ecstatic perception. Some have argued that beyond the intuitive state there is a fourth condition in which the holistic perception exceeds mental and emotional limitations and understanding.
The ecstatic experience of the shaman goes beyond a feeling or perception of the sacred, the demonic or of natural spirits. It involves the shaman directly and actively in transcendent realities or lower realms of being. These experiences may occur in either the dream state, the awakened state, or both. Dreams, and in particular, lucid dreams, often play a significant role in the life of a shaman or shamanic candidate.

TRANCE STATES (or whatever title you want to give it)


The following edited extracts from a paper wrtten by Joseph Bearwalker Wilson in 1978 describe some theory of the trance state as it applies to shamanism. ©1978, 1995 by Joseph Bearwalker Wilson ([e-mail]) Reprinted by permission of the author

In order to journey to the other dimensions of existence a shaman induces an altered state of consciousness in himself similar to a state of self-hypnosis. While in this shamanic trance he is in complete control; able to take his consciousness and subtle bodies into nonphysical reality where he visits the heavens and hells of existence, communicates with and controls spirits, gains information, retrieves souls, and makes subtle changes in reality which may affect the physical world.

A classical, and fairly accurate descriptive definition of hypnosis is "a condition or state of selective hypersuggestibility brought about in an individual through the use of certain specific psychological or physical manipulations of the individual." The key words here are "selective hypersuggestibility." A hypnotherapist uses that selective hypersuggestibility in order to help bring about desired changes in an individual. On the other hand a person practicing shamanic techniques uses that state in order to fine tune his or her senses in order to see, feel, hear, and smell more vividly while traveling in the other worlds.

The lighter trance states feel like those times when you are reading a book, or watching television or a movie, and are so engrossed that you are not aware of your surroundings. The deeper trances feel similar to how you feel when you are first waking up in the morning. You are aware that you are awake, your imagery is vivid and dreamlike, and you feel relaxed, calm, and good.

The ability to attain a and control a trance is the result of cumulative conditioning and mental training.

A weight lifter trains himself by practicing daily. He begins by lifting relatively light weights and progresses to heavier and heavier ones. Eventually he is able to lift a 200 pound weight above his head with relative ease. By working in this manner he has trained his muscles to respond according to his will. After he has reached his goal he can maintain the ability by practicing only two or three times per week. If he stops practicing entirely his muscles will gradually loose their conditioning and strength and, after a time, he will no longer be able to lift the weight. By reestablishing a routine of practice he will bring his ability back to where it was.

This same principle applies to the trance state. You train your mind to respond in accordance with your will in order to produce the ability to develop a deep trance. This is done by daily practice. It may take some time and effort to establish that ability, but once you have it you will be able to maintain it by practicing only once or twice per week. If you stop practicing entirely your ability will gradually lessen. Like the weight lifter you will need to begin a more regular practice in order to reestablish your abilities.

When you go into any trance you gradually progress from ordinary consciousness into deeper levels. It's convenient to have a means of measuring the depth of your trance, so the paragraphs that follow outline some of the symptoms found at various depths. For convenience sake I've divided the depths of trance into four major sections, and, using terms borrowed from the hypnotic sciences, called them the Hypnodial, Light, Medium, and Deep trance states.

In the Hypnodial Trance you progress from ordinary consciousness through the following steps: feeling physically relaxed, drowsy, your mind becomes relaxed and you may feel apathetic or indifferent, your arms and legs start to feel heavy, you may have a tendency to stare blankly, and have a disinclination to move your limbs. As you border this and the Light Trance your breathing becomes slower and deeper, and your pulse rate slows.

In the Light Trance you progress to a reluctance to move, speak, think or act. You may experience some involuntary twitching of your mouth or jaw, and sometimes of the eyes. You will feel a heaviness throughout your entire body and a partial feeling of detachment. You may also experience visual illusions. As you border this and the Medium Trance you recognize that you are in a trance, but may find that feeling hard to describe.

In the Medium Trance you definitely recognize that you are in a trance and may experience partial amnesia unless you consciously choose not to. By giving yourself the proper suggestions you can make any part of your body insensitive to pain, and can experience the illusions of touching, tasting, and smelling. You will be more sensitive to variations in atmospheric pressure and temperature changes. As you border this and the Deep Trance you may experience complete catalepsy of your limbs or body. In other words, if your limbs or body positions are changed you will leave them in the new position until they are changed again.

In the Deep Trance you can have the ability to open your eyes without affecting the trance. You will also have the ability to control such body functions as heart beat, blood pressure, digestion, and body temperature. You can make your body and limbs completely rigid. You will be able to recall lost memories and experience age regression. Here you can vividly experience the sensation of lightness, floating, or flying. You can also experience both positive and negative visual and auditory hallucinations both while in the trance, and, if given the proper suggestions, after awakening from the trance state. (A positive hallucination is when you are told that you see something that is not there, and you see it. A negative hallucination is when you are told that you do not see something that is there, and you do not.) In this state you can also stimulate dreams and visions, both during the trance state and (upon proper suggestion) later in your natural sleep.

Each depth of trance has valuable uses. For example, in the Light and Medium Trances you can learn to begin practical shamanic journeying so that you can see, hear, touch and smell experiences in the worlds which border ours. In those trance states these journeys will feel similar to a fantasy or daydream and you may wonder if it is real, or just your imagination. As you train yourself to deepen the trance the journeys become more vivid, until, in the Deep Trance, they look and feel as though they are taking place in physical reality.

Copyright (c) 1978, 1995 Joseph B. Wilson
Joseph Bearwalker Wilson ([e-mail])

4. How does one become a shaman?
Some have wondered if the experience of shamanic ecstasy or flight makes a person a shaman. Generally speaking, most would say no. A shaman is more than someone with an experience. First, he or she is a trained initiate. Usually years of enculturalization and training under a mentor precede becoming a functioning shaman. Second, a shaman is not just an initiate who has received inner and outer training, but is a master of shamanic journeying and techniques (shamanic ecstasy). This is not a casual acquaintance with such abilities, there is some degree of mastery of them. Finally, a shaman is a link or bridge between this world and the next. This is a sacred trust and a service to the community. Sometimes a community that a shaman serves in is rather small. In other instances it may be an entire nation. A lot of that depends on social and cultural factors.
One becomes a shaman by one of three methods:

Hereditary transmission;

Spontaneous selection or "call" or "election"

personal choice and quest. (This latter method is less frequent and traditionally such a shaman is considered less powerful than one selected by one of the two preceding methods.) The shaman is not recognized as legitimate without having undergone two types of training:
Ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.)

Traditional ("shamanic techniques, names and functions of spirits, mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.) The two-fold course of instruction, given by the spirits and the old master shamans is equivalent to an initiation." (Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 13 , p. 202; Mcmillian, N.Y., 1987.) It is also possible for the entire process to take place in the dream state or in ecstatic experience.
Thus, there is more to becoming a shaman than a single experience. It requires training, perseverance and service.
5. What is the role of personal crisis or trauma or crisis in the selection or development of a shaman?
A common experience of the call to shamanism is a psychic or spiritual crisis, which often accompanies a physical or even a medical crisis, and is cured by the shaman him or herself. This is a common occurrence for all three types of shamanic candidates described above. The shaman is often marked by eccentric behavior such as periods of melancholy, solitude, visions, singing in his or her sleep, etc. The inability of the traditional remedies to cure the condition of the shamanic candidate and the eventual self cure by the new shaman is a significant episode in development of the shaman. The underlying significant aspect of this experience, when it is present, is the ability of the shaman to manage and resolve periods of distress.
6. Does the presence of an active shamanic tradition necessarily mean that the society itself should be deemed 'shamanic'?
No, not at all. The presence of shamanism in a nation or a community does not mean that shamanism is central to the spiritual or religious life of the community or region. Shamanism often exists alongside and even in cooperation with the religious or healing practices of the community.
7. What is meant by shamanic ecstasy and what role does it actually play in shamanism?
The ecstatic technique of shamanism does not involve itself in the broad range of ecstasy reported in the history of religion. It is specifically focused on the transpersonal movement of the consciousness of the shaman into higher or lower realms of consciousness and existence. Another aspect of shamanism is that compared to other spiritual traditions, it is a path that the individual walks alone. While much of the focus of shamanic studies has been on the shamanic complexes of north and central Asia, shamanism is a universal phenomenon, not confined to any particular region or culture.
8. What is the origin of the word "shaman"?
Shaman comes from the language of the Tungus of North-Central Asia. It came into use in English via Russian.
9. What are the usual roles of a shaman?
In contemporary, historical or traditional shamanic practice the shaman may at times fill the role of priest, magician, metaphysician or healer. Personal experience is the prime determinant of the status of a shaman. Knowledge of other realms of being and consciousness and the cosmology of those regions is the basis of the shamanic perspective and power. With this knowledge, the shaman is able to serve as a bridge between the mundane and the higher and lower states The shaman lives at the edge of reality as most people would recognize it and most commonly at the edge of society itself. Few indeed have the stamina to adventure into these realms and endure the outer hardships and personal crises that have been reported by or observed of many shamans.
from deoxy.org/shaover.htm

[artanaro]

1. Shamanism is completely non-sectarian, gender independent, and can
be practiced alone or in a group.

2. Shamanism is a lifelong process dedicated to self-healing and self-
transformation.

3. Shamanism can be practiced anywhere and at any time, alone or
in any context.

4. The nature of shamanism is such that while you are healing yourself
you are healing others, and while you are transforming yourself, you
are transforming the world.

[artanaro]

here is some more info on Shamanism....I personally see that the Gnostic systems are descended from the Shamanistic which the elven systems in essence seem to be , at this point in my research:

What is shamanism?

Michael Harner:
The word "shaman" in the original Tungus language refers to a person who makes journeys to nonordinary reality in an altered state of consciousness. Adopting the term in the West was useful because people didn't know what it meant. Terms like "wizard," "witch," "sorcerer," and "witch doctor" have their own connotations, ambiguities, and preconceptions associated with them. Although the term is from Siberia, the practice of shamanism existed on all inhabited continents.

After years of extensive research, Mircea Eliade, in his book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, concluded that shamanism underlays all the other spiritual traditions on the planet, and that the most distinctive feature of shamanism-but by no means the only one-was the journey to other worlds in an altered state of consciousness.

Shamans are often called "see-ers" (seers), or "people who know" in their tribal languages, because they are involved in a system of knowledge based on firsthand experience. Shamanism is not a belief system. It's based on personal experiments conducted to heal, to get information, or do other things. In fact, if shamans don't get results, they will no longer be used by people in their tribe. People ask me, "How do you know if somebody's a shaman?" I say, "It's simple. Do they journey to other worlds? And do they perform miracles?"

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Is shamanism a religion?

Harner:
The practice of shamanism is a method, not a religion. It coexists with established religions in many cultures. In Siberia, you'll find shamanism coexisting with Buddhism and Lamaism, and in Japan with Buddhism. It's true that shamans are often in animistic cultures. Animism means that people believe there are spirits. So in shamanic cultures, where shamans interact with spirits to get results such as healing, it's no surprise that people believe there are spirits. But the shamans don't believe in spirits. Shamans talk with them, interact with them. They no more "believe" there are spirits than they "believe" they have a house to live in, or have a family. This is a very important issue because shamanism is not a system of faith.

Shamanism is also not exclusionary. They don't say, "We have the only healing system." In a holistic approach to healing, the shaman uses the spiritual means at his or her disposal in cooperation with people in the community who have other techniques such as plant healing, massage, and bone setting. The shaman's purpose is to help the patient get well, not to prove that his or her system is the only one that works.

In many cultures, shamans are often given gifts for their work, but they will return all the gifts if the patient dies, which I think is a commendable innovation that might help us with the costs of health services today.

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My understanding is that there are two aspects to shamanic healing: a medicinal one and a spiritual one.

Harner:
Shamans talk with plants and animals, with all of nature. This is not just a metaphor. They do it in an altered state of consciousness. Our own students rapidly discover that by talking with plants, they can discover how to prepare those plants for remedies. Shamans have been doing this since ancient times. They typically know a great deal about plants, but it's not essential. For example, Eskimo shamans don't have access to a lot of plants, so they work with other things. But in the Amazon shamans know the various plants and the songs that go with the plants, which they commonly learn from the plants themselves.

One former student of mine in the United States developed a practice of discovering and using healing plants based on his learning directly from the plants. He found that the pharmacopoeia he developed was very close to the ancient, classic Chinese pharmacopoeia knowledge of how to prepare and use these plants for different ailments. Another former student in Germany worked with minerals and found how they could be used in healing. It turned out that her discoveries were very close to what has been known in India from ancient times.

Which brings us to a very important issue: everything that's ever been known, everything that can be known, is available to the shaman in the Dreamtime. That's why shamans can be prophets; that's why they can also go back and look at the past. With discipline, training, and the help of the spirits, this total source of knowledge is accessible.

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What happens when a sick person asks a shaman for a healing?

Harner:
For example, a shaman might make a journey for diagnostic purposes, to get information about the person's problems from a spiritual point of view. It doesn't necessarily matter what the diagnosis is from an ordinary reality point of view. There's no simple one-to-one concordance between spiritual illness and ordinary reality illness. You can't say, "This equals that." So the shaman will often make a journey to find out what the spiritual causality is and, according to that causality, decide on the treatment.

From the shamanic point of view, people who are not powerful-spiritually "power-filled," that is-are prone to illness, accidents, and bad luck. This goes beyond our normal definition of illness. The shaman restores a person's linkage to his or her spiritual power. This spiritual power is something analogous to a spiritual immune defense system, but I wouldn't make a one-to one equivalence. It's an analog. The power makes one resistant to illness. If somebody is repeatedly ill, then it's clear that they need a power connection. A healthy person who is not sick might go on a vision quest to get this power connection, but one of the shaman's jobs is to help people who are in no condition to do that for themselves.

Today in our culture many consider it avant-garde if a person talks about the mind-body connection, but the fact that the brain is connected to the rest of the body is not the most exciting news. It's been known for hundreds and thousands of years. What's really important about shamanism, in my opinion, is that the shaman knows that we are not alone. By that I mean, when one human being compassionately works to relieve the suffering of another, the helping spirits are interested and become involved. When somebody who is disinterested, who is not an immediate family member, out of generosity and compassion helps somebody else to relieve illness or pain and suffering-and it works even better when there are two or more shamans involved-this is when miracles occur. So the big news shamanism offers is not that the head is connected to the rest of the body, but that we are not alone.

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What is soul retrieval?

Harner:
Anyone who's had a trauma, from a shamanic point of view, may have had some loss of their soul. By soul we mean the spiritual essence essential throughout one's life as we describe life in our culture, which is from conception or birth to the time of death. The techniques for healing soul loss are soul-retrieval techniques, and one of the classic shamanic methods is to go searching for that lost portion of the soul and restore it.

Until about 8 years ago, most people in the Western world felt that soul retrieval was a superstitious practice that had no validity, but things have turned. I must say that a major reason is the work of my colleague, Sandra Ingerman, the author of Soul Retrieval and Coming Home. During her shamanic practice in
Santa Fe, NM, years ago, women who had had significant childhood abuse would mention in the course of the sessions that they had removed themselves psychically from the situation at the time of abuse. Sandra immediately recognized, as a practicing shaman, that the person's soul to some degree had left the body (if it had left completely, the person would have been dead), and therefore the logical thing was to retrieve the lost portion of the soul and bring it back. So she then started doing soul retrieval for these people who had had significant childhood traumas, and the results were astounding. Today, this work is an important part of shamanic healing practice in the West.

Indeed, if you ask a group of people, "How many of you feel you've lost part of your soul?" it's typical that everybody raises their hand. At some deep level, there is a natural awareness of this problem. By the way, even a minor trauma can result in some degree of soul loss and can be treated.

Another major technique in shamanic healing work is extraction. Extraction involves removing a spiritual intrusion. Just as there can be infections in ordinary reality, so there can be spiritual intrusions. We don't mean that "evil" spirits have entered. It's more like termites in a wooden house. If you've got termites in your house, you wouldn't say those termites are evil, you'd say, "I'd just like to get them out of the house." In this same way the shaman works to remove things that interfere with the health of the body, such as spiritual intrusions, and extract them. This is not done through journeying. It's done through working here in the Middle World in an altered state of consciousness.

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How is an altered state of consciousness achieved in shamanism?

Harner:
In about 90% of the world, the altered states of consciousness used in shamanism are attained through consciousness-changing techniques involving a monotonous percussion sound, most typically done with a drum, but also with sticks, rattles, and other instruments. In perhaps 10% of the cultures, shamans use psychedelic drugs to change their state of consciousness.

I was introduced to shamanic work in 1961 among the Conibo Indians in eastern Peru, with the aid of native psychedelics. When I came back to the United States and no longer had my supply of ayahuasca, I experimented with drumming. Much to my surprise, it really worked. It should not have surprised me, because drums were reportedly used by shamans almost worldwide. Virtually everything you find in shamanism is done because it works. Over tens of thousands of years, shamans developed the most time-tested system of using the spirit, mind, and heart for healing, along with plant remedies, and so on. Again, the system is time-tested. So if healers in 90% of the shamanic cultures are using the same methods, we pay attention to them. And, of course, we find they work.

To get back to the extraction technique: the technique involves an altered state of consciousness and seeing into the client's body. Much shamanic work, including journeying and extraction, is done in darkness for a very simple reason. The shaman wishes to cut out the stimuli of ordinary reality- light, sound, and so on-and move into unseen reality. The shaman learns to look in the body with "x-ray vision" and see the illness and its location, and then to extract that illness.

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Is that like depossession?

Harner:
Depossession is related to extraction but it's not the same thing. From a shamanic point of view, it's very important to get out of the Middle World when journeying for spiritual purposes. In the old days, shamans journeyed in the Middle World to see how relatives were doing at a distant place or to locate the herds of migratory animals. But most of our work today is in the Upper and Lower Worlds where shamans have voyaged since ancient times. Shamans often prefer not to draw on the spirits of the Middle World because many of them are confused and lacking in power. Going to the Upper or Lower Worlds, one reaches spiritual beings of compassion, power, and wisdom.

Shamans who do another type of healing help the dead as well as the living. These shamans are called "psychopomps," or conductors of souls. Remember, from a shamanic point of view, when you're comatose, you're dead. So the shaman, in the case of comatose persons, would seek them out and see if they wanted to come back. Shamanism is not a system that intends to keep people in this ordinary reality whether they like it or not, because the shaman knows that this is not necessarily the best reality. You make the journey for the person who is comatose to find out what they want. If they want to come back, then the job of the shaman is to bring them back. But if they want to go on- or, more commonly, if they're dying or already dead-then the job of the shaman is to get them to a place where they will be content and not have them stay here, adrift in the Middle World.

So now we come back to this business of depossession. Most cases of depossession of humans are by other humans who are dead, who are here in the Middle World and don't know they're dead. If people are disempowered, or have soul loss or power loss, they are like a vacuum into which these confused entities can come. This is involuntary possession.

Shamans will conduct the entity-with its permission once it realizes it's dead-to a place beyond the Middle World where it will be reunited with people who it loves. Once this is done, so that the clients are no longer possessed, shamans restore their full soul and lost power connections so they are again whole and not vulnerable to further possessions.

Depossession work has slightly different forms in different cultures, but the basic principles are the same. I hope that one day our culture will recognize the need to permit shamanic practitioners to work with the spiritual aspects of illness in cooperation with nonspiritual health professionals.

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In your opinion, why don't we do that now?

Harner:
Unfortunately, when science started, partially as a reaction to the church in Europe, it ordained that souls and spirits have no reality and therefore could not be considered in scientific theory. Now that's an a priori position; in other words, ironically, a statement of faith enunciated in the 18th century. In fact, science has never disproved the existence of spirits. I would submit that now, on the edge of the 21st century, it's time to stop having a science that's based on faith (the faith that there are no spirits) and make it real science, which means that it doesn't ordain a priori that certain types of causes cannot exist.

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In regard to extraction healing, in the shamanic view, where does the illness to be extracted come from?

Harner:
From a shamanic point of view, all people have a spiritual side, whether they recognize it or not. When people get angry, jealous, or have a hostile emotional attitude, they can vent not only verbal and physical abuse, but spiritual abuse without even knowing it. In other words, if somebody is ignorant of shamanic principles, they can do damage to other people on a spiritual level.

Among the Untsuri Shuar and Jívaro people of eastern Ecuador, with whom I lived for quite a while, they call these intrusions "magical darts." There were many feuds and wars, and sometimes healers would get angry and lose their discipline and use their powers to get even. But it is important to know that this is a big mistake, not just ethically, but in terms of self-preservation. No matter how justified a person feels emotionally at the time, those spiritual beings who are representative of the great, loving, hidden universe will disconnect. It's like we're rechargeable batteries. We still have some power, and we can do damage, but the power source is no longer charging us. I've seen this many times in the Amazon. The shamans, in their anger, do harm for awhile, but eventually everything they send out comes back in on them, and it often results not only in their own death or pain, but their immediate family gets affected disastrously by it.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't get angry at people. It just means that you should have discipline and know there are parameters. You can get angry with somebody and verbally let out steam and, at the same time, control your spiritual side. But for your own self-preservation, if you don't work to relieve pain and suffering-and especially if you work in a contrary way-you're soon out of business, and probably dead.

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If I understand the concept, shamans restore wholeness and power to a human being, and then that wholeness and power heals whatever is wrong with that person. So in this framework a power-filled person has the ability to heal himself.

Harner:
To an outsider, it would look like they're healing themselves. But the concept of self-healing excludes the spirits. From the shamanic point of view, nobody's lived into adult life without spiritual help, whether they know it or not. The self-healing concept is a secular concept, and that's fine as far as it goes. It teaches people to take some responsibility for their illness. But it also teaches them to take responsibility for their death. With that approach, everybody's a failure at the moment of death, because they are responsible for the whole thing. From a shamanic point of view we are not that important. We are not necessarily the biggest thing in the universe. The shaman has a more humble point of view, that there is what looks like self-healing but, in fact, we are getting help. And the shaman has the role, of course, of accelerating that possibility.

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So the person is not healing himself?

Harner:
They might be in a specific case. I don't want to rule that out. Self-healing is a very secular view of reality, but it's a step in consciousness. It's like recognizing the brain is connected to the body.

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Can you talk about the difference between ordinary reality and nonordinary reality, especially regarding the implications for medicine?

Harner:
The terms "ordinary reality" and "nonordinary reality" come from Carlos Casteneda. Ordinary reality is the reality that we all perceive together. It's the reality in which we can all agree that there is a clock on the wall. Nonordinary reality is the reality that is associated with the shamanic state of consciousness; that is, when the consciousness has been altered and you're able to see what you normally don't see in an ordinary state of consciousness.

Ordinary reality is something that virtually everybody agrees on. Nonordinary reality is very person-specific. The information obtained in nonordinary reality is tailor-made to the individual-other people may not perceive it at all, as opposed to the information obtained in ordinary reality, in which everybody gets the same thing.

Nonordinary reality is also an empirical reality; that is, the person interacts with it, sees it, touches it, hears it, feels it. And the shaman sees with the heart in that reality. In nonordinary reality, for something to be the same for different persons, it has to be the same in the heart. Here (in ordinary reality) for something to be the same it doesn't matter what your emotion is; you'll see it, for example, as a door in the room. If I showed you a picture of my mother, now deceased, you and I would not have the same emotional relationship with that picture. But if I said the word "mother," and everyone saw their own mother, the emotional feeling in the heart would be closer-not identical, but closer. So to see things exactly the same in the heart, they have to be a little different for each person, because each person has a different personality and a different life history.

The term "nonordinary reality" is useful because it permits one to be reminded that access to these worlds is related to the degree to which you have entered the shamanic state of consciousness. It clarifies our thinking. For years, many people were confused by what shamans said. "I made a journey and was away for 3 years, and such and such happened." Now that person in nonordinary reality had the experience of living somewhere else for 3 years, but might have been gone only a half-hour in ordinary reality.

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What about divination?

Harner:
Work in shamanism also involves divination. A person can journey for themselves or have somebody who's a shamanic practitioner journey for them to get an answer to a question. What's really interesting is when somebody who's a complete stranger-about whom the shaman knows nothing-asks for an answer to a question, and the shaman then journeys or uses other techniques and gets the exact information that's valid for that person's life. This can happen because these things are known by the spirits. The shaman doesn't need to know anything except the methods, and to have his or her own spirit helpers.

from www.shamanism.org/articles/857415539.htm

[artanaro]

JEWISH SHAMANISM
INDIGENOUS JUDAISM


#### A WORD OF CAUTION ####

Becoming a Jewish Rebbe or Shaman is SERIOUS BUSINESS, and not to be entered into lightly! If a person is experiencing visions, hearing voices, being visited by "alien" beings, being followed by strange looking people that others cannot see, etc., it is a good idea to obtain a psychological check-up in order to make sure that the person is in full control of their mental facilities. If, at that point the person is still feeling called to be a Jewish Shaman, then they should find a teacher and apprentice themselves to that teacher.

As the Torah states: ASEY LEKHA RAV UKNEY LEKHA "One who would learn Torah should first get a teacher (to teach them how to study) and then get a student (to teach them how to teach)." (PIRKEY ABOT 1: 6)

*PRACTICAL JEWISH SHAMANISM*

A Rebbe should be the equivalent Jewish version of what a Native American Indian shaman-medicine person is, a Blesser, a Healer, and a Spiritual Guide.

The Shamanic path is a path of healing, guidance and service. He/she is a person who passes on the TRADITION to the next generations, and offers services to salve the soul of the present generation.


***HEBREW BIBLE IS NOT OPPOSED TO JEWISH SHAMANISM AND SORCERY***

Rabbi Gershon Winkler has written: "Shamanism and sorcery are NOT antithetical to the Hebrew scriptures. In fact, torturing a witch to death is a far more heinous sin in Judaism than practicing the occult arts.

The proscriptions in the Bible against divination and sorcery refer specifically to the kinds of sorcery practiced by specified cultures whose ways the Jewish people were forbidden to emulate.

The Hebrew scriptural verse (Exodus 22: 17) M'KHSHEYFAH LO T'CHIYEH for example, has for centuries been haphazardly translated as 'You shall not suffer a witch to live,' when literally it translates: 'You should not SUSTAIN a witch,' meaning don't get into the habit of supporting the livelihood of the village magician; don't let some guy with a lot of supernatural power drain you of your savings through fear and intimidation. Let him get a job like everybody else, and perform his magic out of the goodness of his heart and in recognition of the sacred gift he possesses.

Another translation of the exact same Hebrew wording would be: 'From sorcery you should not live,' as in don't base your entire life and all of your affairs on the powers of sorcery, or, don't make a living from it." (From "MAGIC OF THE ORDINARY by Rabbi Gershon Winkler (C) 2001.)

***What is Jewish Shamanism?*** (from a pamphlet)

by Rabbi Gershon Winkler,

Cuba, New Mexico

Jewish Shamanism is a quality of consciousness that enables one to experience magic in the ordinary, miracle in the natural course of events, and the spirituality of the physical.

Jewish shamanism is as ancient and as rich as most any other shamanic tradition, sharing in common with many of them the belief that all of creation is alive, not just fauna and flora, but that the planets, the stones, the sun and moon, too, are living conscious beings replete with wisdom and soul (e.g. Psalms 8:7-8; 145:10; 148:3-4 and 7-11; Isaiah 55:12; Job 12:7-8; Midrash Heichalot Rabati 24:3).

The second-century Rabbi Me'ir used to call the sun "My brother" (Midrash B'reishis Rabbah 92:6), "All the trees," taught the ancient rabbis, "converse with one another and with all living beings" (Midrash B'reishis Rabbah 13:2). The planets and stars even have their own songs (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 231b).

Had the Hebrews never been given their Torah, their divinely inspired scriptures, they would have been able to learn all they needed to know from the animals (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 100b).

Ask the animals and they shall teach you; and the birds of the sky, and they shall inform you. Or speak to the earth and she shall show you; and the fishes of the sea shall declare to you.

-- Book of Job 12:7-9

The Israelite does not distinguish between a living and a lifeless nature

The Israelites do not acknowledge the distinction between the psychic and the corporeal. Earth and stones are alive, imbued with a soul

-- Israel: Its Life and Culture, by Johannes Pederson [Oxford University Press: 1959], pp. 55 and 479

The physical reality is seen as but an intermediate phase in the ever-spiraling evolution of the fruition of the Creator's imagination or will (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 3, folio 61b).

The various phases of this ever-continuing spiral are comprised of myriad ru'chot, or "spirits", beings who in turn embody myriad stages involved in manifesting spirit into matter. Every blade of grass, for example, is being constantly invoked into being by a spirit that empowers and influences its growth from within the spiralic process that is, moment to moment, actualizing the seed of divine intention to physical fruition (Midrash B'reishis Rabbah, Ch. 10; Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 1, folios 251a and 2:80b). "The Sacred Wellspring [God] impassions all trees and all grasses that are upon the earth" (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 251a; see also Isaiah 6:3; Jeremiah 23:24; Sefer HaBahir, Ch. 10; Midrash D'varim Rabah 2:26).

Jewish shamanism requires the awareness that every human being is comprised of the qualities of every other being on the planet. That we are not made solely in the "Image of God" but just as much in the image of all that surrounds us, stones, plants, animals, the galactic beings, and so on (Midrash HaNe'elam 1:16b; Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 4, folio 118b), that when the Creator is quoted in the Hebrew scriptures as declaring, "Let us make the human in our image" (Genesis 1:26), the Creator was addressing all of what had been created up to that point in the creation story.

This implies that the Creator addressed all of creation before making the human, meaning that in creating the human, the Infinite One incorporated all of the attributes of all the animals and plants and minerals and so on that had been created up to this point. In each of us, then, are the powers of all the creatures of the earth.

-- 17th-century Rabbi Moshe Cordovero in Shi'ur HaKomah, torah, Ch. 4

The human is then fashioned in the image of the do'mem, ts'owmeya'ch, chayyah, and m'daber: Still Being (mineral), Sprouting Being (flora), Living Being (wildlife), and Speaking Being (human).

In the original Hebrew, the wording is "In the image of Elo'heem." Elo'heem is the God Name that describes the dynamics of the Creator stirring creation into being. It is therefore a plural word connoting "Forces" or "Powers" (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayyim 5:1).

Thus, to the Jewish shaman the human is comprised of the chaotic whirlwind of Primeval Creation, of the divine forces dancing spirit into matter, matter into form, and form into action (18th-century Rabbi Chayyim of Volozhin in Nefesh HaChayyim, Ch. 1).

Jewish shamanism assigns enormous importance to the four directions, calling them ar'ba ru'chot, or "four winds," also Hebrew for "four spirits," stressing the organic, living nature of the four directions (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 4, folio 118b).

Each wind or direction is designated an animal (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 4, folio 18b; Midrash Bamid'bar Rabbah 2:9): the eagle in the north, the buffalo in the west, the human in the south, and the lion in the east (13th-century Rabbi Yitzchak of Akko in Sefer M'irat Einayim, Bamidbar, para. 2). Each wind also has a spirit guardian (Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 2:10) who, when invoked by various Hebrew and Aramaic incantations, brings forth the gift of that particular wind.

The attributes of these four spirit guardians are healing, reflection, balance, and vision. The four winds themselves are tsafon (north), literally: hidden, as in the place of mystery; meezrach (east), literally: from [the place of] shining; nehggev (south), literally: wiping or cleansing; and maarav (west), literally: from [the place of] blending. Another name for south is darom, which means place of rising, and another name for east is kehdem, which means beginning or before.

The four winds are also given colors: red in the north, black in the west, white in the south, and yellow in the east (Gaon of Vilna on Sefer Yetsirah, Ch. 4).

The four winds are considered to possess each their own distinct power and attribute, all of which are played out in the individual human drama: "The human was created from the powers of the four winds" (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 130b).

Reflective of this and other such cosmologies in ancient Judaic mystery wisdom, are the numerous narratives in both the written and oral traditions about the mastery of the supernatural by the ancestors and teachers of the Jewish people.

Such narratives include accounts of sorcery (e.g., Genesis 30:37-39; Exodus 14:17 and 7:10-12; Leviticus 14:4-7; Numbers, Ch. 19; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65b and 67b; Ta'anit 23a-b, 24b, and 25a, B'rachot 33a; Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 7:14), communicating with animals (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 17a; Sof'rim 16:9; Jerusalem Talmud, D'mai 1:3), invoking spirits (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 2:6; Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 11:5; Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 43a, Sanhedrin 101a, Pesachim 110a), vision quests (Genesis 15:8-17, 24:63, 28:11-22; Exodus Ch. 3-4:17, Ch. 24; 1 Kings 17:2-6), dream quests (14th-century Rabbi Moshe Bot'ril on Sefer Yetsirah 4:3), rain making (Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit 23a-b), creating and animating animal and human-like creatures out of the earth (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65b and 67b; Manuscript of Sefer Gematriot, printed in A. Eptein's Beitrage zur Judischen Altertumskunde [Vienna, 1887], pp. 122-123; Sheylot Ut'shuvot Chacham Tzvi, No. 93; Sheylot Ya'avetz, Vol. 1, No. 82; The Golem of Prague by Gershon Winkler [Judaica Press: 1981]), exorcising wandering spirits (Babylonian Talmud, Megilah 17a-b; Sefer Sha'ar Ha'Gil'gulim, end), resurrecting the dead (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:34; Jerusalem Talmud, D'mai 1:3; Babylonian Talmud, Ketuvot 62b, Avodah Zarah 10b, Megilah 7b; Midrash Vayikra Rabbah 21:8), parting waters (Exodus 14:21; Joshua 3:14-17; Jerusalem Talmud, D'mai 1:3), drawing water out of stones (Exodus 17:5-6; Numbers 20:11), healing snake bites with a copper serpent (Numbers 21:9), consulting oracles such as the mysterious urim v'tumim (Exodus 28:30; Numbers 27:21; Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 122a, B'rachot 3b-4a), walkabouts (Genesis 13:17), and magical healing (Babylonian Talmud, Shabat 66b-67a, Gitin 67b-70a, Eruvin 29b, Ketuvot 50a, Avodah Zarah 28a-b, Yoma 83b-84a, Shabat 109b).

The shaman is most often approached for healing ceremonies, whether for physical or emotional, or spiritual crises. In performing healing rites, the Jewish shaman will first chant various permutations of the Hebrew letters of the Infinity Name of the Creator.

The shaman then becomes an invited sojourner in the realms beyond the par'gawd, or Veil of Illusion, that separates -- in illusion only -- the realm of spirit from the realm of matter. Having transcended the illusory boundaries between the known and the unknown, the fruit and the seed, the shaman invokes the energies channeled by various spirit beings toward the needed healing. Sometimes the medium through which the cure is sought is a stone, sometimes an animal or plant, sometimes simply prayer chants and mystical incantations.

A stone of well-being hung from the neck of Abraham our father. Anyone who gazed upon it became healed instantly.

-- Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 16b

In creating the wild beasts and animals and creeping crawlies, the Holy Blessed One intended them [also] to be medicine for the human.

-- Midrash Tana D'bei Eliyahu Rabbah, Ch. 1

All medicines come from the earth. And therefore, during the time when the earth gives forth her bounty she empowers all trees and plants, especially during the time of her fullness which is in the moon of Iyyar (around May) during which there is potency in all the medicines, for then the earth empowers them.

-- Likutei HaMaHaRaN No. 277

At times, the horn of a ram, or shofar, is employed for the healing ceremony, sometimes as a conduit for directing herbal smoke as in smudging (Midrash Thilim 22:14), and sometimes as a way of shifting the breath, as with other shamanic traditions where the shaman blows healing breath into the patient. The shofar is believed to wield the power of shattering any factors of resistance to healing that might be present (Likutei HaMaHaRaN 22:5-7).

Illness is perceived primarily as a misalignment or imbalance of the soul's manifestation in the body. The rites are intended to stir the patient out of whatever stupor might be keeping them tangled in their crisis, and then to empower the patient with a fresh sense of life commitment. The less the life commitment, the less the soul becomes manifested in the body, and the more vulnerable the body then becomes to death, toward which illness is believed to be a momentum (Likutei HaMaHaRaN No. 268).

While there are auspicious times during the year when it is best to receive healing plants from the earth, such as in early Spring, the Jewish shaman will not take the plant unless the earth is at peace (Likutei HaMaHaRaN No. 277), and will first chant prayers of blessing for the earth and perform any number of rituals, from drawing magical circles with mystical symbols to soothing the earth spirits by simply dancing. Plants wield great wisdom and powers that are imbued with raw divine energies (Sefer HaZohar, Vol. 2, folio 80b).

All trees rejoice in God's Resonance. And all plants dance in God's Rejoicing.

-- Midrash Heichalot Rabatti 24:3

How good and how beautiful is it when one is able to hear the song of the grasses.

-- 18th-century Rabbi Nachmon of Breslav, in Likutei HaMaHaRan, p. 306

Shamans often journey to other realms through deep meditation induced through drumming and chanting (Exodus 15:20; 1 Samuel 10:5; Maimonides in Mishnah Torah, Hilchot Y'sodei HaTorah 7:4). In the course of these journeys they encounter various spirits at the doorway to each plane who demand of them a sort of password in the form of symbols that they would image, each symbol representing the name and attribute of the spirit guarding entry to that particular realm (Heichalot Zut'rati, MS Oxford 1531, folio 44a; Ma'aseh Mer'kavah 54b). Upon return from the journey, the shaman kisses the earth in gratitude for her revelatory experiences (Sefer Ha Zohar, Vol. 3, folio 168a). On rare occasions, the shaman may become "trapped" at the passageway to one of these mystical realms, in which instance a disciple or colleague must apply to the shaman's knee a twig from a myrtle plant that is wrapped in pure wool and dipped in balsam oils. If that fails, one more ingredient is added: the light touch by the finger of a woman who is in transition from her menstrual cycle (Midrash Heichalot Rabbati, Ch. 18).

The initiation of the shaman requires a meditative journey akin to a Native American "vision quest." The initiate sits for seven days in the wilderness dressed only in the m'il haTsedakah, or Garment of Balance.

This garment is a hooded, sleeveless deerskin decorated with various mystical symbols and God Names. At sundown on the seventh day, the initiate goes to a body of water and chants various prayers and incantations to call forth the spirits who channel the divine energies of creation. If the initiate then sees a reddish glow emerging from the water, the ceremony is successful and complete. If the emerging glow is green, however, the process is incomplete and must be repeated (Sefer HaMalbush vTikun Meel Ha Tsedakah, MS. British Museum, Margoliouth ed. 752, folio 92-93).

The recent re-introduction of Jewish shamanism represents a restoration of ancient and early medieval Jewish mystery wisdom harvested from Hebrew and Aramaic texts that reflect thousands of years of scriptural and oral teachings and ceremonies.

This vast body of esoteric knowledge and practice introduces us to myriad parallel as well as alternate realities where herbs wield magical powers over demonic energies (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 2, folio 80a-b); spirits guard the passageways to underground earth realms (Midrash Heichalot Rabati); spirit-doubles serve as vehicles for shamanic journeying (Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 3, folio 104b); canyon walls encrypt mystical resonances that are awakened through the echo of human and rhythmic sounds (Sefer HaZohar, Vol. 3, folio 168b); lovemaking is the act of unifying Creator with Creation (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 17a and Ketuvot 62a); and good and evil engage one another in a concerted dance of divine mystery (Sefer Yetzirah 6:4; Sefer Ha'Zohar, Vol. 2, folio 69a-b).

To this day, a major portion of Jewish shamanic and other mystery wisdom remains either in oral traditions relegated to a select few, printed Hebraic and Aramaic texts, or in microfilmed manuscripts recovered relatively recently from the archives of the Vatican and the libraries of Paris, Moscow, and Oxford (Kabbalah: New Perspectives, by Moshe Idel [Yale University Press] pp. 19-21) much of it the spoils of centuries of pogroms, witch hunts and Inquisitions aimed as much at the Jews as a group as at women as a group.

Women as a gender groups suffered a special liability in that they had become identified with Jews. Both groups suffered from being associated with magical practices: making potions and poisons, wearing amulets, possessing the evil eye, sticking pins in dolls, having abnormal knowledge about dreams, fortune-telling, or the magical properties of gems.

Rumors circulated about their bodies...that both could turn themselves into animals...

-- Witchcraze by Anne Lewellyn Barstow [HarperCollins: 1995] pages 63-64

Jewish shamanism is about a way of consciousness that perceives magic in the ordinary, miracle in the "natural course of events." Where most people will be awestruck at the sight of a passing comet, the Jewish shaman will be awestruck at the sight of a fallen leaf. It is about engaging the Creator Spirit in clear and open relationship in the course of which the veil between spirit and matter grows thinner and thinner and we no longer experience ourselves as observers of this wondrous planet, but as integral components of it.

Bottom-line, the Jewish tradition in its raw, un-modernized form, is blessed with a very ancient and rich shamanic tradition that is both paganistic and pantheistic, and proudly so.

[artanaro]

JUDAISM and SHAMANISM: THE MYSTERY OF ITS HISTORY

By Rabbi Gershon Winkler, Walking Stick Foundation, Cuba, New Mexico (Reprinted from PUMBEDISSA, Vol. 8; No #6, 2003-5763)

The notion of "Jewish shamanism" may seem like an oxymoron to a lot of people, but it happens to be an integral part of the Jewish tradition that has been suppressed for centuries. Driven from its ancient sojourns in the fresh air of earth and sky, it is now confined to crowded, inaccessible texts that are as unintelligible in English translations as they are in the Aramic and Hebraic original. As with any other aboriginal people, the shamanic elements of the Jewish people grew with them from their infancy some 4,000 years ago as a people of the land, whose very karma and spiritual practice was from the onset interconnected with the earth and the flora and fauna with whom they shared the earth.

Not unlike other aboriginal peoples, the Jews enjoyed their independent commonwealth for millennia before they were conquered, colonized, and whipped into conformity to the religious standartds and values of oppressive host cultures that considered themselves superior and sole heirs to absolute truth.

The American Indians have suffered this way for close to five hundred years, and the Jewish people have suffered this way for close to seventeen hundred years. Both have suffered their spiritual and physical oppression primarily under the influence of Christian doctrine and agenda that held both groups as sub-human species: the Jews as devils, and the aboriginal peoples as "savages" and in dire need of compulsive salvation from problems they did not have.

The disappearance of the aboriginal Jewish mindset and wisdom is easily traced to the deadly campaigns waged against sorcery and witchcraft that cost the lives of millions since the period of the Crusades. "In line with much popular Church teaching about the Jews through the centuries," writes Dr. David Cohn-Sherbok, "the Jewish population was perceived as possessing the attributes of both the Devil and witches... Dabbling in the occult, they were associated with devils and demons... Given such diabolical attributes, it is not surprising that the Jewish people were relegated to a sub-species of humanity, and as a result were butchered without remorse or guilt..." (The Crucified Jew, by Dr. David Cohn-Sherbok).

In order to survive, the Jewish people had to compromise much of their shamanic tradition and practice, and stow it either in the disguise of innocent hymns or in cryptic oral transmissions confined to a select few. According to Dr. Ann Llewellyn Barstow - Professor of History (emeritus) at State University of New York at Old Westbury - while women were especially singled out for persecution by the Church, Jews had long before set the tone, eliciting the wrath of the Church on account of their mystical dabbling, and their practices of sorcery, herbology, alchemy, and other downhome earthy preoccupations.

WOMEN AS A GENDER GROUP SUFFERED A SPECIAL LIABILITY IN THAT THEY HAD BEGUN TO BE IDENTIFIED WITH JEWS (capitals added by Rabbi Caudill for emphasis). Both groups suffered from being associated with magical practices: making potions and poisons, wearing amulets, possessing the evil eye, sticking pins in dolls, having abnormal knowledge about dreams, fortune-telling, or the magical properties of gems. Rumors circulated about their bodies... that both could turn themselves into animals... (Witchcraze, by Dr. Ann Llewellyn Barstow).

By the time the Church, under the guise of witch hunts, had declared its all-out war against women-of-power, they were seen as yet another sub-human species of the Antichrist along with the Jews. "For the most part," writes Dr. Barstow, "witches and Jews were persecuted interchangeably. Both witches and Jews were perceived as traitors to Christian society who must be eradicated" (Witchcraze, by Dr. Anne Llewellyn Barstow).

The fact is that acts of sorcery fill much of the narrative in the Hebrew Scriptures: "Jewish magic was rooted in Jewish tradition and Jewish sorcerers were humble, pious individuals, who were well versed in the tenets of the Jewish faith and their proper observance. Within the ranks of these wonderworkers were scholarly men and women who were thoroughly trained in Hebrew and Aramaic and an understanding of the oral and written traditions of the Kabbalah. Such knowledge enabled them to invoke the Sacred Names so as to effect metaphysical phenomena whether magically healing wounds or concocting love potions (The Crucified Jew, Dr. David Cohn-Sherbok).

So where in the Jewish tradition is this mystery wisdom? Unfortunately, very little of it got passed down through the ages from teacher to disciple for fear of repercussions from host cultures bent on eradicating this kind of wisdom and its practice from off the face of the earth. Even some of the rabbis themselves became unwilling parties to the burial of this raw, sensuous, pantheistic body of knowledge and practice, in their noble but futile attempt to placate Church monitors and inquisitors.

In 1233, Pope Gregory IX ordered the Dominican Order to fan out in the city streets of Provence and Languedoc to root out any remaining forms of heresy of any kind, whether Jewish, Christian, or otherwise. The Dominicans established an office of special investigations - an Inquisition - which brought in a significant number of suspects who were arbitrarily declared heretics, whether the facts justified the allegations or not. It was during this period that a number of Jewish leaders, hoping to spare their communities from persecution, put a grinding halt to the perpetuation of those forms of Jewish mystery wisdom they felt would attract adverse attention from the Church authorities. One of those leaders, Rabbi Me'ir Ben Shim'on of Narbonne, still traumatized from the recent terror of the Crusades, went a bit overboard in trying to convince the Church that Judaism was a respectable religion that posed no threat to Christian beliefs and consisted of nothing that would be deemed heretical in the eyes of the Holy See. Ironically, in his polimical tract, MILCHEMET MITZVAH, "War of the Commandments," written around 1235, he unwittingly offered ample evidence - to the contrary - of just how widespread Jewish shamanism and sorcery actually was (Heavenly Powers, by Neil Asher Silberman). His attempt, and those of other Jewish leaders, were well-meaning and noble but were to no avail. In the summer of 1239, the Pope ordered the confiscation and burning of all Jewish sacred texts, from the revered Talmud to the esoteric writ of the Kabbalah. A total of twenty-four wagonloads of HAND-WRITTEN books (no printing press, yet) perished in the fires of France alone, bringing to a tragic end millennia of treasured Talmudic and Kabbalistic scholarship.


Few fragments of Jewish magic and shamanistic traditions survived the taboo and book burnings in the middle-ages. In 1553, for example, Pope Julius the Third ordered the burning of the Talmud, the Jewish people's precious legacy of seven centuries of oral traditions covering the periods between 200 B.C.E. to 500 C.E., and the cessation of its printing. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Hebrew new year holy day, the Inquisition staged a massive burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books in Rome, and subsequently in other cities across Italy. Less than a month later, over a thousand copies of the Talmud and hundreds of other Jewish books were burned in Venice. In 1559, ten thousand Jewish books were burned in Cremona, Italy, by order of the Inquisition. The Jewish mystical classic, SEFER HAZOHAR (Book of Splendor), only escaped the burnings by being printed at a non-Jewish print shop. Certainly, the greater tragedy was the torching of thousands of Jewish people by the Church during this period as well as before and after, but the Jewish people lost as well an enormous chunk of not only their ancient wisdom texts but, along with those, their ancient shamanic mindset. "Pograms and expulsions," writes Professor Moshe Idel of Hebrew University, "are not conducive to the preservation of unique manuscripts" (Kabbalah: New Perspectives, by Professor Moshe Idel).

The Spiritual Connection Between Jewish and Aboriginal American Shamanic Traditions and Practices (this title not in original Pumbedissa article, added by Rabbi Caudill to create interest)

Other fragments of ancient Jewish mystery wisdom remain at this writing fossilized under glass throughout Europe, including in the archives of the Vatican and the libraries of Munich, Paris, Rome, Oxford, and Moscow. Some of these manuscripts have finally been photographed by Jewish scholars and restored secondhand to the Jewish peoplehood, albeit very little of it is accessible beyond the Jewish academic libraries in New York and Israel that now house them in the form of duplicated versions and microfilm. Such institutions include the Institute of Hebrew Microfilms at the National and University Library in Jerusalem, and the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in New York City.

What these texts most importantly demonstrate is that in its aboriginal form religious dogma and practice are given a back seat to the more immediate emphasis on divine experience through the magic of living, of breathing, and of conscious relating with all the elements of existence in both their spiritual and physical manifestations.

Religion as a focus is a whole new experience for Judaism whose primordal shapers would have found the concept totally alienating and antithetical to the very soul of their message.

"By the eighteenth century," writes Professor William Nicholls, "religion, in the new narrow sense borrowed from Christianity, became central to [the Jewish people's] understanding of what it meant to be Jewish, in ways in fact not traditional for them at all" (Christian Antisemitism, A History of Hate, by William Nicholls).


In fact, according to Professor Moshe Idel of Hebrew University, the TZADIK, or spiritual leader and teacher of the Jewish community - who was also a healer and magician - functioned "in a way that is reminiscent of the shaman" (Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, by Moshe Idel).

It is no surprise, then, that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, missionaries and explorers of the so-called New World wrote profically about the similarities between the Jews and the peoples indigenous to the Americas and other newly "discovered" regions like New Guinea. Report after report demonstrated common practices, socially, shamanically, ritually and otherwise between the "savages" and the Jews. These findings in turn led to the theory that the Native Americans were descendants of the "lost tribes of Israel," a notion that achieved wide polularity during this period, even amongst the Jews themselves, and continues to linger today as well in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles. In 1650, for example, Thomas Thorowgood argued that the Indians must be descendants of ancient Jews because "the rites, fashions, ceremonies, and opinions of the Americans [Indians] are in many ways agreeable to the custom of the Jews, not only profane and common usages, but such as be called solemn and sacred" (Jews in America, or Probabilities That the Americans Are of That Race, by Thomas Thorowgood). The seventeenth-century John Eliot shared similar sentiments in his "Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England in the Year 1670" (London), as did other chroniclers, many of whom are quoted in Maurice Wasserman's "The American Indian As Seen by the Seventeenth Century Chroniclers" (Ph.D diss., University of PA, 1954) and in Lee Eldridge Huddleston's "Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts 1492-1729" (University of Texas Press, 1967).

As helpful as these discoveries were to the age-old tirades against Judaism by the Church, that Judaism was indeed a pagan religion in need of salvation just like the other aboriginal religions, nonetheless the theory soon backfired because the comparison of Judaism to the savage religions inevitably involved Christianity itself since the latter based the validity of its own scriptures on those of the Jews. "The impulse to radically differentiate Judaism and savage religions was part of an ongoing attempt to protect the privilaged status of Judaism, and by extention, Christianity" (Howard Eilberg-Schwartz: The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism, 1990).

As quickly as the theory of comparison had sprung up, it died, and was replaced by a theory of "evolution," whereby Judaism's similarities to the savage religions was by virtue of its EVOLUTION from those ways, an evolutionary process that had ultimately climaxed with the "superior" ways of Christianity. And with that pronouncement in the eighteenth century, what had almost been the beginnings of an anthropological study of Judaism as an aboriginal and shamanic tradition was quickly silenced and sent underground. "The lack of interest among twentieth-century anthropologists in Judaism is itself a 'survival' of an older attitute of the nineteenth-century which viewed [Judaism] as fundamentally different from those of savages" (The Savage in Judaism, p. 20).

At present, in the year 2003, no one is being persecuted for the practice or restoration of shamanism or other aboriginal wisdom, paganism or witchcraft, all of which are therefore now re-emerging from their centuries-old forced exile. Native Americans are slowly restoring sacred dances and ceremonies that once cost them their lives at the hands of a predominantly European Christian culture that had invaded their lands and forbidden their ways. Wiccans, too, are coming out of the closet, free at last to convene covens and perform their rites without fear of being burnt at the stake. Likewise, Jews are gradually recovering their ancient and early medieval treasures of text and tradition replete with elements of shamanism they share with other ancient earth-based religions. Practitioners of this path in Judaism are at present few in number but are slowly growing as its rituals and wisdom re-emerge in reprintings of archived manuscripts and the promulgation of long-silenced oral traditions, both in Israel and in the United States. The term "shamanism" may not be well popularized as of yet in reference to Jewish traditions, but is slowly being applied as the distinctions between aboriginal mysticism and Jewish mysticism become increasingly transparent. As Professor Howard Eilberg-Schwartz of Stanford University writes: "As the opposition between Judaism and savage religions is obliterated, one can expect to find the savage reinscribed within Judaism. By this I mean that some traits originally assumed to be characteristic of primitive peoples alone will turn out on reflection to be characteristics of Judaism itself."

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Bibliography:
*Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism, by Gershon Winkler (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA: 2002)

*Meditation and Kabbalah by Aryeh Kaplan (Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, ME:1988)

*Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, translation and commentary by Aryeh Kaplan (Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, ME:1997)

*The Hebrew Goddess, by Raphael Patai (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI:1990)

*Kabbalah: New Perspectives, by Moshe Idel (Yale University Press:1988)

*Hasidim: Between Ecstasy and Magic, by Moshe Idel (State University of NY Press: 1995)

*The Crucified Jew, by Dr. David Cohn-Sherbock (William B. Eardmans Publishing Co. in association with American Interfaith Inst. and the World
Alliance of Interfaith Organizations: 1997)

*Witchcraze by Anne Lewellyn Barstow (HarperCollins: 1995)


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