Shamanism

 Shamanism is the oldest religion in the world. Ancestors worship is likely the first religious expression. But shamanism has three worlds and a priest and beliefs that are found in the hunting society of Asia, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.  The name comes from Tonga, the people of the northern region above Mongolia.  Shamanism is still practiced there and anthropologists have recorded the translations of ibnterviews of shamanan.  

I studied it first in my 20;s when I was interested in anthropology and studied Franz Boaz’s works on the Haida and Kwakiutl.  I have always been interested in religion since my mother kneeling beside my bed taught me to pray and told me Jesus love me.  Recently i took the Oxford University Anthropology Continuing Ed course Ritual and Religion of Prehistory. It was an incredible course as exciting for me as my first archeology course with Dr. Gold at University of Winnipeg.  There I also studied Literature of the Bible with Dr. Carl Ridd a course that encouraged the historical exploration of religion and religion texts rather than the rote memorization promoted in Sunday school.  

When I was working in the Mariana Island I stuidied Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and later the World until Yesterday.

In the brilliantly crafted and taught Oxford course we studied the Paleolithic cave paintings of Europe.  In the  Cave of Les Trios Freres is the ‘sorcerer’ who to most today would be considered the earliest depiction of the Shaman.

This book,”The Soul Retrieval Journey” Sandra Ingerman , a family therapist,  who describes herself as a Brooklyn girl who moved to Haight Ashbury to find herself is entertaining and informative.  She was mentored by greats of anthropology but ie more easily accessible than Mircea Eliade who I’d previously studied and whose book ‘A History of Religious Ideas’.  

Of course Freud and Jung were great students of anthropology.  I enjoyed Freud’s treatises early but now am more fascinated by Carl Jung’s insights into the mind and soul as fit better well with modern anthropological works .  

In the worlds of the shaman there are three, upper middle and lower.  The middle world is somewhat everyday reality whereas the upper and lower are different and more represented in myth and religion. Joseph Campbell the great study of myth taught about shamanism as well and I’ve just again read his book edited and update book Primitive Mythology.  One really needs to understand Evelyn Underwood’s Mysticism, what today would be called Spiritual Christianity to gain insight into the original religious experiences.  

There is the ‘ordinary’ world and the altered consciousness of the spiritual world which Dr. Mario de Beauregard who studied Scans of Carmelite Nuns has depicted as distinct as the various zones of sleep as recorded in EEG.  This altered consciousness which Brother Lawrences described ad ‘Practicing the Presecne of God” is now taught in workshops by Elkhart Tolle the teacher who wrote the Power of Now.

There’s an association with ‘lucid’ dreaming, the dream therapy where one is taught to alter the nature of the cream consciously.  The experience of the ‘state of heightened consciousness’ is described by C. S. Lewis in his seminal book, “Surprised by Joy’.

The Shaman and Priests and Yogis and Monks today apply volitional control to this ‘surprise’ and move through the unconscious state as if they are on a journey.  Again it is much like the world with Lucid Dreaming and indeed therapeutic hypnosis.  

Today the therapist and teacher and priest all touch on the ground that first moved the early man to experience the ‘sacred’ and feel ‘reverence ‘ or ‘awe’.  

Given that the shaman;s origin was in hunting tribes animals are a central friend with spiritual guides and protectors from upper and lower world’s .  Today the remnants of this phenomena might well be consider in John the Baptist’s  seeing the Dove descend on Jesus.  The Dove was also the bird Noah sent to find dry land. The dove returned with an olive leaf.  

I personally have always had dogs and feel my dog is my guide and protector and companion. My friend Vivian Seegers , medicine woman and Anglican priest was of the bear clan and taught native shamanism. The sweat lodge was part of the process as much of native early shamanism is being brought recovered and considered without the fear and judgement that is associated with the encournters of strangers. 

I’m enjoying the learning and imagine the Old Testament Biblical stories that came later with agriculture, settled life, towns and empires.  It all began one day long ago.