PART VI: ANCIENT SECRETS
by Anthony Forwood (2011)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/anthony-k-forwood/they-would-be-gods/paperback/product-15534669.html
42: Dawn of the Shaman
The earliest indication that
members of the human species held any sort of spiritual belief came with the discovery of a small clay
figure of a bear with pronounced female
characteristics, looking more human than animal, found among the remains of a
Neanderthal man who had lived as long ago as 50,000 BC.
Thus the beginning of man’s belief in any sort of supernatural forces was
apparently developing long before we had evolved into the fully developed and supposedly
civilized and rational creatures that we are today.
Cro-Magnon man used caves for tribal ceremonies, and his cave paintings were often created as a means to focus the
tribe’s spiritual energies during their rituals, such as before a hunt.
Depictions of bison, antelope, and other wild game may have been used to make a
psychic connection with the spirits of the animals they were hunting, to draw
these animals forth and offer themselves as sacrifices to the tribe.
In a sense, it seems natural for
early humans to have believed in a greater power governing
their environment. Fifty thousand years ago, we were quite incapable of so much
compared to today, and, like a young child who is only just beginning to learn
about the greater world around him, Neanderthal man or Cro-Magnon man would have been bound to wonder, in his
primitive way, about that world and his place within it. It’s not all that hard
to imagine how mystified he would have been at this early stage of his
developing intelligence, realizing his separateness from the external world and
yet knowing all too well that he depended completely on that world for his
survival. This would surely have led to the first concretized ideas in his
newly forming rational mind that something greater than himself was
affecting whether his fortune was to be good or bad, controlling events from
some mysterious place and in some incomprehensible way.
As the human brain developed over the last two million years
or so, so did the human mind. Over this time, man
began to develop his intellectual abilities as he learned to recognize the
regular patterns in nature, and began to wonder, and began to form conclusions.
Over a great deal of time spent musing, certain insights began to form in his
developing mind as concepts that reflected to him a rational
meaning to the cause and effect situations that he regularly saw unfold in the
world around him. These concepts were at first without a language to express them, and so a language of symbols and vocal sounds slowly developed, and through
them these early mental concepts were able to be expressed and shared between
an entire community or population.
Because existence was invariably
harsh, much of early man’s primitive thinking abilities would out of
necessity have been put towards his daily survival, and certain ideas would
have formed surrounding the seemingly random nature of fate and circumstance,
in an attempt to make sense of certain events and situations that seemed to
occur with no perceptible pattern. Man strived to understand and take control
of his world, and so explanations were sought, and conceptual understandings
and rationalizations began to form into a logical cohesion that he could
understand and work with. The concept of gods or spirits who controlled the elements and who could be
appeased was thus perhaps only natural to develop, given early man’s strong
feelings of dependency on some mysterious external force or forces
that caused events to happen as they did.
Or perhaps, in the not too
distant past of these early humans, there really were gods that could control, at least to some extent,
the natural forces of nature. These may have been the living gods of later
myths and legends, remembered from a long
tradition of passing down oral histories from one descendent to the next over many
generations. They may have even become imprinted on early man’s subconscious,
the memory of their physical reality slowly transformed into conceptual
archetypes that seemed to still be close at hand but otherwise invisible.
Whatever the case may have been,
with the concept of gods or spirits that controlled the forces of nature followed
the possibility of gaining their favor or of appeasing them, and the idea of
offering gifts or sacrifices took root. Many different sorts of offering
may have been tried, and over time certain ones seemed to work better than
others, but at other times even these didn’t seem to work at all. This
developed into the perception of the various personalities and powers of these
invisible gods, who were at times seen as capricious and requiring individual
and separate attention to their perceived needs and desires. There developed
from this such conceptual entities as the hunter-god, the weather-god, the fertility-god,
the healing-god, etc. Whole pantheons
of gods were imagined, and each god had a certain place in the life of early
man, with certain
requirements for receiving that god’s favor.
The types of offerings that might be made to a god depended on that particular god, and man saw
or imagined certain associations between a god and its area of influence, so that the hunter-god
was seen to expect certain offerings that were far different than what the
weather-god might be seen to
expect. For instance, man may have recognized that an offering of a freshly
killed rabbit laid out in an open clearing would bring about much bigger game
that would feed a whole community where the small rabbit wouldn’t, and such an
act may have become commonplace as a ritualistic appeasement to a hunter-god. On the other
hand, the weather-god may have been seen to require something much different,
and perhaps it came to man’s attention that such a god only responded after
long hours of drumming, chanting, or other sounds that
reflected the sounds that the weather-god made, such as thunder or rainfall.
These sounds, if they were loud enough and of the right timbre, could actually
induce rain to fall and thunder to roll through the skies when the clouds were
thick overhead.
Certain types of artifacts came to be employed in calling on the favor of
the gods and spirits as well, things that were meant to reflect
man’s honor and respect to that god, or which reflected the desired outcome.
These objects were composed of materials found in the environment, such as
feathers, shells, stones, bones, locks of hair, certain plants and flowers,
animal horns, etc. Each was seen to have a certain influence in attracting a specific god’s attention, and
the combinations between them that seemed to work best were often formed into
amulets and talismans. The knowledge about the
power of these things developed into a sort of science, and as man’s developing
mind began to discern greater complexity around
him, so too did this ritual-based science of magic.
It came to be that certain people
were found to be particularly gifted in this science, and in communicating
favorably with the gods and spirits, and were able to achieve
much better results than others. These individuals were seen as having a
special relationship with the gods, or at least knew how to communicate with
them, and came to be necessary figures in the community. Because of their
greater abilities, they came to be sought out more and more often by members of
the tribe or community for assistance in finding favor with the gods or seeking
the help of certain spirits when they sought a particular outcome in matters
affecting their personal lives. These people who came to be seen as having
close communication with the gods became the first great shamen and witch-doctors, and because their craft
became a specialized function that was highly valued and respected within the
community, these people became powerful figures whose knowledge and skills were
greatly trusted and depended on.
The fact that certain offerings of appeasement often went unanswered or with
unfavorable results brought about the idea that the person who sought
appeasement were themselves somehow at fault, and were being punished for some
transgression that had caused them disfavor with the god they were trying to appease. The shaman might instruct the person to make an offering
or carry out certain ritualistic acts, or he would perform certain acts
himself, through which appeasement might be gained. Often, in due course, these
acts would appear to result in a favorable outcome, but at other times not, and
greater effort was called for. This may have perhaps been seen to be due to
some grievous action or event in the person’s life that had greatly angered one
or more of the gods, and so the person might be required to make a larger
sacrifice or perform further ritualistic acts. Sometimes, a whole community may have
been seen to have angered the gods, and in this situation even greater
sacrifices were required. The forces of nature had to be kept in balance, and
so if a man had caused the loss of another man’s property, then he was often
required to sacrifice something of his own of equal or greater value. If a man
killed another wrongly, that man might have been required to sacrifice a life
in return for the one taken, perhaps in the form of fresh game or livestock, or
perhaps even the life of one of his own offspring. When a whole community was
seen to have angered the gods, even greater sacrifices had to be made. In some
tribes or communities this may have sometimes resulted in such extremes as the
sacrifice of humans. Certain shamen who had
become infected by their power in the community even began to use human
sacrifice as a psychological tool to manipulate the entire tribe or community
through fear and terror. To whatever extent this
may have gone on, we know that in at least some early cultures humans began to be offered as sacrifices to their
gods, sometimes being those who were captured from other tribes, but in some
cases being their own people. Such acts reveal the level of influence that shamen and shaman-priests came to hold over a tribe or community.
At some point, when and where the
gods seemed to be of a more temperate mood, it
occurred to man that they might be sought out for answers to things that were
wished to be known, such as the best time to undertake a journey, or what the
outcome of some future action or event might be. This led to the art of
divination and prophecy, and many forms of these
came to be devised and used. Many times they included the use of psychotropic
substances, which the shaman had learned early on had great power and
usefulness.
Part of the shaman’s or witch-doctor’s repertoire of skills was in determining the
cures for injuries and ailments, and this involved the use of plants and other
substances and a knowledge of their medicinal properties. The use of these and the
concoctions that were made from them was initially discovered through the slow
process of trial and error, which would have started very early in man’s
evolution when he was still quite primitive, at those
times when hunger and starvation often forced him to try adding new substances
to his diet. Over time, it would be noticed that certain substances had certain
effects with certain advantages in specific situations. Over a great deal of
time this developed into a pharmacopoeia of medicinal remedies, cures, and applications.
Certain substances that happened
to be available in abundance, such as cannabis or peyote, were discovered to
induce various types of altered states of consciousness, and early man perceived
these experiences as a sort of entrance into a supernatural world where he was
able to commune directly with the gods and spirits. The shamen and witch-doctors became very familiar with using these and
other psychotropic substances, and incorporated them
regularly in their practices. The journeys they took into this spiritual realm opened up their natural psychic senses and allowed them to perceive and explore
reality in a totally different manner that ordinary experience didn’t permit.
On these journeys, the shamen were imparted knowledge of things that weren’t easily revealed in an
ordinary conscious state. They brought this knowledge back from their spiritual journeys and were able to apply it in the
ordinary world for whatever purpose they had sought it.
These journeys were no less real
than if they were to have traveled to a distant land and encountered real
beings, with the only difference being that it occurred on the mental or astral
plane. This realm that they
journeyed to was also known to be where deceased ancestors resided, and they
could be communicated with as well. The ability to access the
psychic senses was also real, allowing the shaman to perform amazing paranormal feats such as we hear of the ancient fakirs of India or the lamas of Tibet being able to do. Often, the entire tribe or
community would take part in such a spiritual journey, and they would share the
same collective visions and experiences that took place, testifying to
them that these journeys were real. These journeys were not just hallucinations. They were a form of
entry to a higher level of awareness, a more fundamental state
of reality that today we might more commonly understand as the astral or
psychic plane.
Through their strange occult
practices, the shamen were able to awaken their natural psychic
energies and control them in various ways. They knew
the real power of the mind and how to use it to its greater potential. By
including the entire community in their rituals, a shaman could multiply
this psychic force. The hypnotic trance state that was induced during these shamanic
rituals and ceremonies increased the power of suggestibility, and as modern hypnotists
know quite well, this allows a person to do things they normally couldn’t
possibly do, even breaking the laws of nature. The shamen understood that
altered states of mind induced these super-human capabilities, and
that the mind could control matter.
Early on, when the shaman had become established as a central component
in the normal functioning of the community, man was still at a stage where he
saw himself, and by extension his community, as a component of the larger
environment around him, directly connected to it and affecting it as much as it
affected him. He hadn’t yet developed the overwhelming sense of selfness and
separateness from the environment that we experience today, and so he naturally
considered his experiences in relation to this perception of a single connected
whole. Whether there was discord in the community, or a hunting season had gone
unfavorably, or a person had become sick or injured, the problem was often seen
as one that involved the entire community, and so did the solution. This
developed into ritualistic ceremonies that involved the participation of the entire
community, and sometimes even multiple communities, incorporating all the
tricks of the shaman’s trade: drumming, chanting, dancing, ritual objects, and mind altering substances.
The dance of the shaman was important because it had real power. Under
the influence of a very strong intoxicant, the shaman would allow a
particular god, usually associated with
that substance, to enter into his body and take it over. In essence he became
that god, and as the drumming and chanting of the ceremony filled the air, his body movements soon fell
into rhythm with it with impulsive and highly energetic thrusts and jerks,
dancing more and more wildly as he was overtaken completely by the power of the
gods and quickly fell into a trance state. Many or all of the other participants,
also affected by the drumming and chanting, and in some cases having also taken
a milder dose of the intoxicant, would easily fall into a mild hypnotic state. The dancing gyrations of the shaman had a further deepening hypnotic effect that
drew them into it, and they would begin to involuntarily and impulsively follow
the lead of the shaman, dancing along with him in a slowly rising state of
intoxicating energy that would overtake the entire group. The
shaman’s dance often had a very powerful effect on the other participants even
without them taking any of the mind-altering substance. This
has been attested to by many people today who have been present at similar
ceremonies that still take place in Haiti, Peru, and elsewhere. In this
ceremonial manner, whole communities become involved in the purpose and effect
of the ritual. In the process the
community undergoes a group experience where they are all affected in a manner
that brings about the desired effect.
Through the use of powerful mind-altering substances, the shaman was able to gain a much greater perception of
reality than in ordinary conscious states, and was able to literally transcend
time and space, through the window of
his inner eye. Seeing the world through this psychic channel took practice, however, and only through long
experience was the shaman able to learn how to seek and receive
knowledge and to perform phenomenal feats in this
manner.
Because the shaman was so crucial to the functioning of the
community, his skills and knowledge had to be passed on to new generations, and so
it was normal for a student to be chosen at a certain point in the shaman’s
life, who he would take in and begin to initiate into the deeper knowledge of
the shaman’s craft and teach him how to walk in the spirit world. Shamanic knowledge was never written down because it could only
be understood through direct experience. Therefore there is no language or symbolism that has developed around shamanism as we see with the perverted spiritualism of witchcraft, sorcery, and the later religions.
It is said that the earliest
shamen were able to converse with animals, and with
the dead, and even to shape-shift, become invisible, and fly through the air.
Some of the more powerful of the earliest shamen were considered to be gods themselves. It’s even believed by some of our
current cultures that still have strong connections to their ancient roots that
the first humans were all shaman-gods, and had descended to
Earth from another realm. For instance, the legends of the Cuna, who live on islands off
Panama, say that human-like
beings flew down from heaven on a golden disk, and imparted heavenly
knowledge to the human race. These shaman-gods are
sometimes said to have created the human race, such as within the legends of
a people in Siberia called the Buryats, which also tell us that
these gods held their conferences on the moon and in the Pleiades, and left us with our
first shamanic leader. The Yamana tribe of Tierra del Fuego believe that the early shamen were almost
completely wiped out in a great flood, and only a few survived
to teach the later generations of humanity. This connects with the continent of
Atlantis, as well as the biblical
legend of the Flood.
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