In this excerpt from βShamanism and the techniques of ecstasyβ (1953), Mircea Eliade compares the ecstatic techniques of the various shamanic traditions, from Siberia to Australia passing through the Americas, trying to identify their common traits.
di Mircea eliade
taken fromΒ Shamanism and the techniques of ecstasy
cover: Mongolian shaman
Shamanism stricto sensu it is, par excellence, a Siberian and Central Asian religious phenomenon. Through Russian, the term comes from the Tungus word Shaman. In other languages ββof central and northern Asia the corresponding terms are: yakuta ojun, the Mongolian buga, vogue e udagan, the Turkic Tartar kam. [β¦] Similar magical-religious phenomena have been observed in North America, Indonesia, Oceania and elsewhere. [β¦.] These phenomena are truly shamanic and it is worth studying them together with Siberian shamanism. However, first of all, a relief is imposed on us: the presence of a shamanic complex in any area does not necessarily imply that the magical-religious life of one people or the other has crystallized around shamanism. In general, shamanism coexists with other forms of magic and religion.
We meet magic and magicians all over the world, while shamanism corresponds to a particular magical βspecialtyβ: it implies the βdomination of fireβ, magical flight and so on. Thus, although the shaman is, among other things, a magician, not every magician can be qualified as a shaman. The same clarification is required with regard to the shamanic healings: every medicine-man he is a healer, but the shaman uses a technique unique to him alone. As for the shamanic techniques of ecstasy, they do not exhaust all the varieties of ecstatic experience attested by the history of religions and religious ethnology: one cannot therefore consider any ecstatic as a shaman; he is the specialist of a trance during which it is believed that his soul can leave the body to undertake celestial ascensions or descent from hell.
These preliminary clarifications, however succinct they may be, already indicate the path we intend to follow in order to arrive at the correct understanding of shamanism. Since this magical-religious phenomenon has manifested itself in its most complete form in Central and Northern Asia, the shaman of these religions will be taken as a typical example. We do not ignore, and indeed we will try to show that, at least in its current state, Central Asian and North Asian shamanism is not an original phenomenon, free from any external influence: on the contrary, it is a phenomenon that has a long "history" . But this Central Asian and Siberian shamanism has the merit of presenting itself as a structure in which various elements that exist widespread in the rest of the world - namely: special relationships with the "spirits", ecstatic abilities allowing magical flight, ascension to Heaven, descent to the Underworld, dominion over fire and so on - they already reveal themselves, in the area in question, to be integrated into a particular ideology and validated by specific techniques.
[β¦] The peoples who claim to be "shamanic" give considerable importance to the ecstatic experiences of their shamans; these experiences concern them personally and directly, because it is the shamans who, by means of their trance, heal them, accompany their dead in the "kingdom of shadows" and mediate between them and their gods, celestial or infernal, large or small. This small mystical elite not only directs the religious life of the community, but in a certain way watches over its "soul". The shaman is the great specialist of the human soul: he alone "sees" it, because he knows its "form" and destiny.
Where it is not the immediate fate of the soul, where it is not dealing with the disease (=loss of soul) or with death, or with a misfortune, or with an important sacrifice that implies a certain ecstatic experience (mystical journey into heaven or hell), the shaman is not indispensable. A large part of religious life takes place without him.
As is well known, the Arctic, Siberian and Central Asian peoples are largely made up of hunter-fishermen and shepherd-breeders. A certain nomadism characterizes them all. And, broadly speaking, their religions coincide, despite ethnic and linguistic differences. [β¦] They venerate a great celestial god, already creator and omnipotent, but in the process of becoming a deus otiosus. Sometimes the very name of the great god means "Heaven"; such is, for example, the Num of the Samoyeds, the Buga of the Tungusians or the Tengri of the Mongols. Even when the concrete name of "sky" is missing, one of its more specific attributes is found, such as "high", "elevated", "bright" etc.
THE PURCHASE OF SHAMANIC POWERS
In Siberia and north-east Asia the main ways of recruiting shamans are:
1) the hereditary transmission of the shamanic profession;
2) the spontaneous vocation, the "call" or "election". There is also the case of individuals who have become shamans by their own will or by the will of the clan, but these are considered less powerful than those who have inherited the profession or who have followed the "calling" of the gods and spirits.
Whatever the selection method, a shaman is recognized as such only after having received a double instruction:
1) education of an ecstatic order (dreams, trance, etc.);
2) traditional education (shamanic techniques, names and functions of spirits, mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.).
This double instruction, given by the spirits or the old shaman masters, is equivalent to an initiation. Sometimes initiation is public and forms, in itself, an autonomous ritual. But the absence of such a ritual does not at all imply the absence of initiation: this can very well be carried out in a dream or in the ecstatic experience of the neophyte.
Among the Voguli, shamanism is hereditary and is also transmitted through the female line. But the future shaman can already be distinguished from adolescence: he soon becomes nervous and is sometimes even subject to epileptic fits, attacks which are interpreted as an encounter with the gods. Already from this quick examination [...] two conclusions emerge:
1) the coexistence of hereditary shamanism with a shamanism determined directly by the gods and spirits;
2) the frequency of pathological phenomena that accompany the spontaneous manifestation or hereditary transmission of the shamanic vocation.
SHAMANISM AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Let us now examine the relationships that some believed they could establish between Arctic and Siberian shamanism and nervous diseases, primarily the various forms of arctic hysteria. [β¦] The psychopathological phenomenology of Siberian shamanism has always been emphasized. The latest proponent of explaining shamanism by means of Arctic hysteria, A Ohlmarks, has even been led to distinguish arctic from sub-arctic shamanism on the basis of the degree of nervous pathology of those who exercise it. According to this author, shamanism was originally an exclusively Arctic phenomenon, essentially due to the influence of the cosmic environment on the nervous lability of the inhabitants of the polar regions. The excessive cold, the long nights, the desert solitude, the lack of vitamins, etc., would have acted on the nervous constitution of the Arctic populations, causing both mental illnesses (arctic hysteria, meryak, menerik, etc.) and the shamanic trance. The only difference between a shaman and an epileptic would be that the latter cannot perform the trance at will. In the Arctic area, shamanic ecstasy is a spontaneous and organic phenomenon: only in this area can we speak of "great shamanism", that is, of a ceremony that ends with a royal cataleptic trance during which the soul is supposed to leave the body and travel to the heavens or to the underground hells.
But the primitive magician, the medicine-man or the shaman are not simply sick people: they are, first of all, sick people who have been healed, sick people who have managed to heal themselves. When the vocation of the shaman or the medicine-man it is revealed through a disease or a seizure (epileptic seizure or with the same manifestations), the initiation of the candidate is often equivalent to healing.
We will immediately see how all the ecstatic experiences that decide the vocation of the future shaman involve the traditional scheme of an initiatory ceremony: passion, death and resurrection. Considered from this point of view, any "illness-vocation" has the value of an initiation. In fact, the sufferings it causes correspond to initiatory tortures, the psychic isolation of a "chosen patient" is the equivalent of the isolation and ritual solitude of initiation ceremonies, the imminence of death felt by the patient (agony, unconsciousness, etc. .) recalls the symbolic death that appears in most initiation ceremonies.
As for the content of these initial ecstatic experiences, although it is quite rich, it almost always repeats one or more of one of the following themes: dismemberment of the body followed by a renewal of internal organs and bowels; ascension to heaven and dialogue with gods or spirits; descent into hell and talks with the spirits and souls of dead shamans; various revelations of religious and shamanic order (secrets of the art).
ECSTASY AND INITIATIVE VISIONS OF YAKUTI SHAMANS
The candidate becomes meditative, seeks solitude, sleeps a lot, seems absent, has prophetic dreams, sometimes attacks. All these symptoms are but the prelude to the new life that awaits the candidate, without his knowing it. His behavior remembers, moreover, the first signs of mystical vocation, which appear the same in all religions [...]
The yakuta Gavriil Alekseiev states that every shaman has a Bird of Prey-Mother resembling a large bird, with an iron beak, hooked claws and a long tail. This mythical bird appears only twice: at the spiritual birth of the shaman and at his death. He takes his soul, takes it to the underworld and ripens it on the branch of a fir tree. When the soul has reached maturity, the bird returns to earth, cuts the candidate's body into pieces, which he distributes among the evil spirits of disease and death. Each of these spirits devours the piece of the body that belongs to him, which results in the acquisition, by the future shaman, of the ability to heal the corresponding diseases.. After devouring the whole body, the evil spirits depart. Then the Mother-Bird puts the bones back in place and the candidate wakes up, as if from a deep sleep.
According to another Yakuta teaching, the evil spirits carry the soul of the future shaman to the underworld where they lock it in a house for three years (for one year only, if it is a question of those who will become shamans of a lower order). It is there that the shaman receives his initiation: the spirits cut off his head and put it next to him (because the candidate has to watch his dismemberment with his own eyes), then they reduce it into minute pieces which are distributed to the spirits of the various diseases. It is only for this condition that the future shaman will acquire the power to perform healings. Subsequently, the bones are covered with fresh flesh and in some cases a new blood is also introduced into him.
THE INITIATION OF AUSTRALIAN MAGICIANS
For some time the first observers have attested that certain initiations of the medicine-men Australians imply the ritual death and the renewal of the candidate's organs, an operation performed by both the spirits and the souls of the dead. The most recent studies have fully confirmed and supplemented this information. [...] the Wotjoballuk believe that it is a supernatural being, Ngatya, who consecrates the medicine-men: he opens the belly by inserting the rock crystals that give the magical power. To create a medicine-man the Euahlayi proceed as follows: they take the chosen young man to a cemetery and leave him tied up there for several nights. After he is alone, numerous animals appear, which touch and lick the neophyte. Later a man appears with a stick; he puts the stick in his head and puts a magic stone the size of a lemon into the wound. Then other spirits come along and chant gods magical and initiatory songs to instruct him in the art of healing.
COMPARISONS BETWEEN AUSTRALIA, SIBERIA, SOUTH AMERICA ETC ...
As we can see, the analogy between the initiations of the Siberian shamans and those of the gods medicine-men Australians is very close. In both cases the candidate undergoes, by semi-divine beings or ancestors, an operation that includes the breaking up of the body and the renewal of internal organs and bones. In both cases this operation takes place in an "inferior", or implies the descent into hell. As for the pieces of quartz or other magical objects that the spirits would introduce into the body of the Australian candidate, they are part of a practice that is of little importance among Siberians. In fact, as we have seen, only rarely is there an allusion to pieces of iron or other objects put to melt in the same cauldron where the bones and flesh of the future shaman were thrown. Another difference opposes Siberia and Australia: in Siberia most of the shamans are "chosen" by the spirits and gods, while in Australia the career of the medicine-man it seems to be as much the result of a voluntary search of the candidate as that of a spontaneous "election" by spirits and divine beings.
In any case, these analogies between Australia and Siberia visibly confirm the authenticity and antiquity of the shamanic initiation rites. The importance of the cave in the initiation of the medicine-men it is a further validation of this character of antiquity, given the important part that the cave seems to have had in the Paleolithic religions. On the other hand, cave and labyrinth they continued to have a first-rate function in the initiation rites of other archaic cultures, both being, in fact, concrete symbols of the paths that lead to the other world, which allow a descent into hell. According to the first information that we had about the Araucan shamans of Chile, they carried out their initiation in caves often adorned with animal heads.
On the other hand, it is important to point out right now the correspondences that can be found elsewhere for the belief ofintroduction of rock crystals into the candidate's body by the spirits and initiators. This motif is also found among the Semang of Malacca, while it constitutes a precise characteristic of South American shamanism. βThe shaman Cobeno introduced rock crystals into the novice's head which rose his brain and eyes in order to replace these organs and become his 'strength'β. In other places rock crystals symbolize the shaman's assistant spirits. Typically, for the shamans of tropical South America, the magical force takes the form of an invisible substance that the masters sometimes transmit to novices from mouth to mouth.
βThere is no difference in nature between the magical substance, an invisible but tangible mass, and the arrows, thorns, rock crystals with which the shaman is stuffed. These objects materialize the strength of the shaman who, in many tribes, is conceived in the most vague, albeit not very abstract, form of magical substance ".
THE INITIATIVE DISMISSAL
In fact, both the spontaneous vocation and the initiatory research imply, both in South America, both in Australia and in Siberia, a mysterious disease or a more or less symbolic ritual of mystical death, sometimes given in terms of a fragmentation of the body and a renewal of the organs. Among the Araucanians the choice generally manifests itself with a sudden illness: the young man falls "as if dead" and when he regains his strength, he declares that he will become machi.
Similar motives appear in North American shamanism. Maidu initiators put candidates in a pit full of "medicine" and kill them with a "Poison-medicine"; thanks to this initiation, neophytes acquire the faculty of holding red-hot stones in their hands without hurting themselves. In shamanic society "Ghost CeremonyOf the Pomo, initiation involves the torture, death and resurrection of neophytes; these lie on the ground like corpses and are covered with straw.
The same symbolism of death and mystical resurrection in the form of both mysterious diseases and shamanic initiation ceremonies is also found elsewhere. Among the Sudanese of the Nuba Mountains the first initiatory consecration is called "head" and it is reported that it is a rite in which "The novice's head is opened so that the spirit can enter".
Among the Daiacs of Borneo the initiation of the manang (shaman) includes three different ceremonies, corresponding to the three degrees of daiac shamanism. The first degree, besudi ("Touch, touch") is also the most basic and can be obtained with very little money. The candidate lies down on the porch as if he were sick and the others manang they take him steps all night. It is supposed that in this way he is taught how the future shaman can discover diseases and remedies: precisely by touching the patient [...] The second ceremony, called beklites ("Opening"), is more complex and has a distinctly shamanic character. After a night of spells, the old folks mama they lead the neophyte into an isolated room by means of curtains.
βThey claim that there they cut off his head and take out his brain; after having washed it, they put it back in place in order to infuse the candidate with a clear intelligence capable of penetrating the mysteries of evil spirits and diseases; then they introduce gold into his eyes in order to give him such a penetrating sight that he can see the soul, wherever it is, lost or wandering; then they plant toothed hooks at the ends of his fingers to make him capable of capturing the soul and holding it tightly; finally they pierce his heart with an arrow to make him compassionate and full of sympathy for those who are sick and suffering β.
Of course, it is a symbolic ceremony [...] There is a third ceremony that perfectly integrates the shamanic initiation, which includes an ecstatic journey to heaven on a ritual ladder.
TRIBAL INITIATIVES AND SECRET SOCIETIES
We have repeatedly emphasized the initiatory essence of the candidate's "death", followed by his "resurrection" [...] In fact, the ceremonies that mark the passage of the individual from one period of life to another or his admission to any "secret society" always includes a series of rites that can be summarized in the convenient formula: death and resurrection of the candidate. We recall the most common of them:
period of withdrawal in the bush (symbol of the afterlife) and larval existence, in the manner of the dead; prohibitions imposed on candidates, deriving from the fact that they are assimilated to the dead (a dead person cannot eat certain foods, cannot use his fingers, etc.).
face and body dyed with ashes or with certain calcareous substances in order to obtain the livid whiteness of the ghosts; funeral masks.
Symbolic burial in the temple or fetish house.
Symbolic descent into the underworld.
Hypnotic sleep; drink that causes candidates to lose consciousness.
Harsh tests: beating, roasting of the feet in the fire, suspension in the air, amputation of fingers and various other cruelties.
All these rituals and all these tests have the purpose of doing forget the past life. This is the reason why in some cases the candidate, having returned to the village after the initiation, assumes that he has lost his memory and must be taught again to walk, to eat, to dress.
Finally, we note that the myth of renewal by dismemberment, cooking or fire has continued to fascinate men even outside the spiritual horizon of shamanism. Medea he manages to have Pelias murdered by his daughters by convincing them that he will resurrect and rejuvenate her, as she did with a ram. And when Tantalus he kills his son Peolpe and serves him at the banquet of the gods, they resurrect him by boiling him in a pot there was only one shoulder missing, which Demeter had inadvertently eaten.
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