Direct video: “The peoples of the Great Bear”, with Antonio Bonifacio

Wednesday evening we will have the pleasure of hosting Antonio Bonifacio on our YouTube channel who will present to our audience his new work “The peoples of the Great Bear: along the way of the Bears and the Shamans”, just published by Simmetria. Direct as always from 21:00.

“Shamanism is one of the oldest human traditions. His conception of man and reality is found on all continents of the planet, being at the origin of the main religious and spiritual systems of the whole world. "

(Mircea Eliade)

ABSTRACT

The man seems to have started to enter into a form of relationship with the dog about 36.000 years ago, forging an indissoluble friendship with him. This happened primarily in the same Siberian forests where, however, man was already entertaining himself with the bear. The magical-sacral relationship with the plantigrade, son of the celestial pole - which in shamanic psychocosmology constitutes the apicality of the axis mundi - is much more archaic and less understandable than that with the "wolf" (indeed the jackal, according to Konrad Lorenz so in his book And man met the dog), so much so that by some researchers, the one with the bear, is considered among the most ancient theophanies of man's religious life, since, while in the one case it is man which permanently introduces the wolf into his world and, domesticating it, makes him a dog, in the case of the bear the opposite happens. It is, in fact, man who enters the world of the forest, a kingdom of which this animal was the undisputed king, if not the "god", and this bond born in the depths of time probably lasted for tens of millennia.

Only recently has the furry giant been ousted from his throne and "guillotined" by agitated Jacobins, together with his more brotherly double ground, that is the shaman who has formed an immemorial symbiotic relationship with the bear. In fact, it is stated that the bear often appears as the most appropriate animal to act as an instructor and helper for the individual who is entering the path that will lead him to become a shaman and even many hunter peoples considered the bear as the shaman of the animal world. The fate of the souls of thousands of generations that preceded us depended on this archaic and tenacious bond between two extraordinary subjects.

The highly contested study by Clottes / Lewis entitled Les Chamans dans la prehistorie, had the merit of framing the totality of rock art as a manifestation of a shamanic vision of reality and therefore of a representation of subjects perceived in the Elsewhere. In this innovative approach, albeit not unprecedented, the possibility, hitherto unheard of, has been cleared of completely remedying the conceptions of the remote past of our species through the use of concomitant factors of reflection, or to seriously consider the presence of shamanic manifestations also in the Middle Paleolithic, after having consolidated the evidence of its existence in the following Paleolithic period. The bear, so widely present in unusual burials of this very distant era, offers us the most evident litmus test of this archaic nature, although it contributes to forming a complete picture together with other surrounding circumstances, thus showing the profound and one-to-one sacral relationship which is intertwined between the two intertwined species in a truly immemorial temporality as we will try to show in this study.

“Where was the bear born?
where was honey's paw weaned?
Otso was born there
Honey leg was raised there

At the Moon at the Sun
on the shoulders of the Great Bear
from there he was lowered to the ground
in a golden cradle
With a silver chain. "

ANTONIO BONIFACIO

Graduated in ancient religious history and in law, he is a researcher on the modalities of the sacred in various religious traditions. He collaborates with some magazines in the sector such as "Mystero", "Hera" and "Symmetry", on topics mainly related to archeo-astronomy, ethnology and symbols. Previously he published the essays “Egypt gift of Atlantis” (Agfa Press), “The voice of Gaia: the angel's runes. The cosmic language of crop circles ”,“ The cosmic cave: the power of Shamanism in Paleolithic rock art ”and“ The red man and tradition. The realm of quantity enters the new world ”(Symmetry),“ Dogon: Masks and Souls towards the stars ”(Venexia),“ Organisms of Stone. From Egypt to cathedrals: geometries, energies, alchemy of medieval temples "(Submerged Lands)," Circular Architecture: between time and eternity "(ReS) and four novels," Melted snow "(CTL)," Journey to the end of time "(La Caravella Editrice)" Shadows at midnight "and" Spirals "(Deep Red)