If it wasn’t clear from the offset, a shamanic initiate does not choose their profession – at least not in normal circumstances. There may be some instances in which shamanic initiation does seem like a choice, but these are instances of “shamanic initiation lite”. The subculture of the 60s and Leary’s experiments with taking accident could be considered in the latter sense, as leading to explorations within the mind that do not come first at a great cost to one’s person.
Similar things could be said about New Age shamanism. Yet such lighter versions of shamanism, which are suited to more developed countries in which lifestyles have already become finessed do not invite a deeper sense of the logic of shamanism – that one becomes a shaman, traditionally, because of inherent pathologies within one’s community. It is these that give rise to the shamanic initiation, which is via profound wounding of some sort. Shamanism, although originating in cultures of hunter-gatherers, is also most ideally suited to the needs of oppressed communities of all sorts. It is their members who are most likely to be inducted – unwillingly, as I have suggested shamanic initiation in its truest sense must be – into shamanic knowledge. For, if the shaman is the manifestation of the disease of his community, he is also the counterpoint and its cure. Thus the logic of genuine shamanism is that it has a side of initiation into knowledge of the “other realm” and how things really work (as opposed to how they merely seem to work to blinkered and as yet unprobing eyes).
A shamanic initiate has eyes newly opened to the meaning and the cost of power, which has been in inscribed upon his body, like one of Kafka’s torture victims. It is in this profound sense of shamanism that Marechera’s book, The House of Hunger, finds its meaning and its raison d'être. [Footnote: This is not to underestimate the effect that the international youth subculture had on the author, or indeed the degree to which his use of cannabis –an entheogen—had the result of producing his “shamanic initiation”. However, it was the oppression of hunger and the poverty of opportunity that ultimately produced Marechera’s induction into the world of shamanic sensibilities.]
Marechera’s writing, righ
t from its first inception and presentation in The House of Hunger, has been shamanic. Yet, it is The House of Hunger that most closely embraces the conception of “shamanic realism” as presented by James Alexander Guerra Overton in Shamanic Realism: Latin American Literature and the Shamanic Perspective. Whereas some of his later works, such as (I have argued) Black Sunlight, is more wholly shamanic, The House of Hunger approximates, rather, that which Overton refers to as “Shamanic realism”, which is “a new classification or genre of literature - which [is] based on the coordinated juxtaposition in resolved antinomy of two antithetical worldviews, one shamanic and the other Western. [ p 63]. Overton speaks in this regard of texts relating to Latin America, however he also states that, “the roots of this [Latin American tradition of] esoteria were already well established in the weltanschauung of the three principal cultures which constitute the social and racial make-up of the Latin American continent: the Native American, the African, and the Iberian.[-- p 3]. It is perhaps for the reason that The House of Hunger contains so much Western “realism” that is has been generally better acclaimed internationally than some of his later produced works.
In the novella section of The House of Hunger, Marechera’s hunger for spiritual and intellectual sustenance – and not just food – takes place semi-autobiographically, in the black ghettoised ‘township’ of Vengere of white-ruled Rhodesia. The young man struggles with the rights and wrongs of gaining an education in English, at the expense of his parents and their suffering. He develops a crush on a local girl, Immaculate, and expresses certain traditional misogynistic attitudes towards her, despite his pity for her situation – which is worse than his. In due course, the inward hunger for a life that offered some dignity and sophistication, along with the pressure to complete his destiny through study and leave the ghetto at last, causes the protagonist’s mental breakdown. He starts to see hallucinations, which are banished only with a huge emotional release of tension in the community, which comes to pass with a sudden crash storm, which destroys much of the school and the local environment.
The spiritual hunger for life outside of the community remains, however, and the author takes us for a trip inside and outside of his head, as he draws inwards, to the point that inside and outside of this “house of hunger” – his head – can not be differentiated, (at least by the protagonist and perhaps by the reader, who is often left wondering if what is happening is actually real or is occurring symbolically and inwardly). The final passages of the book are in an entirely different tone and of a different quality from some of these tormented passages of tormented realism. It is in these last few passages that the “shamanic” elements are introduced into this otherwise excruciating but otherwise fairly “realistic” depiction of somebody’s descent into madness. These last elements are “shamanic” because they do not follow the normal pattern of human psychology, where there are only two polarities of being – madness and sanity (and the gradations in between). An unpredictable third element appears in the figure of the “wise old man” who appears at the young Marechera’s door, and nurtures him with his story-telling.
The fragility of this old man and the serendipity of his appearance and his story-telling (which is somehow intrinsically nourishing) lead one to believe that this is somehow Marechera who has affected a shamanic transformation, (after a difficult “initiation” and madness), in order to provide for himself, through his imaginative powers, that which he found to be lacking. Shamanic transformation and regeneration is the third element of the pendulum – one that doesn’t rightfully exist either logically or according to most Western psychology. Yet it is the introduction of this element of restorative freedom that gives Marechera’s work the appellation “shamanic realism”.
The rest of the short stories in the book are black humorous stories about the author’s experiences, as a writer, in exile, growing up in Lesapi, and in relation to the question of having a “black identity”. These stories are shamanic in that they involve a doubling of the persona of the author (much as we saw the beginnings of in the last section of the novella. In the story concerning his childhood in Lesapi, the narrative elements are animistic and broadly Romantic in its deep and evocative sense of connection with the capricious spirit of nature governing his village. The short stories of The House of Hunger portray women as manifestly strong, in terms of how they are represented according to the author’s own metaphysics. The writer represents his shamanic view of the world – with magic and reality supervening on each other.
shamanic realism
these things grow in the garden.
Ultimately all ideologically tainted and false perspectives work to handicap the viewer.
It is one thing to define your opponent in a stereotyped and negative light, however, any subsequent engagement with her had better be based on a more realistic estimation, otherwise the viewer handicaps himself.
The garden variety sexist has so many blindspots that I can effectively: step to the right and hook there; step to the left and uppercut there; lay in heavy and repetitive body blows there and there.
I don't expect the garden variety sexist to know what hit him. Maybe, like Polyphemus he calls out to his fellows: "Nobody! Nobody is hitting me. Nobody."
strength of mine
A shaman doesn't regress because he or she is intrinsically "sick". They are more likely to be those of intrinsically strong minds if they do turn out to be shamans after all (ie. if they recover).
It is the element of social or political oppression that causes their regression. It can also be the result of an accident that causes the wounding (as per Frieda Kahlo), but generally shamanism is associated with the lower classes of society who may be subject to systematic oppression (see Michael Taussig and the situation of the Columbian indians). It must be an inbuilt mechanism of the human mind that when put under a state of extreme stress it aims to return to the safety of the womb. (The post-Kleinians make much of this, although not in terms of shamanism).
Forces of oppression can be seen to be responsible for keeping some members of society in a state of immaturity in relation to the dominant classes (and gender). This would give them automatic closer access to the magical pre-oedipal level of consciousness. But the intrinsic strength of the minds of some of the oppressed classes would result in the strange occurrence that these individuals do not descend into madness never to return, but do return after this baptism, with all sorts of things like an insightful social critique, an enhanced imagination, and enhanced survival skills. That is because their "madness" was never intrinsic to them, but was caused by direct pressures from the outside. Such pressures turn the otherwise healthy and vibrant mind inwards for a while, so as to get to know itself in all of its imaginative complexity, thus releasing blockages and repressions that would otherwise cause neurosis. That is why the shaman's "wounding" is often so beneficial to himself as well as to his community. Insight into the nature of oppression seems intrinsically linked to shamanic insight in general.
pathology or power?
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2006, 51, 125–144
0021–8774/2006/5101/125 © 2006, The Society of Analytical Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
The developmental/emergent model of
archetype, its implications and its
application to shamanism
John Merchant, Sydney
This is an article that says that siberian shamanism is, in fact, pathological, on the basis of pre-oedipal dynamics.
The link I am constantly finding is between shamanism and early childhood -- even in Aboriginal culture, there is the conceptualisation of returning to infancy and then back to adulthood in shamanic ritual.
What this article doesn't depict (because it is just empirical, not broadly theoretical) is the regression followed by the return to a mature disposition and associated healing.
The whole issue of how this three-part process occurs and to what degree is probably not empirically verifiable. It is only mythically suggested in various texts that this is the nature of the process.
Also, I have the problem of answering the question: To what degree does the kind of ontological knowledge of how selfhood is constructed become redeemed of a pathological residue and useful for appropriating in a health-giving manner, for example in an expert dissection of the function of the pre-oedipal FIELD (NOT "stage" -- but some infantile residue that also pertains quite necessarily, and only in some cases pathologically, to a fully attained adult life)?
In other words, it is really hard to know about the degree of recovery that Marechera managed to attain, from his earlier illness. What IS clear to me is that he writes with a deep knowledge of the structures of pre-oedipal psychological mechanisms, and that he employs a lot of insights into how the pre-oedipal FIELD (in the sense that it affects adult social organisation) produces selective repression and the exclusion of some people, but not others, from power.
So, this is indicative of his turning his knowledge (and personal misfortune) towards healing others in society, especially the downtrodden.
And it is THAT pattern of sickness and recovery that IS shamanic. (But once again, to what degree are some of his earlier works? I don't know. Also why did he fear so much the "participation mystique" (in terms of the dynamics I have found in some of his works and in his life?) Perhaps -- and very likely so -- this has much to do with the way that blacks were infantised in colonial society (as often white women were, too, as I have pointed out). So there is a tendency to relate from the position of immaturity into which he had been interpellated. Also, the motif of the black identity as being "unborn" is very evocative of the power of political repression to create a forced immaturity.
Parmenides and the priests
So I have just read articles to the effect that Parmenides was a materialist who opposed the notion and practice of crude empiricism. Good for him.
The eyes and ears often deceive, and are especially deceptive to those whose educations have turned out to be cursory and superficial. To doubt one's initial perceptions, as I have said before, is the beginning of wisdom. This pertains especially to social life. To doubt everything that seems apparent is necessary to untangle oneself from perceptions that have been conditioned by priests. For, as Nietzsche points out below, not everyone who lacks public approval is deserving of scorn or the condition of being socially outcast. Rather, they are outcasts because priests have usurped their rightful authority:
[See: Let us generalize the case of the criminal: let us think of men so constituted that for one reason or another, they lack public approval and know that they are not felt to be beneficent or useful—that chandala feeling that one is not considered equal, but an outcast, unworthy, contaminating. All men so constituted have a subterranean hue to their thoughts and actions; everything about them becomes paler than in those whose existence is touched by daylight. Yet almost all forms of existence which we consider distinguished today once lived in this half tomblike atmosphere: the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the merchant, the great discoverer ... As long as the priest was considered the supreme type, every valuable kind of human being was devaluated ... The time will come—I promise—when the priest will be considered the lowest type, as our chandala, as the most mendacious, the most indecent kind of human being ... I call attention to the fact that even now—under the mildest regimen of morals which has ever ruled on earth, or at least in Europe—every deviation [Abseitigkeit], every long, all-too-long sojourn below, every unusual or opaque form of existence, brings one closer to that type which is perfected in the criminal. All innovators of the spirit must for a time bear the pallid and fatal mark of the chandala on their foreheads—not because they are considered that way by others, but because they themselves feel the terrible chasm which separates them from everything that is customary or reputable.]
So long as priests are in charge, ones eyes and ears a likely to deceive one, for a battle is being fought on a "subterranean" level, and it is between the priests and those whose rightful authority has been usurped.
***
But how does one tell who is who, if the battle being fought is inherently "subterranean"?
I determine the difference between a friend and an enemy in precisely THIS way:
A priestly type NEEDS me, in order to assert his authority. His authority does not stand alone, but requires various captives -- a herd or a flock he has trapped.
Somebody who speaks from his or her own authority, however, does not emit an aura of neediness even as they grasp for power and for an image of domination and control.
They do not need to take away my power, in order to feel powerful. They already have enough power of their own.
And thus, this is how I know that patriarchy is related to the priests -- those who are craven and in need of power, because they have no inherent authority, but only authority that is based on deception.
It is as clear to me as night and day.
revision of earlier suppositions
To correct an earlier point I made somewhere in my thesis drafts -- one which turns out to be an error -- shamanism never involves any "transcendence of self". Buddhism does, but shamanism doesn't. Rather, the objectivity acquired by a shaman is through the melting of emotional bounds that previously forced a particular attitude towards authority out of him. Yet now, he is no longer beholden to power -- powerful individuals as well as powerful ideas -- since the emotional bonds that bound him to fit into his society in a narrow and ordinary way have been broken. The way that power is used strikes him as arbitrary. The events that do take place because of power are tinged with a quality of either the comic or the tragic or both.
This loosening of the bonds enables the concrete self to become "spirit". Metaphorically, the psychologically crystalised bonds break and become liquid -- the liquified self thus becomes free of its earthly bonds.
The patriarch speaketh
So I attended a new school. My mummy paid for me to go, but anything that mummies pay for ain't worth shit. I attended the class and it was given by Professor X, and everyone says that Professor X is really good, really well known and a good egg.
I listened really hard to what Professor X was saying -- that is one quarter of the time. The rest of the time what I was hearing was boring and seemed overly emotional and hysterical.
I couldn't pass any of my exams! But THAT I put down to the tone and quality of Professor X's lectures.
Did I tell you that anything my mummy pays for ain't worth shit?
Logic and the bridge
NOT "transcendence of self" but "transcendence of one part of the self by another part of the self". THIS describes the shamanic crossing of the bridge. And it is facilitated by Kleinian "splitting", not on the basis of unconscious drive, but on the basis of conscious will. (There is a polarity of self that one is moving away from, and a polarity of self that one is moving towards.)
With Nietzsche, one moves (towards transcendence) from a state of psychological lack of integration towards one of hierarchical internal integration.
With Bataille, one moves in the opposite direction -- away from a repressive unity of self towards a lack of integration and towards disunity. (This frees the self that was previously trapped by rigid societal mores from its objectification in these terms.)
With Marechera, the movement "across the bridge" is somewhat in the direction of Bataille -- towards "sin" or "evil" and self-disintegration -- But then there is also a return to the holistic view of the self "in the mirror". For Marechera, a movement away from logical thinking releases the authentic selfhood. And "logic", in his sense, is identified as being a "kind of transcendence". The linear nature of logic, however, prevents a person from seeing reality as it really is, so this kind of transcendence is to be eschewed.
Genet AND Minus the Morning
I would like the following terms to be applied to my memoir:
--
Could the critic for whom ‘profound communication demands
silence’ (IE, 92) hope to find any greater realization of his desire?
Ultimately there is nothing to say. Genet’s solitude goes with a
‘stiffness’ that becomes such an extreme ‘tension out of the world’
(tension hors du monde) that it precludes any attempt at mediation in
its favour: ‘It is even in one sense a failure to be played and to
be defended’ (470). Besides the fact that Mauriac’s compassion is
thus ironically undercut, Genet’s work appears as a model insofar as
it integrates within itself, from its very first sentence, the dimension
of refusal, the ‘refusal to communicate’ that is the ‘more hostile
means of communication, but the most powerful’, the silence that
gives Rimbaud’s departure its extraordinary force. For Bataille, this
systematically affirmed distance, an amplified echo of Baudelairian
indifference and surrealist scandal, constitutes the principal condition
of ‘communication’.
FRANCOIS BIZET
University of Aoyama Gakuin
(Translated by Mair´ead Hanrahan)
Bataille’s Battle With Genet 133
shamanic doubling / minus the morning
Let me resort to speaking only from my own experience. There is such a thing as shamanic doubling. But these shamanic doublings are organic and not defined by such contrivances as a mechanical drop of the butcher's cleaver. Shamans may be masters (and mistresses?) of splitting and dissociation in order to give an advantage to one part of their minds and not the other/s. Self hypnosis and the resulting ability to "change one's form" were also aspects of the ninja's arsenal of tricks used in order to enhance their power.
This conceptualisation of shamanic "magic" is well and good in terms of elucidating some aspects of the way that a shaman may utilise his psyche for achieving particular ends. It goes to the "magic" side of shamanism -- but it rests also, as it were, on that side of things, where shifts of consciousness pertain. It might be argued, and quite reasonably so, that this shamanic "magic" has nothing to do with reality. Reality, as it were, abides on the non-magic side of things, by definition. Reality is that place, the range of experiences and the condition of being where things do not change "magically".
So this conceptualisation of shamanic magic is limited. One would have to have this magic become dialectical, right to the point where it was influencing and altering reality itself, for shamanic magic to be genuinely efficacious.
The "magic" on the one side of things acts as the suggestion of a change, as the will for a change, yet if it does not change reality itself, it remains only will and desire.
I will say that the barrier -- the bridge -- between the realm of what is and the realm of the spirit can and must be crossed. At the same time, one does not do so without sacrificing to the gods, without the release of strong emotion that comes from a searing of the flesh. Without emotion being released through pain, the bridge is not crossed "as spirit".
Shamanic magic involves a doubling -- where the body remains on one side of the gulf and the mind as spirit crosses stealthily over the bridge. Such doubling is required for the shamanic project. A sacrifice of who one is in the concrete and fixed sense is therefore always necessary if one is to attain shamanic doubling.
Thus, there is the need for a shamanic wounding, to release the force of emotion that would enable one to "cross the bridge". One sacrifices a part of oneself, a part of one's identity, actually, although the sum quotient of the experience of sacrifice is some degree of physical and mental pain.
As the pain releases emotional energy that had long been held in place by normal psychological mechanisms of repression, one's character structure becomes liquid again -- liquid and fluid enough to cross 'as spirit" over the bridge, so long as one wills to do so and has the guts.
And so one crosses, and returns in due course from this journey, with a different range of conceptions of the world and a different sense of self. The price has been paid -- the body and mind are able to be healed again. (Although nothing is assured -- they do not call this a "difficult journey" for nothing.)
One can read more about the Way of the Shaman and the difficulty of a shamanic crossing in Nietzsche's Zarathustra.
Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.
"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain.
Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.
But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!
Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self- rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?
Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?
Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of aloneness.
To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes.
But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: "I am alone!"
One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou wilt one day cry: "All is false!"
There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it--to be a murderer?
Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word "disdain"? And the anguish of thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee?
Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they heavily to thine account. Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wentest past: for that they never forgive thee.
Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is the flying one hated.
"How could ye be just unto me!"--must thou say--"I choose your injustice as my allotted portion."
Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that account!
And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify those who devise their own virtue--they hate the lonesome ones.
Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire--of the fagot and stake.
And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love! Too readily doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who meeteth him.
To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I wish thy paw also to have claws.
But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests.
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way!
A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.
Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving ones despise.
To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!
With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy creating; and late only will justice limp after thee.
With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.--
Thus spake Zarathustra.
If on the basis of this text, shamanism doesn't interest and entice you, then I wouldn't be surprised. Just keep in mind that shamans are generally initiated against their will, and not by choice.
And now we return to the issue of the dialectics of shamanism and how shamanic "magic" can influence the real world.
Changes are possible -- and the strongest certainly I had that I had changed not gradually (and thereby naturally) but somehow absolutely and definitively was when my book was being analysed for editing by a kind man (whom I paid well), who tried to find the continuity of the old, pre-shamanised self, which should have been there "in reality" -- but wasn't.
blah
It is absolutely crucial to add a further proviso, concerning shamanistic dynamics and how they operate on our minds: wherever reality – as held in place by dominant ideologies and political power and its rhetorical devices are unable to hold our consciousness into one place, doubt arises concerning the nature of the socially constructed reality and whether it is as real as it may have at first seemed to be. This soul-threatening process of existential opens up a wormhole in the nature of real and access to the realm of “spirit”. The achievement of shamanic doubt is shamanic skepticism, which transcends social norms and conventions and sees them as eternally pliable. The logic of shamanic skepticism can also be quite recursive -- thus Marechera’s very shamanic suggestion concerning his own attribution of value to anarchist resistance to social domination and control – “The Black Sunlight organisation was shit.” Such shamanic doubt values the fluidity and flexibility of forms of life over dogma. [ footnote: The realm of the spirit is both the existential counterpart and yet also the negation of the real (it is the negation in terms of the fact that the self-evident quality of reality becomes open to doubt and questioning: Ultimately the bridge to the other realm is crossed in terms of answering the question: is the real that pertains to communicable experience really the ultimate form of reality – ie. all that there is?. Shamanistic doubting of this sort is extremely politically subversive.]
