Recent
researches have clearly brought out the "shamanic" elements
in the religion of the paleolithic hunters. Horst Kierchner has interpreted
the celebrated relief at Lascaux as a representation of a shamanic trance.
The same author considers that the "kommandostabe"
- mysterious objects found in prehistoric sites - are drumsticks. If
this interpretation is accepted, the prehistoric sorcerers would already
have used drums comparable to those of the Siberian shamans.
Finally,
Karl J. Narr has reconsidered the problem of the "origin"
and chronology of shamanism in his important study.[Barenzeremoniell
und Schauanismus in der Altern Steinzeit Europas] He brings
out the influence of notions of fertility (Venus statuettes) on the
religious beliefs of the prehistoric North Asian hunters; but this influence
did not disrupt the paleolithic tradition. His conclusions are as follows:
Animal skulls and bones found in the sites of the European Paleolithic
(before 50,000 - ca. 30,000 BC) can be interpreted as ritual offerings.
Probably about the same period and in connection with the same rites,
the magico-religious concepts of the periodic return of animals to life
from their bones crystallized, and it is in this "Vorstellungswelt"
that the roots of the bear ceremonialism of Asia and North America lie.
Soon afterward, probably about 25,000 BC, Europe offers evidence
for the earliest forms of shamanism (Lascaux) with the plastic
representations of the bird, the tutelary spirit, and ecstasy.
It is
for the specialists to judge the validity of this chronology proposed
by Narr. What appears to be certain is the antiquity of "shamanic"
rituals and symbols. It remains to be determined whether these
documents brought to light by prehistoric discoveries represent the
first expressions of a shamanism in statu nascendi or are merely
the earliest doucuments today available for an earlier religious
complex, which, however, did not find "plastic" manifestations
(drawings, ritual objects, etc) before the period of Lascaux.
In accounting
for the formation of the shamanic complex in Central and North Asia,
we must keep in mind the two essential elements of the problem: on the
one hand, the ecstatic experience as such, as a primary phenomenon;
on the other, the historic-religious milieu into which this ecstatic
experience was destined to be incorporated and the ideology that, in
the last analysis, was to validate it. […]
Everywhere
in those lands, and from the earliest times, we find documents for the
existence of a Supreme Being of celestial structure, who also
corresponds morphologically to all the other Supreme Beings of the archaic
religions. The symbolism of ascent, with all the rites and myths dependent
on it, must be connected with celestial Supreme Beings; we know that
"height" was sacred as such, that many supreme gods of archaic
peoples are called "He on high," or "he of the Sky,"
or simply "Sky." This symbolism of ascent and "height"
retains its value even after the "withdrawal" of the celestial
Supreme Being - for, as is well known, Supreme Beings gradually lose
their active place in the cult, giving way to religious forms that are
more "dynamic" and "familiar" (the gods of storm
[Such as Yahweh.]and fertility, demiurges, the souls of the dead,
the Great Goddesses, etc.) […]
The reduction
or even the total loss in religious currency of uranian Supreme Beings
is sometimes indicated in myths concerning a primordial and paradisal
time when communications between heaven and earth were easy and accessible
to everyone; as the result of some happening, these communications
were broken off and the Supreme Beings withdrew to the highest sky.[…]
The disappearance
of the cult of the celestial Supreme Being did not nullify the symbolism
of ascent with all its implication. […] The shamanic ecstasy could be
considered a reactualization of the mythical illud tempus when
men could communicate in concreto with the sky. It is indubitable
that the celestial ascent of the shaman is a survival, profoundly modified
and sometimes degenerate, of this archaic religious ideology centered
on faith in a celestial Supreme Being and belief in concrete communications
between heaven and earth. […] The myths refer to more intimate
relations between the Supreme Beings and shamans; in particular, they
tell of a First Shaman, sent to earth by the Supreme Being or his surrogate
to defend human beings against diseases and evil spirits.
This historical
change in the religions of Central and North Asia […] in turn altered
the meaning of the shaman's ecstatic experience. Descents to the underworld,
the struggle against evil spirits, the increasingly familiar relations
with "spirits" that result in their "embodiment"
or in the shaman's being "possessed" by "spirits,"
are innovations, most of them recent. In addition, there are
the influences from the south, which appeared quite early and which
altered both cosmology and the mythology and technques of ecstasy.
Among these southern influences we must reckon, in later times, the
contribution of Buddhism and Lamism, added to the Iranian and, in the
last analysis, Mesopotamian influences that preceded them. [For example,
the co-opting and corruption of the Tree of Life symbolism by Judaism
with complete loss of its true function.]
The initiatory
schema of the shaman's ritual death and resurrection is likewise an
innovation, but one that goes back to much earlier times; in any case,
it cannot be ascribed to influences from the ancient Near East.
But the innovations introduced by the ancestor cult particularly affected
the structure of this initatory schema. The very concept of mystical
death was altered by the many and various religious changes effected
by lunar mythologies, the cult of the dead, and the elaboration of magical
ideologies.
Hence
we must conceive of Asiatic shamanism as an archaic technique of ecstasy
whose original underlying ideology - belief in a celestial
Supreme Being with whom it was possible to have direct relations by
ascending into the sky - was constantly being transformed by a ongoing
series of exotic contributions culminating in the invasion of Buddhism.
The concept
of mystical death, furthermore, encouraged increasingly regular relations
with the ancestral souls and the "spirits," relations that
ended in "possession." The pheomenology of the trance
underwent many changes and corruptions, due in large part to confusion
as to the precise nature of ecstasy. Yet all these innovations
and corruptions did not succeed in eliminating the possibility of the
true shamanic ecstasy.
More than
once we have discerned in the shamanic experience a "nostalgia
for paradise" that suggests one of the oldest types of Christian
mystical experience. As for the "inner light," which plays
a part of the first importance in Indian mysticism and metaphysics as
well as in Christian mystical theology, it is already documented
in shamanism.
But shamanism
is important not only for the place that it holds in the history of
mysticism. The shamans have played an essential role in the defense
of the psychic integrity of thecommunity. They are pre-eminently the
antidemonic champions; they combat not only demons and disease,
but also the black magicians. [A shaman is a] tireless slayer of
demons. The military elements that are of great importance in certain
types of Asian shamanism (lance, cuirass, bow, sword, etc.) are accounted
for by the requirements of war against the demons, the true enemies
of humanity. In a way it can be said that shamanism defends life,
health, fertility, the world of "light," against death, diseases,
sterility, disaster, and the world of "darkness."[...]
What is
fundamental and universal is the shaman's struggle against
what we could call "the powers of evil." […] The shaman's
essential role in the defense of the psychic integrity of the community
depends above all on this: men are sure that one of them is able to
help them in the critical circumstances produced by the inhabitants
of the invisible world. […] A member of the community is able
to see what is hidden and invisible to the rest and to bring back
direct and reliable information from the supernatural worlds.[…]
We have
already referred to the likenesses between the accounts of shamanic
ecstasies and certain epic themes in oral literature. The shaman's
adventures in the other world, the ordeals that he undergoes in his
ecstatic descents below and ascents to the sky, suggest the adventures
of the figures in popular tales and the heroes of epic literature.
Probably a large number of epic "subjects" or motifs, as well
as many characters, images, and cliches of epic liteature, are, finally,
of ecstatic origin, in the sense that they were borrowed from the narrative
of shamans describing their journeys and adventures in the superhuman
worlds. [Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.]
