The Shaman and the Magician

Journeys Between the Worlds

Nevill Drury

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000691481
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Originally published in 1982, The Shaman and the Magician draws on the author's wide experience of occultism, western magic and anthropological knowledge of shamanism, to explore the interesting parallels between traditional shamanism and the more visionary aspects of magic in modern western society. In both cases, as the author shows, the magician encounters profound god-energies of the spirit, and it is up to the individual to interpret these experiences in psychological or mythological terms. The book demonstrates that both shamanism and magic offer techniques of approaching the visionary sources of our culture.

CHAPTER 1
The World of the Shaman

1 A Jivaro shaman photographed by Michael Harner

In 1951 a legendary Iban healer named Manang Bungai performed a dramatic ritual which was believed to slay an incubus, or evil spirit, that had been blamed for the death of a seven-month-old baby girl.

Bungai, clad in a loin cloth and carrying a spear, entered a darkened room and began summoning the incubus by means of various invocations and also by tempting it with food. His audience was unable to clearly perceive what was happening and was in a state of heightened suggestibility.

Very soon there was a yelping sound and a noisy scuffle, after which Bungai emerged with a blood smeared spear claiming he had inflicted mortal wounds on the incubus. Several experienced Iban hunters were aware that Bungai had in fact been doing battle with a monkey and the anthropologist observing the event, Derek Freeman, was later able to verify this by means of blood tests. However the majority of the Iban present at the ceremony believed that their healing magician was engaged in a mystical encounter.

The case of Bungai represents the shaman-who-is-not. True shamanism is characterised by access to other realms of consciousness. As Mircea Eliade notes: ‘the shaman specializes in a trance during which his soul is believed to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld.’¹

Indeed, the shaman is a master of spirit entities, a venturer on different cosmic planes. When the would-be Jivaro shaman ventures near the sacred waterfalls to seek the power of the arutam wakan, the soul force identified with the visionary experience, he takes natema, a hallucinogenic beverage made from the Banisteriopsis vine, which allows access to the spirit world. In his visions he may see rolling towards him a pair of giant mythic jaguars fighting viciously or alternatively two enormous writhing snakes, and it is his task to master the reality of the vision by running forward to touch it. Anthropologist Michael Harner who, himself experienced psychedelic initiation with the Indians, notes that for the Jivaro the supernatural is the real world, and in this sense confirms the idea of the shaman as a ‘master of ecstasy’. But the shaman is also in a very real sense a ‘traveller’, a visionary who has access to other dimensions of experience.

The remarkable case of Deguchi Onisaburo is one of the most extraordinary examples of this type of shamanism and gave rise to the Omoto religious movement in Japan.

In 1898, Deguchi, who was by all accounts a frail youth, was beaten up by some gamblers and nearly died. A short while later he sank into a comatose sleep and on recovering consciousness declared that he had journeyed to a cave on Mt Takakuma and after fasting there had travelled through regions of Heaven and Hell. On his journey he had been granted occult powers such as clairvoyance and clairaudience and had seen back as far as the creation of the world. His visionary experiences included a meeting with the king of the underworld who in a moment was able to transform from a white-haired old man with a gentle face into a frightening demonic monarch with a bright red face, eyes like mirrors and a tongue of flame.²

Embodying a theme which recurs in shamanism – the transformation of the symbolic vision – we see from the account that time and again Deguchi is ‘killed, split in half with a sharp blade like a pear, dashed to pieces on rocks, frozen, burnt, engulfed in avalanches of snow … turned into a goddess’ and yet he still emerges from his journey victorious over the forces of apparent death. It is this power which gives the shaman his awesome standing among his fellows. It is his conquest of the dangers and pitfalls of the visionary journey, even through death and rebirth, that places the shaman among ‘the elect’. The themes of dismemberment, ascent to the sky, descent to the underworld are clearly initiatory.

It is significant, then, that after his ordeal Deguchi eventually finds himself at the centre of the world, at the summit of the huge axial mountain, Sumeru. He is granted a vision of the creation of the world and then comes to a river beyond which lies paradise. Before him and standing on a vast lotus he finds a marvellous palace of gold, agate and jewels. All around him are blue mountains and the golden lapping waves of a lake. Golden doves fly above him in the air.³

Several aspects of Deguchi’s journey are typical of shamanism in general. He is in a state of psychic dissociation caused by his near death; he gains visionary powers from the beings he encounters; he journeys upon a magic mountain, which in other cultures equates in significance with the Cosmic Tree, and eventually arrives at the ‘centre of the world’; his enlightenment includes a vision of the world’s origin; vistas of serene and majestic landscapes, and imposing temples. Despite Deguchi’s traumatic encounters with powerful cosmic forces he is finally a transformed and ‘reborn’ figure. Initiation is central to shamanism in the same way that it is a vital component of modern magic, and specific initiations tend to arise as crises at different stages of the mythic journey. From culture to culture these patterns of transformation take different forms according to the way in which the mythic universe is perceived and the nature of the hierarchies of gods who dwell there.

THE COSMOS AND ITS DENIZENS

In the sense that the shaman acts as an intermediary between the sacred and profane worlds, between mankind and the realm of gods and spirits, he has special access to a defined cosmos. The actual cosmology, in terms of levels and hierarchies may be reasonably basic, as it is with the Australian Aborigines and many South and Central American tribes, or it may be complex and highly structured, as in the case of Siberian shamanism.

For example the Jivaro believe that all knowledge pertaining to tsentsak, or magical power, derives from the mythical first shaman, Tsuni, who is still alive today. He lives underwater in a house whose walls are formed like palm staves by upright anacondas and sits on a turtle, using it as a stool. He is said to be white skinned with long hair and he supplies privileged shamans with special quartz crystals (tsentsak) which are particularly deadly. No shamans are able to stand up to or overcome Tsuni.⁴

The sky god of the Wiradjeri medicine men of Western New South Wales has a comparable function. Known as Baiame, he is described as a ‘very great old man, with a long beard, sitting in his camp with his legs under him. Two great quartz crystals extend from his shoulders to the sky above him.’⁵

Baiame sometimes appears to the Aborigines in their dreams. He causes a sacred waterfall of liquid quartz to pour over their bodies absorbing them totally. They then grow wings replacing their arms. Later the dreamer learns to fly and Baiame sinks a piece of magical quartz into his forehead to enable him to see inside physical objects. Subsequently an inner flame and a heavenly cord are also incorporated into the body of the new shaman.⁶

The Mazatec Indians of Mexico, meanwhile, have been exposed to Christian influence and such elements have entered their cosmology while the indigenous component remains. The Mazatecs make use of psilocybe mushrooms and the female shamans use this altered state of consciousness to determine the causes of sickness. On a local level they believe that the groves and abysses are inhabited by the little people or dwarves known as the laa, but they have also assimilated into their belief systems Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Among the Mazatecs both the patient and the shaman take the sacred mushrooms, so that the sick person may hear the healing words which come from the spirit world and thereby share in the cure. Munn reports that as the shaman sinks deeper into trance she seems to go on a journey. She mutters: ‘Let us go searching for the path, the tracks of her feet, the tracks of her nails. From the right side to the left side, let us look.’ After several hours she appears to reach a peak:

There is the flesh of God, There is the flesh of Jesus Christ. There with the Virgin.⁷

But if such shamanic pronouncements seem reasonably orthodox they may often be infused with magic. Another Mazatec ceremony includes the following:

The aurora of the dawn is coming and the light of day. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, by the sign of the Holy Cross, free us Our Lord from our enemies and all evil….

I am he who cures. I am he who speaks with the Lord of the World. I am happy. I speak with the mountains of peaks. I am he who speaks with Bald Mountain. I am the remedy and the medicine man, I am the mushroom. I am the fresh mushroom. I am the large mushroom. I am the fragrant mushroom. I am the mushroom of the spirit.⁸

Invariably the shamanic process entails direct contact and rapport with the gods and goddesses who provide their followers with first principles, with a sense of causality, balance, order and with it health and well-being.

Especially among American Indians, for example the Desana group of the Eastern Colombian Tukano, we find a strong identification of the shaman’s vision with the primal reality of the cosmos:

On awakening from the trance, the individual remains convinced of the religious teachings. He has seen everything; he has seen Vai-mahse, master of the Game animals, and the daughter of the Sun, he has heard her voice; he has seen the Snake canoe float out through the rivers and he has seen the first men spring from it.⁹

The concept of a system of rivers or an ocean of being from which the Universe derives is also a common mythological element in several unconnected cosmologies in both simple and complex religions. Quite aside from shamanic accounts the idea also occurs, for example, in the creation myths of the Babylonians and in the Jewish Qabalistic mystery teachings.

Among the Evenks of Siberia the Universe is thought to have been born from a watery waste. Rivers feature predominantly in Evenk mythology and the shaman’s helper spirits are often water birds like the duck or goldeneye.¹⁰ The Evenk universe is a characteristically shamanic one in the sense that it conforms to the normal Siberian pattern of being divided into three worlds, upper, middle and lower, vertically aligned around a central axis or World Tree. The Evenk lives in the middle world. His options are upwards towards the benevolent sky dwellers, or downwards to the world of the dead, the spirit ancestors and the mistress of the Underworld. This dualism is reinforced by the fact that the term for the upper world (uga buga) has a linguistic origin in a phrase meaning ‘toward morning’ while that of the lower world (khergu-ergu buga) means ‘towards night’.¹¹

The Evenks believe the sky dwellers in ugu buga live a life comparable to that found in the middle world except on a more exalted level. For example Amaka, who taught the first Evenks how to use fire and make tools, is thought to be a very old man, dressed in fur clothing and living among treasures, gold, copper and silver. Around him are large herds grazing in lush pastures.¹² Other prominent Evenk deities include Eksheri, supreme master of animals, birds and fish and ruler of fate. Local spirit rulers of the hills, rivers and streams are subservient to him. He labours on behalf of the Evenks gathering heat for them and as Spring comes, his sons carry his bag and shake out the heat upon the middle world.

Khergu-ergu buga, on the other hand, represents a world which is quite the reverse of man’s. Living things become dead there, and the dead come alive.¹³ Animals and beings which were resident in the lower world become invisible if they transfer to the middle plane and accordingly shaman heroes who venture down into the underworld will be seen only by the shamans of that region.

In the Evenk underworld dwell deceased kinsmen and the spirits of evil and illness. The deceased continue to lay their traps there, and to fish and hunt, but their bodies are cold and lack the life essence of the middle world. Meanwhile the ancestor spirits who reside there are only half-human and are linked with totemic reincarnations. The possibility of a transfer of plane does exist however, and this is the shaman’s role. The hole which leads into the heavenly vault is guarded by an old woman – the Mistress of the Universe – and she is sometimes visualised in an animal/human transformation with horns on her head. Her task at the entrance to heaven is to point the way to the dwelling of the ruler of the heavenly lights.

A similar female deity also guards the animals of the clan lands below the earth. In order to ensure a satisfactory hunt, the shaman journeys down below the roots of the sacred tree to visit her. Aided by spirit guides who help him overcome various obstacles which impede his path, he encounters the Clan Mistress and begs her to release animals for the hunt. She may be witholding animals from the middle world because vital taboos have been breached. The shaman seeks to capture from her magical threads which he hides in his special drum. When he returns to the middle world, he shakes these forth from his drum indicating that these threads will in turn transform into real animals.¹⁴

The symbolic Tree is a vital pillar in t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1 The World of the Shaman
• 2 Shamanic Trance
• 3 Magical Symbols and Ceremonial
• 4 Techniques of Magical Trance
• 5 New Directions: From Atavistic Resurgence to the Inner Light
• Postscript: Why the Shaman?
• Appendix A Shamanism, Magic and the Study of Consciousness
• Appendix B Major ‘Mythological Correspondence’ in Western Magic
• Appendix C Organisations and Groups
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index