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"African Shaman" |
Shamanism and African Traditional Religion
By Grisso*
I am writing this article on shamanism by request.
After my last article,
one reader wrote asking me the very open-ended question
what insights did I have regarding Shamanism. Somehow or other I lost
the
incoming email, so what should perhaps have remained a private
communication
in response to her, I now post for all the world to see. (By the way,
if the
original
reader sees this, please write again. I promise to reply next time.) I
choose to relate shamanism to African Traditional Religion (ATR),
because this is, after all, TheAfrican.Com.
I start with definitions. Shamanism is what a shaman does. The question, therefore, is what is a shaman. According to one definition , a shaman is a medicine-man. We will leave the term "medicine-man" undefined for the moment, except to note that it is a term used most often to denote, and connote, a spirit-worker in the tradition of any of the original peoples of the Americas. Thus, in geographic connotation, the terms "shaman" and "medicine-man" are not centered in Africa, and ATR, rather in the aboriginal traditions of the Americas.
The word "shaman" reportedly comes from the language of a
tribe in
Siberia, where the usage is of a man or woman who "journeys" in
an altered state of consciousness (see here).
The earliest reference to the word I can find is
in the
book written by Eliade
. It is now a term most associated with New-Age spiritual usage.
One
thing we can be sure
of is that no shaman, in their own tradition, calls him/herself
a shaman... unless perhaps they're Siberian.
A person calling himself a shaman would almost certainly
be a modern New-Age adherent who has relearnt, or is
relearning, from the aboriginal cultures that have
survived into modern times, an art that was long ago stamped out
by Christianity in the West, and was sought to be stamped out
wherever there was Christian (also Islamic) conquest.
Nevertheless, language being the plastic thing that it is,
and the New-Age people having the "power of the microphone",
we can expect the terms shaman and shamanism to be gradually
adopted even by those whose art is the expression of an
unbroken cultural and religious tradition, and for which alternative
terms exist. For example,
Malidoma Some's beautiful book, "Of
water and spirit", carries a reference to him in the subtitle as an
"African
Shaman".
Such a usage is certainly not culturally authentic, but
a rose by any other name, I suppose, is still a rose.
Spirit work is spirit work, and the shamanic journey, by whatever name,
is certainly not foreign to ATR.
In my own evolution to priesthood, I journeyed to a place
where I encountered
who-I-was-before-I-was-born, and also my long-deceased father.
That "shamanic" journey -- it was called a "past-life regression" at
the time -- was for me an absolutely critical
event in my spiritual development, for it was what was necessary for me
finally to "see" the truth and
reality of the unseen, having been a self-described
agnostic up until that point. On another occasion,
my even longer-deceased maternal grandmother came to me,
at another critical point in my spiritual journey, to provide the
guidance that I then needed.
One of my cousins, as an initiate into the
Shango Baptist tradition in Trinidad, went on a shamanic
journey during which the same maternal grandmother greeted her, and
took her in spirit to underwater
realms, revealing to her the keys to her own
spiritual growth. The term "shamanic journey" was not used for that
event, rather it was going to the "mourning-ground".
Therefore, shamanic journeying is by no means unknown to ATR. In fact,
the initiation process of all ATR has, at its core, the requirement of
shamanic journey (see numerous examples in the book by Some). For
ATR is fundamentally not a matter of creed,
or belief, as in the religions of "the book", rather it is a matter of
coming to personal knowing,
of the unseen reality of who we are as spirit.
Shamanic journeying can be accomplished using a variety of
techniques. One way is to use peyote, or
ayahuasca, or
any
other of a host of mind-altering herbs that facilitate the shift to
altered state of consciousness. Another way is to use one of the
ecstatic arts to effect the change of consciousness sought:
drumming, chanting, or dancing, or usually all three together can have
the required effect. Breath-work, the modality used in my own journey,
can achieve the same effect. Then there are the modalities which act
through physical discomfort. Fasting is one such modality, that
used by my cousin when she went to the mourning ground. The book by
Some contains many such examples, where subjecting the body to extended
physical discomfort has the effect of causing the consciousness to slip
into the altered state desired. Vision questing isone
such modality, very much akin to going to the mourning ground, the
difference being that vision questing takes place in the woods or out
in nature, while in the Shango Baptist tradition, the questing takes
place indoors at the center pole (poto mitan) of the ritual space. In
American Indian practice, there is also the sweat lodge.
I have been blessed to take part in a number of sweat lodge ceremonies
(conducted by Baba
Koleoso),
where with the intense physical discomfort caused by the high heat
generated in a closed space, possibly also through the purification
effect obtained by the profuse sweating that takes place, the
consciousness can be made to what I call
"flip out", to other realms
where spirit-guides, animal guides, angels and other entities may be
encountered. Other techniques can no doubt achieve the same
effect, such as sitting long enough out in the sun, or being
buried up to one's neck (Some). Such discomfort techniques are
infinite in their potential variety. All journeying techniques, whether
herb-induced, ecstatic-art induced, or discomfort induced -- and in
practice, combinations of all three -- are greatly consuming of time
and energy, but the indispensable tool of opening an
initiate's eyes.
There are many situations where
the information regarding the Spiritual Cause, and
therefore Spiritual Solution, of a client's problem, may be obtained by
means less costly in time and energy. Divination is one such type
of spirit work. If journeying requires the querent to travel to other
realms while in an altered state of consciousness, divination is a
method of communicating with spirit in which there is no need to induce
an altered state of consciousness. The idea is quite simple, really.
If man can journey to the realm of the gods, how much easier must it be
for the gods to journey to this realm. What is required are the
initiatory means to call on spirit, and knowledge of the keys, or the
code, by which spirit's answers, expressed through the outcome of a
throw of shells or coins or palm kernels or some such, or pulling of
cards from a special deck, eg. tarot, may be decoded. Through
divination, or what in the bible is termed the casting of lots, it is
possible in short time to determine whether sacrifice is required to
effect the change desired by the client, what is it, and to what deity
intercession must be made. If one needs to
obtain from spirit an herbal prescription to treat a client's illness,
divination is often much the better, because cheaper, tool, than going
on a shamanic journey. Through divination, a spiritually determined
prescription can often be had within relatively
short time, assuming a pre-defined finite pharmcoepia from which to
choose, and within which to direct divination queries. The art of
divination
is, in my opinion, the
major gift
to the world of ATR, a gift that appears to pre-date and
inform such other divination systems as the Chinese I-Ching, Tarot,
Arabian so-called sand
divination, European geomancy, etc.
As with all technology, one uses
the best tool for the job. If all one has is a
hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. If
one has both hammer and screw-driver, sometimes what
appeared to be a nail, when one had only a hammer, begins to look more
like a screw! In the same way, the tool of the shamanic
journey is a hammer that is well known to ATR. However, sometimes the
divination screw-driver is the better tool.
Certainly, in the traditional religion of the Yoruba, it is Ifa
divination that takes pride of place. In Ifa, the story is told of
how
Orunmila, the god of wisdom, when leaving the earth, taught his sons
how to call on him in divination.
But spirit work embraces more than either shamanic journey or
divination. In the African, and many Asian traditions, there is also spirit possession.
This is akin to medium-ship, but not quite the same. Here again there
is altered state of consciousness. In the state of possession, the
person's consciousness is set to one side, as it were, and the
consciousness of the spirit being takes over the bodily vehicle of the
one possessed. When, eventually, the spirit ends its occupation, the
person who was possessed would have no recollection of what transpired
while possessed. This is fundamentally different from shamanic
journeying, where the shaman undertaking the journeying must have
recollection of what was encountered on the journey, otherwise the
entire trip would have been wasted. In the case of spirit possession,
the value is not to the priest who becomes possessed, but to those who
are witness to the event, for possession affords an opportunity for the
deities to speak to, and to bless, those assembled at what is a
community event, called a bembe by the Yoruba, and akom by the Akan.
I well remember the movie Kundun,
about the Dalai Lama, and amazed to see the scene in which a priest
becomes ritually possessed by spirit, and in that state, answering
questions to which the Dalai Lama needed answers. It forced me to see
Buddhism in a somewhat different light than I had up to that
point, i.e not that different from ATR, in working with, and knowing, spirit.
I will address one last question relating to the shaman, and
that is
the question whether the shaman is made, or born. My American Indian
shaman friend insists that one is born a shaman. One doesn't get up one
morning and decide to become a shaman. There has to be a call. And that
call comes to those who have been born to that destiny. It is the same
I think in all aboriginal traditions. My cousin told me of her
experience. Having to go to the mourning ground was definitely not
something that she would have chosen for herself. She thought of
herself as a proper Anglican when the call came, and it took some major
re-definition of self, in the eyes both of self and community, for her
to walk the walk as a Shango Baptist, a group that had at one time been
banned by the colonial government of Trinidad, and generally looked
down upon as being, well, primitive and undignified. Spirit, however,
cannot be denied. In my own case, I remember as a willful "bright boy"
in school, arguing myself into a position of agnosticism, at least
where Christianity was concerned, but also as to whether God, and ipso
facto, spirit, exist. I remember being told by one of the grown-ups to
whom I spouted this audacity, "It is impossible to be an African, and
an agnostic." I was about 14 then. It took me over thirty years to
understand how right Mr. Telemaque was, and my own little shamanic
journey, courtesy Iya Osunnike,
Yoruba priestess, who took me on it, to
open my eyes. Looking back, Shango had touched me already as a boy of
about nine. I remember dancing up a storm at a Shango fete (we don't
use the term bembe in Trinidad, just fete), and the elders already then
identifying me as a son of Shango. But my father told my mother, "don't
take the boy back there." And for that, my father, during my shamanic
journey, came to me in spirit (he had been 17 years dead at that
point), and made it a point to apologize. I did not understand what
for, at the time. What reason did he have to apologize, I did not
understand, and neither did Iya Osunnike. But more lately, as I have
come to Shango, I have come to understand what that apology was about.
But for my father keeping me away from the Shango fetes, I might not
have spent 30-odd years in the spiritual wilderness, willfully
espousing an agnosticism that is alien to an African spirit. On the
other hand, I might have been rendered captive by the Christians -- for
it was in reaction to my Catholic schooling that I became an agnostic
in the first place -- and I'm sure my spirit could not abide that! All
that said, I by no means claim to be a shaman, with all of its
connotations, merely at this point, a priest of Shango -- and a junior
one, despite my now grey beard. My shamanic journey
revealed to me, in no uncertain terms, that I was born to be a priest,
in fact had been one in a previous life. But equally, it is clear that
no ATR priest becomes a priest without initiation, and without learning
(re-learning) the attendant arts. It can be no different with the
shaman.
In this regard, it might be noted that if priest and shaman
alike
must be both born to it, and
made in it, there will be pretenders,
and indeed some will be mocking pretenders.
Check the links indicated, I will say no more here about those who,
uncalled, nevertheless insert themselves into the roles of priest or
shaman.
Grisso