Tag: Animism

What is Shamanism?

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Shamanism is an ancient spiritual tradition dating back at least 40,000 years. It is not a religion but a body of techniques centring on altering one’s state of consciousness to access a spiritual reality and commune with helping spirits for the purposes of accessing guidance, healing and inspiration.

Shamanism is founded on animism. Animism, from the Latin anima ‘soul’ is the belief that the whole world is inspirited. Every mountain, hill, river, tree, plant, fungus, animal, bird, fish, insect and bacterium has a spirit. So does the man-made environment. Houses, churches, office blocks, smart phones, laptops, tools, all have spirits. Thoughts, feelings and emotions, such as love and jealousy, have spirits too. 

In animistic cultures significant landscape features are often viewed as particularly sacred and are associated with spirits of place and Deities. For example we know the river Ribble in Lancashire has a Goddess, Belisama, as the Roman geographer, Ptolemy, in the second century, labelled the Ribble estuary Belisama aest.

Animistic peoples are often also polytheistic. Polytheism is the belief in many Gods. These include local and tribal Gods and Goddesses and Deities who oversee certain functions such as learning, parenting, hunting, war, life and death.

Whilst all shamanic cultures are animistic not all animistic cultures are shamanic. Shamanism takes the belief all things are inspirited one step further. Shamanic peoples also believe in the existence of a spiritual reality that is separate from but intimately connected with physical reality. This spiritual reality has its own landscapes and is populated with spirits who have their own ways of being.

Everybody has the abilitity to ‘shamanise’ – to interact with the spirits and Deities of the household, tribe, locality, and of the spiritual reality. However, there is usually a specific person who serves their community as a shaman – a specialist in interacting with the spirits who has received a calling and undergone a rigorous training.

I will pause here to note the term ‘shaman’ comes from saman ‘one who knows’ from the Russian Tungus people and indigenous cultures have their own names for  shamans. The application of ‘shaman’ and the term ‘shamanism’ to these cultures is a Western development. In the West we only use the term ‘shaman’ to describe a person in an indigenous culture who communes with the spirits to serve their community. Westerners who practice shamanism refer to themselves as shamanic practitioners.

There are two main ways that shamans interact with the spiritual reality. The first is the spirit flight or shamanic journey wherein the soul leaves the body and journeys to the spiritual reality to travel its landscapes and commune with its spirits. The second is inviting the spirits to be with us in this reality. This might take the form of calling them to be present alongside us in the physical realm or into our bodies to dance with us, eat with us, or to speak through us, thus offering guidance directly.

Entering an altered state of consciousness can be done in many ways. These include: listening to repetitive music such as drumming or rattling, dancing, chanting fasting, silence and taking entheogens such as ayhuasca, San Pedro cactus, or psychotropic mushrooms such as fly agaric and liberty cap (which we have in the UK).

We all move through various states of consciousness throughout the day and many people are familiar with trance through going out and dancing to trance music. Where shamanic practice differs is that a shaman enters trance with will and intention and uses it to commune with the spiritual reality to serve to their community.

So how does somebody become a shaman? In indigenous cultures the role of the shaman can be hereditary or a person might be called by the spirits. This can happen when they come of age or may be triggered by a traumatic event such as a physical injury, a mental breakdown or a near death experience. This is often referred to as ‘shamanic sickness’. To outer appearances the person is seen to ‘go mad’ or fall into a depression. It’s common for them to remove themselves from everyday society, sometimes into the wilderness, to spend time alone. During this period their psyche, bearing its presuppositions, rules and norms of everyday reality is broken down and ‘dies’ and they are initiated into the metaphorical, mythic, dreamlike ways of being of the spiritual reality. Once this process is completed they return to their community ‘reborn’ and ready to serve as a shaman. 

A shaman serves their communities in many ways. Some of these are very practical – using their skills of soul flight and communing with the spirits to find the herds when the people are hungry or to find lost pets or possessions. Shamans also use their abilities to heal. This can take the form of energy healing or they might work with plant spirits and herbal medicines. They are able to remove harmful energies and entities from people and places. Pyschopomping, helping the dead to pass and aiding spirits who are trapped in this world to move on, is also a shamanic role.

Whereas these ancient shamanic practices have been maintained in places such as Siberia, Mexico and the Amazon and amongst the Native American peoples, sadly shamanism has been lost from Western Europe. This is mainly due to the hegemony of Christianity. The Christianisation of Britain began in the fourth century when it was under Roman rule and the emperor, Constantine, converted to Christianity. This resulted in the taking over the sacred sites associated with pre-Christian Gods and and spirits and re-dedicating them to the Christian God, Jesus, Mary, the angels and the saints and labelling many of our indigenous Deities as ‘devils’. Our capacity to shamanise was taken away by the ban on communicating with our local spirits and Deities and replaced with the rule we can only commune with the Christian Deities through set prayers, attending church and seeing a priest. Rationalism, materialism, science, industrialisation and capitalism have also played a role.

The Question of Technology and Technological Askesis

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In the first two of his essays, ‘Four Questions Concerning the Internet’ (1) Paul Kingsnorth identifies the force behind the Machine (technology/the internet) as Ahriman, an evil and destructive spirit in the Zoroastrian religion (2).

He argues that ‘the sacred and the digital not only don’t mix, but are fatal to each other. That they are in metaphysical opposition.’ ‘The digital revolution represents a spiritual crisis’ and ‘a spiritual response is needed.’ As an aid to living through ‘the age of Ahriman’ he suggests the practice of ‘technological askesis.’ He notes that the Greek word ‘askesis’ has been translated as ‘self-discipline’ and ‘self denial’ and that asceticism forms the ‘foundation stone of all spiritual practices’. Its literal translation is ‘exercise’. ‘Asceticism, then, is a series of spiritual exercises designed to train the body, the mind and the soul.’ 

As a nun of Annwn in the making I can relate to much of what Kingsnorth is saying. As an animist and polytheist I perceive technology and the internet to be a living being with a will of its own although I’m not sure it can be reduced to one supposedly evil spirit. I tend to see it as the co-creation of many humans and many Gods, some more benevolent, some more malevolent. Unfortunately as the hunting ground of many malicious humans and non-human entities including the one I identified as the King of Distractions last week.

I personally do not agree with the statement that ‘the sacred and the digital don’t mix’ are ‘fatal to each other’ ‘in metaphysical opposition.’ I think their relationship is more complex and ambiguous. The internet can certainly steer us away from the sacred if we’re mindlessly scrolling or using it merely for entertainment. Yet it can help us deepen our relationship with the sacred if used mindfully to view content and engage in dialogue that is thoughtful and meaningful. 

Without the internet I would not have managed to reach the small but much appreciated audience I have today through my blogging and my books. The Monastery of Annwn would not exist as a virtual space of sanctuary where members feel safe to converse on the deeper aspects of spiritual practice and we wouldn’t be able to hold on-line meditations and events.

Although I didn’t have a name for it ‘technological askesis’ is something I have been practicing for a while. Firstly by leaving social media. More recently by blocking off my time on week days from when I get up at 4am until around 3pm to focus on my spiritual practice and writing and only when I have done my deeper work answering emails and using the internet. 

This has helped me to be more focused and less scattered. It hasn’t been easy – not being able to check my emails has been like an itch I can’t scratch and I’ll admit I’ve given in to checking them again at around 6pm ‘just in case there’s anything I need to deal with so I can relax for the evening.’ It’s possible next week I will set them back to 6pm so I only need to check them once and I might even try a day without checking them at all (!).

As I write this I see that going to such lengths and the amount of restraint I am having to use shows that I am under the sway of forces difficult to control within and without. I have an addiction to checking my emails and my blog and much of it comes from anxiety so might be labelled ‘email/blog anxiety’. I get anxious about ‘missing something’ or having one or more email or blog comment that is long or difficult to answer and getting overwhelmed. My checking is for reassurance – making sure ‘there are none there.’ 

Of course this is a bit silly as I have placed strict limitations on what I subscribe to and my communications and correspondences are usually from friends and thus friendly and encouraging and usually quite positive. 

I think when tackling the internet the best way forward is being mindful of how we are relating to it in terms both of our inner impulses and the forces without. Of how we are using it and how it is using us. Of the complex net of relationships it has brought us into, friendly and unfriendly, human and non-human.

  1. ‘The Universal’ HERE ‘The ‘Neon God’ HERE
  2. Ahriman’s nature is described by John R. Hinnel: ‘He is the demon of demons, and dwells in an abyss of endless darkness in the north, the traditional home of the demons. Ignorance, harmfulness, and disorder are the characteristics of Ahriman. He can change his outward form and appear as a lizard, a snake, or a youth. His aim is always to destroy the creation of [Ahura Mazda] and to this end he follows behind the creator’s work, seeking to spoil it. As Ahura Mazda creates life, Ahriman creates death; for health, he produces disease; for beauty, ugliness. All man’s ills are due entirely to Ahriman.’ HERE

Barbed Points

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An antlered skull
over

a
slither
of eternity

two bare feet

the
grooving
splintering
of bone

plucked
from your crown
and worked

into
a point
of beauty
and

barbarity

killed
and killer
as one

In 11,500BC Horace the Elk was killed by a combination of flint-tipped instruments and a barbed point that had lodged in his rib cage. Another barbed point was found embedded in the metatarsal bone in his left foot. The lesion formed around it suggests it had been there for around two weeks.

The barbed points used to kill Horace the Elk are the oldest known in Britain. Because they have only one barbed edge they are known as uniserial rather than biserial. Uniserial barbed points have been found across present-day England and Scotland and have been dated to between 11,500 and 8000BC.

All the barbed points were made specifically from red deer antler with a few examples from elk. I have been unable, as yet, to find out what material was used to killed Horace, but as elk and reindeer were the predominant species rather than red deer in 11,500BC, I suspect it was elk antler.

What intrigues me is the use of antler rather than other bones. This suggests antlers were chosen by the logic of sympathetic magic. As the primary ‘weapon’ of the elk and deer stags they were likely to have been seen as imbued with fierceness and strength and perhaps with the spirit of the dead animal.

Barbed points were made by the ‘groove and splinter’ technique. This involved cutting grooves lengthwise along the antler then splintering out long strips of bone. Afterwards, though processes of cutting, scraping, and filing, the barbs, tip, and haft were shaped before the point was fastened to its shaft.

For an animistic people this was no doubt a sacred process in which the maker of the barbed point engaged with the spirit of the dead animal and perhaps called for aid from the ancestors and hunter gods. A hunter deity may have been seen as a tutelary figure, perhaps part-human, part-animal, who passed on the knowledge of hunting to his or her people. The finished product would have been viewed as alive, inspirited, having its own personhood.

Barbed points have been referred to as ‘the dominant symbol’ of the Mesolithic like the stone axes of the Neolithic. At Star Carr, in the Vale of Pickering, in north Yorkshire, 191 barbed points were deposited in Lake Flixton along with 102 red deer antlers and 21 antler frontlets that may have been used in hunting rites. The points may have been made from the antler removed from the frontlets. Their return to their place of manufacture seems significant as does their ‘making whole’ by their deposition.

Star Carr was occupied from 9335 – 8440BC. It was a place where the identities of human and deer were intertwined. Where dead deer were brought to be eaten, barbed points for hunting deer were created from their antlers, and to which the points were returned. The start and end point of a cycle based around the lives and deaths of humans and deer.

The shift from the Mesolithic barbed point to the Neolithic axe as the primary deposition symbolises the change from the focus on hunting to shaping the land and from the use of bone to stone. Stone was no doubt easier to get hold of and perhaps stronger, but not linked to an animal. The sacred connection between killer and killed was severed and, with the later discoveries of bronze and iron, would not be revived again. An early step on the way to our loss of an animistic worldview and our relationship with the animals we kill and eat and with the hunter gods.

*My main source for this post was Benjamin Joseph Elliott’s massively informative PhD thesis ‘Antlerworking Practices in Mesolithic Britain’ (University of York, 2012).

Dragonfly Vision

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The dragonfly
his face is very nearly
only eye!’
Chisoku*

‘His face is very nearly only eye’. To look into the eyes of a dragonfly, to imagine seeing through them takes us beyond the limits of human eyesight and perception back to a more primordial way of seeing.

Unlike humans, whose eyes have only one lens, dragonflies have compound eyes. Their eyes are composed of 30,000 facets called ommatidia (from Greek ommat ‘eye’) and each has its own lens. This results in a single mosaic image, formed from many pixels of light.

Each ommatidium contains a series of light-sensitive cells called opsids. Whilst humans have only three types of opsins, allowing them to see green, red, and blue light, dragonflies have between 11 and 30. This means they see in ultra-multicolour and can perceive ultraviolet and polarised light.

Their swift judgement of the speed and direction of prey arises from them having three additional smaller eyes called ocelli, which transmit vision to the motor centres in just a fraction of a second. This is the basis of their skills as acrobatic hunters who are able to pick out a single insect from a swarm.

Their perception of time is also very different to that of humans. Whereas we see 60 images per second they see 300 images per second. This means they experience the world five times slower than us.

The earliest eyes began developing from simple eyespots – patches of photoreceptor cells – during the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago. The first creatures to possess them were arthropods such as Fuxianhuia protensa and Anomolocaris (which, akin to dragonflies, had over 16, 700 lenses in each eye). The development of eyesight played a major role in the ‘arms race’ of the Cambrian explosion.

Dragonflies were amongst the first winged insects to evolve 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. That their eyes have remained unchanged suggests they have achieved a degree of perfection.

It is near-impossible to imagine seeing like a dragonfly – 30,000 pixels of light forming an ultra-multicoloured image 300 times per second. We can only guess at the brightness and intensity of their world. Apparently because the upward facing eye has receptors for only blue and UV the sky looks exceptionally bright. The longer light waves are picked up by the downward facing eye. Perhaps seeing not only more intensely but more slowly makes up for what seems like a short life to us.

Dragonflies not only look beautiful but what they see could be of a beauty far beyond human perception. In their ability to bring together what is fragmented and to be open to far more waves of light we glimpse an older and deeper way of perceiving. This might appear inaccessible until we remember that we have evolved from creatures like Fuxianhuia protensa, Anomolocaris, and Odanata (dragonflies).

The Brythonic bard, Taliesin, lists all the animals he has been – a blue salmon, a dog, a stag, a roebuck. This provides evidence for ancient British beliefs in reincarnation and may be suggestive of a shapeshifting tradition in which bards learnt to become and see through the eyes of different creatures.

For us, in the modern world, this would mean setting aside the presuppositions of our rational and scientific worldview and learning to listen to, become, and see through the eyes of the non-human world again. Perhaps, if we could relearn to see like a dragonfly, we might be able to bring together the fragments of our world in a new mosaic – a dragonfly vision- that could provide guidance for the future?

*I first saw this quote in the visitor centre at Risley Moss where I was doing a tree identification course with the Carbon Landscapes Partnership a couple of days ago.

SOURCES

Catherine Brahic, ‘Dragonfly Eyes See the World in Ultra-Multicolour’, New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27015-dragonfly-eyes-see-the-world-in-ultra-multicolour/ (accessed 16/11/2019)
Grrlscientist, ‘30,000 Facets Give Dragonflies a Different Perspective: The Big Compound Eye in the Sky’, Science Blogs, https://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2009/07/08/30000-facets-give-dragonflies (accessed 16/11/2019)
Kate Hazelhurst and Lisa Hendry, ‘Eyes on the prize: the evolution of vision’, Natural History Museum, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/eyes-on-the-prize-evolution-of-vision.html (accessed 17/11/2019)
Marged Haycock (transl), Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, (CMCS, 2007)
Mashpi Lodge, ‘Dragonfly Vision’, National Geographic, https://www.mashpilodge.com/blog/dragonfly-vision/ (accessed 16/11/2019)
Roaring Earth Staff, ‘Dragonfly Experiences Time in Slow-Motion’, Roaring Earth, https://roaring.earth/dragonflies-see-time-slower/ (accessed 16/11/2019)

The Death of a Dragonfly

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Dyed he is with the
Colour of autumnal days,
O red dragonfly.
Hori Bakusui

It was an accident. Still, if I’d accidentally killed a human I’d have been jailed for murder. I’m often killing midges, greenflies, flies, as I cycle down the Guild Wheel along the Ribble to Brockholes Nature Reserve. Not on purpose of course – they just have a terrible habit of getting in my eyes, in my mouth, down my top. It’s said there were more flying insects before cyclists, cars, climate change…

I’m not sure why killing a dragonfly somehow seems worse than killing all those tiny things. I didn’t even see him. I was too busy thinking about the fantasy novel that I was planning to set in a marshland and how the flora and fauna of Brockholes, as a wetland nature reserve, might inspire me.

Thinking not listening. There was just a buzzing at my neck and a kind of crackling against my skin. Without thinking I swatted at it compulsively, then stopped in a panic, fearful of what I’d done. Looking down, for a moment I felt relief, seeing what looked like a twig before I realised it was a ruddy abdomen. Severed from it a furred red-brown thorax, two cobwebby filmy wings, and a head with two huge dark red globular eyes and three small eyes that, between them, didn’t see me coming.

I didn’t know what he was right then, that he was a he, or a common darter. Only that I’d killed a dragonfly. I laid the broken pieces at the side of the cycle way with an apology to dragonfly kind and rode onward more slowly, more aware of other ruddy darters rising from where they were basking on the path. After I’d arrived, locked up my bike, they haunted me for the short period I was there. Flying in front of me, landing on the wooden walkways and handrails.

One, in particular, caught my eye. Beholden by the huge round portals of his eyes I drowned in the utter inadequacy of not knowing what he was thinking. Did he know I was a murderer? Did he know what I was? Could he sense my awkward reaching? My overall impression was one of curiosity. That it seemed likely he was thinking dragonfly thoughts distant from my own – trying to place this gigantic monster with its small eyes within his brief sunlit world of eating and flying and mating.

Dragonflies are old. The oldest fossils date back to the Carboniferous period – 350 million years ago. They spend most of their lives as nymphs, living for up to four years in muddy waters. They then crawl up the stem of a plant and shed their nymph-skin, emerging as dragonflies, leaving behind the exuvia. In the brief six months of their adult life they feed on smaller flying insects and find a mate, in an acrobatic display forming a spectacular mating wheel, then afterwards the female lays her eggs on the leaves of plants or in the water. Death follows shortly and the life cycle begins again.

It’s impossible to know if that dragonfly had fulfilled his life’s purpose before I killed him. And, of course, in that all-too-human way that has reduced the earth and its creatures to resources, I’m searching for a meaning, like nature is here to teach us lessons. I can’t help it. That’s human nature.

And it’s pretty obvious, slow down, listen, maybe just maybe I’m heading off on the wrong path trying to write a fantasy novel about an imaginary marshland when our existing wetlands need our voices. Making up new creatures when it may be more valuable to introduce people to Sympetrum striolatum ‘common darter’, Sympetrum sanguineum ‘ruddy darter’, Anax imperator ‘emperor dragonfly’.

This is leading me to think that, rather than writing second world fantasy, I might be best off writing a novelset in this landscape, but further back in time. Not only before the wetlands, the marshes, the peat bogs, the lakes, were drained off, but before the people lost their spiritual relationship with the land.

I’ve long been drawn to the archaeological evidence for the ancient marsh-dwellers in my local area. During the Romano-British period they were known as the Setantii ‘The Dwellers in the Water Country’ but had lived here far longer. Here, on Penwortham Marsh (now drained) and not far from the river Ribble (now moved) they had a Bronze Age Lake Village evidenced by the remains of a wooden platform, dug-out canoes, a bronze spearhead, 30 human skulls, and skulls of aurochs and deer. There were numerous other settlements such as those beside the great lakes Marton Mere and Martin Mere (now drained), wooden trackways such as Kate’s Pad, and the (now lost) Port of the Setantii.

If I was to write about that time, rather than making up critters and magic and gods and monsters, I would be able to draw upon the real magic of an animistic and shamanistic culture rooted in a lived relationship with the ‘water country’ – its reeds and rushes, its wetland birds, its dragonflies and damselflies. With the spirits of the ancestors, gods we know throughthe Romans, such as Belisama and Nodens, and those who are unknown such as the goddess I know as Anrhuna, Mother of the Marsh.

That dragonfly was one of her children perhaps. She who has been here as the marshland since, at least, the thaw of the Ice Age and thousands of years of water country, these last four centuries of its draining off, and is still here in the last remnants preserved by wetland nature reserves such as Brockholes.

Would it be too very human to read, in an unlucky accident, a message from a goddess?

O red dragonfly,
Colour of autumnal days,
Dyed he is with the

Mother of the Marsh
Returned to mud and water
Rest well O red one.

***

Those who follow this blog will note this event has led me to returning to its old name ‘From Peneverdant’. This was the name of my hometown of Penwortham in the Doomsday Book and signals a homecoming from an exodus through Welsh mythology and Annwn. It makes sense in relation to my lifelong dedication to Gwyn, here, in January.