Shamanism
In Siberia,Shamans would often go into a trance, frenzied or passive, to heal the sick, change weather, fortell the future, and converse with spirits.
In South/Central America, Catholic priests met people who consumed intoxicated drinks to have spiritual experiences.
In South Africa, missionaries saw people who often dance till nostrils poured from their nose, they were dancing for the Kaggen, which translated means Mantis, one of his manifestations, but white settlers translated it to “the Devil."
The irony in all this is europeans seeing this as primitive, but in Judeo-Christain tradition, estatic revelations and visions are also common.
Altered States of Consciousness:
Shamanism relies on induction, control, and exploitation of altered states of consciousness. These days neuropsychological research can know a lot on Upper Paleolithic people in altered states. There is the alert consciousness, and there is also the deep trance that many explorers observed. In alert consciousness there is the “light” altered states, an inward state like daydreaming, There is also dreaming, and lucid dreaming where you are aware that you are dreaming. Then there are deep states, seeing things that aren’t there, like hallucinations, which is a trance state. Medical problems can cause hallucinations, like epilepsy, migraines, or schizophrenia, but there are also psychotropic drugs like LSD, or sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, pain, dancing, rhymes sound, drumming and chanting.
Stages of Trance:
One: seeing geometric forms like dots, zigzags, grids, circles,etc.
Two: subjects try to take geometric shapes and associating them with religious or emotional significance.
Three: Subjects hallucinate what they expect to hallucinate. subjects feel drawn to by a tunnel. When you emerge from the tunnel it’s a world of monsters, people, and settings, where the subjects interact more, feeling like they can fly or change into animals.
Diversity and Unity of Shamanism.
Shamans can be strikingly different all around the world, however, it is the similarities despite their differences in culture/customs/time periods that is even more striking, which may be because of the way the human nervous system behaves in altered states.
Chapter 5: The Shamanic World
There are four elements that have resulted in the creation of the complex caves done by the Upper Paleolithic people throughout the wide spaces of time.
One: the topography of the cave/passges/chambers on helping or hindering shamanism aspects.
Two: the universal functioning of the human nervous system and how it functions in altered states
Three: Customs of the people throughout time, social conditions, cosmologies, religious beliefs.
Four: How people exploited all these for their purposes and advantages.
Embellished Chambers: it seems large chambers in caves were the primary spots for multiple people to gather and work on cave imagery. But because these chambers are isolated physically from eh world,it suggests social separation, and an important stage in a shamanic journey. Embellished chambers maybe also have ties to power in the communities in the area. That, for example, the better decorated caves may show a group’s better access to the knowledge of the underworld.
Passages:
These would lead to the embellished chambers. Claviform’s are used in special places where imagery commences, as transitions, at the ends of caves, and entrances, like in the Niaux cave. There are also passages with nothing in them, but perhaps that was part of the shamanic journey to experience nothing before reaching spaces with images and actives.
Small Chambers and Recesses:
In extremely cramped conditions big enough for only two art was still made. There were also cuts/lines in the rocks, but perhaps they were done to allow supernatural powers/animals to escape and help establish some sort of relationship with the maker and the underworld. Perhaps even, in these small sensory deprived space psychotropic drugs were used to induce hallucinations, and animal hallucinations that they would then draw on the walls.
