Siberian

Siberian The healer and magician

The majority of Native American Indians believe that there are three worlds: The Lower World representing such things as landscape, the Middle World where we live in the present, and the Upper World above us in the angelic realms. Shaman are able to travel between these worlds while in a trance and it is these worlds that they meet spirits, and learn lessons and find answers to questions.

The Native American Indians are said to possess the wisdom and knowledge of generations that stretch back thousands of years, with a sacred belief in the need to appreciate and be thankful for all that life provides.

The most distinctive spiritual specialists among indigenous peoples are the shamans. They are called by many names, but the Siberian word "shaman" is used as a generic term by scholars for those who offer themselves as mystical intermediaries between the physical and the non-physical world for specific purposes, such as healing. According to archaeological research, shamanic methods are extremely ancient- at least twenty to thirty thousand years old.

Ways of becoming a shaman and practicing shamanic arts are remarkably similar around the globe. Shamans may be helpers to society, using their skills to benefit others. very very important. Spiritual power is neutral; its use depends on the practitioner. A shaman may thus be either a causer or healer of sickness. In either case, what Native Americans call "medicine power" does not originate in the medicine person. Shamanism is not Native American at all. The word derived from Siberia, and was used by Carlos Castenada to explain what Mexican magical people did because they had no word for magic.

Black Elk explains.......

"Of course it was not I who cured. It was the power from the outer world, and the visions and ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-legged. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through"

There are many kinds of medicine. One is the ability to heal physical, psychological and spiritual problems. Techniques used include physical approaches to illness such as therapeutic herbs, dietary recommendations, sweat bathing, massage, cauterization and sucking out of toxins. But the treatments are given to the whole person body, mind and spirit, with special emphasis on healing relationships within the group - so there may also be metaphysical divination, prayer, chanting,and ceremonies in which group power is built up and spirit helpers are called in. If an intrusion of harmful power, such as angry energy or another person, seems to be causing the problem, the medicine person may attempt to suck it out with the aid of spirit helpers, and then dry vomit the invisible intrusion into a receptacle.

These shamanic healing methods, once dismissed as quackery, are now beginning to earn respect from the scientific medical establishment. Medicine people are permitted to attend indigenous patients in some hospitals.

In addition to healing, certain shamans are thought to have gifts such as talking with plants and animals, controlling weather, seeing and communicating with the spirit world and prophesying. A gift highly developed in Africa is that of divination, using techniques such as reading patterns revealed by a casting of cowrie shells.

The role of shaman may be hereditary or it may be recognized as a special gift. Either way, training is rigorous. In order to work in a mystical state of ecstasy, moving between ordinary and non-ordinary realities, shamans may experience physical death and rebirth. Some have spontaneous near-death experiences. Uvavnuk, an Inuit shaman, was spiritually initiated when she was struck by a lightning ball. After she revived, she had great power, which she dedicated to serving her people.

The great sea has set me in motion set me adrift,
Moving me as a the weed moves in a river
the arch of sky and mightiness of storms
have moved the spirit within me till I am carried away
trembling with joy

Other potential shamans undergo rituals of purification, isolation and bodily torment until they make contact with the spirit world. Igjugarjuk from northern Hudson Bay chose to suffer from cold, starvation, and thirst for a month in a tiny snow hut in order to draw the attention of Pinga, a helping female spirit.

"My novitiate took place in the middle of the coldest winter, and I, who never got anything to warm me, and must not move, was very cold, and it was so tiring having to sit without daring to lie down, that sometimes it was as if I died a little. Only towards the end of the thirty days did a helping spirit come to me, a lovely and beautiful helping spirit, whom I had never thought of; it was a white woman; she came to me whilst I had collapsed, exhausted, and was sleeping. But still I saw her lifelike, hovering over me, and from that day I could not close my eyes or dream without seeing her.... She came to me from Pinga and was a sign that Pinga had now noticed me and would give me powers that would make me a shaman."

The helping spirits that contact would-be shamans during the death and re-birth crisis become essential partners in the shamans's sacred work. Often it is a spirit animal who becomes the shaman's guardian spirit, giving him or her special powers. The shaman may even take on the persona of the animal while working. Many tribes feel that healing shamans need the power of the bear; Lapp shamans metamorphosed into wolves, reindeer, bears, or fish.

Not only do shamans often posses a power animal as an alter-ego, they also have the ability to enter parallel, spiritual realities at will in order to bring back knowledge, power or help for those who need it. An altered state of consciousness is needed. Techniques for entering this state are the same around the world: drumming, rattling, singing, dancing and in some cases hallucinogenic drugs. The effect of these influences is to open what the Huichol shamans of Mexico call the Narieka- the doorway of the heart, the channel for divine power, the point where human and spirit worlds meet. It is often experienced and represented artistically as a pattern of concentric circles.

The "journey" then experienced by shamans is typically into the Upperworld or the Lowerworld. To enter the latter, they descend mentally through an actual hole in the ground, such as a spring, a hollow tree, cave, animal burrow, or a special ceremonial hole regarded as a navel of the earth. These entrances typically lead into tunnels which if followed open into bright landscapes. Reports of such experiences include not only what the journeyer saw but also realistic physical sensations, such as how the walls of the tunnel felt during the descent.

The shaman enters into the Lowerworld landscape, encounters beings there, and may bring something back if it is needed by the client. This may be a lost guardian spirit or a lost soul, brought back to revive a person in a coma. The shaman may be temporarily possessed by the spirits of departed relatives so that an afflicted patient may finally clear up unresolved tensions with them that are seen as causing illness. Often a river must be crossed as the boundary between the of the living and the world of the dead. In West African tradition, there are three rivers separating these worlds and one must cross them by canoe. In another common variant, the journeyer crosses the underworld river on a bridge guarded by some anima. Often a kindly old man or woman appears to assist this passage through the underworld. This global shamanic process is retained only in myths, such as the Orpheus story, in cultures that have subdued the indigenous ways.