Traditional Medicine and Shamanism: An In-Depth Journey

One of the fundamental doors to reach this state of sublimation is the shamanic ecstasy, which grants the subject a return to the primordiality that precedes what is symbolically understood as the fall from the state of grace, sometimes understood as a sort of evolutionary attempt to expand the genetic consciousness. In other words, the …

Shaman comes from the Tungú language and originally meant “to know.” Others attribute it to Sanskrit and relate it rather to the term “ascetic,” the knowledge or mastery to which the word refers is related to the spirit world, so we can conclude that shaman means “one who is knowledgeable of the spirit world,” such wisdom somehow indicates the communion and control over them according to the interest of the shaman. Shamanism is, in turn, linked to a non-ordinary vision of the world, of analogical thinking, and the shaman is assumed to have gone through different stages of pain and closeness to death to have acquired this knowledge.

The emotions and primordial elements used by shamans in authority are the same as those used in times past and are similar in different cultures in different parts of the world. To contact people who practice this art, it is generally necessary to leave behind the context of the metropolis and travel to more distant places on the margins of civilization. Shamanism is thus presented to us as something that goes beyond the everyday and finds its maximum expression in virgin land, where the senses are maximized by that which is still untouched by man’s hand. The shaman, in turn, is presented to us as that primordial connection with other worlds that escape our mundane understanding of reality and may seem exotic at first glance.

How effective are shamanic rituals and the use of plants in the physical and the various elements that are relevant in the mental healing of the patient in this process? First, it is important to analyze the atmospheric factor; since these types of rituals often occur in the jungle or a place considered “wild,” it is important to see how this affects the mind of both the patient and the shaman.

According to anthropologist Michael Taussig, a large part of the wild territory where these rituals take place happens to be far from social and moral sanction, it is a territory where passions are more at the surface and become magnified with fewer restrictions. This process can be seen in the film Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola, in which the soldiers protagonists go deeper into the heart of the jungle, and while doing so, they are also losing their distance from civilization and slowly approaching what is called “the heart of darkness,” where the barriers of what is permissible in civilization are becoming shorter. It is in a similar atmosphere that, in most cases, the shamanic rite takes place, and I believe that this has a catalytic effect on the mind of the one who participates in this ritual, a catalyzation in whatever the intention of the shaman is upon the subject.

Taussig explains that in the jungle, there is a loss of both the rational and the civilizational, as well as a sense of home, heritage, and belonging that is somehow liberating but simultaneously makes one lose oneself, leading to a kind of terror state. Terror often serves as a teaching tool that allows the individual to come face to face with his dark side. It is, therefore, the savage atmosphere, an element that plays a fundamental role throughout the ritual and is opposed to the civilized world in which the subject is annulled under the fetishism of objects, denaturalizing him. In the civilized world, man has many artificial external objects to which to cling, constituting a sort of “refuge” against the more primordial thoughts of death and survival, which are evident in the savage environment.

It is in this space that one enters a mental state of death, which ultimately represents a transformation of the psyche that allows for a more vivid experience of life that is very different from the state of civilized life, where the subject becomes more of an empty object, especially in more authoritarian contexts where the subject becomes more objectified and has less contact with himself as an organic being as such.

The space of death found in the context of savagery leads to an internal mortification of the subject that guides him to descend to the depths of his being, subsequently allowing him a new ascent towards clarity; somehow, this can acquire a highly therapeutic element, as Stanton Marlan points out throughout his work regarding therapy called The Black Sun. Here, he tells us about the therapeutic value of the descent into the darkest and least visited states of consciousness, basically proposing the idea that having reached the deepest, most sordid, and darkest, an ascent is what is expected afterward.

This atmosphere comes to transform whoever enters it, even the most civilized person. Taussig goes so far as to describe it as a magical vortex that absorbs those not born into it or even as an atmosphere where barbarism and a break with certain civilizing precepts are more likely to be found. In any case, what is evident to us is that the savage atmosphere has a transformative, destructive, and sometimes regenerative effect (if the shock is not excessive) on the psyche of a human, the chants or icareos that sometimes tell stories that serve as a guide during a particular journey according to anthropologist Levi-Strauss and thus provide a point of reference for those who are subject to the guidance of the shaman.

It should be known that the shamanic ritual is quite compatible with the wild atmosphere since it seeks to free us from the five senses world. In turn, for Eliade, it seeks to make him descend to hell or the most radical state of consciousness for the subsequent healing of the soul of the sick person. Within this path of descent of the consciousness, there are common elements for different cases, and one of the most important that I believe convenient to mention would be that of the bridge, this can be represented during the ritual by an object or image that emulates it and has as function the union between the earthly world and the spiritual world, worlds that in the past were more interconnected but whose transit has become more difficult. The ritual serves, then, as a method to create an interconnection between both worlds that helps to transform the spirit of the affected person.

This transition across the bridge is represented in many traditions and is always referred to as a passage to an extremely dangerous afterlife precisely because of its unknown nature. The bridge itself is recognized as being of an extremely subtle and fine nature and therein lies the difficulty in reaching it, and it is in accordance with this subtle nature that one who attempts to cross it must also become as subtle as possible.

This state of subtleness may require arduous training that many times includes constituent diets in the ingestion of foods low in salt or sugar; these foods can be liquefied plants or seeds that help to purge the organism in question. Many times, to reach this state of sublimation, shamans seek to invite different gods and spirits to descend the “ladder” mentioned above and assist them in their difficulty; this can sometimes be accompanied by chants that seek to accompany the soul of the patient on his way.

For Strauss, shamanic chanting also has other therapeutic uses, such as assistance in difficult births in which a battle is sometimes narrated between the forces of the shaman and the misguided spirit. In this particular context it should be remembered that evil is often understood as deviation rather than as evil in itself, as an immanent force that has gone out of control and leads to a simulated spiritual combat. The shamanic chanting, in this case, for example, can become the manipulation of a physiological organ using a psychological technique, thus becoming an effective and verifiable cure because it makes a situation that would otherwise be overwhelming for the patient thinkable and more tolerable and even more so if it is within a logical belief system. This psychological manipulation opens up a new understanding of the mind-body relationship and the capacity of mental suggestion to treat ailments that, in the face of these rituals, seem to lose their merely physiological quality, thus putting in check various biologistic and physicalistic reductionisms.

One of the fundamental doors to reach this state of sublimation is the shamanic ecstasy, which grants the subject a return to the primordiality that precedes what is symbolically understood as the fall from the state of grace, sometimes understood as a sort of evolutionary attempt to expand the genetic consciousness. In other words, the fall from the state of grace can be understood as the will of a supra-consciousness to rebel against itself to grow on other levels.

Shamanic ecstasy, by constituting a return to the primal, is therefore also a sign that the human being’s own polarity has been abolished or transcended, leaving aside the merely human being and reaching the state of being spirit. This state of transcendence of polarity can be understood as a return to childhood and can, in turn, be achieved with the assistance of powerful hallucinatory plants such as yagué which, for example, has the effect of awakening and “opening” the human body, aligning his forces with those of the stars and merging him with the universe, thus being a revolutionary plant since it deprograms the individual from his previous conceptions.

Transcendence also occurs at a vision level; according to researcher Aeolus Kephas, there is something called “lucid vision” that occurs when the right hemisphere is united with the left (i.e., the logical part joining the creative part, intuition to reason) to end up forming a transcendental vision of reality. In a way, it is this type of vision that is sought through shamanic action.

For Robert Lamb, the use of plants can also be used to exalt the ordinary senses and, for example, to see at night with greater precision in the middle of wild territory, thus being able to integrate a large part of the external world to the internal world, the patient being able to integrate with the reality that surrounds him. This type of effect is common in the use of plants such as ayahuasca. The repetition of this type of shamanic session can develop clairvoyant qualities as long as a special discipline is followed when performing them. It must be understood that the plant by itself only shows the way and certain methods to reach the realization, but it is the subject who must make use of the tools that are given to him. It is important to point out that sometimes, some plants can cause, in the first instance, an effect of nervous discomfort and fever that gradually transforms into well-being; this can be understood as a symbolic ascension from darkness to light, as mentioned above. In any case, the first use of hallucinogenic plants is always a shock.

The ethnobotanist Terrence Mc Keena points out that throughout history, human beings have avoided contact with this type of experiences because they do not respond to immediate survival needs but rather constitute escape tubes to a type of non-immediate knowledge that could have a relevant effect on the needs of daily life. In this way, the use of these plants could be contemplated in the first instance as recreational, explorative, and ludic, but also as a tool for expansion, knowledge, and even as an evolutionary assistant.

Every shamanic ritual constitutes a deprogramming, or if we want to understand it in another way, an initiatory rite towards something unknown and new. The initiatory value here is the transformation of the human being into something he was not, a trans-mutative effect at the most ontological level of the person that serves to leave aside old ties and reach new levels of consciousness.

Before this rite, catalytic elements such as fasting, contemplation, the use of chanting and chanting or meditation can be used as they are used in different regions of India. Fasting represents a sensitization of his digestive system by starving, which helps to purify his organism and to discard more freely what is left over. This type of method presents an alternative that allows us to do without substances when we want to reach similar states; however, especially if we are going to use powerful hallucinogenic substances, having a good teacher is essential to achieve the expected results, otherwise, the patient could be in danger. Ironically, within the popular imaginary it is believed that the use of hallucinogenic plants leads to madness, however, we have for example the use of yagué as a cure for madness.

Madness can be understood as an imbalance of energies, and hallucinogenic plants, as mentioned above, usually have the effect of confronting the person with his own darkness; in this case, it could cause an imbalance of energies. Often, this can be due to attachments, uncontrolled anger, affective disorders, or traumas of which one has no memory. Many times, during these extra-sensory psychedelic trips, the user can experience regressions to moments of his life that he does not remember, but that could have had a traumatic effect on him and, therefore, triggered other disorders.

The use of hallucinogenic plants, however, could have played an important role in reaching new states of consciousness at the beginning by inviting primitive man to reflect and later to communicate his reflections with his fellows, in this way, we have an element that could have distinguished us as a species concerning other hominids, that state of abstraction could have given him the awareness of present, past and future values, as well as advanced forms of abstract reasoning. This use is taboo according to the modern worldview because of a predisposition to see the ecstasy and exaltation of consciousness as restricted elements, as well as sexuality, which can often be exacerbated if the plant or ritual in question has an erotic or aphrodisiac effect.

In conclusion, we can understand the shamanic ritual in its healing aspect as a means of psychic healing that affects the biological, absorbs the person in a new level of consciousness that allows him to transcend the foggy limitations that prevent him from seeing the true nature of his discomfort. In its expansive aspect, we can understand it as an expansion of the ordinary state of consciousness, as a reaching of the lucid vision, or as a stairway to another dimension, depending on how you want to see it. Even in the case of skeptics, it is difficult to deny the factual state of the subjective experience of this type of ritual, as many have testified to its effect.

 

Sources

Taussig, M. (1996). Shamanism: A study in colonialism, and terror and the wild man healing. Chicago

Mc Keena, T. (1992). Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution. New York

Marlan, S. (2008). The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness. New York

Córdova, M. (1985). Rio Tigre y más allá: La medicina de la Selva del Amazonas. New York

Eliade, M. (1951). El chamanismo y las técnicas arcaicas del éxtasis (ed., Vol., pp.). México, Fondo de cultura económica

Kephas, A. (2004). The Lucid View: Investigations Into Occultism, Ufology and Paranoid Awareness.

Kephas, A. (2009). Homo Serpiens: An Occult History of DNA From Eden to Armageddon, Kempton, Illinois

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1987). Antropología Estructural . Paidos Iberica.

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