Many Spirits
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
—William Shakespeare, Henry IV
For shamans, the answer to Hotspur’s question is “yes, the spirits will come.” For shamans reside in a living, conscious universe teeming with spirits that exert an enormous influence on individuals and the tribe.
Ordinary people are largely helpless victims who have little control over the spirits. Their only recourse is to pray, to sacrifice, to obey the tribal taboos, or to have the shaman intercede on their behalf. For the shaman alone can control spirits. Indeed, for many anthropologists, this control is a defining characteristic of shamans. But in order to control the spirits, shamans must first learn to see them.
SPIRIT VISION
Since the spirits are usually invisible to the untutored eye, a major part of shamanic training involves acquiring the power of “spirit vision” by which they can be recognized. This accounts, said Eliade, for “the extreme importance of ‘spirit visions’ in all varieties of shamanic initiations.”83
Given the value of this spirit vision, it is not surprising that considerable effort is invested in acquiring it. The spirits are usually sought under specific conditions that enhance awareness of visual images, conditions such as ASCs and reduced lighting. For example, the Jivaro Indian initiate of South America may spend days fasting and ingesting drugs until finally a spirit is seen. In another tribe, the instructor rubs herbs on the eyes of the apprentice and then:
For three days and nights the two men sit opposite each other, singing and ringing their bells. Until the eyes of the boy are clear, neither of the two men obtains any sleep. At the end of the three days the two again go to the woods and obtain more herbs....if at the end of seven days the boy sees the wood-spirits, the ceremony is at an end. Otherwise the entire seven day ceremony must be repeated.215
How does spirit vision develop? One psychological explanation is that shamans learn to recognize and interpret the flux of visual images seen during altered states. If you close your eyes right now, especially in a darkened room, and gaze into the inner space of awareness, you will gradually become aware of a kaleidoscopic flux of visual images. In altered states these images can become more distinct, meaningful, and archetypal.
Shamans may organize this flux into spirits and other images consistent with their expectations. A study of Zinacanteco natives of Mexico revealed significant perceptual differences between shamans and non-shamans.336 When shown a series of blurred, out-of-focus photographs and asked what they saw, shamans were much less likely than non-shamans to say “I don’t know,” even when the photographs were blurred to the point of being completely unrecognizable. Furthermore, when the experimenter offered suggestions as to what the image might be, shamans were more likely to ignore the suggestions and to give their own personal interpretations.
These findings indicate that shamans can create meaningful patterns from unclear data, organizing ambiguous experiences into coherent, meaningful images. Moreover, for shamans these images are likely to reflect their own personal categories and worldview. This suggests that shamans are adept at finding what they expect to see. Consequently, they may be particularly able to find spirits amid the many images they encounter during their séances. Of course, it remains for future research to see whether these findings hold for shamans in other parts of the world.
The psychologist Richard Noll has suggested that shamans may also be intense fantasizers.260 Studies of excellent hypnotic subjects suggest that some 4 percent of the population are so-called “fantasy-prone” personalities. These are people who “fantasize a large part of the time, who typically ‘see,’ ‘hear,’ ‘smell,’ ‘touch,’ and fully experience what they fantasize.”414 Perhaps some shamans are “fantasy-prone” personalities who are able to organize and learn from their intense images in personally and socially beneficial ways.
The term “fantasy” is sometimes used derogatorily, as in idle daydreaming. However, at its deepest, imagery may open into profound, revelatory visions. This is not to say that psychological processes fully account for experiences of spirits or that spirits are only visual images. But whatever the nature of spirits, shamans clearly exemplify the words of the great sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus who claimed that “everyone may educate and regulate his imagination so as to come thereby into contact with spirits, and be taught by them.”263
Stabilizing Spirit Vision
The novice’s task of learning to see the spirits involves two stages. The first is simply to catch an initial glimpse of them. The second is to develop a permanent visionary capacity in which the spirits can be summoned and seen or felt at will. In Eliade’s words:
All this long and tiring ceremony has as its object transforming the apprentice magician’s initial and momentary and ecstatic experience…into a permanent condition—that in which it is possible to see the spirits.83
This is the “challenge of stabilization,” a challenge that faces spiritual practitioners of all traditions.396 The task—for shamans, yogis, and contemplatives alike—is to stabilize temporary gifts into permanent abilities, altered states into altered traits, and epiphanies into personality, or as Huston Smith so eloquently put it, to transform “flashes of illumination into abiding light.”346
THE VARIETIES OF SPIRITS
While there are many kinds of spirits, the shaman can control only some of them. For as Eliade pointed out, the shaman is “a man who has immediate concrete experiences with gods and spirits; he sees them face to face, he talks to them, prays to them, implores them—but he does not ‘control’ more than a limited number of them.”83
Those he controls are his helping spirits. Many of these are animals, sometimes called power animals, and “they can appear in the form of bears, wolves, stags, hares, all kinds of birds,”83 and in numerous other forms as well.
Similar encounters also occur outside shamanism. Growing numbers of psychotherapists use guided visualization techniques to evoke images of “power animals” or “spirit guides” and then encourage clients to interact with and learn from them.110
Encounters with “spirit guides” occur spontaneously in psychedelic therapy and, according to Stanislav Grof, can be “most valuable and rewarding phenomena.”131 It is remarkable how often ancient shamanic experiences are echoed in contemporary psychedelic ones, suggesting that shamans have long mined deep, archetypal realms of the psyche that remain hidden to most people.
FUNCTIONS OF SPIRITS
Whatever their form, spirits assist the shaman in four ways. They may teach, assist with journeys, provide strengths and abilities, or possess the shaman as in mediumship.
The spirits may travel with the shaman on ecstatic journeys, accompanying or even carrying her to the sky. They may defend her from threats and battle on her behalf. Their strength may become hers if she voluntarily merges with them and thereby partakes of their powers and capacities. She may see herself turned into an eagle and soar into the sky, or become a wolf and feel infused with its power. After returning from the journey she may perform her “power animal dance,” moving and sounding like the animal, as a way of experiencing and maintaining its presence. The following example of finding a power animal is drawn from my own experience as a participant in one of Michael Harner’s core shamanism workshops. It demonstrates the experiential power of these encounters.
This was a journey to the lower world to meet and request assistance from power animals. I began my journey by entering a cave in Hawaii and went down a tunnel until I reached the lower world that first appeared as a small green globe. On landing I found myself in a lush green jungle filled with animals.
I was immediately drawn to a lion. I appealed to him to be with me during the workshop and to let me share his power, strength, suppleness, keen sensitivity, and agility.
I then asked him what I needed to know or do. Immediately the lion leaped into me and merged with me, so that my shamanic body was human/lion, and I felt its power. This sense of power was very helpful since it seemed to counteract feelings of fear, guilt, and contraction that I had been experiencing.
At the end of the journey, I returned up the tunnel into the cave and then back into the workshop room. Yet there was a clear sense that the “lion” returned with me, and I felt healed, empowered, and strengthened.
What are we to make of these reports of merging with power animals? Several psychological mechanisms may be at work. These include role playing, identification, permission giving (being given permission to feel powerful, effective, etc.), and “acting as if” (acting as if one had a particular desired quality). But whatever the mechanism, it is clear that visualizing oneself merging with a powerful figure is widespread across religious traditions, is dramatically empowering, and is increasingly used in psychotherapy.92 Even contemplating an animal can bring benefits, as the great yogi Patanjali described some 2,000 years ago: “From sanyama [meditation] on the strength of an elephant, or other creatures, we gain that strength.”333
Some of the most dramatic examples are the “deity yogas” of Hindu yoga and Tibetan Buddhism. Here the yogi visualizes herself as first creating and then merging with a sacred figure—the ishtadeva of Hinduism or the yidam of Buddhism—who symbolizes spiritual qualities such as unconditional love, boundless compassion, or profound wisdom. Afterward the yogi attempts to speak and act as the deity. In other words, after merging with their allies, both shamans and yogis attempt to experience and express their allies’ qualities.
However, there is a crucial difference. For the shaman, the power animal ally is real. However, for the yogi, the deity is considered a mental creation, a projection of one’s own as yet unrecognized transpersonal potentials, which the visualization will allow the yogi to recognize and claim.
The impact of these visualizations is suggested by the fact that Tibetans regard Deity yoga as one of their most powerful practices. In one of the world’s most dramatic claims for effectiveness, they claim that Deity yoga allows practitioners to become a Buddha in a single lifetime, rather than in the “three countless eons” it would otherwise take.166 However, despite the claim, Buddhas seem to be in short supply.
The spirits also instruct and teach. In fact, “During the period of initial contact the spirits function above all as teachers.”337 The spirits are most likely to instruct during altered states, such as dreams or journeys, or during the curious process of mediumship.