Divination and Diagnosis
Humans respond not to events but to their meanings and can read into any event an endless variety of meanings.
—Jerome Frank 103
The world and life are mysterious. And yet we must choose and act in the face of this inevitable mystery. This is our existential dilemma. What to do?
One obvious solution is to ask those who know. Throughout most of history these have been the gods and spirits or those who could divine their intentions.
Not surprisingly, diviners or oracles have been part of every culture, including our own. Also not surprisingly, the questions people ask have been similar across cultures.59, 60 People ask about the cause and cure of suffering, the ways to health and happiness, and about relationships and religion.
Shamans were among our earliest diviners, and their many roles as diagnosticians, counselors, and healers demanded many methods. Most often they rely on their spiritual helpers or spiritual vision.154 Helping spirits may be consulted during a journey or, less commonly, by object divination such as with a randomly selected stone or bone. Spirit vision may be employed to discover spirit intrusions. Other strategies for diagnosis and treatment foreshadow contemporary psychological techniques, and intriguing examples include group confession and the world’s first projective test assessing muscle tension.
THE WORLD’S FIRST PROJECTIVE TEST
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that….it is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As man thinketh, so does he perceive.
—A Course in Miracles10
The shaman’s projective test is remarkably similar to clinical psychology’s Rorschach test. Both tests make use of the mind’s tendency to structure ambiguous scenes into personally meaningful images that symbolize underlying motives and emotions.
The shamanic projective test is deceptively simple. The patient with a question or problem chooses a rock and brings it to the shaman. The shaman then instructs him to hold his question in mind, to view each side of the rock, and report the images seen there. When complete, the patient is asked to describe how each image speaks to his question or concern.150 The beauty of this technique lies in its simplicity and its ability to reveal unconscious forces at work in the patient’s mind.
THE HEAD LIFTING TEST
In a second technique, an Eskimo shaman addresses a series of questions to a patient while lifting the patient’s head. Changes in the apparent weight of the head are taken to indicate positive or negative responses. Rasmussen described the procedure as follows:
The one who is to consult the spirits, lays a person down on the floor, or on the sleeping place, face upwards, the operator’s waist belt being often fastened around the subject’s head. Various questions are now put to the qila’na: the person through whose head the spirits are to answer. While asking the questions, the operator endeavors to raise the person’s head by means of the belt, calling upon the spirit, which is supposed to enter the scene immediately below the body of the qila’na. When the latter’s head grows heavy, so heavy that the operator, despite all his efforts, cannot move it in the slightest degree, this means that the spirits are present and answer in the affirmative. If, on the other hand, the head is normal and easily moved, this constitutes a negative answer to the question put....I once wrote down the proceedings in such a case....The object was to ascertain the cause of a particular illness....
“is the illness due to forbidden food?”
The head grows lighter, the shaman lifts it with ease, and the listener answers: “a’k’agoq”: “No!”
“isarajannik?”: “Is the illness due to forbidden work?”
The spirit answers:
“Yes!”....
Should the spirit answer yes, then it remains to investigate further, with constant pulls at the line, what breach of taboo has taken place and under what circumstances. So the questioning goes on, letting the spirit answer all the time, until the presumable cause of the sickness has been ascertained.299
Changes in the apparent weight of the head presumably reflect variations in muscle tension. Both conscious and unconscious concerns affect muscle tension, and the test therefore allows the patient to communicate and confess these concerns in spite of conscious resistance. Confession may be good for the soul, but it can also be good for the body, especially where psychosomatic illness is involved.
GROUP CONFESSION
Shamans also use group confession. An interesting example occurs after the Eskimo shaman has placated the sea spirit Takánakapsâluk. Having interceded with her on behalf of the tribe, the shaman journeys back from the bottom of the sea to be greeted by cries for information about the success or failure of the journey. But the shaman does not give the information. Rather he hedges, saying, “Words will arise.” Then he waits, knowing what will happen. Rasmussen described the scene as follows:
then all in the house must confess any breaches of taboo they have committed.
“It is my fault, perhaps,” they cry, all at once, women and men together, in fear of famine and starvation, and all begin telling of the wrong things they have done. All the names of those in the house are mentioned, and all must confess, and thus much comes to light which no one had ever dreamed of; every one learns his neighbors’ secrets. But despite all the sins confessed, the shaman may go on talking as one who is unhappy at having made a mistake, and again and again breaks out into such expressions as this:
“I seek my grounds in things which have not happened; I speak as one who knows nothing.”
There are still secrets barring the way for full solution of the trouble, and so the women in the house begin to go through all the names, one after another; nearly all women’s names; for it was always their breaches of taboo which were most dangerous. Now and again when a name is mentioned, the shaman exclaims in relief:
“taina, taina!”....Thus at last the cause of Takánakapsâluk’s anger is explained, and all are filled with joy at having escaped disaster. They are now assured that there will be abundance of game on the following day. And in the end, there may be almost a feeling of thankfulness towards the delinquent. This then was what took place when shamans went down and propitiated the great Spirit of the Sea.299
Many elements of contemporary group therapy are evident here. The group as a whole collaborates on a project of common concern. Members confront their shortcomings, and this leads to confession and catharsis. The sharing of intimate secrets creates a sense of trust and group cohesion. The result is a recognition of what psychologists call “universality” as members discover that they are not the only sinners and that their failures are a universal part of the human condition. The resulting sense of relief and closeness can be healing for all concerned. Of course, to the shaman these psychological benefits are minor compared to the importance of identifying breeches of taboo in order to appease the great sea spirit. However, the procedure could clearly be therapeutic for individuals and socially cohesive for the tribe, and in Native American traditions such healing groups are called “medicine wheels.”
CONTEMPORARY DIVINERS
It is intriguing to compare these methods and their likely success with contemporary approaches. While some shamanic divination methods were doubtless successful, others were probably ineffective. But so are many recent ones. For example, phrenology was once wildly popular; palmistry remains so. Even some highly respected and lucrative professions do little better. A book aptly titled The Fortune Sellers: The Big Business of Buying and Selling Predictions334 reviews the success rates of several types of forecasting. Its conclusion? Predictions in economics, investing, futurology, technology assessment, and organizational planning do about as well as a coin toss (which was an early form of divination). Political pundits and television “experts” fare no better. In fact they are no more successful at predicting the future than ordinary mortals like us, although they are far better paid.364 In fact, the better known the expert, the less accurate their political predictions are likely to be.
As yet we have no studies of shamanic diagnostic accuracy. They may not fare as well as modern physicians with their high-tech tools, but they likely do better than some of our most famous forecasters.