Shamans have long felt that the power of the guardian or tutelary spirit makes one resistant to illness. The reason is simple: it provides a power-full body that resists the intrusion of external forces. From the shamanic point of view, there is simply not room in a power-filled body for the easy entrance of the intrusive, harmful energies known in ordinary reality as diseases.
A power animal or guardian spirit, as I first learned among the Jívaro, not only increases one’s physical energy and ability to resist contagious disease, but also increases one’s mental alertness and self-confidence. The power even makes it more difficult for one to lie.
Being power-full is like having a force field in and around you, for you are resistant to power intrusions, the shamanic equivalent of infections. From a shamanic point of view, illnesses usually are power intrusions. They are not natural to the body, but are brought in. If you are power-full, you will resist them. Thus possession of guardian spirit power is fundamental to health. Serious illness is usually only possible when a person is dis-spirited, has lost this energizing force, the guardian spirit. When a person becomes depressed, weak, prone to illness, it is a symptom that he has lost his power animal and thus can no longer resist, or ward off the unwanted power “infections” or intrusions.
You may have been quite successful in the experience of dancing your animal. However, as has been discussed, this is no guarantee that you still retain its power, since it may long since have left you. To be absolutely sure that you have a power animal, there are specific techniques to use. One of these is the shamanic journey to the Lowerworld to retrieve a power animal someone has lost.
While shamans most commonly undertake this journey for another person alone, an unusually elaborate version of the method of restoring guardian spirit power occurred among the Coast Salish Indians of western Washington State. There the shamans had the practice of making the journey together as a group. To do this, they formed a “spirit canoe” or “spirit boat” to undertake a journey whose purpose was to regain the guardian spirit of their patient from the Lowerworld.1 It “was not the soul of a person in the general sense of the word, but rather his guardian-spirit” that was to be restored to the patient.2 Among the Coast Salish, the guardian spirit is commonly referred to as the power animal, as noted earlier.3
The Coast Salish are unusual in the elaborateness of their group spirit canoe methods.4 When a person began to have symptoms of dis-spiritedness, which among the Salish could include the gradual loss of property or wealth, then he might hire half a dozen to a dozen shamans to engage in a task together to recover his guardian spirit by journeying to the Lowerworld.5
On an agreed-upon night the shamans formed two imaginary canoes by standing in two parallel rows inside a large house. Beside each shaman was his magical cedar board, stuck into the dirt floor. Each board was decorated with representations of its owner’s experiences when he had his first vision of a spirit canoe. Every shaman, in addition, held a pole six to eight feet long with which he paddled or pushed the spirit canoe. The shaman in the bow was the leader, the one in the stern the steerer.
Accompanied by the shaking of rattles, the beating of drums, and singing, the shamans’ “souls or minds sank down through the earth,” going in a spirit boat “having the power to ‘make land into water’ wherever they travel” in the Lowerworld.6 As they journeyed in the spirit canoe, each shaman, beginning with the leader, sang his own guardian spirit song. A large audience of spectators sat around the walls of the house and joined in the singing to help the shamans.7
Sometimes spirit canoe journeys among the Coast Salish lasted five or six nights, with the shamans sleeping during the days and resuming in the evenings at the point in the journey where they had stopped at dawn. More often the journey lasted only two nights, the first night being the journey to the land of spirits, and the second night the return. As soon as the shamans succeeded in retrieving the guardian spirit of their patient, they started the return journey. When they had put the guardian spirit back into the patient, he rose and danced.8
The Coast Salish spirit canoe is a large-scale, cooperative version of a much more common and simpler shamanic method of restoring power to a patient. In this method, there are only two or three essential participants: the shaman, the person or patient in need of power restoration, and often an assistant to beat the shaman’s drum. Some master shamans can do without the aid of a drummer, but such sonic input is usually necessary.
I first learned this method in 1961 while living with the Conibo, whose shamans frequently use this technique in treating illness. Like the Coast Salish shamans, the Conibo journey down into the Lowerworld in a spirit boat, though usually it is a nonordinary river steamboat rather than a nonordinary canoe! In addition, the Conibo crew is formed not by shamans, but by the single shaman, helped by a large crew of spirits.
The use of some kind of spirit or soul boat in the shamanic journey is widespread in the primitive world. It occurs in Siberia as well as in Malaysia and Indonesia, where it is related to the “boat of the dead.”9 Often the spirit canoe is in the form of a serpent, as in aboriginal Australia, or as in the “Snake-Canoe” of the Desana Indians of the South American tropical forest.10 For other groups, such as the Tapirapé of central Brazil, little is known of the specific form of the spirit canoe used by the shamans.11 Sometimes a shaman may use a spirit raft, as in Siberia.12
More often, shamans undertaking the shamanic journey do not use a canoe or watercraft in the SSC, but employ the same basic method. In other words, they “sink” into the Lowerworld to recover a spirit, but without bothering to create a “canoe” or any other conveyance. For my own part, I usually only conceptualize a canoe when working in the Coast Salish style with a group, even though the boat method was what I was introduced to by the Conibo. Every shaman, as the years go by, should be prepared to modify and adapt his methods in accordance with what seems to work best for him.
The method that I wish to introduce to you is a relatively simple and basic adaptation of the retrieval journey. This same basic technique can be used not only to recover a guardian spirit for another person, but also can be employed, with certain differences, to heal patients by retrieving lost portions of their vital souls. That, however, is advanced work not dealt with here.
One of the important elements in this method is lying down beside the patient on the floor or ground. The falling down or lying down of the shaman beside the patient is a very widespread aspect of the journey method of treatment. One very good reason for this practice is that it is very difficult in a deep SSC to remain standing. But even in a light SSC, the shaman usually wants to lie down in order to see and experience the journey clearly by being fully relaxed and not having to be concerned with keeping himself functioning in ordinary reality by having to stand or sit. A Yaralde Australian tribesman eloquently described the need for lying down in doing seeing:
If you get up, you will not see these scenes, but when you lie down again, you will see them, unless you get too frightened. If you do, you will break the web (or thread) on which the scenes are hung.13
In the guardian spirit retrieval method taught here, the person in the role of the shaman brings back the power animal and blows it first into the chest of the patient. From the Jívaro I learned that a person’s guardian reposes primarily in the chest, although its power emanates throughout the entire body. A Jívaro shaman, taking the ayahuasca drink, sees an inverted rainbow in the chest of someone who possesses a guardian. The idea that the guardian resides primarily in the chest is apparently widespread, also occurring, for example, in aboriginal Australia as well as in western North America.14
The fontanelle, or so-called “soft spot” location in the top rear of the head where the temporal and occipital bones meet, is an important entrance and exit point for power, and it is for that reason that a shaman, after blowing the guardian spirit into the chest, then blows into the fontanelle of the patient. This is to finish putting in whatever remains of the power he has brought back.
Before undertaking the shamanic journey to retrieve a power animal, you should acquire a power song. Each shaman has at least one power song that he uses to “wake up” his guardian and other helpers to help him in healing and other work. To get a power song, plan to spend a day alone in a wild natural place, a location where you will not encounter people and where the natural environment has not been too altered by humans. Rasmussen, the great student of Eskimo life, puts it well:
The best magic words are those which come to one when one is alone out among the mountains. These are always the most powerful in their effects. The power of solitude is great and beyond understanding.15
A remote forested or mountainous area is ideal, but if you cannot reach such a place, try to do the best you can. Do not eat breakfast, and fast throughout the day as you quietly stroll and sometimes sit. Do not plan an itinerary; just see where your feet take you. As you wander, discover what animal you feel like. It may or may not be the one you danced. Take on its feelings, and enjoy its identity during the day. As this is your first hunt for a song, you may only encounter the melody.
If so, later, you should find your own words, too. But for now, I give you the words of one of mine that I acquired when I was studying with the Jívaro:
I have spirits,
Spirits have I.
I have spirits,
Spirits have I.
I have spirits,
Spirits have I.
I, I, I.
(repeat three more times and go to the next stanza)
My spirits
Are like birds,
And the wings
And bodies are dreams.
I have spirits,
Spirits have I.
I, I, I.
(repeat three more times and return to the first stanza)
Repeat the song as long as you feel that it is needed. A power song also helps one to enter the SSC, both through its words and melody. The more you use the song in shamanic work, the more effective it will be as an adjunct in altering your state of consciousness. Eventually, it can act as a small “trigger” to help you shift into the SSC.
One can also seek a special power song to sing during the journey. This is best discovered while actually doing a journey and usually involves a description of what one sees. This free adaptation by Cloutier of a Northwest Coast Tsimshian shaman’s song is a good example:
I go in my canoe
all over
in my vision
over trees
or in water
I’m floating
all around
I float
among whirlpools
all around
I float
among shadows
I go in my canoe
all over
in my vision
over trees
or in water
I’m floating
whose canoe
is this
I stand in
the one
I stand in
with a stranger
I go in my canoe
all over
in my vision
over trees
or in water
I’m floating16
You may also involuntarily acquire a song while you are dreaming. The late Essie Parrish, a Pomo Indian shaman in California, gave this account of dreaming her first power song:
I’m going to tell another story about when I was young—about how I first sang a song when I was a child. I was eleven years old at that time. I didn’t acquire that song in any ordinary way—I dreamed it.
One time, as I lay asleep, a dream came to me—I heard singing up in the sky. Because I was little, because I didn’t realize what It was, I didn’t pay (conscious) attention to it—I just (passively) listened when that man was singing up above. Still he made it known to me—it was as if it entered deep into my chest, as if the song itself were singing in my voice box. Then it seemed as if I could see the man. as if I could just make him out.
After I awoke from sleep, that song was singing Inside me all day long. Even though I didn’t want to sing, still the song was singing in my voice box. Then I myself tried, tried to sing, and amazingly the song turned out to be beautiful. I have remembered it ever since.
Then, one time, I and my older sister accompanied our grandmother to Danaká. At that time she was little too, but she was bigger than I. We traveled with her (our grandmother). Having descended to Danaká, we lived there.
Then early one morning we went to Madrone Beach to gather seaweed We accompanied our grandmother. While sitting there on a boulder, we were playing dolls and chattering and laughing. But still that song was always singing deep inside of me. And then because it was singing in my voice box, I too began singing. It turned out that my sister heard me.
“What are you singing?” she asked me. “I’m singing a song,” I said. “How beautiful it sounds. Where did you hear that song?” she inquired. “I dreamed it,” I replied. When I said that, I felt embarrassed. “Please sing it again,” she said. Then I started the song. “Oh, how beautiful it sounds. Teach it to me,” she said. I then replied, “It’s not for such purposes. It’s not for you to learn.” Then, because she was bigger than I, she made me sing anyway. Even though I didn’t want to sing, she still made me.
Then I sang the song..
“But don’t tell this to anyone,” I said. “Why?” she asked. “They might make me sing.” “All right,” she said. That turned out not to be true. We returned home in the evening. My sister, in spite of (what she had promised), told my mother’s mother’s older brother—he was strange, a silly person. He said, “They say that you have a song.” “Well, who said that?” I asked. “Your older sister said that you sang a beautiful song. Please sing it,” he said. So I sang again for him. It sounded extremely good to him.
That was the first song that I sang when I was little. I’m going to stop right there.17
Making the Journey to Recover a Power Animal
You will need a partner who has also studied the book. In addition, you will require a drum (or a cassette recording of shamanic drumming) and a rattle. If you use a drum, you will also need a third person to do the drumming.*
To restore a power animal to someone, it is not necessary that the person be lacking one. What is important is that a power animal “take pity” on the patient, in response to the shaman’s request for help during the journey. The intervention of one human being (the shaman) on behalf of another often seems to evoke sympathy in the hidden universe, and usually a former, lost power animal of the patient volunteers to come back with the journeying shaman. Each additional one that returns adds to the spiritual power of the receiver, but he should take care to honor those that return and not be “greedy,” or they may leave him again.
This is a journey to bring back a guardian that your “patient” has lost. Since over one’s lifetime one may unknowingly or knowingly have the help of a series of different power animals, there is no ordinary way of guessing in advance whether the animal is one your “patient” danced or otherwise might expect to return to him. Power animals normally come and go unexpectedly from a person, especially after a few years. Accordingly, the regular practice of this exercise is an important way for a person to be assured of possessing power. And if a person shows power-loss through depression or illness, and asks for help, such work should be immediately undertaken.
The steps are as follows:
Plan with your partner and a third person to spend an evening together. Abstain from alcoholic beverages and mind-altering drugs throughout the day. Eat only a light lunch and no dinner.
Use a room free of light and external noises. Clear the area of furniture. Light a candle on the floor in one corner of the room, where it will not throw much light.
The person who is to act as shaman, in this case yourself, should go through all the steps of the Starling Dance and Dancing Your Animal described on pages 65-67. If you have a drummer, have him beat the drum in time to your rattle, but only when you are actually dancing (see Plate 6).
Shake your rattle four times in the six directions (east, north, west, south, up, and down) to catch the attention of the spirits, wherever they may be. Then whistle four times to call the spirits. Next, walk very slowly around the patient four times, shaking the rattle in a slow but strong and steady tempo, and return to stand beside him.
Begin to whistle your power song, the song with which you call upon your spirits to help you, shaking your rattle in accompaniment. Whistle this, usually for a few minutes, until you are aware that there is a slight alteration in your consciousness.
Plate 6. Beating the drum for the shamanic journey. Drawn by Barbara Olsen.
Now begin to actually sing the words, continuing to shake the rattle in the same strong, slow beat.
Continue repeating your song until you are aware that your consciousness is altering. With practice and experience one easily recognizes when this light trance is being reached. Some of the more obvious signs are increased tempo of singing and rattling, trembling arms, and even uncontrollable shivering. When the time is right, you will experience an almost irresistible desire to collapse or lie upon the floor next to the patient. Put this off as long as possible, until you cannot resist slumping to the floor.
On the floor, push your prone body up against the patient, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, foot-to-foot. Without delay, in the darkness, begin to shake the rattle back and forth just above your chest. When you start shaking your rattle, the drummer begins beating in time with it.
Shake your rattle at a rate that is in the range of about 180 times per minute. Lying on the floor, cover your eyes with one forearm to exclude any light from the candle, and maintain the rattling until you clearly see your entrance into the Lowerworld (see Plate 7). (Only you, acting in the role of the shaman, undertake the journey; your partner, acting as the patient, has no responsibility to see or experience anything.)
When you go into the entrance, stop shaking the rattle; but the drummer should maintain the beat strongly at the same tempo you had been using. He should continue to do this at this cadence throughout your journey until you signal him with your rattle four times (Step 14). The beat of the drum is essential to the maintenance of the journey of the canoe. In a sense, the drum is the canoe, as the Chukchee of Siberia say.18 As the drummer maintains the beat:
Continue to visualize the entrance or opening into the earth, and then enter it. Follow the cave or Tunnel downward. The passage may appear as a long, ribbed tube; it may appear as a series of caverns; it may be a flowing stream (see Plate 8). Follow it down wherever it goes. Pass around any obstacles that may appear.
Avoid any ominously voracious nonmammals you may encounter in your journey (the shamanic reasons for this will be explained in Chapter 7). Especially avoid and pass around any spiders or swarming insects, as well as fanged serpents, fanged reptiles, and fish whose teeth are visible. If you cannot pass them, simply return back up out of the Tunnel and try on another occasion. This is true throughout your journey.
Plate 7. Entrance into the earth. Drawn by Barbara Olsen.
Plate 8. The Tunnel. Drawn by Barbara Olsen.
When you emerge from the Tunnel, you will find yourself in the Lowerworld (see Plate 9). It is here, amidst whatever landscapes you see, that you search for a guardian spirit or power animal for your partner. Search, with your eyes still closed, as the sound of the drum supports you in your journey.
The secret to recognizing the power animal is a simple one: it will appear to you at least four times in different aspects or at different angles (see Plate 10). It will be a mammal or bird (in which cases it does not matter if it appears menacing), a serpent, other reptile, or fish (provided that in these last three cases they do not show their fangs or teeth). It may even be a “mythic” animal or in human form. It is almost never an insect.
Do not strain yourself to find the animal. If it is going to make itself available to you to take back for your partner, it will do so. Do not worry as to whether it presents itself to you in a living form, as a sculpture in wood, stone, or other material. All its presentations are valid. Again, do not try too hard. Your search should be relatively effortless, for you are drawing upon power beyond your ordinary self.
After seeing the animal four times, clasp it to your chest immediately with one hand. The animal will come willingly; otherwise it would not have presented itself. Clasping the animal in this manner, pick up and sound the rattle sharply four times. This signals the drummer momentarily to stop drumming. Then shake the rattle in a very fast cadence (in the range of 210 times per minute), setting the tempo for the drummer. Return rapidly through the Tunnel to the room. Usually this takes less than thirty seconds. This return journey should be done rapidly, to avoid inadvertently losing the guardian animal.
Set the rattle aside, keep the animal clasped to your chest and rise up on your knees, facing your prone partner. (The drummer should stop as soon as he sees you get up on your knees). Immediately place your cupped hands containing the guardian spirit on your companion’s breastbone, and blow with all your strength through your cupped hands to send it into the chest of your partner (see Plate 11a). Then, with your left hand, raise your companion to a sitting position, and place your cupped hands on the top rear of your partner’s head (the fontanelle). Forcefully blow again to send any residual power into the head (see Plate 11b). Pick up the rattle. Shaking it rapidly and sharply, pass it in a circle four times around the whole length of your companion’s body, making complete the unity of the power with the body.
Plate 9. Emergence into the Lowerworld from the Tunnel Drawn by Barbara Olsen.
Plate 11. (a) Blowing the guardian back into the patient’s chest. (b) Blowing the guardian back into the patient’s head. Drawn by Barbara Olsen.
Quietly tell your partner the identity of the animal you brought back. If it is an animal whose name you do not know, then describe the appearance of the creature. Describe all details of the journey.
Assist your partner to dance his animal, in order to make the animal feel welcome by giving it the reward of experiencing its movements in material form. As you shake the rattle, gradually increase the tempo in accordance with the patient’s movements. The drummer follows the shaman’s lead. After just a few minutes, shake your rattle four times, and thereby end the drumming and the dance. Then gently assist the dancer to a sitting position on the floor. Remind him to dance his animal regularly so that it will stay with him.
You can now change places with your partner and the same kind of journey can be undertaken for your benefit. When your animal is brought back, you too dance it.
Most Westerners are surprised to discover the vividness and reality of the journey to retrieve a power animal. apparently, their potentiality for experiencing the shamanic journey and for being see-ers is far greater than they expect. If either you or your partner were not successful, don’t be discouraged. Try again later. Some of those with the greatest potential are slow starters.
The following free rendition by Cloutier of a Tsimshian song from the Northwest Coast dramatizes the journey to recover a guardian spirit, in this case, Otter:
Ye hey
hyo
ye hey hey
hee
Otter chases
swims straight toward me
Otter’s coming
I float off with him
ye hey
hyo
ye hey hey
hee
right beside me
I work my spirit
charm of the opening
beneath all things
ye hey
hyo
ye hey hey
hee
Otter dives in
swims beneath me
there in the opening
beneath all things
ye hey
hyo
ye hey hey
hee
Otter’s in me
deep within me
Spirit Otter swimming
in the place beneath me
ye hey
hyo
ye hey hey
hee19
You may be interested in comparing your guardian spirit retrieval journey experiences with those of others working with a partner. Here are a few representative examples from my workshops.
I went into the same hole I used earlier this evening. First there was water. Then the water sort of dropped off, like in locks. I kept jumping off onto the next one, and the next. The water finally turned into dirt. I was running along, still in the same cave, but a wooden bridge appeared. Then I was running across the bridge. It went up at an angle, and at the end there were stairs. I climbed those stairs for a long time until I finally came out on what looked like an African plain. There were a lot of different animals that appeared and disappeared. Finally I saw an antelope was standing by a waterhole. She immediately became very vivid, very vivid, and appeared four different times. Oh, she was even above me at one time. The last time was a very bold close-up of one eye. So I carried her back here to my partner.
In the next case, the animal gave an unusual exhibition of his power by charging the person twice, even on one occasion running right through him. This is something that commonly happens on vision quests of both North American Plains Indians and of the Jívaro, as well as the experience of “blacking out” afterward, which the person also reported. The individual had not been taught about these matters. The fact that the power animal is a horse is worth noting, for it might appear that this is an exception to the usual rule that domesticated animals cannot serve as guardian spirits. But the horse that appears is a wild one, without a rider and untamed.
I went down into my hole, which is on the side of a cliff on an island I once visited off the coast of Spain. It leads into an underwater cave about ten yards in diameter that you can physically only reach by diving. I was sitting in there waiting for something to happen when a horse started to run at me. You know, if you see a horse running at you it’s very scary; so I guess I blacked out. So anyway, when I came to, which was like Instantaneously, I saw a white ram where the horse had been. He was moving his head as though to get me to look to the side. I looked around. Behind me I saw this white horse with a brown mane—it was the same one I saw before. He started running at me again. I thought, oh God, here he comes again. He came at me and ran through me. Then I saw this ram again. Well, I had seen the horse twice and the ram twice. So I was looking around and thinking, well, that’s twice, I ought to see something four times.
Then I started seeing fish. I saw one like a sailfish go in and out of the water twice. I thought, well, that’s twice. So now there were three animals that I had seen twice. Then the fish did it again. So that was three times. Then he dived once more. I looked where I expected he was going to come out, and out came this very ugly catfish. Welt, that was not him.
Then this bear started meandering over toward me, but it turned around. It seemed like I moved him away with my own power. Then these wolves were starting to come at me, when suddenly here came the horse. He reared up to protect me from the wolves. So that was three times with the horse. Anyway, he disappeared. So I turned around to look for my way back, and there he was standing right where the hole is. The horse, white with a brown mane. So I brought him back.
Sometimes the shaman does not succeed in his journey to retrieve the power animal for his patient. The following individual’s experience illustrates this. Still, every journey adds to the shaman’s knowledge and awaits gradual integration with the other information he acquires in the SCC.
This particular journey was a very strange one for me. It was a journey through a world that was completely uninhabited by anything. The world was entirely artificially constructed, a world that was completely built by humans or other intelligent creatures, all completely chambers and very geometrical. It was somewhat like a super space station, with no sign of any life there at all. It seemed as though there may have been some hidden there, however, in terms of robots.
In the next case, as in the one where the horse was the power animal, the eagle demonstrates its power through visually ferocious behavior.
I went into this cave I’m familiar with, and just kept going back and back. Then I hit this tunnel and went down through it fast. I just kind of felt where I was going. When I came out I was in the same territory I had visited before. I saw an eagle, but it flew away. Then there was a red squirrel sitting on the tree. I wasn’t sure whether the guardian was going to be the red squirrel or the eagle. I waited some time, and then all of a sudden the eagle came back and attacked the squirrel. At first I thought the eagle was going to kill the squirrel and eat it, but it didn’t. It stopped attacking. After the squirrel had disappeared, the eagle flew around. I saw it from various angles, and I brought it back.
As I mentioned earlier, the Conibo use the roots of certain trees to descend to the Lowerworld. The person in the following case independently discovered that technique for himself. It is a good illustration of how one accumulates shamanic knowledge, even with regard to method, in the SSC. For brevity’s sake, only the initial part of the person’s account is presented (the tiger was the power animal for his partner).
I went down the hole and walked underground alongside the roots of a pine tree. Since the rough ground was uncomfortable, I climbed onto a root end walked down on it. The roots kept branching off, getting thinner all the time. Then I came to the slightly lighter-colored root I had used in the last journey and I branched off onto it. I followed it until it suddenly stopped. There was a deep well in front of me, all its walls completely black. I realized that I would have to go down, so I jumped right in. I fell for a very long time through darkness until finally I could see the outline of something narrow and straight below. It was a thick rope that was part of a hanging bridge crossing the well. I landed on the rope and let myself down on the bridge. I walked toward the right. As I stepped off the bridge, I saw a magnificent tiger standing to one side and looking at me.
One of the interesting features of a successful guardian spirit journey is that it often involves synchronicities, or remarkable coincidences. For example, it is common for the patient, after receiving an animal, to reveal to the shaman that he or she already had an unusual connection with that particular animal. It may have been a deep childhood association, a recent peculiar encounter, or a long-time tendency to collect images and drawings of the particular creature.
Another kind of synchronicity that often occurs is that the patient experienced some of the same details of the journey as the shaman, although no verbal communication took place. This kind of similarity in experience is even more dramatic when a large group of persons undertakes the shamanic journey together as the crew of a spirit canoe. Not uncommonly, several members of the crew will encounter the same animal repeatedly and corroborate specific details of its appearance in the discussion at the end of the journey.
In shamanic work it is important to be on the lookout for the occurrence of positive synchronicities, for they are the signals that power is working to produce effects far beyond the normal bounds of probability. In fact, watch for the frequency of positive synchronicities as a kind of homing beacon analogous to a radio directional signal to indicate that the right procedures and methods are being employed.
When “good luck” is surprisingly frequent, the shaman is working correctly and benefiting from power. Here are a couple of representative cases that illustrate the kinds of positive synchronicities that sometimes occur in guardian spirit retrieval work.
In the first case, the person acting as patient saw the power animal as soon as it was blown into him, without being told anything about it by the person acting as shaman.
The partner acting as shaman: I went down into the opening of the earth and down into a tunnel which I’ve been to many times before. I passed over the small stream that flows through it. This time I went into a dark passageway of the cave that I’ve never been into before. I had always passed it up and gone another way. Then I came out into a desert place and there were a lot of different forms of cactus around. I saw a variety of the kinds of animals that one sees in the desert. Then I saw a mountain lion. This all happened very fast. The mountain lion kind of ran away from me like it was teasing me, but it did run around in different directions so that I saw it from four different angles. I then brought it back.
The partner acting as patient: Right after he sat me up and blew into my head, immediately I saw a vivid picture of a cat with teeth with mouth wide open, growling. I figured it had to be related because it was just really so vivid. And then he told me that a mountain lion was what he had put into me.
In the next case, Partner A had earlier made an introductory journey of exploration in which he had encountered an old farmhouse and a mountain goat nearby on a hill. He had told no one about this. Then when Partner B ( in ignorance of A’s experience) took the journey to retrieve a power animal for him, she found a farmhouse and a mountain goat near it on a mountainside. She brought it back for him. This kind of synchronicity means, from a shamanic point of view, that there can be no doubt about his power animal and its willingness to be brought back to him.
Partner A: I just whipped right through the Tunnel. I knew I was going a long way and I was going really fast. I came out at a place that was like a farm. It seemed very old and far away. I kind of stayed around the farm building for a while. Everything was wooden, nothing modern. Then I climbed way up on this hill and saw this goat there, this mountain goat. Then I came back.
Partner B: I went to my cave and down through the hole. I was not feeling very optimistic really about finding anything. Then all of a sudden I noticed up on a ledge was this mountain goat—a white and really pretty goat. He was looking at me. Then he dashed away and up into a meadow. I followed him there. In this meadow was a big farmhouse way out in the distance. It was a really beautiful meadow. When I got up to the farmhouse, I saw the goat again up on the mountainside. I saw the goat four times. The fifth time I saw him, he was getting ready to go down a hole. I wanted to follow him on down because he was playful, but I didn’t. I got him and came back.
Partner A: I hadn’t told her about seeing the goat. Every time something like this happens my rational mind asks, is this really an experience from outside, or did our subconscious manufacture it? But really, it’s a pointless question.
The Coast Salish spirit canoe method, described earlier, can be adapted to serve as a valuable group experience, with a large number of persons joining together to constitute the canoe to retrieve someone’s power animal. These persons should all have successfully completed the work up to this chapter, and one of them should already be recognized as a shaman. If you form a group to make a spirit canoe, you should ideally have somebody as a patient who is seriously depressed, dis-spirited, or otherwise ill—someone who is really in need of power, so that you can fully utilize the group effort.
In this adaptation of the spirit canoe method, the shaman lies down beside the patient, as in the usual guardian spirit recovery method. A difference from the prior technique you learned is that the other members of the group join together to form a canoe around the pair and serve as paddlers, polers, lookouts, and protectors in terms of the journey into the Lowerworld.
The basic steps in this adaptation are as follows:
All participants, except the patient, should go through the steps of the Starting Dance and Dancing Your Animal described on pages 65-67. During these dances, have the drummer beat in time to the shaman’s rattle. If the participants have rattles, they can shake them, while dancing, in the tempos set by the shaman.
The patient lies down on his back on a blanket spread on the floor of a quiet, darkened room. The persons acting as the shamanic crew form the outline of a canoe around the prone patient, with the prow pointing in the same direction as the patient’s feet. The members of the crew form the sides of the canoe and are the paddlers. Each keeps in touch with the person in front and behind him with his legs so a human chain is formed without a break.
At the rear of the canoe, in the center of the stern, sits the drummer. Across his knees lies the drum that will provide the beat for the paddlers as the canoe journeys into the Lowerworld (see Plate 6).
3. When the paddlers have formed the canoe, the shaman leading the group extinguishes all light except one candle behind the drummer, and steps into the middle of the canoe.
The shaman now does the same work as described in Steps 4 and 5 in Making the Journey to Recover a Power Animal (page 77).
The group accompanies the shaman in singing his power song. Spirit canoe work is more effective if the entire group is singing the words together.
The shaman now does the same work described in Steps 6 through 9 in Making the Journey to Recover a Power Animal (page 78).
Then, at the same time the drum beat begins, the members of the crew begin to paddle. The crew may choose to paddle physically to the beat of the drum, but need not use material poles or paddles. In the darkness of the room, all the participants—the shaman, the drummer, and all the crew members—are visualizing their entrances into the Lower world.
The shaman, in the center of the canoe beside the patient, is the only member of the canoe whose mission it is to search for the guardian spirit. It is his responsibility alone. The other members of the canoe crew are, however, engaged in seeing, and will search the Lowerworld to repel any perceived dangers and to collect information to share after the journey is over. By having joined in the shaman-leader’s power song to call their spirits, they now have with them their own particular guardians. With the aid of these power animals, they will search the Tunnel and then the Lowerworld. If they see any fanged reptile, any voracious insects, or any nonmammalian creatures whose teeth are showing, they are to exhort their own power animals to keep them away from the canoe. In doing so, they may make the sounds of their particular animals.
The shaman now undertakes the work described in Steps 10 through 14 in Making the Journey to Recover a Power Animal (pages 78, 81).
When the shaman shakes his rattle sharply four times to signify that he has the patient’s guardian spirit, it is a signal to the drummer and the whole crew that the return journey should be undertaken immediately. They visualize the canoe sharply turning around and returning up through the Tunnel, as they paddle with maximum speed. They and the drummer stop as soon as the shaman ceases shaking his rattle, for this means that the canoe has returned,
The shaman undertakes the work described in Steps 15 through 16 in Making the Journey to Recover a Power Animal (pages 81, 85).
To give the patient room to dance his animal, the members of the canoe crew spread out into a circle and sit facing inward. When the dancing is finished, the shaman gently assists the dancer back down to the floor to rest. He puts his arm around the patient to indicate his continued support, and describes his experience on the journey to the others. Then members of the canoe crew may, in turn, describe their own experiences during the journey. The shaman adds comments, supplementing their personal experiences with his own knowledge.
The shaman now takes the opportunity, insofar as his own knowledge permits, to suggest how the individual experiences relate to the patient and to knowledge of nonordinary reality. Before beginning this discussion, the shaman may ask the patient if he has anything he wishes to say. Not uncommonly, the patient volunteers that the particular animal or other guardian brought back by the shaman played a very important role in the patient’s life, especially during childhood.
The spirit canoe need not be only used to retrieve guardian spirits; it can also be used to retrieve vital souls (not dealt with here) and for journeys of exploration. Journeys of exploration do not require the presence of a patient in the middle of the canoe. Under such circumstances the drummer has a key position, and the role is best taken by an experienced shaman. The crew shares experiences after each journey to hasten the personal accumulation of shamanic knowledge.
Through journeys of exploration, the shaman gains spirit helpers (see Chapter 7) and knowledge of how to treat different kinds of illness. In such SSC journeys, he is often guided and instructed by his guardian spirit who takes him to the places of particular kinds of spirits. In the following excerpt from an account by a Tavgi Samoyed shaman of Siberia of his first journey to the Lowerworld, a guardian spirit takes him to a locality where he can learn how to treat mental illness:
We saw nine tents before us. . Then it seemed to me we were in the street. We entered the first tent where we found seven naked men and women who were singing all the time while tearing their bodies with their teeth. I became very frightened.
“Now I shall explain this to you, myself, because you will not guess it anyway,” said my companion [guardian spirit]: “Originally, seven earths were created and it is through the spirits of these seven earths that (men) lose their minds. Some just start singing, others losing their minds. go away and die; others again become shamans. Our earth has seven promontories with a madman living on each of them. When you become a shaman, you will find them yourself.”
“Where can I find them—you have led me to the wrong place”—I thought.
“If I do not lead you to see (the spirits), how could you make magic for the insane?” You must be shown all the ways of diseases.”20