discussion and links for shamanism, medicine, & ritual
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  • Beautiful womb-like depiction Mary, birthing into the next world. What struck me was the 'working' articulated foot to send her off with, replacing the damaged one perhaps.Thanks for the link Bonnie. Incredible. I think we are beginning to remember and piece together our roots.
  • Thanks Bonnie - I encourage everyone to open the link as the burial is most strikingly embryonic! Fetus in the womb! Yes on knowing about Tedlock - it was her book that drove me nuts via not enough citation or info on this oldest shaman. And when I went digging it seemed the materials wanted to be found as something which could have been a fruitless search became the ultimate plethora of wonder. Being I'm new around here, I won't burden things with the mass quotes I've logged from various texts unless asked (did I mention I'm riting-writing a book? These matters are the matters I'm addresses via mischief). One really great book is called Unearthing the Past, as well as Klima's essay. Thanks for letting me know the Noble book - she's one of my favs per Motherpeace Tarot so I will look up that book. David Abram (Spell of the Sensuous) has a new book out called Becoming Animal - looks great! I'm excited for that read. Mary
  • Welcome Mary! I have been fascinated by recent discoveries of various burials of women shaman for several years. There is something so numinous about the whole thing. I hadn't seen the one you're describing I don't believe--it's much older! However,here's a link to a story I found on LiveScience a couple of years ago that details another burial from about 12,000 years ago and includes a sketch of the burial: http://www.livescience.com/5179-female-shaman-grave-loaded-goodies..... Here's an excerpt:

    The grave of an elderly woman buried about 12,000 years ago included a plethora of animal remains, adding one piece of evidence she was indeed a shaman who possibly used animal spirits to communicate with the spirit world (depicted in this artistic reconstruction of the grave).

    This care along with the animal parts point to the grave belonging to both an important member of the society and possibly a healer called a shaman, the researchers conclude in their research published this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Such healers mediate between the human and spirit worlds, often summoning the help of animal spirits along their quests, according to the researchers...

    BTW. there are two absolutely fabulous books I recommend on the history and culture of women shamans, one of which I recall includes some discussion of one of these burials (can't remember which, though). You probably know these books well, Mary, but for anyone else, they are "The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Relgion and Medicine by Barbara Tedlock, and "Shakti Woman: Feeling our Fire, Healing our World-The New Female Shamanism" by Vicki Noble.
  • Hey Ed - here is one quote from the rather obscure source:

    “The female whose strongly flexed gracile skeleton we found in 1949 under two mammoth scapulae, below the level of the culturalstratum near the edge of the first settlement unit, also showed a defect [that
    two art portraits replicate] of the left half of the face.  Her head and chest had been sprinkled
    with red ochre; in her fist she held canines of a polar fox and a skeletal
    portion of the same animal; and near her head was a flint point – a typical
    example of funerary rites of religious character in the upper
    Paleolithic….  In any event, the
    woman interred in the grave at Dolni Vestonice was of small stature, and her
    delicate appearance…her grave marked her for ritual practices as if she had
    been “born” for them.”  (Bohuslav
    Klima, “The First Ground-Plan of an Upper Paleolithic Loess Settlement in
    Middle Europe and its Meaning,” in Robert Braidwood and Gordon Willey (eds.), Courses Toward Urban Life, 203.)

     

    If you cannot find the book via Amazon or such, I could copy and snail mail you the essay.  Per shamanism and cross-culture, I think shamanism delves to a stratum that transcends culture and you just KNOW when you are in the midst of a healer that you are kindred with, transcending language, but certainly not self-imposed grandiose attempts or the heavens will send trickster in some form or another to re-humble-ize the healer so they remember they aren't really the healer, more like the divine secretary or such.  A somewhat simple answer but even within my own "culture" there can just be a knowing who and who isn't the shamanic-one who can assist.  If someone arrived speaking a different language and that mutual knowing was in-of our souls, I would not mind one bit that the person was of another language and culture.  I think white-ies have a bad rap because we've forgotten our own shamanic heritage which goes back millennia and then try to find our origins through someone else's.  But at the deepest strata the origins remain alive and well and eager to be re-membered.  Mary



  • Mary,

    I am interested in this area so please list the obscure references. I became interested after reading several of the Geer books (People of the Wolf) and the like. I have not kept up with this group as I would wish so this next question may have been covered: What is the place of a person not of a particular culture in providing shamanic healing cross-culturally? I have a concern about, for example, any attempt of a self-proclaimed, Western shaman attempting to help a native from Peru. The desire may be genuine but if the culture is so different......?

  • My interests are in prehistory/prehistoric art and attempted tracings of a unified archetype of trickster-shaman-artist as presented in some of the earliest records of our art-making. If anyone is interested I'll post some obscure references - but the first archaeologically known shaman was a woman who was buried under mammoth scapulae 27,000 BC, her skull revealing facial nerve paralysis on her left side, two art works found are portraits of her and her healing art was firing sculptures in such a way as to blow them up for purposes of healing - she went to complicated lengths via her craft to have this happen, and had created kiln firing 17,000 years before we had previously known ceramic firing to date back to. Same with her community showing evidence of basketry, textiles and agriculture. Cheerio, Mary
  • I just added myself to this discussion group. I will review convos in process. Looking forward, Mary
  • I am wondering if anyone is interested in taking a trip to Peru, possibly in late August or early September to work with a Shaman and experience the Ayahuasca.
  • One of the best  writers on shamanism is Roger Walsh he provides scientific data e.g. psychosis meditative and shamanic  states as well understanding and respectfully appraoching shamanic ritual container.
  • check out http://www.shamansong.com
    Shamansong.com
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