spirit and art- and the puzzles of paradox

7/30/2019 Spirit and Art- And the Puzzles of Paradox

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Spirit and Art: and the Puzzles of Paradox

By Van James

Today, the word spirit and the term spiritual are often reserved for the religion

page of the newspaper, held captive at church, or exiled to New Age circles. But

the questions of origin andbirth, life and fertility, reincarnation and karma, and

death and transformation have long been connected with spirit and have been

communicated by means of art throughout the ages. Images of gods and

goddesses, angels and demons may have given way to pictures of landscapes

and abstract forms, but what can we understand from such changes?

Throughout human history, spiritthe shamanic trance state, mystic revelation,

divine inspiration, religious devotion, enlightened thinking, individual self-

expression, the Spirit of the Agehas inspired change and transformation in

human consciousness. Art is a picture of the spirit, in its many forms, articulating

what it means to be human. Any period in history can show us through its art the

nature of human consciousness at a particular time. From the Paleolithic era to

the present time, art has acted as a self-portrait of the human condition and has

served as a family album or picture book of our humanity. Shamanic art is one of

the earliest such self-portraits, at its height during the Paleolithic era, between

circa 42,000 and 12,000 BCE.

The term shaman, once used to describe the sages and medicine people of the

Tungus tribes ofSiberia, is now generally applied to certain people and practices

found in almost all indigenous cultures throughout the world. Three essential

elements are found in most shamanic traditions: (1) Shamans voluntarily enter

visionary states of consciousness, during which (2) they experience non-ordinary

realms of existence where (3) they gain knowledge and power for themselves or

for their communities (Cowan, p.3). This journey into the supersensory, where the

shaman is helped by spirit guides that appear most often in animal forms, usually

leads to initiatory crisis, an experience of oneness with the fabric of the universe,

and the ability to prophesy, heal, and control natural phenomena. The paintingsof the Paleolithic caves may have been used in this connection. By depicting

animal images in caves, the shaman may have stimulated a supersensory

experience, entered the Otherworld by means of altered consciousness, and

gained knowledge through this contact. The ritual artistic act of painting and

drawing, together with other means, can be seen as a vehicle for paleo-shamanic

practices.


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Neuropsychological research distinguishes three overlapping yet discernible

stages of trance experience. These begin with the seeing of geometric forms,

such as dots, circles, crescents, zigzags, grids, or parallel and wavy lines. These

forms, called phosphenes, have a luminous, brightly colored, pulsating character

that fluctuates and metamorphoses. When the subject's eyes are open, these

phosphenes are seen as though projected transparently upon surfaces such as

rock walls. In the second stage of trance condition, some forms are given more

significance than others and are seen as images of objects: A crescent may be a

bowl, a zigzag may be a snake, and a grid a ladder. The third stage is entered by

way of a tunnel or vortex experience, at the end of which a bright light is seen.

The geometric forms of stage one transform into the lattice structure of the vortex

into which the subject is pulled. Animal, human, and anthropozoomorphic figures

begin to appear. Subjects feel by this third stage that they can fly and turn into

animals or birds. Subjects become what they see.

Jean Clottes and J. D. Lewis-Williams note that:

These three stages are universal and wired into thehuman nervous system,

though the meanings given to the geometrics of Stage One, the objects into

which they are illusioned in Stage Two, and the hallucinations of Stage Three are

all culture-specific. . . a San shaman may see an eland antelope; an Inuit will see

a polar bear or a seal. But, allowing for such cultural diversity, we can be fairly

sure that the three stages of altered consciousness provide a framework for anunderstanding of shamanic experiences (p.19)

Although some researchers acknowledge the shamanic experience, it is often

viewed as strictlyhallucinatory and illusory in nature. This raises the question, Do

we regard all shamanic experiences as hallucinatory or are there such things as

valid and objective spiritual experiences?


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A Lapp shamans drum, collected in the early nineteenth century from northern

Sweden, depicts thetraditional three worlds of (1) Middle Earth, the realm of

human beings; (2) the Underworld, land of elemental spirits and souls of the

dead; and (3) the Upperworld of gods and guardian spirits. The shaman first

descends into the Underworld in a trance state induced by beating the drum and

then ascends to the Upperworld pictured as a ride on a sleigh drawn by a

reindeer and followed by a dog (fig. 1).During the Paleolithic era, entering a cave may have been equated with entering

into deep trance by way of the tunnel experience. Images on the cave walls may

have paralleled visions attained through altered states of consciousness, thereby

providing a link between inner and outer experiences.


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Many of the animal paintings are believed to have been blown or spat, rather

than drawn with a brushliketool. In this way a very different relationship to the

image was made possible. Michel Lorblanchetsuggests that spitting is a way of

projecting yourself onto the wall, becoming one with the horse youare painting.

Thus the action melds with the myth. Perhaps a shaman did this as a way of

passinginto the world beyond. This technique can be seen as a way of

breathing life into the image.


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It is possible that many of the anthropozoomorphic figures depicted in some of

the three hundredknown Paleolithic cave sites, and often called Sorcerers or

Animal Masters, are indeed shamans onritual journeys or in visionary trance

states. The Sorcerer of Les Trois Frres, for example, is atwo-and-one-half foot-

long, part-animal, part-human figure, fifteen feet above the floor level of aFrench

Pyrenees cave (fig. 2). With stag antlers and ears, alert owl eyes, long hermit

beard, bear or lion forepaws, human feet, and a short fox or pony tail, the figure

oversees numerous animal images in the subterranean chamber. It is

conservatively dated at about 14,000 BCE. Throughout primal history there are

many examples of these anthropozoomorphic figures with stag antlers or cow

horns. The figures found at Les Trois Frres and Le Gabillou (fig. 3) are perhaps

the most impressive examples of this Paleolithic theme. In later prehistory, horn-

or antler-crowned shamans are found represented in many places throughout the

world (fig. 4).


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In the Nordic creation myth of the Edda, the World Stag stands atop the World

Ash Tree, Yggdrasil.From the antlers of this mythic stag drops of water fall down,

creating the twelve rivers or streamsthat give life to the world. Ernst Uehli

suggests that the streams are a picture of the major nervesin the human head.

According to him, this creation tale describes the head as an image of the

cosmos, and the senses arise in order that perception of this cosmos may occur.

Uehli connects the stag-man of Les Trois Frres to initiation practices and early

mystery cults of the Paleolithic era. He suggests that the conductors of initiation

for these cave mysteries called on the help of the stag imagination in order that

the candidate would experience the forces at work in the forming of the head

organization. According to Uehli, it is through penetrating such spiritual

imaginations that primal humanity learned something of the significance of the

senses and the nervous system in a direct, instinctive manner.From this perspective, the antlers are a pictorial imagination of the formative life

forces or chiconnected to nerve activity, ideation, and sense perception. In this

way, the antlers are an earlyartistic representation of what was perceived by

primal humanity as radiating light that extends beyond and around the head. In

other words, antlers and horns may indicate primal halos or auras. The halo is

well documented in the history of art as a spiritual emanation surrounding the

heads and bodies of buddhas, bodhisatvas, saints, and spirit beings. Antlers,

horns, halos, and crowns are pictures of extrasensory capacities that standbehind the spiritual activity of thinking or knowing beings.

In the last line of the "Song of Amergin," one of the oldest remnants of Irish

literature, Amergin,the Milesian bard, declares, "I can shift my shape like a god."

This reference to the shamanic abilityto shape-shift (the capacity to live as,

identify with, and become one with other objects, beings, and phenomena) might


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also be translated as I am the god who creates in the head of man the fire of

thought. Put simply, this line might be paraphrased as I am the fire of

imagination or I burn with visions of the spirit world. Tom Cowan says about

this phrase Shapeshifting occurs in the head and is analogous to fire, the most

radically transformative of the elements(p. 35). All of these aspects, contained in

this simple phrase by Amergin, pertain to the artistic rendering of the horned and

antlered Animal Master. Life, thought, imagination, vision, fire in the head, and

shape-shifting all relate to the antler-crowned shaman. So the question arises,

Are these horns images of an extended vision, a new vision brought to birth in

the Paleolithic caves through directed ritual artistic activity?

The spiritual meaning of horns is also mentioned in the Bible with the Hebraic

prophet Moses, who, as the visionary author of Genesis and spiritual leader of

the chosen people, is endowed with exceptional magic powers that are

represented by "horns of fire" emerging from his brow. Artists of the Renaissance

depict this Old Testament figure with two horns of light or antlerlike columns of

fire rising out of his forehead. Perhaps the most powerful artistic rendering of this

biblical prophet is the sculpture Michelangelo carved for the tomb of Pope Julius

II (fig. 5). The artist clearly depicts Moses with two horns upon his head. The

horns are pictorial imaginings of the energy of vision and prophecy possessed bythe shaman-initiate, as well as of the fire of creative spirit that extends beyond

ordinary brain-bound thinking. Although Michelangelo would not have intended

such a thing, they can also be seen as a reference to the two-petaled brow

chakra of Indian esoteric tradition associated with the pineal gland between the

eyebrows, sometimes called the third eye.


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Images such as the Sorcerer of Les Trois Frres lead us to inquire whether such

anthropozoomorphic figures represent (1) actual creatures that lived at the time,

(2) fanciful beings invented by early humans, (3) hallucinations, (4) shamans in

animal costume, (5) supersensory impressions of the shaman priests seen

through the still-visionary consciousness of primal peoples, or (6) spirit beings. In

different cases any one of these possibilities may be true. However, it is likely

that in many cases early humanity is depicting the supernatural animal forces,

the spirit guides, as they pertain to primal human experience.

Ritual masks, costumes, headdresses, crowns, capes, and othergarments that were featured in cave art were probably donned asclairvoyant faculties began to decline among primal humanity. Theart of costume initially had its place in cultic practices and

probably approximated the actual picture formed in visionaryexperience. This is not to say that more mundane uses were notpossible for sacred objects. However, the original inspiration forsacred objects such as the table (altar), the wheel (solar symbol),the dagger (sun ray), the headdress (halo), and clothing (bodyaura) appears to have been ritually motivated in connection withearly sacred practices. The wearing of animal skins and hornshad the significance of aiding the shaman on his or her vision

quest or spirit journey to find the Animal Master and spirit guide.In this regard, Joseph Campbell points out:

The masks that in our demythologized time are lightly assumed for the

entertainments of a costumeball or Mardi Grasand may actually, on such

occasions, release us to activities and experiences which might otherwise have

been tabooedare vestigial of an earlier magic, in which the powers to be

invoked were not simply psychological, but cosmic. For the appearances of the

natural order, which are separate from each other in time and space, are in fact

the manifestations of energies that inform all things and can be summoned to

focus at will. (p. 93)

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A powerful image found at Lascaux depicts a bird-headed human figure

positioned diagonally above astaff topped with a bird effigy, the bird featuressignifying the shaman's avian transformation and spirit flight (fig. 6). The figure,

probably a shaman, is immediately in front of an apparently disemboweled bison

crossed with a lance. Often described as depicting a hunting accident, this

picture is one of the most narrative images in Paleolithic art and suggests an

animal sacrifice. It is called the "wounded man" or "killed man" scene, but it may

represent an initiatory trance death rather than a hunting mishap. The animal

sacrifice is made to the gods; the shaman enters into trance and is guided with

the help of the animal spirit into the Otherworld. The bird staff is the magic

symbol of the trance ascent, for wherever it is placed it becomes the bird-toppedTree of Life at the Center of the World and the vehicle upon which the shaman

rises to the Upper World. The shaman, with erect penis, engages in a reversal of

the birth experience as he enters the contracting and constricting uterine tunnels

of Mother Earth to regain union with the nourishing maternal womb of creation.

He is the "wounded man" in the sense that he suffers a death to his lower self in

the trance condition and, aided by an animal sacrifice, soars to the top of the

Staff of Life.Robert Ryan characterizes the shamanAnimal Master's relationship to the caveas a returning to the source of creation. The ithyphallic shaman's penetration of

the maternal cave of power is a return to the deep structures of the human mind,

the formal source of our experience, and, at the same time, to the cosmogonic

source. For the revelation of the cave art is that the two sources, human and

cosmic, have concentric centers and that their shared center is inwardly

encountered and experienced by opening the eye of the soul ... (p. 55).


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To see the scene at Lascaux, one must pass through the great Hall of Bulls, an

open chamber covered with exquisite large animal paintingsthe largest of

which are bullsand proceed down a narrower, tunnel-like corridor to a well or

shaft, "apparently the most sacred place in the sanctuary, rather like the crypt of

an ancient church" (Ruspoli, p. 28). One must descend into this shaft to view the

shamanic scene.

Another figure at Les Trois Frres, also ithyphallic, is portrayed with bison

shoulders and head, but standing upright on human legs and feet (fig. 7).

Surrounded by a herd of thirty bison, ten horses, four ibex, and a reindeer, this

part-human Animal Master seems to be directing the herd's movements as it

plays what some believe to be a bowlike musical instrument. Others see the

figure as having a bleeding nose, a typical side effect of the shamanic trance

state. "Whether this Animal Master is a visionary picture of the Paleolithic

shaman with his god?like capacities," says Marija Gimbutas, "or whether it is theshaman in ceremonial mask and regalia, one thing is clearthe Animal Master is

an important spiritual reality for peoples from Asia to the Americas" (p. 175).


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Ernst Uehli suggests that the horned and hoofed Animal Master is a visionary

picture or primalimagination of an earlier stage of human development (fig. 8). He

also connects this figure with the Greek god Pan. Gimbutas too sees aconnection and says of Pan: "Greek Pan was a mortal god of the forest. He was

a shepherd and believed to be the protector of wild animals, beekeepers, and

hunters. . . . There are more than 100 recorded cult places associated with Pan's

name in ancient Greece. This seems to indicate that he was popular and widely

worshipped, although he was outside the pantheon of great gods and

goddesses" (p. 177). Pan is also linked to the Indian god Shiva, and the Indus

deity Pashupati. Unfortunately, Pan later serves as the imagination behind the

medieval Christian devil with its horns and supernatural power prodding humanity

on toward the assertion of independent egohood with all its (in this case)

negative attributes.The Animal Master, Sorcerer, or shaman is an important key to the imagery of

prehistoric art as it captures in picture form the aesthetic missing link between

the animal kingdom and the human being. Perhaps our long?lost ancestor is not

the lower primate we've imagined for the past century and a half, but the elusive

paleo-shaman Animal Master, as spirit and art have suggested for thousands of

years.

References:

" 1." Campbell, J. Historical Atlas of World Mythology. (vol. I.) New York: Harperand Row, 1988.


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" 2." Clottes, J. and D. Lewis-Williams. The Shamans of Prehistory. New York:Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

" 3." Cowen, T. Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit. SanFrancisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

" 4." Gimbutas, M. Language of the Goddess. London, England:Thames and Hudson, 2001.

" 5." Lorblanchet, M. quoted in R. Hughes, "Behold the Stone Age," Time,February 13, 1995.

" 6." Ruspoli, M. The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographs. New York: HarryN. Abrams, 1987.

" 7." Ryan, R. The Strong Eye of Shamanism. Rochester,VT: Inner Traditions,1999.

" 8." Uehli, Ernst. Atlantis und das R tsel der Eiszeitkunst. Stuttgart, Germany:J. Ch. Mellinger Verlag, 1980.

FIGURE CAPTIONSFigure 1. A Lapp shaman's drum, from early nineteenth-

century northern Sweden, illustrates the three worldsto which the shaman has

access.

Figure 2. The Sorcerer of Les Trois Frres, in a French Pyrenees cave, is an

anthropozoomorphic figure with stag antlers and ears, owl eyes, a beard, bear or

lion paws, a horse- or foxlike tail, and human feet. Anthropozoomorphic figures

may depict shamans in ritual attire or spirit beings who guide the shamans.

Figure 3. A figure at Le Gabillou, France, depicted with bison head and shouldersand human legs and feet, is described as a Sorcerer or supernatural Animal

Master.

Figure 4. The Siberian Tungus shaman with his antlers and ritual drum is

depicted in this illustrationafter Nicholas Witsens drawing of 1705.


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Figure 5. Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses, created for the tomb of Pope Julius

II, depicts Moses inthe likeness of the Pope.Figure 6. Referred to as the Killed Man, this Paleolithic image depicted in the

innermost cave sanctuaryat Lascaux in France is perhaps better described as

Trance Man, for it may depict the shaman on his spirit flight beside a sacrificed

bovine.

Figure 7. Another figure at Les Trois Frres, also ithyphallic, is portrayed with

bison sholders and head, but standing upright on human legs and feet.

Figure 8. These unusual anthropozoomorphic creatures prefigure the Bushmen

"flying bucks" of South Africaand the Pan figures of ancient Greece. They were

engraved on a staff found in a rock shelter at Teyjat in the Dordogne region of

France and suggest the shamanic Animal Master.

spirit and art- and the puzzles of paradox

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