Why is it that I am so stubbornly interested in shamanism, even though many colleagues have warned me that I should better change the subject for something nearer to literature, to our culture, to something serious. These attitudes often conceal the ugly face o f academic racism, the implication made that there exists a preferance or obligation to write about legitimate literature. The territorrial im
perative o f human creation that happens in a written text and is universally recognized and approved by a competent community as high literature. Another attitude hidden behind these statements con
siders shamanism as a foreign and rather primitive object not sui
table for academic research, excluding ethnology and a few other
‘proper’ places.
As a third consequence, it might be stated that academia wants control over knowledge, because profitable intellectual objects can be legitimized when deriving from one’s own culture. Unless there is a military or commercial project against underdeveloped ethnias, and strategic information on that culture is required. Many other reasons may be lurking behind those words, but let us stop spe
culating.
Shamanic texts have been the objects o f my research for some time. Not only are they poetically pleasing but also harbor a mostly unknown dimension o f body intelligence. The time has come to determine how our rationalistically ridden cultures managed to wipe out any trace o f magical, imaginative or creative aspects, by which to regard our bodies. Anyway this line o f inquiry shall not be pursued any further.
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Some shamanic cultures believe in a kind o f magical internal work with mind and body, quite distant from the pragmatic signi
ficance with which we load the term ‘work’. Anyhow our cultures are not that simple, since most o f us are under the impression that we know something about shamanism. Indeed, our mega informational machines have already processed a few dozens or so films and published quite a score o f books on the subject. Gurus and mystical schools proliferate as busily as mushroom colonies, people are thirsty for some form or other o f mystical and physical control. The prevailing indefinite sensation o f emptiness must be filled with some kind o f exotic teaching, the same goes for strange foods catered in a variety o f restaurants, perhaps both remain interchangeable?
Each time we read a novel, poem or play, we feel transported into a place where things, people, objects, animals and sensations be
come part o f our imaginational experience. Analogously, when we are involved in a shamanic text, a special place o f mind and body is accessed. The idea is not to examine in a closed rationalistic mode, but merely to read with our most flexible theoretical and intuitional resources, a space which remains largely unknown. One has to be warned to relinquish most cultural determinisms in order to contact our otherness in this otherness. The similitude o f words notwith
standing, due to the very real differences between worlds.
What is understood as the unconscious — those events per
formed without awareness; that lack o f awareness o f ongoing inter
nal process occurring out o f consciousness or simply that which is not conscious. Most o f what we store in the unconscious becomes, in my rendering, a magical consciousness in shamanism. A con
sciousness able to understand invisible, supernatural and mental phe
nomena that acquires a certain textural nature. A substance me
diating a relationship between humans, their internal lives, their supernatural beliefs and the environment. More shall be said on the subject as we proceed.
We find a case in point o f magical consciousness among the Cherokee Ani-Kuta-ni. It was believed that the Ani-Kuta-ni pos
sessed the kind o f powers that enabled them to alter their forms, known as shape-changers. The legend reports how a warrior returning to his village found that his people were being attacked by a large group o f enemies. Fearing for his grandmother he put her into
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a small gourd, which he fastened to his belt. Then he climbed a tree and changed his shape into a swamp woodcock, next he flew across a river and once landing in a safe place changed both o f them back into their original shape. (Cf. Pijoan 1993). It turns out that the medicine pouch, always carried by the Ani-Kuta-ni, functions as the magical mediator. The materiality o f the supernatural appears in the shape-shifting motive. A well known bird o f the region is chosen as a magical metaphorical vehicle to assimilate the human form to the swamp woodcock. This alterations offer, within the native back
ground o f storytelling, the fashioning o f a visionary body.
The body needs a language in order to communicate its own narrative articulations. Most o f us own mute and dumb organisms that live and perish in silence. This silence can be traced back into the late nineteenth century — if not before — where people restricted and concealed their bodies. This silence persists nowadays even if most o f the media displays the naked body as the center o f attention. Furthermore our cultures submerge the body in a logos. In such an enclosure, the body that belongs to the natural order is believed to have a rational purpose. By the mid-nineteenth century the craze o f a specular fashion develops photographic experiments in anatomy, physiology, histology, pathology and psychology. The technical eye is the prime logos dissector.
We live in an era o f fragmentation, which sets off from the aesthetic or scientific photographic discemance — a term deriving from discernen, discerner, discernere, to separate and divide — to digital cadavers soon able to replace corpses in medical schools;
genetic engineering, organ implants; surgical and hormone sex change, to geometrical fractals and deconstruction theories capable o f destabilizing formal and conceptual systems. Our scientific logos shifts between the microscopic and macroscopic experiences o f specular interpretation.
At any rate there is another topos o f the logos linked to magical procedures. In Greece illnesses were attributed to demonic posses
sion. Conjurations and enchantments are mentioned in the Odyssey as part o f a therapeutic epode — from epi, upon and ode, a song.
Odysseus’ leg is injured by a wild boar, the sons o f Autolycus bandage the leg (desan) and stop the flow o f blood with an epaoide or enchantment. Two leading scholars have pointed out that both the
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Greek verb deo: ligature and binding, in addition to ligare are often related to the act o f enchantment through binding and ligature (Cf. Scheftelowitz and Pfister, quoted by Entralgo 1987). In this sense Odysseus’ leg is cured; be that as it may, the logos clearly reveals magical therapeutical attributes: The thaumaturgic character o f the epode can be divided into a restraining action, such as stopping the flow o f blood by means o f a conjuration; and an enchantement, formulated to demand numinous assistance. The Hel
lenic epode combined the logos o f the word with a musical medium.
Among the Orphics, enchantments were accompanied by music in order to cure disease and to purify. Modem research claims that auditory nerves have more connections than any other nerve. It has also been shown how music affects digestion, circulation, respiration and nutrition (Cf. Tame 1984).
Dismemberment as initiatory death, outlines a form o f know
ledge, because a new body is construed. Myth tells about the dis
memberment o f Dionysus-Zagreus by the Titans, while Orpheus was rent by the wild women o f Thrace. We are also familiar with Orpheus’ journey to the underworld to save his wife Eurydice from Hades. Through the art o f his singing and by playing the cithara before the king and queen o f the underworld he obtains the release o f Erydice.
The musical language o f Orphic mysteries deploys a bridge between death and the body. Platonic Eros traced the quest for knowledge at different levels. Initially as beauty o f the body, then the beauty o f many bodies, next the beauty o f concrete things, the beauty o f categories o f knowledge, and the quest o f beauty as such or beauty as pure thought. The Orphic endeavor was the same as the categories o f knowledge in the Platonic Eros. The initiates or mystai who had to keep their eyes closed, eventually became seers or epoptes. A denial o f the body is related to that kind o f abstraction o f the logos that ends in pure thought. (Cf. Walter Wili 1955).
Altered states o f consciousness are brought about by a com
bination o f music and poetry, according to certain findings rhythmic stimulation can lead to auditive hallucinations (Cf. Jaynes 1976).
Could one surmise that the mental state o f the mystai and pure thought derived from auditive hallucinations? At any rate this is one way in which the musical text is assimilated by an imaginal text;
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thus accounting for a magical process that triggered the sensation o f total organic integration. Furthermore, Korean shamans create a certain rhythmic beat o f the drum, these tones are read by each person. The body’s rhythm is accentuated or diminished, hence people are prepared to enter a trance state. The manshin or woman shaman evokes, through music, a magical space in which she will meet the spirits. In a state o f trance the manshin is invested with a metaphorical body. All her movements now belong to the spirits (Cf. Covell 1986). Music can change body rhythms and induce trance like experiences. A body that is used as a vehicle by the spirits takes on a metaphorical configuration. The tropological ex
change occurs when the definition o f the body (the spirit) is insinuated into another body, the m a n sh in ’s.The similitude between the spirit’s body and the m a n sh in ’s is procured by a trance inducing music.
Hippocrates, a contemporary o f Socrates, viewed disease as an internal disorder. In other terms, the logos o f the body, its text was affected by am etria (disorder o f the powers), d ysk ra sia (humoral disorder) or d y srro ia (disorder in the flux o f pneuma). The magical logos is displaced by a tekhne iatrike or art. With the advent o f Hyppocratic medicine the epode is put aside. The doctor interrogates his patient, prognosis is assimilated to tekhne. It is necessary to know the present state and to predict the future. The overall idea being, to explain disease to the patient. A rationalistic profile o f the logos is set as the essential feature o f Hyppocratic discourse.
Throughout this quick description it is possible to acknowledge vestiges o f shamanic elements in early Greek healing rituals and the initial characteristics o f the medical logos. Two different texts are issued: one articulated by a magical logos, which narrativizes the body in a supernatural universe, where disease is personified; and another text delimited by a logical chain o f cause and effect.
However such neat divisions will prove difficult to sustain. The difference between spoken word and written one concerned Plato’s concept o f logos. The problem is staged in the P haedrus with the story o f Theuth or Thoth. An Egyptian deity, master o f magical formulas, he was the god o f writing and medicine. Theuth, eager to share his knowledge goes to Thamus King o f All Egypt. Before the king, Theuth explains that writing is a prescription (pharm akon) for
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memory and wisdom. Thamus challenges this discovery, on the grounds that memory may be put to sleep by writing.
The key term advanced by Derrida to determine the difference between spoken word and writing is ph a rm a k o n , a Greek word with antithetical meanings since it may denote either a remedy or a poison. But this is not the only reading we can give to the word, for it also is associated with a magical logos. Forcibly p h a rm a k o n becomes an important element in the argumentation o f the shamanic texts.
Derrida has shown a marked predilection for a certain ambiguity and juxtaposition in the meanings o f words. D ifferance, decon
struction, dissemination and P harm akon, to name a few. The am
biguity o f ph arm akon formulates the multiple locations o f meaning and can permeate and affect every part o f Plato’s philosophical dis
course. Derrida’s predilection opens a path to a high theoretical mobility. The question on mobility is a pertinent one inasmuch as we are constantly dealing with the problem o f power. A constellation o f words like possession, centeredness, presence and appropriation be
long to the power sphere and may be questioned by a certain imper
sonality in theory striving toward decentralized conceptualizations.
We have chosen to follow some o f the implications given by the term ph arm akon by Derrida, because in so doing shamanism, or rather the mobile analysis insinuated in the shamanic texts is headed to a theoretical space where the boundaries o f meaning remain un
certain and insecure. Unsettled conceptuality agrees with theoretical mobility. Theory can easily fall prey to a reification o f its own presence; an attraction to inhabit a center from which to issue laws and prescribe where analytical thought should go. It can also become very possessive o f its topics o f study, appropriating meaning to reinforce its position in the power stronghold.
When I chose to study shamanic texts, I soon realized the boun
daries o f theoretical thinking and how cumbersome they could be.
Often enough silencing the voices o f difference which must prevail in the study o f shamanic texts.
Plato compares disease with the logos, underlining its rhythms and articulations. Pharm akon, conceived as an artificial substance disturbs the “natural progress o f the illness” (Derrida 1981: 100).
The disruptive character o f writing becomes one o f the features the
king objects to in the story o f Theuth. Pharm akon is the narcotic substance o f writing, considering that writing is a drug. Pharm akon can only be held in distrust by Plato, due to the fact that it disrupts the living authority o f the logos.The power o f the lo g o s is embodied by the spoken word o f the father. Thamus is another name for Ammon, not only the sun king but also the father o f the gods. The logos can be traced to a father figure, always guarded in the memory o f the logos. That is why if memory is disturbed the father logos suffers by sympathetic contamination. Let us not forget at this point that rhetorical practice was linked to memory.
Through Plato’s discourse Socrates discloses a strategy to fight pharm akon; that which remains occult. Socrates argues that fear o f death is what lies behind the power o f pharm akon. Socrates wants to challenge this power with his own remedy in the form o f dialectics.
His strategy is to overwrite the p h arm akon with the inscription o f self examination. Knowledge o f the self involves an internalization o f words into the body. This entails the actual antidote against the ph arm akeu s o f fear. Dialectics is the textual substance that inverts the ph arm akon . Inverted ph arm akon is the metaphorical device through which the episteme or discursive conditions o f knowledge can be entered. Magical knowledge is changed into a rationalized cure. However, reason is not able to abandon the powerful attraction o f magical metaphors, insofar as it is through magical metaphors that dialectics exchanges the drug for the remedy. This procedure is accomplished when the shamanic traits o f early Greek thought are transformed into a rationalistic drug. Pharm akon is a metaphorical locuswhere opposites converge.
The written word or rather its power penetrates the body, due to the knowledge dragged in by the pharm akon, as a substance that allots a textural concatenation to the body; writing as remedy or as poison. At this point a few propositions o f the text should be voiced.
The text yields significance, it is an open network, which is at the infinity o f language, this last conceived as not subject to closure. At the root o f textual analysis the text becomes loose, explodes and disseminates. (Cf. Barthes 1985). The ph arm akon that underlies the text is exposed to all the propositions o f the text. By this same token the textural disposition o f the body will have to yield meaning; an open network as well, where meanigs cross each other acquiring
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informational density, and o f course cannot be restricted to any theoretical closure.
Although briefly, I want to mention how Eskimo healing practice rely on a secret language or ph arm akon to contact the spirits. Once in a trance the shaman sings:
My body is all eyes Look at it! Be not afraid!
I look in all directions!
This language comes from a trance state where the body has changed into a magical one (Cf. Eliade 1964: 290). Secret language and the text o f the body are united to deliver a special kind o f knowledge.
Socrates distrusts p h a rm a k o n, describing it as an impurity that disrupts the inner purity. Thus, the external menace o f the p h a r m akon must be put back outside. The lo g o srestores balance and acts as a cure where inside and outside are once again clearly delimited.
The term p h a rm a k o s indicates an external demonic possesion, at the same time it can be depicted as an outer supernatural force that threatens the inner harmony o f the city. In shamanic practice the body is possessed and when in trance the shaman can depart in a magical flight. Does this suggest that the shamanic logos was able to deal with psychic externalizations? If this is true, then it is in strong contrast to the Socratic fear o f psychic disruption.
The rite o f the p h a rm a k o s was performed in order to pacify the wrath o f a god, whenever a calamity struck the city. A person was sacrificed and burnt to purify the city. The city is imagined as a closed body and has to find someone to personify the scapegoat.
Frazer describes how in Greece, a man belonging to the poorer classes was willing to personify the scapegoat. He was fed, dressed in sacred garments and people prayed that all their evils might fall on him. “The Athenians regularly maintained a number o f degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two o f these outcast scapegoats” (1940: 579). The inside regnum o f the lo g o s is opposed to the outside influence o f magical calamities.
P harm akon as a tangible narcotic substance is well known among Venezuelan and Colombian Guajiro natives. They use a
special variety o f tobacco to cure internal psychic disorders; this substance works as a self-healing device. The drug, acting as a magical logos “reveals the true causes and symptoms o f the sickness” (Cf. Kalweit 1988: 166). After the narcotic vision, the Piache or shaman acquires special knowledge. Tobacco along with dreams can be read as a sort o f pharmakon/writing that procure knowledge. Supernatural visions, contemplated as spirits, become part o f a psychological engraving or writing.
Socrates likens the graphema to the zõgraphema, that is writing compared to painting. “Reality” is incarnated by the simulacra o f writing and painting. Resemblance can only simulate the real;
painting denatures what it imitates as writing denatures speech.
Once again reason functions as an antidote ph arm akon against imitation.
A prevalent epistemic apprehension is imported into scientific discourse, which exchanged places with the old Greek Socratic logos. When the matter o f shamanism is brought up, ph arm akon against non-rationalistic knowledge from other cultures is put to action. “A characteristic feature o f solanaceae psychosis is further
more that the intoxicated person imagines himself to have been changed into some animal, and the hallucinosis, due probably to main paraethesic” (Hesse quoted by Hamer 1978: 142). The sacred shamanic European trance state is explained away with a termino
logy that suggests mental disease.
More to the point though, is the fact that the fiction o f reality blocks both the pictorial and scriptural aspects o f the pharm akon.
This process is engaged when the real is confronted to different systems o f writing or painting. The episteme dispels illusion by imposing a territory. As such it is manifested by measuring, weighing and counting opposed to the illusions produced by painters
This process is engaged when the real is confronted to different systems o f writing or painting. The episteme dispels illusion by imposing a territory. As such it is manifested by measuring, weighing and counting opposed to the illusions produced by painters