Shamanic Tunnel Shamanism the Tunnel Art Work Native American
Joseph Campbell, in his lifelong exploration of our planet'south mythology came to believe that shamans were the first artists, the get-go musicians, and the first storytellers. He also discovered the drum as ane of the core instruments in many varieties of shamanism, actualization in the most ancient of traditions. It is then reasonable to speculate shamans were the get-go drummers every bit well. The global predominance of the pulsate seems to support this conventionalities. Michael Harner summarized his study of global methods of consciousness alteration by stating that throughout most of the globe the altered states of consciousness used in shamanism are attained through techniques involving a monotonous percussive sound, almost typically done with a drum, merely as well with sticks, rattles, and other instruments.
I have been reading Michael Harner's book The Manner of the Shaman, his personal guide to shamanic practice. His volume is part ethnography (Harner spent considerable time with the Jivarro people of Peru) also as excercises and his own accounts and of people he worked with. I endeavor to embody a healthy corporeality of skepticism, but I must say Harner exemplifies a deep integrity and empathy, encouraging shamanic exercise on a transpersonal level; something that must be experienced (and repeated and congenital upon) in a meaningful way.
His get-go experiential exercise he calls, 'First Journey', he writes, "this will be a unproblematic journey of exploration downwards through the Tunnel into the Lowerworld. Your but mission volition exist to traverse the Tunnel, perhaps see what lies beyond, and and then return." He is very sincere in his instructions and I felt comfortable experimenting for myself. Later on all, I am an artist. My interest in shamanism has been steadily growing and I felt it was fourth dimension to footstep it upwardly and meet for myself the possibilities of my ain experience. Harner'south instructions were very specific: to carry out the do I will need a drum. Out at my family embankment firm at the coast (I had inconveniently forgot all my drums were in storage in Portland). Non a adept start, but Harner says you could employ a CD of shamanic drumming or even someone tapping a tablespoon on hardcover book next to your head! He admitted this was less than optimal, and I agreed. However, in the garage I did find a v-gallon saucepan with a remarkable tone to it. I jerry-rigged a mallet using a slice of driftwood and a cloth to make a "drum." You wouldn't meet this in the American Museum of Natural History, but Harner assured me information technology was the audio that really counted. Beggars can't be choosers and I definitely considered my solution a step up from a spoon.
Why is the drum such a powerful tool for entering into shamanic states of consciousness?
The drum acts as a focusing device, similar to the approach of various meditation techniques in other traditions where one strives to focus the mind on a specific point, quieting distracting thoughts and energies, keeping the mind anchored to a linear consciousness. The elimination of distracting thoughts is the offset stepping-stone toward assuasive the consciousness to open to higher states of awareness.
Once the drum sounds, the energies and attentions of the spirits hone in.
In the shamanic traditions, every bit mentioned before, the drum is frequently referred to as a vessel the shaman rides into other realms. (Meet Siberian traditions, Lapp drums, spiritual flying, association with birds etc.) Phrases such equally the shaman "rides his drum similar a equus caballus" are found throughout the accounts of shamanic trance journeying experience. The single focus on the pure sound of the drum is the aiding meditation vessel transporting the shaman'due south spirit into non-ordinary realities. In a higher place and beyond its use every bit a musical instrument the pulsate is considered sacred, and possessed of powers its ain right. The instrument is oft empowered through ritualistic practices that charge it with powerful energetic intent. This often includes the materials of the pulsate, such as a specific tree for the frame and animate being for the hide. Such a drum becomes a stiff tool for healing, and like all tools of power, must be earned and treated with restraint and respect. The pulsate is an free energy form—a living beingness, derived from beings, working with the shaman to increase his or her power and effectiveness. Such a drum can invoke spirits, fight illness (and demonic forces often associated with disease) and many influence many other forces.
On a physiological level, a more scientific explanation is that drumming stimulates the auditory tracts that laissez passer directly into the reticular activating system (RAS) of the brain. The RAS regulates the general level of electrical activity in the brain. Through a phenomenon known as auditory driving, the audio of drumming creates strong, repetitive neuronal firing in the auditory pathways. Prolonged listening to such sounds serves to overcharge the RAS in a unique way that can greatly reduce, or entirely block out, other sensory stimuli. This existence said, I wasn't particularly thrilled about my plastic bucket, but I kept my spirits high.
Adjacent, for the journey Harner instructs to avert psychedelic or alcoholic substances for at least 24 hours prior to the journey, and then that "your centeredness and power of concentration will be good", he further writes to swallow lightly or not at all during the preceding iv hours. Choose a dark and tranquility room (which was user-friendly here on the Oregon Coast) and to lie comfortably on the floor, without a pillow, in loose clothing. Have a few deep breaths, relaxing your arms and legs. Prevarication there a few minutes and contemplate your forthcoming journey…You lot are and so to visualize an opening in the world. Any hole volition exercise, fifty-fifty a man-made one. The right opening will be one that feels comfy to you. Spend some time seeing the pigsty without entering it. "Note its details conspicuously."
I was now desperate to decide my hole. Since I had simply returned from eastern Oregon, 2 different holes were nowadays in my minds eye: ane was the hot springs at Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge (which seemed very mystical and fitting) the other was a crack in the rock along a canyon by the Deschuttes river on a family unit property in Tumolo, Oregon. The tight piffling crack had natural rock steps, which we used to go lower downwardly the coulee to a trail about xx feet beneath, my family had used it to get down to the river trail my whole life, and my dad had used information technology before me as a kid, but I wasn't certain if it counted, since it really didn't go down into the earth per se, but just to a lower part of the stone coulee. This would prove to be an interesting dilemma.
Next, y'all need an assistant to play the pulsate. Luckily, my girlfriend Anne was with me, and beingness a musician herself seemed proficient to the play the role. The drum must be played in a monotonous, rapid frequency of ca. 205-220 beats per minute (which is unremarkably the most effective, Harner writes). At the start of the drumming, put your arm over your optics to cake out any remaining light. The drumming continues for approximately ten minutes. When the drumming begins, visualize your hole and enter it. Harner then writes:
"Go downward through your Tunnel. At first the Tunnel may exist dark and dim. It usually goes underground at a slight angle, but occasionally it descends steeply. The Tunnel sometimes appears ribbed, and oftentimes it bends. Occasionally one passes through the Tunnel so fast information technology is not even seen…At the end of the Tunnel you volition emerge out of doors. Examine the landscape in item, travel through it, and remember its features. Explore until y'all are signaled to come up back, and then return up through the Tunnel the same manner yous went down. Practice not bring annihilation back with you lot. This is only an exploratory journey."
The betoken by the drummer is 4 sharp cracks on the drum (or bucket) followed by xxx seconds of very rapid beats followed by another four hits, signaling the final return where you are to sit upward and open up your eyes. Harner says, "Do not be discouraged if you lot do non succeed the get-go time." Off-white enough.
So, Anne begins drumming. Since, this is her kickoff fourth dimension she wavers a petty fleck in the beat and finding the "sweet spot" of the bucket, but finally gets going; meanwhile, I am wavering between holes in the basis. I forget what I'thousand supposed to do; practise I enter and imagine a tunnel? Or is a tunnel supposed to come to me? I am apprehensive about the whole thing. Practice I complimentary-associate and create my experience in mind? I was nether the impression that part of the 'altered land' is y'all receive visions and participate, non just create. Yet, I relaxed and tried to get into the swing of things. Like my experience with meditation, yoga, or mountain climbing visions come up when you are not consciously thinking—suddenly things move into view that weren't there earlier. I felt piffling twinges of an contradistinct state, probably about 5-8 minutes in. And I suddenly began to come across dim, hazy pictures of what looked like, or could exist a tunnel. Except information technology wasn't going down in the world simply seemed to be going straight upwardly like a ribbed cone. And I couldn't tell which hole, the hot spring or the rock scissure, the cone was coming from. Shortly enough, Anne banged the four hits marking my return, from, well, nowhere in detail.
I wasn't disappointed, rather merely contemplative on the fact that I would have to try information technology once more some other night and that the experiment was worthwhile, withal. Yet, there was that moment almost ¾ of the way through where things seemed to exist happening, though I couldn't really put a mental finger on information technology at the fourth dimension (or fully turn off my quantifying mentality, analyzing the experience).
It wasn't a total loss; Anne had a swell time and even said she was having her own visions of a stenciled moose. I immediately suggested she lie downwardly and I pick upward the bucket (I am a drummer later on all!) and I thought pretty highly of my power to go the spirits going with my plow on the saucepan. Sure enough, Anne's experience was a phantasmagoric scene of morphing deer, a mermaid on a swing with a wolf which then turned into grass, a vivid square tunnel, diamond paneling which turned into elephants, a giant bat…she apparently has a more agile imagination.
I was perplexed and wondering if she hadn't taken something special for the occasion; but knowing her (she can't even finish a glass of wine) I knew she just had a fortunate brain chemistry for this sort of affair. Yet, in her recollection (which nosotros recorded immediately later on the session) nothing she described concretely fit the 'journey to the Lowerworld exercise, merely was more of a 'journey to the fantasy playground'—nevertheless, I consider her experience a valid 'shamanic' one in this context, even if we didn't completely sympathize it.
Anne'south successful feel, and my ain time concentrating with the drum, seemed to lighten my mood and free energy and Anne asked if I'd like to endeavour again. Mermaids on a swing with a wolf, I'm in! I so confessed I couldn't fifty-fifty make up one's mind on the hole and we talked near it. This (second) fourth dimension I would stick with the hot spring (for I knew this hole went deep in the earth). I relaxed, took a few deep breaths as the drum began.
Below are my recorded notes and drawings immediately following my experience:
"It took awhile…just I imagined the hot spring, and I kept imagining it and and then I saw the kind of ribbed thing once again, but it was like a cone, and it was sort of similar the within of a worm, and it was kind of dark, merely I (it) didn't feel like information technology was going down, I felt like information technology was going up. So I was confused, I didn't feel like I was [looking] going down in the globe, I felt similar I was going upwards into this cylinder, and then eventually I was going in information technology, simply it wasn't real quick, it was taking a long time, and at that place was this matter with me. It wasn't a articulate picture but information technology was definitely something, in that location, and information technology was to my left and information technology was swimming with me, and I'll take to draw you a picture, it was like a long, gangly, monkey-like affair with blackness and white stripes, and had an angler (fish-like) kind of face, and information technology had these porcupine pilus things coming off its head and neck, and it wasn't good. It was something with me that wasn't necessarily bad merely it was something that was tagging along for the ride just wasn't invited.
And this all took awhile, considering at first I was in the tunnel and so I came up (or downwards?) once more and was at the Hart Mountain area (where the hot springs are located) and I knew that wasn't it, because information technology was a memory. So I finally went in it (the tunnel) and came out and information technology looked similar the African savanna. And it was merely the real dry xanthous grass, and one of those copse, 1 of those scraggily, depression trees that kind of come up and so go out with a flat bottom (of the canopy), and at that place was naught else around, at that place were merely some rocks and I was there for a long time and I wasn't really exploring much else, in that location wasn't much else and I merely kept seeing this hazy picture of this stuff and eventually I picked up a stone and I dug around in the dirt, it was just all dry, brownish dirt, and I kept thinking, 'god, I got some problems if this is my place' (referring to the landscape of the lower globe), this isn't good at all, in that location's nothing here, this isn't some paradise, information technology'south a wasteland, (and I thought) 'I demand to become to a shaman, I need to find a shaman and take intendance of this, because I tin can't do this (meaning the journey) 'I need to meet a shaman' so someone appeared, I couldn't make out the face, but it was a human and they said "have my mitt" and it was like I was a child, looking up at the side and shoulder and head of a large homo looking down at me, and I couldn't totally make it out. Y'all know, it'southward like a dream, but I mean, he looked similar an Indian! But I don't desire say that considering I could exist simply making that up, nil was physical, it was like a dream! But he was at that place and I distinctly heard in my inner mind "take my manus." I didn't hear a voice, only something said "take my hand" and I don't remember actually taking a mitt or anything simply suddenly I was in a forest, what looked similar the redwoods of California, and so I saw a tree, like one of those redwood trees with the holes (at the base) and I went in it and then there was the 'tube' again (referring to the cone, concentric tunnel) and from the forest experience to the pigsty in the tree this whole sensation went over my body, like something I tin can't describe, just something quite unique, I felt it come up upwards through my whole body (from my legs to my torso) and I felt similar I was in a inverse place. So I went to the redwood tree and then I went through the tunnel real quick, and all of a sudden I was in a jungle. I was in this thick, dense jungle, you know, and I felt how thick it was, and there were sounds, I mean I wasn't really hearing sounds simply I felt, like, the sensation, like information technology was at that place, like a retentiveness, like it was being replicated for me correct there, and I couldn't make out any animals or anything just at that place were some sort of things effectually me, like picayune fluorescent eyes or something. I didn't see eyes, but I felt there were some things (beings) around me and they were laughing! [Not at me] It was like a good kind of laughter, and I felt like I was laughing besides, simply a lot of laughter [but internally] and then I remembered the beginning matter that was with me, in the first tunnel, and and so something said "don't think most that," just be hither in the jungle, in the forest. So I didn't think about that. So I was there in the jungle, and I didn't see a big jungle, but I simply felt a jungle. I felt that soundscape and a denseness, that's what information technology was. It was like the feeling you get when you walk into a real humid, dense room, and suddenly your whole body relaxes and you lot go this rush. It swelled up from my toes to the crown of my caput and I felt the presence of all these woods beings and they were and then happy I was at that place and I felt their joy. And and so when yous [Anne] did the return, I had to make sure I went back up the showtime tunnel, and then I saw a wink of the desolate place (referring to the savanna) and then go out the second tunnel. I didn't simply want to get up immediately, or I didn't want to or I didn't experience like it would be right, I had to make my return. Three different landscapes, iii unlike levels; the showtime didn't seem like it was 'bad' in that location was just cypher there and I was there for a long time and I was merely sitting thinking 'this is where I wound up, so I should stay here' and then I started feeling bad or antsy because I thought that thing that was with me [at first in the tunnel] might have been my demon, or a demon."
I do not claim with any certainty that my experience was a 'shamanic journeying' and that any of what I experienced is relatable to the work and experience of traditional shaman. Rather, it is just an experience, and atranspersonalexperience at that. Though, it brings intriguing insight, for me, into this earth, which every bit a composer and storyteller am naturally drawn to, just every bit I am naturally drawn to the myths and sounds of nature. The origins, the 'how' and 'why' of this experience remain elusive, only my account is certainly authentic; I did experience this and it did feel profound.
Special thanks to Anne for drumming and experimenting (she'south a pretty good drummer after all!). Afterwards on I came across Michael DrakesThe Shamanic Drum: A Guide to Sacred Drumming,where he writes: "A five gallon bucket…makes an fantabulous improvised drum." Maybe I'chiliad a natural after all.
Bottom of the page: Depiction of the arid "savanna": Top corners of page: The beginning and 2d tunnels. 1st was quite long, where I was traveling with the entity swirling beside me (heart). Every bit I described above it was more similar a cylindrical cone pointing up then a tunnel, still at the same fourth dimension it seemed sort of like the within of a worm—dim and dark, but with hues of red, brown, black. Annotation its similarity to the stone fine art above (which I had non previously studied or contemplated as a 'tunnel'). Second was near instant traverse and seemed straight (equally I noted the second one did not feel similar it was traversing upwardly).
Below: Brief scene in the redwoods, which zeroed in on a hole at the base of tree. Top left corner: Not entirely accurate, only representative, cartoon of the very brief encounter with a figure and jungle at lesser center.
I couldn't help but relate my experience to my contempo journey documenting the petroglyph site near Hart Mount, notably the concentric circle or "tunnel" prototype. Below nosotros run across a cruder (and unfortunately bullet riddled), simply nevertheless, a clear example of the concentric circle, accompanied by shamanic images (signified by figures with antlers on either side of the circle) besides every bit the wavy, zig-zag lines, characteristic of other rock fine art around the world and connected, as well, to shamanic visions of others worlds.
These images depict more wavy, zig-zag lines, equally well every bit bizarre beings. Graham Hancock writes in his convincing comparative study of hallucinogenic and trance feel, "In South Africa, I have seen stunning rock paintings of beings that are one-half human being, one-half preying mantis. In Tanzania, at that place are weird, otherworldly images of human bodies with insect heads, including "feelers"and optics on stalks."One need not travel to the savannas of Africa, right here in Oregon we have such images, such as this close up of ane of the 'beings':
A German language linguistics expert named Wilhelm Bleek anticipated the annihilation of the San bushmen as early as the 1870s. He interviewed some of the last San tribesmen and shaman, recording their manner of life before information technology disappeared. His hand written notes and transcripts remained subconscious in Southward African archives until scientist David Lewis-Williams re-discovered them nearly a century afterward. The San were remarkably clear about the beautiful and mysterious rock paintings of their ancestors. They revealed that the paintings were the piece of work of shamans, whose function was to travel into the spirit world and negotiate with its inhabitants on behalf of their young man bushmen. On their terrifying psychic voyages, these shamans were accompanied by spirit guides who appeared to them in animate being course and taught them to heal the ill, influence the weather, control the motility of animals and and then on.
Intriguingly, the San described how the shamans entered the otherworld past means of an backbreaking and exhausting form of dance. Lewis-Williams realized that this would have led to farthermost dehydration and hyperventilation – exactly the concrete conditions that could propel them into an hallucinatory trance. When they returned from these out-of-body journeys, the shamans informed the community about what they had learnt and painted some of the strange beings and scenes they had encountered. Hence the existence of their stone art.
Cultures throughout the world have exhibited many similarities in the practices and journeying of traditional shamans. Glyphs from California to Siberia are strikingly similar. Whether this is a product of 'diffusion', or the migration of these peoples over millennia (which is certainly the example) or the result of similar biopsychosocial (to apply the term by shaman scientist Michael Winkelman) phenomena universal to the human condition remains to exist perennial debated, along with much of the research and personal account documented here. Even so, as Harner states, the phenomena persists, because it works and haspersistedand then long.
Images of bighorn sheep and figures from Coso canyon, well-nigh Death Valley, in southeastern California. Note the concentric circled heads, similar to the Hart Mount glyphs.
Left: "The Sorcerer" of La Trois Frere, France. Idea to exist a depiction of a shaman figure, ca. 17,000 years agone. Correct: Drawings of documented rock art from the Lake Baikal region of Siberia (note the many 'shaman' figures with antlers, which are likely representations of beings in other worlds, replicated by the shaman wearing his mask).
Source: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/natureculturemusic/2015/09/16/journeys-to-inner-and-outer-worlds-part-2/
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