The other day, in a post about Penn & Teller, I wrote this:

When I was in my wacky lets-learn-all-about-spiritual-secrets-and shamanism phase, I became fascinated by the way shamans could use tricks of illusion and magic as part of ritual and surprisingly effective medical treatments. Indigenous spiritual practices are full of manufactured illusions that are treated as reality, even by the practitioners themselves - but that’s another post.

This Is That Post (and yes, it’s stoopid-long)

Ahem.

For a few years during my spiritual insanity, I had an actual-real-live-official mentor amid all the wackiness.

And yes, he was more than a wee-bit-wacky himself, but he was also quite smart, knowledgable and insightful, and a good sort of mentor (at least so long as you remembered he was basically a bit wacky. I did forget, every once in a while)

But anyway.

A frustrated actor, he loved being in front of groups of people and doing rituals, and the more dramatic the better. One of his favorites was a version of what folks involved modern Euro-American Shamanism call “spirit animal retrieval”. The exact details are tough to explain without a lot of background material, so I’ll just skim the surface and trust that you won’t decide I’m any crazier than you already think I am.

An Introduction to Spirit Animals and Soul Retrieval

Now, most indigenous cultures have quite a different concept of spirit/soul than we do, here in the West. In fact, this whole one-soul/spirit thing seems to be a relatively modern concept. Older traditions refer to many different types of souls or spirits. Similar to how Sigmund Freud divided our psyche into the ego, id, superego and libido, these traditions see natural separations in the various non-physical parts that make us who we are.

And like Carl Jung’s take on the collective unconscious, some of those soul-spirit parts are shared among ancestral family groups, trade groups, tribes, etc.

A common form these parts of self and soul and community take is of animals, and a common thread is that they provide teaching and guidance, shape our personalities, and provide us with energy, drive, a thirst for life, and a connection to the natural world and the cycles of life.

At times, these parts of our spirits may wander off, or be driven off, leaving a gap in who we are. Part of a traditional shaman’s job in the community is to help restore or reconnect those spirits to us.

The idea of these “soul retrievals” is fairly simple… the shamanist and their client both go into a trance state, usually aided by a drum or rattle. The practitioner then shifts their vision inward, moving into the subconscious world of symbolism, and interacting with it as though it were physical (the experience is akin to a very real-feeling dream.

In that state, they track down the missing spirit, and bring it back with them into their awareness. Then in a state of consciousness that bridges dream-state and waking-states, they transfer the spirit back to the client… sometimes by blowing it directly into their body, sometimes by blowing it into a stone, crystal, or other talisman which is then given to the person to meditate on, in order to deepen and maintain the connection.

The Western Challenge

When the folks in the West began exploring shamanic beliefs in the 80’s & 90’s, this whole soul-retrieval bit grabbed a lot of attention. Maybe it was attractive because it was akin to some of the “inner child” work that was popular in previous decades. Maybe because we were that hungry for connection to the natural world, maybe because animal spirits didn’t seem threatening or demonic, or maybe it was just because it seemed exotic or fun to have a sort of spiritual pet hanging around.

Regardless, the idea quickly gained ground with alternative religious folks, and it was quickly adapted and adopted by modern practitioners, including my mentor.

But it wasn’t so easy to get through Westerner’s psychological defenses so that they’d allow the soul retrieval to go on.

I remember the first time it was done for me (not by my wacky mentor, but someone I’d known long before) - and I was afraid I’d have to dance around a fire naked, chanting to a dead chicken or some such. The skepticism and caution is part of our culture, and it’s especially useful in a blended society like America. So it’s not always possible or even wise to put aside our critical, doubting ways and accept something outside of our world view just because we want to play around with some new spiritual healing ritual.

Thus, even though someone might really see the psychological (if not spiritual) value in a soul retrieval, they might not be able to accept it on the deep level they needed to, to get the full benefit.

Which Brings Me Back To My Mentor And Magic…

Along with being a frustrated actor, my mentor was also a frustrated magician with a wee bit of skill in sleight of hand, which he used to good effect in his own soul-retrieval rituals among groups.

To begin, he’d pull out a volunteer as the first subject, have them lay down in the center of the group, then explain the process to everyone, letting them know what they could expect to experience. He’d explain about rattles and rhythms and shamanic trance inductions. He’d explain the known visual and sensory effects of such trance states (most notably the sensation of going down a tunnel). These days, he’d probably talk about the specific scientific knowledge of brainwave states, and the exact brainwave frequencies found in shamanic trance.

Next, he’d show them a small stone, carved in the shape of a bear. He’d pass it around, let them touch it. He’d explain that his own animal spirit was a bear, and that it would journey with him when he went into trance and into the spiritual worlds.

Once there, he and the bear would find the person’s lost animal spirit, and blow it into the stone, to bring it back to this world. He’d let them watch as he placed the little stone bear between his lips, and then he’d begin to use his rattle, gradually falling into trance.

At the end, he’d lean over the current participant, and blow so that the stone fell from between his lips and onto their belly or chest.

He’d tell them what their animal was… (a buffalo, for instance) and explain that it’s spirit was now in the stone. Invariably, magically, when that first person picked up the stone to examine it, it would have transformed. The talisman was no longer in the shape of a bear, but the shape of a buffalo.

It was a sweet little magic trick, though it wasn’t hard to figure out, either. Before he’d show them that first bear, he’d hide a buffalo stuck inside the handle of his rattle, a bird in one cheek, a second, slightly different bear in the other cheek, and so on. Not everyone got a stone representation of their animal, just a few of them… just enough of them for the trick to work.

The seeming transformation of the stone did a little number on their brains, and just enough of a chink formed in their skepticism to allow them to get a deeper experience and benefit from the rituals.

There Was Something Marvelous In That Trick, For Me…

It somehow seemed an honest trick, in that he showed them what he was doing, and he didn’t pretend that the stones just appeared. And it was a simple trick, one that wouldn’t have fooled anyone if they’d been at a magic show and expecting it, but the simplicity didn’t matter… the trick was enough to get the subconscious skepticism about “spiritual mumbo jumbo” out of the way.

This struck me as significantly different from the spiritualist-rapping and cold reading scams that have been so popular throughout the last two centuries in the West. With those, there seems to be so little honesty, and little if any real benefit to the participants. Their goal is, invariably, to separate the client from their billfold.

But in this particular illusion, the goal was just to trick the participant’s mind into being a bit more open to the experience, an experience which (even if you fully dismiss the idea of spirit animals running around you) can have a powerful and helpful psychological impact.

I went back, and re-evaluated many of the other scams I’d read about over the years, from psychic surgeries to zombie powders.

In the process, I realized how intermingled the spiritual, psychological, and stage illusion aspects of the rituals were. Yes, some were performed in ways that they were flat out scams, designed to defraud customers or increase political power. But other rituals really did seem to be all about helping, healing and guiding clients. And it wasn’t all about the people being simple, rubes, or gullible - they saw reality differently, and the “tricks” (if revealed) weren’t seen as deceptive.

It brings to mind the use of placebos in modern Western medicine - and our growing understanding of the power of the mind and that belief in a treatment can be crucial.

But the most important bit, for me? The realization that not all tricks and illusions are deceptions. Sometimes, what we in the West see as tricks, other cultures recognize as a different sort of truth and reality.

And while I don’t advise we all run out and try to adopt the views of traditional, indigenous cultures (they really dont fit well in our society, anyway) it’s a great mental exercise to try to grasp those views and perspectives.

Mind you, this isn’t the post I set out to write, but it’s what spilled onto the page, so here it is. No tricks, no illusions, no deceptions. And maybe not even much reality

MindTweak: Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent . - Robert Heinlein