There is a famous anthropological essay out of the late 19th century (so famous, I have forgotten the author) about a young apprentice to a shaman among the Kwakiutl Indians of the US Northwest (the same culture area as the Tlingit, as spoken of before). A nearly universal aspect of shamanism, as practiced by indigenous peoples, is removing the evil from the afflicted that is causing the disease through sucking. As the apprentice revealed to the ethnographer, he was taught to hide a small stone in his mouth, and then after sucking, to show it to the attendants and sufferer. "See? I have sucked out the disease! Now the sick should get better."
Now, this was in the late 19th century, after several hundred years of contact with Russian, English, and American fur traders, and then American settlers. The people had been diminished by disease and vice, and one might expect that the culture itself had become only a shell of what it had once been. It may have been for this reason that the apprentice first concluded that the curing was a hoax, a slight of hand to fool the people and get payments from the family. But then, he was left to himself to cure someone. Doing what he had been taught to do, he was shocked when the sick person suddenly revived - and, it turned out, was cured. This convinced him that the practice itself was efficacious, as efficacious as penicillin would be for a cynical doctor of our culture. "It works, is all I can say. Now I believe." (my paraphrase)
The author of the article went into an explanation based on belief and psychosomatic illness, but as everyone knows, the "placebo effect" - when belief itself cures real disease - has never been fully explained, so much so that it is merely passed off in drug trials as just another variable. With psychosomatic illnesses, we might have something of a handle, but with real, physical illness that is cured by belief, we have none. Our science, to date, is simply not set up for it.
I mention this in introduction to my very interesting weekend, which will not be officially over until 9 tonight. It happened because my wife signed up for a retreat called "The Light of the World" at the Catholic Church which required attendance for several hours Friday night, several more hours to come tonight, and a whopping 12 hours per day this past Saturday and Sunday. I had expressed some interest in it, but had no plans to attend. I figured it would be a lot of Praise Jesus hokum, many many hours of boredom, and besides, I really do have to seriously trim the fruit trees now that spring is here. As it turned out, and as the Praise Jesus people would say, at the last minute, I felt a pull to attend. I did, and stuck with the entire program until today. I plan to finish tonight.
Hopefully, I can get the fruit trees done before the big rains move in tomorrow afternoon, but the point is - as I kinda expected - something did happen. No cure of the incurable, no, but rather a deep sense of what Christians call the "Holy Spirit." It was most prominent during the "laying on of hands," that is, where (in our case) three people put their hands on you and prayed in unison, one in the right ear with intelligible and encouraging words, the other two in the left ear, with sounds and nonsense syllables. I had heard of this before, but hadn't realized that Catholics did such things. It invites a personal and intense experience of the Spirit, and that, as all Catholics know, is not the first mission of the Church. Rather, it is to bring people to faith and to obedience under the clergy and rules and dogma of the Church. But happen it did, and as with probably everyone else there, I experienced a profound sense of the Holy - a landscape that is removed from the profane world that is peace and fulfillment itself. In this land, nothing else is needed; in this land, the striving and insecurities of the secular, of the political, of unfulfilled desires, become as nothing, silly shadows of a former self.
And then 'one' - I - began to sense what was happening and at that, it drew back. I did not want it to leave, but of course, it always does. I have been there before after meditation, although rarely as deeply. And I have to ask, like the apprentice shaman, is it real? Or, more to the point although it sounds obscure, is it really real?
Just as the Kwakiutl apprentice must have been steeped in his cultural lore, so have I been. Although what occurred to me wasn't exactly expected, it was generically expected. It was real, all right, but was it only part of a psychological expectation? For unlike the apprentice, no material disease was cured. And even in that case, for the ethnographer who reported the story, he, too, did not really believe the power of the shamanic rite was real. Rather, for him, the apprentice had fallen into his cultural reality due to a 'psychological' oddity (an actual cure). This "reality" then, was and should not be generalized as the truth, an experience of another reality just as real as this one.
Yes, I know - we do not question the emotions that come from song or art, and to do so would ruin the experience. But in such cases as mine, the implications for the individual are profound. Because it is attached to a set of beliefs, a change of life is expected. And in truth, one wants a change of life, because one wants that feeling back, forever. Still, the change asked for is huge - impossibly huge, as every Christian knows.
Many questions remain, for that is this writer's nature, for better and for worse. There will be more tonight, where I learned yesterday that the group will attempt to organize US into giving such performances. In the immediacy, this does not sound possible for me, given the Doubting Thomas that I am. In the long term, I don't know. However, as an anthropologist, I always wished to get in on the personal level, on the insides, of various cultures' religious experiences. Now I have, and it brings forth not only answers, but more questions.
More on all of this later - for whatever it is, it is fascinating. FK
Now, this was in the late 19th century, after several hundred years of contact with Russian, English, and American fur traders, and then American settlers. The people had been diminished by disease and vice, and one might expect that the culture itself had become only a shell of what it had once been. It may have been for this reason that the apprentice first concluded that the curing was a hoax, a slight of hand to fool the people and get payments from the family. But then, he was left to himself to cure someone. Doing what he had been taught to do, he was shocked when the sick person suddenly revived - and, it turned out, was cured. This convinced him that the practice itself was efficacious, as efficacious as penicillin would be for a cynical doctor of our culture. "It works, is all I can say. Now I believe." (my paraphrase)
The author of the article went into an explanation based on belief and psychosomatic illness, but as everyone knows, the "placebo effect" - when belief itself cures real disease - has never been fully explained, so much so that it is merely passed off in drug trials as just another variable. With psychosomatic illnesses, we might have something of a handle, but with real, physical illness that is cured by belief, we have none. Our science, to date, is simply not set up for it.
I mention this in introduction to my very interesting weekend, which will not be officially over until 9 tonight. It happened because my wife signed up for a retreat called "The Light of the World" at the Catholic Church which required attendance for several hours Friday night, several more hours to come tonight, and a whopping 12 hours per day this past Saturday and Sunday. I had expressed some interest in it, but had no plans to attend. I figured it would be a lot of Praise Jesus hokum, many many hours of boredom, and besides, I really do have to seriously trim the fruit trees now that spring is here. As it turned out, and as the Praise Jesus people would say, at the last minute, I felt a pull to attend. I did, and stuck with the entire program until today. I plan to finish tonight.
Hopefully, I can get the fruit trees done before the big rains move in tomorrow afternoon, but the point is - as I kinda expected - something did happen. No cure of the incurable, no, but rather a deep sense of what Christians call the "Holy Spirit." It was most prominent during the "laying on of hands," that is, where (in our case) three people put their hands on you and prayed in unison, one in the right ear with intelligible and encouraging words, the other two in the left ear, with sounds and nonsense syllables. I had heard of this before, but hadn't realized that Catholics did such things. It invites a personal and intense experience of the Spirit, and that, as all Catholics know, is not the first mission of the Church. Rather, it is to bring people to faith and to obedience under the clergy and rules and dogma of the Church. But happen it did, and as with probably everyone else there, I experienced a profound sense of the Holy - a landscape that is removed from the profane world that is peace and fulfillment itself. In this land, nothing else is needed; in this land, the striving and insecurities of the secular, of the political, of unfulfilled desires, become as nothing, silly shadows of a former self.
And then 'one' - I - began to sense what was happening and at that, it drew back. I did not want it to leave, but of course, it always does. I have been there before after meditation, although rarely as deeply. And I have to ask, like the apprentice shaman, is it real? Or, more to the point although it sounds obscure, is it really real?
Just as the Kwakiutl apprentice must have been steeped in his cultural lore, so have I been. Although what occurred to me wasn't exactly expected, it was generically expected. It was real, all right, but was it only part of a psychological expectation? For unlike the apprentice, no material disease was cured. And even in that case, for the ethnographer who reported the story, he, too, did not really believe the power of the shamanic rite was real. Rather, for him, the apprentice had fallen into his cultural reality due to a 'psychological' oddity (an actual cure). This "reality" then, was and should not be generalized as the truth, an experience of another reality just as real as this one.
Yes, I know - we do not question the emotions that come from song or art, and to do so would ruin the experience. But in such cases as mine, the implications for the individual are profound. Because it is attached to a set of beliefs, a change of life is expected. And in truth, one wants a change of life, because one wants that feeling back, forever. Still, the change asked for is huge - impossibly huge, as every Christian knows.
Many questions remain, for that is this writer's nature, for better and for worse. There will be more tonight, where I learned yesterday that the group will attempt to organize US into giving such performances. In the immediacy, this does not sound possible for me, given the Doubting Thomas that I am. In the long term, I don't know. However, as an anthropologist, I always wished to get in on the personal level, on the insides, of various cultures' religious experiences. Now I have, and it brings forth not only answers, but more questions.
More on all of this later - for whatever it is, it is fascinating. FK
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