Syncretism As A Proto-Mythic Process - Clover Sites

SYNCRETISM AS A PROTO-MYTHIC PROCESS:

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Orlanda Brugnola
c 1993, 2004 all rights reserved

Introduction

For the student of indigenous religions and shamanic traditions, there comes
a moment when a certain synthesis may occur--when the student's own
traditions and experiences appear to coalesce with the tradition(s) studied. It
is the author's contention that such syncretic experiences may provide a
workshop in which we may glimpse the fundamental process of mythmaking
itself, albeit in microcosm.

The American or European scholar may be handicapped by a primary
tradition which is not as highly contexted as that chosen for study.
Traditional Japanese culture or Pueblo culture, for example, are far higher on
the context scale than North German culture. A thorough and engaging
exploration of monochronic/polychronic and low context/high context
worldviews has been undertaken by Hall.1

The syncretic experience plunges the American or European scholar
into a highly contexted reality and, in so doing, allows entry to the process
of mythmaking itself. Since dreams are probably the most highly contexted
phenomena encountered by persons whose primary tradition is low context,
they may play a particularly important role in syncretic interactions. The
content and form of such a syncretic event can be considered a proto-myth.

1 Hall, Edward T., The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time, Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984.

Such an experience should, therefore, be powerful training for the scholar's
continued encounter with other religious traditions. This paper attempts to
document and interpret the author's experience of a syncretic interaction
between cultural traditions in the course of the author's study of Native
American religions.

A narrative account of the interaction will serve to orient the reader within
the sequence of transformative events. The incidents recounted took place
over a three day period. They will be rendered in the first person and present
tense for the sake of convenience and to encourage the reader to experience
them with some of the immediacy felt by the author.

The Narrative

DAY 1.
As I leave the building in which I live, I stop to chat with the doorman--a
goodnatured young man with a wonderful sense of humor. Referring to a
recent vacation during which he photographed some flamingos in a park, he
tells me that he has purchased two art prints of flamingos for his apartment. I
tease him (as I would do on almost any subject) because the
flamingo has always seemed to me to be a rather ungainly bird of
improbable color (pink). I then leave the building.

In the evening I attend a lecture by Luis Eduardo Luna, a senior lecturer at
the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki. Luna is engaged in the study
of the ethnobotany and ethnomedicine of the Columbian and Peruvian
Amazon. Luna's topic is "Plant Allies in Amazonian Tribal and Mestizo
Shamanism." The lecture includes an ethnographic film, slides, and original
paintings by one of the shamans. Luna studied with mestizo healers of the
Peruvian Amazon and Ingano Indians of the Sibundoy Valley in Columbia.
Both groups use a psychotropic substance, ayahuasca, or yage, to explore
various realities: the supernatural world, the world of plant spirits which
may assist in their healing work, and their own everyday reality.

The shaman who chooses to work with ayahuasca must learn tremendous
control. Preparation for work with ayahuasca requires the shaman to undergo
a period of isolation (and celibacy) in the forest while existing on a restricted
diet (rice and smoked fish). The restricted diet is considered essential if the
shaman is to survive the ingestion of the ayahuasca in combination with
minute quantities of other plant substances which contain highly toxic
alkaloids. This combining is done so that the shaman can discover the proper
use of those substances in healing. The period of abstinence required of the
shaman is hardly the most demanding aspect of work with ayahuasca. The
ayahuasca visions themselves can be terrifying, even for a master shaman.
The strongest of wills is necessary for the maintenance of sanity and even
the control of bodily functions. This development of will extends as well to
the use of alcohol, which is taken in large quantities but without symptoms
of inebriation.

Luna's film documents the preparation of the ayahuasca mixture by one the
shamans, and the actual ritual surrounding the taking of the mixture by the
shaman and his assistants. The ritual involves prayer for the safety and

spiritual guidance of those taking the (ayahuasca). The prayers themselves
combine indigenous and Christian elements. The ritual takes place at night
so as to minimize external stimuli during the ayahuasca visions.

The slides Luna shows were taken by a photographer who traveled with him.
The slides are of the Amazon river and adjacent vegetation. When turned
180 degrees they offer amazing and powerful images of "plant spirits."

The original paintings Luna has with him were done by a shaman at Luna's
request. In the process of sharing the shaman's visionary experience and
ideology, they demonstrate the eclectic tendency of the shamanic endeavor
by incorporating both indigenous and European elements (a syncretism to be
found on the home altar of one of the shamans, and even expanded to
include even a Buddhist element from an unknown source). Images of
mermaids and steamships appear in the shaman's paintings as well as images
of plant spirits communing telepathically with one another. Some images
appear to be one thing but are also another, e.g. a steamship carrying
passengers (who are really spirits of the dead) is actually a giant native
snake, the anaconda. Rainbows, normally read as positive and hopeful by
North Americans and Europeans are a negative and possibly malevolent
portent for Amazonian shamans.

After the lecture Luna and I discuss the relevance of lucid dreaming to the
ayahuasca visions. Lucid dreams are those dreams in which the dreamer is
aware that it is a dream, can exercise control over action in the dream and
experiences colors as intense and jewel-like. (The author's introduction to
lucid dreaming was through a presentation made by Patricia Garfield. Her
excellent popular writing on dreams augments her professional and
academic work on crosscultural issues in dream research.)2

Luna indicates that lucid dreams are considered by the shamans to be the
equivalent of the ayahuasca experience. Both experiences demand a level of
self-mastery, both create or reveal an intense, vivid alternate reality.

2 Garfield, Patriciai: Creative Dreaming, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.

Although lucid dreaming may be first experienced spontaneously, continued
lucid dreaming involves a learned intentionality in the dream state. Leberge
at the Stanford University Sleep Research Center has written a fairly useful
popularized summary of material on this subject.3
This dreaming bears some comparison to that achieved by Tibetan adepts in
the practice of milam yoga, the yoga of the dream state.4

3 Leberge at the Stanford University Sleep Research Center has written a fairly useful popularized summary of
material on this subject. Leberge, Stephen: Lucid Dreaming, New York: Ballantine, 1985.
4 Blofeld, John: The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet, New York: Causeway, 1974, p. 232.

DAY 2.
In the afternoon of the second day I have to officiate at a wedding (I am an
ordained Unitarian Universalist minister.) The couple whose wedding I am
celebrating is unusual. The groom is an American of Protestant background,
the bride is Indian, of Jain background. Although she is not a strict Jain, she
is a vegetarian and fasts one day a week. In keeping with Jain moderation in
material things, the couple exchanges flowers instead of wedding rings.
However, the wedding is not austere. The ceremony and reception take place
in a fine Indian restaurant and I am invited to stay for the dinner. Contrary to
my custom, I accept.

At the wedding reception I meet a librarian from the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. He serves the library collection specifically devoted to the study of
“primitive” art. As he and I are engaged in animated conversation, I notice a
tapestry on the wall behind him. It is an essentially abstract work of
embroidery--very beautiful. As I look at it I notice that the forms are
outlined in many colors of thread, side by side. I begin to see shapes in the
tapestry which remind me of the Amazon "forest spirits" rendered in the
slides which Luna showed during his lecture the previous evening. Some of
the "plant spirits" in the tapestry seem to be engaged in a kind of telepathic
communication, as did those in the shaman's paintings. The style of the
stitching with its many colors of thread side by side is reminiscent of
Huichol yarn painting, although the outlines are not so bold. This placement
of colors in adjacent fashion to create outlines of figures is a relatively
satisfactory means of presenting the kind of "electric" energy of the images
perceived under the influence of certain psychotropic substances.

I share these observations with the librarian who concurs. I suggest that
these tapestries are a second or third generation rendering of visions induced
by psychotropic plant substances. I do not believe that they are first
generation because the forms are highly stylized and the colors are not
sufficiently vivid.

The waiters at the reception begin to circulate with trays of hors d'oeuvres.
These trays are lined with pink linen napkins which are twisted at one end to
make the shape of a bird's head.

At the end of the meal, the wedding cake is served. To my surprise, the
sugar roses on the cake are colored a bright and improbable peacock blue.5

DAY 3.
In the early morning I have a lucid dream, i.e. a dream in
which I am aware that I am dreaming, and in which the colors are
marvelously intense and gem-like.

In the dream, people are bringing their flamingos to me to be dyed. I have a
large container of some vegetable dye in front of me. It is a twin of the
container used by the shaman in Luna's film to concoct the ayahuasca
mixture. The vegetable dye will not harm the birds and is not a permanent
coloring. I take each of the birds in my arms as they are presented. They are
quite large and heavy and rather nervous so that I must hold them and calm
them before I gently lower them into the vat of dye. The dye turns them a
marvelous translucent peacock blue (cyan). I raise them up from
the vat of dye and release them to fly and dry "on the wing." They
are stunning as they spread their blue wings in flight.

I wake up with a feeling of great joy. To the moment of this writing, I can
still feel in my chest and arms the weight and warmth of those great birds as
I held them before their immersion. The physical sensation evokes a sense
of awe and great tenderness, even love towards the birds. I feel privileged to
have participated in this act of immersion.

The occasion of the dream suggests to me that I should offer a gift to the
person whose original input began the whole sequence. I find art paper
close in color to that of the dyed flamingos in the dream. I make a silhouette
figure of a flamingo from the blue paper and give the mounted silhouette to
the doorman with whom I had the initial conversation, and also relate an
abbreviated form of the dream for his enjoyment

An Analysis of the Elements

The dream itself incorporates a number of specific elements from the
experiences of the two preceding days. They are: flamingos, the ayahuasca

5 The designation of this color is difficult but important. "Peacock" has been chosen as a term that might most
nearly call to the reader's mind the color intended. It is actually a color corresponding to nearly pure cyan.

vat, dye which is a vegetable substance having the property of transforming
visual experience, the pink napkins twisted into the shape of birds' heads, the
blue roses on the wedding cake, and the element of lucidity.

These elements by themselves do not of course constitute an interpretation
of the whole experience. To understand how and perhaps why such a dream
could arise from the related sequence of events may offer an approach to
other such syncretic experiences.

The sequence begins with an instance [albeit atypical] of the author's closed-
ness to natural beauty and wonder, i.e. the beauty of flamingos, and hence,
to the "true nature of things."

The author experiences a challenge to that closedness in the form of
enthusiasm for the natural beauty of flamingos by someone the author likes.
The challenge is not experienced as a threat because the issue is rendered
with humor, which permits some opening of the rigid perceptual structure.

Luna's lecture introduces new visual material to be absorbed, i.e. landscape
photographs and paintings of shamanic visions. The lecture introduces new
ritual to be observed, i.e. the ayahuasca ceremony itself. The lecture
introduces a moment of visual transformation as the slides of Amazon
vegetation are rotated to reveal images of "plant spirits." This act of
transformation is accomplished through the conscious will of
the presenter and its impact is validated by the author's shared response.
Further, permission is explicitly given by the lecturer to equate lucid
dreaming with the shamanic mastery of ayahuasca. This permission is given
to the author who is not only interested in shamanism but who has spent a
number of years in the effort to become adept at lucid dreaming.

The wedding ceremony itself is a sacramental moment. For the author, the
celebration of marriage evokes/demands an openness in the celebrant. It
occurs in sacred time. Its intent is transformational, it is a rite of passage,
it is joyful and beautiful. It requires intentionality on the part of the couple
and the celebrant. It requires ritual expertise for which the couple turns to
the celebrant. The celebration of the wedding culminates in a communal
meal, which is itself another type of ritual. Note that the ayahuasca mixture
is taken in a communal context. Both this wedding meal and the ayahuasca
ceremonies take place at night.

The tapestry on the restaurant wall introduces new visual material to be
absorbed. In this instance the perception is shared by another who is open
to new perception. This sharing helps to validate the perception.

The pink napkins provide a reminder of the issue to be resolved, i.e. the
proper perception and response to the natural beauty of flamingos. They are
amusing and as such are additional reminders of the jesting relationship
which exists between the author and the person whose affection for
flamingos initiated the entire sequence. The napkins are literally tropes--
twistings which reveal meaning. Again humor erodes rigid perceptual
boundaries.

The blue roses on the cake are a challenge to a fixed notion: that roses are a
number of possible colors but never blue. They are made of sugar, i.e., of a
special substance. This special substance is capable of being transformed or
transmuted into different shapes and colors to resemble something "real" and
familiar just as the shaman (a "real" human being") can change form to
become something strange or at least different.
Ayahuasca is also, of course, a special substance which alters perception of
ordinary things so that the familiar becomes strange. Both ayahuasca and
sugar are acquired from the sap or "lifeblood" of plants. Yet the rose is, after
all, more than anything rose, color is illusion, having little to do with
the essence of the rose. The rose therefore has a transcendent reality, like the
reality experienced is other states of consciousness.

Only a few, the most fortunate, of the guests receive a blue rose with their
slice of cake--the fortunate few (like the shaman's assistants) are given the
opportunity to experience what is "real." For the author, blue roses have an
additional relevant associations. There is a tailor who owns the "Blue Rose
Tailor Shop." He was brought up in an orphanage and understands
the important and yet illusory nature of personal space. For that reason he
has transformed his shop's tiny dressing room by means of mirrors so that
his customers do not feel claustrophobic. The shop is a jungle of potted
plants including garlic. They are enormous, like the so-called elephant garlic
but not as mild. He eats raw garlic for its medicinal properties. Ayahuasca
can be taken in combination with other plants in order to determine their
potential medicinal use. He drinks a great deal of yellow tequila in the shop
but never appears inebriated, i.e. like the shamans, he is in control of
himself. He offers both garlic and tequila

to a few customers such as the author, with whom he has a long association.
This tailor cut down a buffalo hide vest to fit the author but insisted on
wearing it himself first for several months. One of the author's guardian
spirits at that time was a buffalo calf, a spirit associated with healing.

Note that the tailor's craft itself has to do with the transformation of plant
and animal substances i.e., the very bodies of plants and the skins of
animals) into garments. That which was dead is made to live through its
assumption by the wearer--a somewhat similar process occurs in the wearing
of a mask. Garments both conceal and reveal the body of the wearer
according to the tailor's will, thus mediating the wearer's presentation of self
and others' visual experience of the wearer. Nevertheless, this "real"
perceptual appearance is transcended by the "true nature" of the individual.
One might recall in this context the shaman's careful elaboration of the
"costume" worn for shamanizing.

The name of the tailor shop comes from a mystical dream that the tailor's ex-
wife had had. She dreamed that, one night, everyone went to sleep and had
the same dream: THE DREAM OF THE BLUE ROSE and when they
awoke they all knew that they had had the same dream, and it was from that
time forward, forever different. In other words the dream state affords us an
opportunity to realize that we all are interrelated and that when knowledge
of a higher reality becomes manifest in the waking state, we will transform
our experience of this life. By the time the author met him, the tailor was
ready to remarry. This wedding was to be the first wedding that the author
ever performed in her ministerial career. This, then, was the initial
association of "blue roses" with the ritual celebration of a marriage.

Some Underlying Motifs

Present in the author's consciousness are various motifs, including Christian
ones, which reflect religious ideation pertinent to the sequence related.

Perhaps most salient is the account of Jesus' first miracle, the miracle at the
wedding feast in Cana (John 2:1-11). At the wedding Jesus is made aware of
the lack of wine and turns water stored in large stone jars (distinctive
containers like the ayahuasca vat) into especially good wine.
Metaphorically, Jesus transforms the water of baptism into the wine of the
spirit (the wine of his blood). It is no mistake that this should occur at a
wedding since part of the meaning of marriage is mystical union: the two
become one. Through baptism and then the elements of the eucharist, the
communicant becomes one with the divine. The familiar reality (bread and
wine) become the body and blood of the god, or perhaps more accurately are
revealed as having always been such, were we to be sufficiently aware.
In other words, that which we take to be commonplace is more than it
seems, something of divine import. To return to the dream sequence, just as
the water at Cana is changed to wine (liquid colored by a plant substance),
the water in the vat is colored by a plant substance and thus in turn has
power to color the flamingos dipped in it. In other words, it has spiritual
power to reveal the flamingos as the extraordinary creatures they
always were.

The transformational act of Jesus at Cana was not only a miracle which
manifested his glory (as John phrases it), and an occasion for his disciples to
begin to believe, but an act which enhanced the celebratory quality of the
feast. Most ministers aspire to follow the kind of spiritual leadership that
Jesus displayed (whether or not they believe in the divinity of Jesus or
the literalness of miracles). The occasion of the wedding in the author's
narrative functioned as such a moment. The author stayed as a guest at the
feast, an unusual action for this minister, and yet de facto, in imitation of
Jesus. The author's presence was indeed cause for additional good feeling
which was vocalized by the other guests.

In the wedding ceremony itself, the traditional rings were absent. The
author had suggested flowers (i.e., plants) as a substitute and during the
ceremony handed them to the bride and groom to exchange. The rings, a
commonplace, have been, in effect, transformed into something
extraordinary. In fact, the flowers themselves were an unusual variety of

orchid. The author has effected a change which serves to emphasize the non-
material meaning of the couple's act, encouraging thereby those present to
disregard what is illusory (just as the "ungainliness" of flamingos is an
illusion.) As an additional note, the flowers serve as referents to the author
of the beautiful flowers of the datura which is used for the ayahuasca
mixture. The deep flowers have been the source of nourishment for a
particular type of hummingbird which has a long curved beak to reach inside
the datura blossoms. The author has wondered if honey from datura might
not be psychotropic and as such may have been ritually added to plant
beverages (wine for example), perhaps even the ancient Aryan soma or the
ancient Iranian haoma. This speculation serves to additionally relate the
ayahuasca concept to a wedding in which one party is from India.

At the conclusion of the wedding feast, the roses, which ordinarily would
have been most probably white or pink, are transformed into blue roses as
if to signify that this is not a common event. In addition the association of
the blue roses with the aforementioned tailor pulls with it another passage
from Christian scripture in a somewhat parabolic way. In Matthew 6:28-29
(and with slight variation in Luke 12:27) Jesus says: "Why take ye thought
for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin; And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed as one of these." The reference to clothing in the
passage is the connection to the tailor--once again the message of the
passage is, in part: look at what is in front of your eyes, see its splendor!
There is perhaps also a humorous relation to the dream sequence: Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of the blue flamingos (or a naturally
pink one, either.)

At another level, the rose is a medieval Christian symbol of purity and the
mystery of an unfolding revelation of the glory of God. The Virgin Mary is
the immaculate "Rose Without Thorns" through whom God becomes
literally manifest in the world. The roses on the cake are also, of course,
without thorns. Were they the traditional white, they would be reminders of
the way that roses were before the Fall and witness to the purity of the newly
wedded couple, the two mysteriously made one even before the physical
consummation of their marriage. There is a pre-Christian association of the
rose with Venus (recalled by Renaissance artists). Her roses have thorns
which serve to grievously and sweetly wound.

As Karl Barth noted, the Virgin Mary conceives through the ear as she
receives the Holy Spirit through the voice of the announcing angel. In most
representations, the Holy Spirit hovers nearby in the form of a dove. The
author heard the words of the doorman who spoke of something wondrous
[a bird]. In listening, the author, in effect, "conceived" and, after a period of
creative "gestation," produced a dream which was a revelation of the "true"
nature of the flamingo [Holy Spirit]. The doorman who is, though
wonderfully goodhearted, "no angel," undergoes an oneiric reversal to
function as an angel here. As a gay male he is symbolically one who "has
not known woman" (like the angels), as the Virgin is one who "has not
known man."

The dipping of the flamingos into the vat of dye evokes the image of
baptism as a transformational event, a rite of passage. By submitting to the
author's ministrations, the birds become "acceptable" in the author's sight (as
the baptized become acceptable in the sight of God for certain Christians).
The birds' "true nature" as creatures of exceeding beauty is momentarily
revealed, for the dye is temporary, their "spiritual nature" will recede in the
course of everyday, limited, profane perception. It is the ritual moment
which permits revelation. It is also an epiphany: the Holy Spirit is manifest.
The "baptizer" undergoes a transformation of vision even as the "baptized"
is transformed. A similar occurrence is to be found in the account of Jesus'
baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:30-33). In fact that passage is
particularly notable because John the Baptist repeatedly indicates that he
does not know the one he is to baptize, but that the
act of baptism will make that identity manifest: "And I knew him not: but
that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come, baptizing
with water." The author did not know the "true" nature of flamingos but
discovered it by "baptizing" them.

John sees the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, abiding on the one
baptized. The reversal of the bird image in the dream--i.e. the bird flies up
after "baptism" serves to identify the baptized one with the Spirit itself. The
upward direction of the bird's flight is consonant with the primordial
association of birds with shamanistic flight--in fact, the shaman
may be transformed into a bird for a journey to the heavens.

John the Baptist is, like the Amazonian shamans, living (celibately) in the
wilderness, eating a special diet (honey and locusts or carob-pods), and
wearing unusual, rough clothes: camel-hair and leather (Matthew 3:4). John

has set himself apart, living austerely with a self-imposed discipline--in
other words he masters himself and thus is enabled to function as the
baptizer. It is he who brings forward the realization of a new or different
reality for the benefit not only of himself but others (a shamanistic role).

The conversation about the tapestry during the wedding reception is
important, not so much because of its overt content which reinforced the
plant imagery and thoughts about the psychotropic role of plant substances,
but because it was a shared perception. Like the "permission" to dream
lucidly, this shared perception "permitted" the author to continue to
recognize potentialities. In that sense it was perhaps analogous to the sharing
of ayahuasca by the shaman and his assistants in Luna's film. It is now the
author who sees the imagery first and then shares the vision with another.
The power the author exercised in the dream to change the very
color of the flamingos is shamanic power. It occurs in a lucid dream, which
itself is an exercise of will. It is power exercised on behalf of others, those
who bring the flamingos to be dyed. The intentional nature of appearance is
implicitly acknowledged. As spirits can change appearance at will, so can
the shaman. The shaman can transform others as well. The fact that others
bring the birds to the author is testimony to the author's ability to summon
spiritual power(s). In the wedding, individuals come to the author as minister
to be ritually transformed into a married couple (becoming one flesh)
through the invocation of the divine, specifically (at least in traditional
Christian weddings) the Holy Spirit.

To return to the incident which precipitated the entire sequence: The
doorman whose initial banter provided the flamingo image served literally
as gatekeeper to expanded consciousness. His humor allowed the creative
integration of the ridiculous and the sublime. It was through his office that
the author passed into the creative realm, from the familiar to the
challenging. (He keeps the door to the author's building, whence every day
the author moves from the safety of an apartment to the world of the large
city). Also of significance is the fact that in recent months this pivotal person
had had a near death experience as a result of an allergic reaction to a drug
(a psychoactive plant substance). Although he claims to be non-religious,
during a week of delirium and incoherence in the hospital, he kept repeating
"May God forgive me!" This phrase undoubtedly served as a tug in the
author's unconscious for the issue of baptism. "John did baptize in the
wilderness and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins'

(Mark 1:4). Baptism serves of course as a symbolic death to an old
consciousness and rebirth into the new.

Again, a challenge to narrow consciousness occurs as this "ordinary" person,
the doorman, becomes the harbinger of a truthful and extraordinary
experience. The sharing of a short version of the dream recounted here with
the doorman was a reciprocal act, as he has often shared dreams with the
author and requested help in their interpretation Occasionally he reports
dreaming about the author.

Reflections on the Process

The author has purposefully stayed away from an explicit, psychological
self-analysis in the course of this paper because of a wish to underscore the
eclectic process itself and the revelatory potential of the symbolic motifs.
What is significant for this purpose is the way in which images acquire
meaning from existing tradition and extend that meaning into situations
whose framework is quite other. An appendix notes what the author
considers to be a purely personal, albeit eclectic, association to the sequence
presented.

To reflect briefly on the proto-mythic process presented here: the role of
visual imagery and metaphor are essential to the process. It is a
fundamentally poetic endeavor, relying on contiguous elements which
operate in a polychronic fashion. Similarities, adjacencies, proximities are
utilized to the fullest. Occasionally this has a peculiar effect--the association
of flamingos to the "lilies of the field" comes to mind. And yet this is not
unusual even in written texts that were first orally transmitted. The Talmud
has examples of this process, for in recalling a commentator's words on a
particular issue, the memorization scheme pulls with it all the sayings of that
commentator whether relevant to the topic or not.

Mythmaking and probably much story-telling before the advent of the
modern novel6 has in it a quality of suggestion. The story-teller's art is to tell
enough to generate imagery for the listener, in some cases to create a
dreamlike experience. This is accomplished by means of prose or poetic
rhythms, rhymes, repetitions, evocations, doubling back, restating,
elaborating, etc. These devices effect an almost trancelike quality of

6 See Levi-Strauss, ibid., p. 45, for a discussion of the changes in literary form vis-a-vis musical forms.

attention in the listener. Repetition alone has an effect similar to that
achieved by rubbing stones together to induce trance during vision quests.
The teller may also be entranced, living the story as it is told and retold. In
Old Norse epics this was eventually formalized: at the most exciting moment
of the narrative, the skald spoke in the first person, as the hero. In shamanic
sessions, the shaman is entranced by drumming, singing, the use of rattles,
etc. either by the shaman or assistants.

It is not surprising then, that suggestion should be such an important tool of
the mythmaker or storyteller. Suggestion is a primary tool of the shaman. It
is the point of entry into the heterohypnotic or autohypnotic trances which
enable the shaman to undertake the transformations and flights which are
essential to the shaman's art. The shaman uses those suggestive devices to
recreate for the audience or client the situations encountered in the spiritual
journey in a way which can be experienced as a heightened reality.

If indeed the individual syncretic experience is a valid means of entry into
the mythmaking realm then one ought to be able to find an example of a
similar process in a single established mythic culture. The persistent
flooding of images from one realm to another, the use of contiguity and
resemblance and so on should be easily seen. Although appropriate material
is easily gained from Lakota religious tradition, especially in Black Elk's
account of the seven rites of the Oglala Sioux,7 the author has chosen
another tradition entirely: the Dogon of West Africa. Marcel Griaule
recorded in respectful detail the information given him by Ogotemmeli, a
Dogon elder chosen by his peers for the task.8 The example taken from this
remarkable material has to do with the arrangement and cultivation of
parcels of land and cultivation's association with the work of weaving. The
passages quoted contain but a fragment of the context surrounding the
images which appear here.

7 Brown, Joseph Epes: The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, New York:
Penguin, 1972.
8 Griaule, Marcel: Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965.

"On the plain, the cultivated land is like a
checquer-board, the squares marked out by small ridges less
than a hands-breadth wide...'The land,' said Ogotemmeli, 'is
cultivated in squares, eight cubits a side, surrounded by
embankments of earth.' The area of each plot, he explained, is
that of the flat roof of the celestial granary; and the plot is
orientated so that each side faces a cardinal point of the

compass. 'The old method of cultivation,' he went on, 'is like
weaving; one begins on the north side, moving from east to
west and then back from west to east. On each line eight feet
are planted and the square has eight lines recalling the eight
ancestors and the eight seeds.' Furthermore, inside the line, the
cultivator advances first on one foot and then on the other,
changing his hoe from one hand to the other at each
step...Cultivation thus being a form of weaving, a field is like a
blanket made of eight strips, the black and the white squares
being represented by the alternation of mounds made at each
step and the gaps between them; a mound and its shadow
represent a black square. The whole collection of fields round a
village together with the village itself may also be said to

resemble a large coverlet, the houses with roofs shining in the
sunlight being the white squares, and the courtyards lying in
shadow, the black. The streets are the seams joining the strips.
If a man clears ground and makes a new square plot and builds
a dwelling on the plot, his work is like weaving a cloth.
Moreover, weaving is a form of speech, which is imparted
to the fabric by the to-and-fro movement of the shuttle on the
warp; and in the same way, the to-and-fro movement of the
peasant on his field imparts the Word of the ancestors, that is to
say, moisture, to the ground on which he works, and thus rids
the earth of impurity and extends the area of cultivation round
inhabited places. But if cultivation is a form of weaving, it is
equally true to say that weaving is a form of cultivation. That

part of the warp which has no woof is the uncultivated land or
bush. The finished web is the symbol of the cultivated field.
The four stakes of the loom are the trees and bushes which are
felled by the shuttle, symbol of the axe. To pull the carding-
comb towards oneself is to carry wood to chop for faggots; and
to draw the thread of the woof through the warp, is to bring life,
water, and purity to the desert (p.76f.)...

the fourth thing to be woven was the covering for the dead,
made of eight strips of black and white squares, which are the
eight families multiplied and which reproduce the lay-out of
cultivated land. The covering or pall is thus a symbol of life and
resurrection. In it the dead man is folded for a short time, like a
foetus in the womb, so that in it he may be immersed again in
the web of the living and in the germinating fields (p.79.)...

At sunrise on the appointed day, the seventh ancestor Spirit
spat out eighty threads of cotton; these he distributed between
his upper teeth which acted as the teeth of the weaver's reed.
In this way he made the uneven threads of a warp. He did the
same with the lower teeth to make the even threads. By opening
and shutting his jaws, the Spirit caused the threads of the warp
to make the movements required in weaving. His whole face
took part in the work, his nose studs serving as the block, while
the stud in his lower lip was the shuttle. As the threads crossed
and uncrossed, the two tips of the Spirit's forked tongue pushed
the thread of the weft to and fro, and the web took shape from
his mouth in the breath of the second revealed Word. For the
Spirit was speaking while the work proceeded. As did the
Nummo in the first revelation he imparted his Word by means
of a technical process, so that all men could understand. By so
doing he showed the identity of material actions and spiritual
forces, or rather the need for their co-operation. The words that
the Spirit uttered filled all the interstices of the stuff: they were
woven in the threads, and
formed part and parcel of the cloth. They were the cloth, and
the cloth was the Word. That is why woven material is called
soy, which means 'It is the spoken word.' Soy also means
'seven,' for the Spirit who spoke as he wove was seventh in the
series of ancestors (p.27f.)...

...spinning and weaving are work for the daytime.
Working at night would mean weaving webs of silence and
darkness. (p.29)"

These extraordinary passages serve to give the flavor of the highly contexted
Dogon religious tradition. In North America, Pueblo culture may be the
most highly contexted Native American tradition. It is interesting to note
that both these traditions are agricultural ones, rather than hunting/gathering
ones.

Obviously much of the same sort of reference process has taken place in the
Dogon material as took place in the syncretic material presented here. What
remains to be explored is the extent to which syncretic tendencies on a
cultural level, involving entire groups of individuals, proceed in the same
ways. If so they may indeed provide us with an insight to the living
formation of myth in a different way than the depth psychologies can.

Afterword

Obviously the three-day narrative sequence has a parallel in the Christian
Passion narrative. On Friday afternoon, the author “goes into the city” and
dies to old understandings, on the second day, descends (is immanently
engaged in) a process which redeems otherwise unconnected or irrelevant
fragments into a narrative and redemptive whole (as did the “decent into
Hell” of one of the Christian creeds) and on the third day releases into the
sky (Heaven) the bodies of the transformed one (the dyed flamingoes.) And,
in this paper, long after the experience, recalls and interprets the
remembered events as a species of sacred text.

Appendix A

There is a personal association to the dream recounted here that may be of
interest. It concerns the robe worn by the author for the celebration of the
wedding. This robe was made for the author's ordination according to
specifications rendered in one of the author's dreams. The robe is an off-
white, soft, nubbly material with a purple yoke across the chest, shoulder,
and back. On the back section of the yoke, in somewhat cyan tones is a
reproduction of a painting by the Belgian surrealist, Rene Magritte. The
painting is titled "La grande famille." The painting is an image of a huge
bird shape, turned three-quarters, hovering over a stormy sea. Through the
shape of the bird, as through a window, the viewer sees blue sky and clouds.
On the pectoral area of the robe, stitched in purple thread so that it cannot be
seen by a casual observer, the form of the bird from the painting is repeated.
The bird image was prepared for the robe by the author, who used a color
Xerox process on cloth. This produced the rather cyan toning of the bird
image.

The actual decision to seek ordination came following the following dream:
The author was walking through a clearing in some woods in the winter.
There was snow on the ground and the trees were bare. Suddenly a bird flew
diagonally up across the author's field of vision. It appeared to be a magpie
(dark purplish feathers with white bands on its wings)--a bird strangely
associated in the author's mind with the mockingbird and the latter's sweet
liquid voice, which in turn was associated with a passage from Shakespeare
about the "bird of dawning" (which for Shakespeare would have been the
cock). During the season "Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated" no evil
thing has power and the bird of dawning "singeth all night long...so
hallowed and so gracious is that time." (Hamlet, I,ii) As the author turned to
see this bird, it plummeted down striking the author's chest, knocking the
author supine in the snow. There it rested, wings outspread on the author's
chest. From the perimeter of the clearing came a large wolf, who circled
around the author still lying in the snow. The wolf appeared benign but not
tame. It appeared to be observing and approving. When the wolf departed
the bird immediately flew up and away.

Apprendix B

Some notes on a shamanic upbringing.
[include personal training]
[include “Tezcatlipoca” and “All the fountains” poems from King of
Thornbushes.]

N.B. It is desirable that appropriate references to cutting-edge research be
incorporated into this paper—e.g. Icanchu’s Drum—as they are relatively
“soft.”

Works Cited

Blofeld, John: The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet, New York:
Causeway, 1974.

Brown, Joseph Epes: The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the
Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, New York:
Penguin, 1972.

Garfield, Patricia: Creative Dreaming, New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1974.

Griaule, Marcel: Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An
Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1965

Hall, Edward T., The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of
Time, Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984.

Leberge, Stephen: Lucid Dreaming, New York: Ballantine, 1985.

Levi-Strauss, Claude: Myth and Meaning, New York:
Schocken, 1979.