Our time is over rational, logical to the absurd, devoid of any magic horizon. We forgot our right brain, which atrophies. We neglect the wonders it offers. We despise those who enjoy some, drug addicts, mystics and madmen.
And yet … Since ancient times, in all parts of the world,
many men and women have followed the path of the shaman.
In what mysterious activities were indulging those who painted those Sixtine chapels of prehistory, Altamira, Lascaux, Niaux?
“The representations have a hieratic depth, they are full of religious force, and thus they can clearly be classified as Sacred Art. Works such as Altamira or Niaux are more than just works of art and must be considered and appreciated in terms of philosophy and deep problems of humanity.” (source)Miguel Garcia Guinea, professor at Santander University Some sacred art, no doubt. Even shamanism.
Drawing silhouettes, and other figures on the first ones, setting animals in the web of their signs, shamans have established with the beasts unbreakable links which, several years later, will give birth to the pets. In their caves, the shamans of the Ice Age have prepared the revival of the great agricultural spring.
While the humans were trying to escape the nuclear winter that lasted a hundred thousand years, while the mole-men lived in tunnels and caves, while the People of the Inside led the men to the Center-Earth, the shamans had come closer to the surface. They tried to reconnoitre outside as soon as the vegetation had recovered its rights. They recognized bison, wild horse, large deer, mammoth, lion and wild dogs. They linked with the egregor of all the beasts. Sometimes the link has held. Other times, he broke up. Nevertheless, all the animals on our farms have been harnessed by the great shamans of the forgotten times. They made a pact with the egregores of each species.
They invoked the group soul of the horse, they made a pact with her, and the horse became our ally, a pet. In exchange, the man gives it love, respect and protection.
“An egregore is, in esoterism, a concept referring to a “group spirit”, an autonomous psychic entity or a force produced and influenced by the emotions and desires of many individuals united in a common goal. This living force would function then as an autonomous entity. The term originated in the Hermetic tradition before being taken up again by the Surrealists, who gave it a real subversive potential.” (source)Wikipedia The egregore they are talking about here refers to the group-soul of the animals.
“While man is characterized by an individual soul, the animals have a group-soul, the egregore, which determinates the destinies of each species.” (source)Rudolf Steiner After the Horse, the shamans of the painted caves have made the same pact with the egregore of the Bison.
From Tatankaname of the sacred buffalo in Sioux Lakota the sacred buffalo are born our placid bovines.
Of course, I don’t say that the former gods didn’t play any part in this evolution. I think their vast knowledge of genetics has allowed them to design better-suited species for farm work. It was their interest that the oxen and the horses work for them. So they sent their best geneticists to their labs, and new animal species were started. Draft and plowing animals were needed for humans to produce all kinds of vegetables and fruits. Field work requires both human and animal livestock.
A lot of meat was needed, eggs, honey and milk. First to feed the gods and their angels, the rest for the humans and the rejects for the cattle. This way of doing things is always in practice. It comes from the example given by the gods before. But genetics is not everything. And that’s where the shamans and witches came in.
With that of the Bees, the egregore of the Bull was the first pact made. The “rivers of milk and honey“ that flowed in the Garden of Eden tell the domestication of cows and bees. Then the shamans of the painted caves resumed their rituals. They made a pact with many species. Some of them, although they are represented in cave paintings, have resisted domestication, such as gazelles and rhinos.
Conversely, several wild species domesticated at that time have since regained their freedom. Thus the beaver was formerly a pet. Rustic, hardworking, good diver, lumberjack and carpenter, the men have long used it to build their dams and their log huts. Everything the beaver knows, the man taught it. All that the beaver knows, the man has taught him once. All that man knows, the visiting gods taught him once. But the beaver chose to have its freedom back; he has nevertheless cultivated its talent of builder, which closely resembles our own.
Another example, the dolphin, that man has long used for fishing and sea rescue. In some Polynesian atolls, the dolphins are still allies of fishermen by driving schools of fishes in their nets. Cooperation is easier between dolphins and humans. Formerly all ships were escorted by a band of dolphins in charge of rescuing the men in the sea, a task in which they excel yet, as taught us La Fontaine in the fable The monkey and the dolphin.
Here it is we who have forgotten them. Not them.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke)