Shaman

As evidenced by the traditions and customs of the primary peoples, our ancestors have maintained a magical mentality, like the current primitive peoples.

In Australia, Aborigines celebrate the Time of Dream, a kind of paradise of origins in which each one of them finds his own place in this life. For them, ordinary reality is not worthwhile. They are devoted from an early age to the exploration of the mind.

And these inner labyrinths have their outer projections, it is the “sung tracks” they go all over through the Australian outback.

With each verse, the landscape changes, a tutelary animal appeared on the way, and the Aborigine, guided by its sacred song, follows his dream track.

For the same purpose, the Latin American Indians make an abundant use of hallucinogenic drugs. Peyotl, Datura, Jimson weed, and above all, the wine of the spirit, Ayahuasca.

Unlike the European or American yuppies who go there by charter flights, the Amazon Indians do not get high to forget the mediocrity of their lives, since they’re already full of wonders and adventures. The state of nature gives them their daily dose of adrenaline. And the Time of Dream gives pearls of wisdom. 

The Western world has lost sight of everything that makes the flavor of our human condition: to achieve the sacred union of the spirit that does not die and the material that degrades.

The sacred science of the Atlanteans had achieved a fragile bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain , between reason and creative delirium, but this bridge was undermined by the ancient Greeks: Logical Plato killed flamboyant Aeschylus, the Appolinien stifled Dionysian. The latest real men, primitive, wild and away from slavery societies are still continuing this shamanic tradition.

Paradox born of our idiocy: while all animal species are jealously protected, commendable care stops with our species. In humans, there are no protected tribes. Brigitte Bardot is not involved with Papuans, which makes them good. Very strong in their environment, will the Indians resist in our civilized microbes? If the dirty flu reached the Yanomami or these magic peoples of the Omo Valley – they may well disappear until the last …

North American Natives had different techniques to link to Wakan Taka: the vision quest, the sweatlodge and the Sun Dance. The warrior in search of vision pierces his skin. He threads sticks where he knots ropes which are hanging from a sacred tree or a totem. 

He then let himself be hung in the air, supported only by the ties which tear his skin. He stands firm until his skin breaks out, and until he falls like a ripe fruit. This is not masochism. It is a passion, like that of Jesus. By the door of assumed pain the warrior seeks a self-transcendence. He wants to enter the World of Dream, where the highest aspirations come true.

Yet these rituals were considered barbarians and thus prohibited in most of the concerned states. Another ritual is represented by the sweatlodges. They are the super saunas of the Sioux Lakota and have the same purpose as the sun dance or the psychotropic drugs: a vision quest, to find the Time of Dream.

 The only problem, but a big one, is: the last Native Americans, largely cut off from their ancient traditions, claim they establish a church of the sweatlodge that really looks like a sect: ritual fixed, hierarchical clergy, and other signs of decline. Slowly but surely, the cold and angular world of pure reason and kali yugacomes to a point of no return.

The Holy Mass of Descartes and the Vespers of Kant put a damper on their chimes. Expected return of Bergson, Eliade, Steiner and Guénon.

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

That is the return of the spiritual way, while in the other side, the materialists are locked in categorical cyber robotics. Sitting on the floor on their bottom, the last mechanical monkeys watch a plastic sun setting behind a black wall. No more cave, we don’t want it. Is it a change of course or a pilgrimage to the origins?

The Ancients have had no other preoccupation than to connect with the Great Whole, reigning over the world, becoming light again, born of light, the ones by whom all things were made. The cave painters were not an exception to the rule. Actually, this is the only task that matters.

Our mission, if we accept it, lies in a few words that will self-destruct in a few seconds: “Crossing the ozone layer, going all over the diamond of time, drinking green tea among the Seven Rishi Sages, giving Buddha a boost and visiting the ineffable object of our protean desires in the misty avenues of our unconscious where swans glide.” (source)Stéphane Kervor, by the way