4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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actuals
any attempt to compose them. But I learned & memorized those
songs by repeating them.
(Rothenberg 1968: 51–2) 6
Rothenberg (1968: 424) thinks that Tens’ experience is “typical of
1) the psychology of shamanism; 2) the shaman’s ‘initiation’ through
dream and vision, 3) transformation of vision into song.” Eliade and
Lommel cite similar examples. Eliade (1965: 87) says there are three
ways of becoming a shaman: as Tens did through the “call”; by inheritance;
and by personal ambition or the will of the tribe. A shaman is
authenticated only after having received two kinds of instruction. The
first is ecstatic (for example, dreams, visions, trances); the second is
traditional (for example, shamanic techniques, names and functions of
the spirits, mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language). The
instruction of the fledgling shaman first by older shamans and then by
the spirits is a universal aspect of shamanism. Its structure is much like
Dante’s travels with Virgil through the Christian other worlds. Lommel
describes an Australian shamanic instruction.
At sunset the shaman’s soul meets somewhere the shadow of a dead
ancestor. The shadow asks the soul whether it shall go with it. The
shaman’s soul answers yes. . . . Then they go on together, either at
once into the kingdom of the dead or to a place in this world at which
the spirits of the dead have gathered. . . . The spirits begin to sing and
dance. . . . When the dance is over the spirits release the shaman’s
soul and his helping spirit brings it back to his body. When the
shaman wakes, his experiences with the spirits seem to him like a
dream. From now on he thinks of nothing but the dances which he has
seen and his soul keeps on going back to the spirits to learn more
and more about the dances. . . . Then he will first explain the dances to
his wife and sing them to her, and after that he will teach them to
everyone else.
(Lommel 1967: 138–9)
The shaman’s journeys are neither gratuitous nor for private use. He
goes to get something and he must deliver what he gets back to his
people – he must teach them what he learns. His work is social work.