Secret_History

Chapter 7: Ancient Enigmas 241
“embodiment” or in the shaman’s being “possessed” by “spirits”. What is clear is
that these were innovations, most of them recent. What is particularly striking in
the research of the historiographers of myth, legend, shamanism, etc, is the
discovery of the “influences from the south, which appeared quite early and which
altered both cosmology and the mythology and techniques of ecstasy”. Among
these southern influences were the contribution of Buddhism and Lamaism, added
to the Iranian and, in the last analysis, Mesopotamian influences that preceded
them. 156 Eliade writes:
The initiatory schema of the shaman’s ritual death and resurrection is likewise an
innovation, but one that goes back to much earlier times; in any case, it cannot be
ascribed to influences from the ancient Near East. But the innovations introduced
by the ancestor cult particularly affected the structure of this initiatory schema. The
very concept of mystical death was altered by the many and various religious
changes effected by lunar mythologies, the cult of the dead, and the elaboration of
magical ideologies.
Hence we must conceive of Asiatic shamanism as an archaic technique of
ecstasy whose original underlying ideology — belief in a celestial Supreme Being
with whom it was possible to have direct relations by ascending into the sky —
was constantly being transformed by an ongoing series of exotic contributions
culminating in the invasion of Buddhism. […]
The phenomenology of the trance underwent many changes and corruptions, due in
large part to confusion as to the precise nature of ecstasy. Yet all these innovations
and corruptions did not succeed in eliminating the possibility of the true shamanic
ecstasy.
More than once we have discerned in the shamanic experience a “nostalgia for
paradise” that suggests one of the oldest types of Christian mystical experience. As
for the “inner light”, which plays a part of the first importance in Indian mysticism
and metaphysics as well as in Christian mystical theology, it is already documented
in shamanism.. 157
What seems to be most important about Central Asian shamanism in the history
of mysticism is the role the shaman plays in the defense of the psychic integrity of
the community. Shamans are pre-eminently the anti-demonic champions; they
combat not only demons and disease, but also the black magicians. The shaman is
the tireless slayer of demons and dragons. And here we find explication of the
“military” elements of the Grail Ensemble. The Sword in the Stone that can only
be withdrawn by the “Heir”, or the “Desired Knight”, was represented in the
156 For example, the co-opting and corruption of the Tree of Life symbolism by Judaism with complete
loss of its true function.
157 Ibid., pp. 506-508.