In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals; for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beasts, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and the moon, man should learn. Tirawa spoke to man through his works.
— CHIEF LETAKOTS-LESA1
Outside the garden, separated from our spirit home, humans had to work for food. Hunter-gatherer societies emerged, yet remaining within these groups were individuals, shamans, who retained paradisal skills, such as crossing over to the spirit world, flying, communicating with animals, and transforming into animals. The average person developed conflicting ideas — about good and evil, right and wrong. Shamans lived outside this duality and retained the ability to “transcend opposites, to abolish the polarity typical of the human condition, in order to attain to ultimate reality,” according to expert Mircea Eliade.2
To manage the presence of death, the shaman was a healer, a magician, and a psychopomp, one who conducts spirits or souls to the other worlds. Thus, the shaman was, and is today, an integral part of tribal communities.
In general, a shaman defends life, health, fertility, and the world of “light” against death, disease, sterility, disaster, and the world of “darkness.”3 He or she is a prominent personage who, symbolically or in reality, moves between the physical and spiritual realms.4
Shamanic affairs are similar throughout the world’s various shamanic cultures. Tribal beliefs describe a spirit reality from which we came and to which we can return. The shaman first learns to reach the spirit realm through an initiation, which involves a ritualistic death, dismemberment, and rebirth in shamanic form. During “death,” the person experiences an ecstatic journey with transformation and transportation to the other world, thus sacrificing the profane physical condition.
The shamanic practice is a “technique in ecstasy,” the ultimate religious experience, according to Mircea Eliade. The shaman masters a state of ecstatic joy, and in this mystical state, he or she attempts to transcend the human condition, to reach the source of spiritual existence. Eliade calls the experience of ecstatic joy “nostalgia for paradise,” a pervasive spiritual/religious technique found across the globe and characteristic of the mystical experiences of many religions, including Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, and tribal.5
The ancient shaman’s activities often involved animals, largely because of the need to hunt. The shaman conversed with the guardians of the game, spirits in animal form, and requested that creatures be provided for food. Primitive hunters believed that nonhuman beings were similar to humans, except that the beasts had supernatural powers. They could change into people and vice versa. Mysterious relationships existed between individuals and certain animals who were guardian spirits. For example, a guardian bear spirit might give protection or guide the person in the use of herbs.
Three characteristics of shamanism pertain to animals — the shaman can fly, communicate with animals, and transform into animals.
FLIGHT
Mircea Eliade explains how shamans retained the ability to fly. “According to many traditions, the power of flight extended to all men in the mythical age. All could reach heaven, whether on the wings of a fabulous bird or on the clouds.”6 The shaman retained the primordial nature of flight and transcendence of the human condition to visit the spirit realm. Others only reached heaven at death. The Egyptian Book of the Dead describes the deceased as a falcon flying away. Flight is an integral part of many theological ideologies, with similar symbolism across religious teachings. For example, the Hindu text Pañcaviśma Brāhmaņa says, “Those who know have wings.”7 As the Judeo-Christian angels have wings, so does one of the most important symbols of the Native American Sioux religion, the great Thunderbird. In The Sacred Pipe, Joseph Epes Brown wrote: “He is the same as the great one-eyed Bird, Garuda, of the Hindu tradition, or the Chinese Dragon (the Logos), who rides on the clouds of the storm, and whose voice is the thunder. As giver of Revelation, he is identical in function to the Archangel Gabriel of Judaism or Christianity — the Jibrail of Islam.”8
Other examples include Odin of Germanic mythology, sometimes called “Eagle.” Greek sorcerers also professed to furnish the souls of the dead with wings to fly to heaven, and Buddhists discuss two forms of flight, mystical flight and magical flight (which is an illusion).
Mystical flight is also demonstrated by the levitation and flights of saints in both Christian and Islamic traditions. The Roman Catholic Church records as many as seventy levitations by saints, including St. Joseph of Cupertino and Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, who were both seen flying up into trees. Because shamans enjoy the spirit condition, they can fly to the World Tree and retrieve “soul-birds.” A bird perched on a stick is an ancient symbol of shamanism.
Vestiges of shamanic practices remain among the world’s religions today. The ancient, essential features of shamanism include the ascent to heaven, the descent to the underworld, and the evocation of the “spirits,” all common religious concepts.
COMMUNICATION WITH ANIMALS
In the process of initiation among the Eskimo, a future shaman learns a secret language, often the “animal language,” which is needed in order to communicate with the spirits and the animal spirits. Animal language is only a variant of “spirit language.”
African shaman Malidoma Patrice Somé’s grandfather communicated with chickens. Malidoma’s grandfather once explained that a rooster had just told the hen to run into the basket of millet belonging to a one-eyed woman and tip it over. Seconds later, the hen did just that, and the flock rushed over to feast. Malidoma’s grandfather said that if one wished to understand the chicken’s language, one should stop eating chickens.
A spirit may take the form of an animal and appear to humans in normal waking consciousness. A shaman communicates with several types of spirits in animal form: familiars, helpers, and guardian spirits. There are also more powerful spirits that are tutelary spirits. Native people teach that the universe is a mirror. Any animal or anything else one sees is a reflection of themselves. Every animal one sees brings a message. Communication also comes in the form of visions involving animals.
Altered states of consciousness, such as visions, trances, and séances, are the hallmark of shamanism.9 In the trance state, the shaman understands all of nature. Trance states are attained by numerous methods: fasting, meditating, drumming, dancing, singing, and many other rhythmic activities, as well as while using psychotropic drugs or during a state of severe illness. Daydreams, night dreams, and lucid dreaming are other ways a shaman communicates with the spirit worlds. An accomplished shaman does not need an altered state and may connect with many realities at will.
Peruvian shamans claim the hallucinations they have after drinking a beverage made from the ayahuasca plant are the way the plant communicates with humans. One shaman said, “That is how nature talks, because in nature, there is God, and God talks to us in our visions.”10
Nature spoke to Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux shaman, in a vision of “twelve buckskins [horses] all abreast with horns upon their heads and manes that lived and grew like trees and grasses.”11 These images carry important meaning to the shaman as forms of communication from Spirit. In general, the person seeing the vision must interpret it for him- or herself.
However, some prophetic visions have become part of mystical traditions, as is the case with the Merkabah mysticism
