"Possession" by spirits, although documented in a great many shamanisms,
does not seem to have been a primary and essential element. Rather, it
suggests a phenomenon of degeneration; for the supreme goal of the
shaman is to abandon his body and rise to heaven or descend into hell,
not to let himself be 'possessed' by his assisting spirits, by demons or
the souls of the dead; the shaman's ideal is to master these spirits,
not to let himself be "occupied" by them" (320).
Work cited:
"Yoga : Immortality and Freedom"
by Mircea Eliade
Princeton University Press, 1970
On 10/12/2013 1:38 PM, s3raph...@yahoo.com wrote:
Re "It's not really about Castaneda":
OK - fair enough. The BBC docu I linked to is worth a look though. It
briefly touches on Castaneda's life but concentrates on the
disappearances (and presumed suicides) of his female fans Florinda
Donner, Taisha Abelar, Amalia Marquez and Kylie Lundahl . Typical
cult-like fall-out.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com>
wrote:
It's not really about Castaneda - we already pretty much discussed
that over on Usenet : alt.dreams.castaneda
And, it's more about Shamans than Don Juan Matus. It's more about
Shamanism as a influence on the Siddha tradition in India, where an
influence from the shaman substratum may be assumed.
Indian Elements of Shamanism:
1) Induced ecstasy through chanting
2) Recovery of lost souls
3) Flight to the spiritual sky
4) Use of the magical drum
6) Shaman as Psyhchopomp
7) The cosmic mountain as axis mundi
9) Use of fire and flame as magical heat
On 10/11/2013 7:02 PM, s3raphita@... <mailto:s3raphita@...> wrote:
I don't wish to be the bearer of bad news but if Carlos Castaneda is
a hero of yours you might want to watch this BBC documentary "What
happens when anthropology goes bad? The last in this series of great
yarns from the world of anthropology is a story of sex, drugs and a
long-lost body in the desert."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXl95ZaYe3Q
---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com>, <punditster@...>
<mailto:punditster@...> wrote:
They don't call Native Americans "Indians" for nothing, since they
all came from Asia in the first place. Go figure.
According to what I've read, a recent study of a 40,000 year old
skeleton from China "showed that early modern humans present in the
Beijing area 40,000 y ago were related to the ancestors of many
present-day Asians as well as Native Americans."
So, what is a shaman anyway?
A shaman is anybody who contacts a spirit world while in an altered
state of consciousness.
The idea is based on the notion that the visible world is of the
senses is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits which affect the
lives of living people. Shamans can reach altered states of
consciousness in order to encounter and interact with the spirit
world and channel transcendental energies.
"For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have heart, on
any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile
challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I
travel—looking, looking, breathlessly." - Don Juan Matus
Only known photography of Don Juan Matus:
Inline image 1
