Th e cults of god-kings were in a specifi c way modifi ed into cults that were based upon exploitation of ruler personality as a “homeopathic core” for administering natural phenomena. Th ese cults originated from the concept of magic interrelation between the ruler and his people together with settled location. Th ey were characterized by strict regulation of ruler’s life mode in order to avoid any natural or cultural cataclysms that could have happened in compliance with homeopathic principle due to some incautious gesture of a ruler. For instance, the Khagan of the Khazars or Japanese Mikado were the rulers of this type.
In fact the status of the ruler in these countries was of nominal character — the ruler did not have any controls and was a purely religious fetish. Since the health of a ruler was by homeopathic principle related to the health of the state many folks had a custom of bringing to death the ruler who has achieved some particular age in order to substitute him by a younger individual. In later cults this custom was substantial y modifi ed: that change of a ruler was done in symbolic form and instead of him they killed another person that was claimed ruler for some short time-period. In Egypt they had a custom of throwing a wooden log into the Nile thirty years after pharaoh’s ruling. Th is ritual that was 126 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
cal ed the “pharaoh’s renovation” comes as a bright il ustration of the way the real change of pharaoh was substituted by the symbolic one.
From the aforementioned facts one may see that ruling power always contained some religious elements; thus we may also suppose there exist specifi c psychopractices that are linked to power. And indeed we can fi nd these practices in rituals that are connected to power acceptance and transfer, its “objectizing” by means of attributes, as well as in many rituals of one’s expressing his subordinacy, like taking pledges and loyalty oaths etc.
It is easy to understand that psychopractices related to authority power performed the functions of consolidating the domination-submission role stereotype that every power is based upon. Th is stereotype real y needs to be secured since it is initial y frustrating for al participants: those dominating who are forced to perform actions that are not compatible with traditional moral in order to sustain their power, as wel as those subordinate who are bound to sacrifi ce a part of their interests.
4.7. SHAMANISM
4.7.1. Brief Characteristic of Shamanism
Without exaggeration we may treat shamanism for the pinnacle of primeval culture development. Shamanism as religious system has harmoniously absorbed al primeval religions and its worldview is very close to the worldview of developed animism.
Th e key fi gure of shamanism is the shaman — a mediator in relationships between the world of living people and the world of spirits
[191; 268; 272; 358]. Th e shaman diff ers from the sorcerer of early-times religions since he equal y serves people using the spirits, as wel as serves the spirits using people for this purpose. Not every individual can become the shaman, but only the one who has the power of administrating spirits. He should have several spirits that help him —
spirit guides, as wel as one spirit that reveals him the secrets of his skill — the ally spirit, usually the genius of a shaman who had died.
Th ere are three categories of shamans:
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1. Shamans by choice of spirits. As a rule these are the people that in their pubescence age were laid by the so-cal ed shamanic il -
ness — they were subjected to visions and hal ucinations, their bearing was becoming queer and chaotic, they sometimes had seizures close to epileptic ones. In his visions such individual was visited by spirits that suggested that he should become a shaman and they would be his spirit guides. Th e candidate was often trying to refuse from proposed mission since shamanic activity was considered to be a hard one. In this case spirits threatened that they would kill the individual, and his illness was aggravating. If the individual selected by spirits accepted the off er of becoming a shaman, he was cured but he preserved his skil s of shamanic trance voluntarily evoking. Following this the neophyte shaman started mastering his “professional” skills under supervision of the ally spirit or a more experienced shaman who took him for an apprentice.
2. Shamans by learning as a professional stratum are characteristic formore developed cultures. In order to become a shaman of this type an individual used to take a preparation course from the already acknowledged shaman, this often being his elder relative. Th en the shaman-to-be was to declare himelf to spirits and fi nd the ally spirit and the spirit guides. In case he succeeded in this and was acknowledged by spirits he was becoming a shaman.
3. Shamans by descent were receiving spirit guides and thus the status of the shaman from another shaman, usually by heritage. Th e motif of this kind is often available in modern folklore. Having received the knowledge from shaman the individual was not entitled to rest on his laurels. For the rest of his life the shaman was to refi ne his skil and multiply his force, in particular, to gain new spirit guides by fi nding them in his environment or by taking them from other shamans; there were even cases of spirit guides’ sale.
We should once again emphasize that the art of shaman was rather diffi cult and even dangerous (in some traditions they were kil ing the shaman who was unable to perform some certain actions, for instance, cal forth the rain), since he had liabilities not only against the members of his tribebut also against the spirits that were helping him, for he was constantly obliged to feed them and perform their will. Besides sometimes shamans were practicing a kind of fi ghting for the spirit 128 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
guides and the spheres of infl uence, resulting in magic duels that usual y caused il ness or even death of the losing shaman.
Th e shamanistic cult was culminated in the so cal ed shamanic journey when the shaman, being in trance, was able to separate his spirit from his body and travel to the world of spirits in order to receive necessary information or pass requests to superior spirits that were managing lives of people. He could also take the journey for the purpose of fi nding a spirit that was lost in the world of spirits and bring it back to its master, i.e. for the purpose of individual’s cure. Since the cosmogony of shamanism assumes there are three world existing: the upper world — the heaven, the middle world — the world of people, and the lower one — the netherworld, in terms of their direction during the journey they distinguished between the white shamans — those travelling to the upper world, and the black ones who were travelling to the underworld. Th is separation was not related to good or bad undertak-ings of the shaman since he could use the spirits of both upper or lower world in order to make good or bad to people. Some shamans of high rate were able to travel through all three worlds. In most diffi cult cases a group of shamans could have taken a joint journey — the ecstatic sé-
ance (kamlanie, or shamanic ritual dance). In this case their spirits were also going together. Such séances could have lasted several days at a raw.
Th e shamanic drum — physical embodiment of shaman’s force, his main instrument for travelling into the world of spirits — comes as a refl ection of shamanistic ideology as wel as expressive il ustration of the merger between magic and animistic types of reasoning. A drum is a round wooden hoop with stretched skin of a horse or a cow slaugh-tered in compliance with certain ritual. Th e spirit of this animal was becoming a riding means for shaman’s spirit in the astral plane. Th ey used to draw four legs, a head and a tail on the hoop that were symbolic confi rmation of the drum to be shaman’s riding animal. Th e handle of the drum was shaped into the human fi gure in order to symbolize the ally spirit. Th e drum also depicted the spirit guides and cosmogonic levels the shaman could have achieved.
Th e clothes of shaman were also adorned by diff erent images of spirits that were physical embodiment of the spirits protecting his journey. By analyzing shaman’s ritual robe one may better understand the symbolic essence of ritual robes worn by offi cers of late-time cults.
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But for the drum and clothes the shaman was using a number of ritual instruments which spirits were accompanying him during the sé-
ance and were used by him in his journey. Th e most often mentioned instruments were a ritual knife or a bow with arrows for fi ghting evil spirits, a boat that shaman used to cross rivers with, as wel as a chisel to gouge the vault of the sky in winter (since it is covered with ice). In general these notions express the concept of animism.
4.7.2. Shamanism as a System of Psychopractices
Th e most ancient form of psychopractices can be found already in primeval cults at the stage of the so-called professional “priesthood” emergence. A whole group of such psychopractices was used in dril s for shamans’ preparation [191; 358]. In fact, initial training and further development of the shaman assumed consequent employment of a certain set of methods that enabled one’s getting into required states of consciousness. Th e research study of archaic psychopractices, in particular the shamanic ones, makes interest since their principles made basis of al further religious psychopractices and can be traced even in modern esoteric systems. In the most expressive way it manifests in the sequence of intrapsychical transformations that happen in the process of training.
Th e usage of shamanic experience enriched by various interpretations of western psychology made it possible to work out a whole number of eff ective psychopractices aimed at treatment of psychological and psycho-somatic disorders as wel as individual’s psychological development. Successful results achieved by psycho-somatic medicine within recent years also enabled to look from diff erent angle at therapeutic procedures that were used by shamans.
So what is that shamanic journey from psychological point of view?
We may answer this question basing upon contemporary concepts of human psyche that comes as a result of interrelationships between three compound elements: the subconscious mind, the super-conscious mind and the consciousness.
Th e fi rst stage of training is that split of consciousness. It should be experienced by a young man who decided to become shaman on his own, not after “choice of the spirits”. Th e target of this training stage 130 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
is to destroy his traditional mode of world perception and to include there elements that stay beyond conscious attitude of a common individual. Th e consciousness of a common person is fi rmly separated from his subconscious and super-conscious mind. Th e shaman or individual who gets into altered state of consciousness opens up his consciousness to unconscious images performing a journey to the netherworld (subconscious mind) or upper world (super-conscious mind). Th is interpretation of shamanic journey is verifi ed in performed by S. Grof and his fol owers analysis of visions of people that stayed in diff erent forms of ASC, revealing a striking similarity between these vision, as well as between them and descriptions of shamanic journeys found in ethnographic sources. At this stage the neophyte was taught to distinguish between the signs of the universe, this in perspective coming to the spirits. Distinguishing between the signs of the universe means achieving a specifi c state of consciousness in which the individual was learning to activate unconscious material by means of exterior images.
In fact, every individual is surrounded by endless number of various events, phenomena etc. Which of them shal be “selected” by the subconscious mind in order to render it to the consciousness? It depends only upon individual himself, his state, his mental set, his state anxiety etc. For instance, there was a curious variation of this method employed by the Sufi . Having asked the question “Whether I have to do this thing or not?” the individual looks around and sees something that strikes his eye. Th en he has to interpret this notion from the prism of the question asked. One’s applying proverbial signs comes as an exoteric analogue of this technique.
Methods applied at the fi rst stage of training were based upon usage of intense stresses of physiological, psychological or pharmacological origin.
Th e practices of long-term fast, self-torment etc. are related to physiological methods. V. Tokarev [281] describes a ritual practiced by American Red Indians. A young man who wanted to become a shaman was suspended upside down by means of rawhide belts put through legs muscles and left in such position for some particular time. Th e pain sock and the fear of death enabled him to achieve the split of consciousness within the shortest time and the neophyte saw animate forces (the ally spirit) that helped him to survive.
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It is worth noting that split of consciousness comes as apprentice’s fi rst step in many modern esoteric schools as wel . In particular, such methods aimed at consciousness split include those “crossing the doorstep of spiritual world” and “feeling one’s astral projection” employed in anthroposophy, the “crossing the doorstep between the worlds” within the system of C. Castaneda and many others.
As for psychological methods, here one may single out various forms of “pressing upon one’s fear”, i.e. deliberate intimidating of the beginner, putting him into the state of paranoia or short-time shock that deliver concealed reserves of his organism.
Pharmacological methods include usage of various narcotic agents that is proper to both primeval as wel as practical y al modern religions.
Th e infl uence of such psychopractices upon psyche of the man of today is depicted in the works of M. Harner and C. Castaneda [303, 108]. Th e fi nal target of this stage is to establish fi rm contact with the al y spirit that further on shal come as neophyte’s main guide in the
“spiritual world”.
One may observe a peculiar analogue of this stage in other developed systems of psychopractices. For instance, upon analysis of transitional states in Hesychasm S. Khoruzhij explains the necessity of the states that are similar to those of split consciousness within the scope of synergetic and energy approaches [307, pg. 21]: “Each stage as well as the act of transition from one stage onto the next one contain a sort of “synergetic substance”: they may be accordingly interpreted as dynamic structures of self-organization and acts of transition in synergetic process. In the most expressive way this substance is revealed in initial stage of confession. It is known that the reference stage required for synergetic process, the stage that opens up the process of organization of dynamic structures series, is that preparation of the state of intense non-equilibrium, abrupt distancing of the system away from customary stable regimes. It comes in obvious structural paral el with confession. In order to get a crucial y new dynamics of inner life, in order to start ascendant process of spontaneous arrangement of consciousness and psycho-somatic energy structures that do not emerge in the scope of individual’s traditional existence, one needs to drasti-132 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
cally leave that state of equilibrium, experience a reference commotion, discard al usual stereotypes. Synergetic paral el enables us to comprehend in a new way the discourse of confession with its intension and exaltation, scaring imagery, sharp emotions and exaggerations… — and we agree that such paral els from mutual y distant spheres have their heuristic value”.
Th e second stage of the shaman-to-be training includes psychopractices directed at “culture mastering” of the world seen in a new way.
At this stage the apprentice develops the skil and learns the methods of conscious transition from common state of consciousness to the altered one and back. Th e main practice here is the communication with ally spirit and investigation of the netherworld and upper world under his supervision in order to perform successful shamanic journeys in future. From psychological position such investigation is nothing but investigation of archetypical resources of one’s own as wel as col ective unconscious mind with further generation of individual “keys” that are required for one’s turning to these resources. An important issue here is mastering the skill of preserving one’s charismatic potential that was generated in the ASC in traditional state of one’s consciousness.
Th e third stage of the shaman’s individual development continues within al his further life, this being constant accumulation of personal force by means of increasing the number of spirit guides. Attachment of a spirit and turning him into one’s assisting guide was done with help of special rituals of attachment made in form of a fi ght with every new spirit the shaman wanted to subordinate. Such duel was considered to be very dangerous since it could have even causedshaman’s death. Such death of shaman could have been of both spiritual kind — with shaman losing his personal force and spirit guides — as wel as physical one. By this shaman’s spiritual death usual y caused the physical one. Yet when shaman was dying in physics without losing his personal force he was supposed to be able to turn into a powerful spirit.
One may easily observe that basing upon Jung’s treatment of spirits for autonomous unconscious complexes projected outwardly the above described rituals can be interpreted as methods of recovering one’s psychological integrityor methods of consciousness expansion. Th ese psychopractices come as a bril iant example of the way to one’s psyche restructuring.
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Th e described practice of spirits “attachment” illustrates the way the existential myth of the World Tree is displayed. Th e power of the shaman, his status in the range of the world (or shaman’s world, this being the same in mentioned context) is defi ned by the number and variety of spirit guides that help him [90]. It is not possible to confi ne oneself to one assisting spirit only, even if the most powerful one, since diff erent spirits are responsible for diff erent aspects of shaman’s activity and are endued with various skills [191]. With every next level up in the World Tree thereincrease the number of various leaves and twigs there.
A common individual living at the level of the “second world” lives next to the tree body being devoid of such kind of variety.
Let us notice that the concepts of personal force are peculiar to archaic folks at the stage of animatism. For instance, dwellers of the Easter Island believed in existence of specifi c impersonal force of
“mana” — the energy that impenetrates every object of the material world enlivening and animating them. Such doctrines lack their manifold and refl ect existential pattern of the World Mountain.
One may come across described stages of shamanistic practices mostly in every esoteric psychopractice where they exist in various forms.
SUMMARY
1. Primeval religious rituals come as most ancient psychopractices directed at cultural self-mastering of individual’s psyche.
2. Layers related to primeval religious forms that are available in collective unconscious mind make these practices still eff ective from the point of their infl uence upon individual’s psyche. In fact, these very archaic psychopractices come as basis of all further systems of religious and secular psychopractice.
3. Re-stimulation of innermost layers may manifest in form of unconscious religiosity, i.e. individuals’ performing some archaic religious rituals without being aware of religious nature and meaning of the actions performed by him; one’s establishing his worldview upon a system of religious myths without comprehending mythologic nature of his notions.
Section V
ESOTERIC
PSYCHOPRACTICES IN
RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS
5.1. ANTHROPOLOGIC CONTENTS
OF ESOTERIC PSYCHOPRACTICES
As it has been already mentioned in section one, we shal be cal -
ing esoteric the systems that are used by limited number of adepts and that bear mostly applicative character. Th e systems of this kind existed in almost all cultures and religious traditions. As an example we can draw Indian yoga, the Tao theory of inner elixir, the Hesychasm, Ignatius de Loyola spiritual exercises, Sufi orders etc.
Th e peculiar feature of esoteric systems — this in paral el being the reason of their “restricted” character — is that unlike religion esoteric systems are intensely pragmatic and practical. It was yet M. Weber who drew his attention upon this feature of such systems: “Mystic knowledge… is a practical (Weber’s emphasis) knowledge. Mysticism intends a state of “possession”, not action, that can provide basis for a new practical way of getting oneself oriented in common world, and in some cases even for new communicative cognition” [37, pg. 205].
Like religions, esoteric systems also have their target in deliberate self-modifi cation of the individual, yet unlike the fi rst mentioned they off er a certain reproducible set of methods for such modifi cation. For instance G. Palamas in his characterizing the task of the Hesychasm practices wrote that by instal ing into body the oversight of the mind they were “…in this way establishing a law appropriate for each power of the soul, and for every member of the body” [184]. Yoga also manifests objects of similar kind: “Yoga is restraining the mind-stuff from taking diff erent forms” [101]. Th e text draws many other samples that il ustrate the idea. Th e mentioned modifi cations are based upon altered states of consciousness, but unlike altered states of consciousness that PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS. Andrey G. Safronov 135
are entered by followers of many religions, personal modifi cations endeavored by adherents of esoteric systems are of persistent character. Esotericism is “a reconstruction of inner esoteric world, a journey through it” [209, pg. 107-108]. In esoteric systems one may fi nd an abundance of various psychological practices. For short we shall refer to the last ones as “esoteric psychopractices”.
If to compare targets of esoteric psychopractices and targets and values of religions that they existed in, one may observe diff erences that are crucial though not much advertised. We shal bring corresponding samples further on in this section. We shall also show that but for being a signifi cant partof such systems, the existence of such diff erences also comes as their essential compound element.
Despite the variety of esoteric systems we may single out several types of persistent psyche modifi cations that their followers were out for:
1) formation of new personal characteristic traits;
2) development of one’s already existing skills and mastering of new ones, including those that go beyond “traditional” human abilities; 3) extension of consciousness, increase of one’s awareness rate.
Elaboration of one’s new personal traits comes as the most popular and easy achieved goal that is set not only by esoteric systems but by majority of religious-educational systems as wel . Sometimes fol owers of one system try to gain features that followers of the other system strive to get rid of. In this aspect it is the Indian tradition that appears as the most intricate one since it suggested that representatives of different social strata should elaborate various sets of traits in compliance with their social role (dharma).
One may single out the following skills among those that adherents of various esoteric systems endeavored to gain:
1) refi ning of one’s perception organs, body conditions and culture of movements;
2) development of specifi c communicative skil s;
3) ability of voluntarily getting into altered state of conscious; 4) ability of setting volitional control over physiological processes in one’s organism.
136 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
Th e description of personal modifi cations induced by esoteric psychopractices is feasible on the grounds of methodology of structural-psychological and phenomenological approaches as well as that of transpersonal psychology. Yet if to speak in general the anthropologic perspective that is off ered by diff erent psychopractices varies signifi -
cantly thus having caused a kind of confusion. Th e researchers that employ any of methodological approach to psychopractices’ description were inclined to describing one type only, without consideration of other variants of anthropologic perspectives.
For instance, basing upon materials of western alchemic tradition and partial y some of those from oriental systems C. Jung singled out one sole (according to his opinion) purpose of psychopractices that was metaphysical y laid within the need native to the psyche itself — the individualization, the process in which a personality gains wholeness and integrity of its being. Individualization is related to the extension of consciousness sphere, expansion of its abilities. Th e process of individualization is that personality’s singling out from col ective bases of personal psyche, spiritual birth of the individual, the emergence of psychical y independent self-developing creature. Individualization comes as assimilation of unconscious notions through comprehension of images that they represent, i.e. through manifestation and realization of archetypes. Individualization results in establishment of selfness in which ego (individual’s consciousness) becomes an element of the selfness. Yet the ego is not dissolved, it is not assimilated by the selfness for it would turn into psychological calamity. Th e purpose of individualization is that deliverance of selfness from false veils of persona as wel as from self-suffi cient power of unconscious images. Unlike individualism, the individualization does not stand for rejection of col ectivity but on the contrary — it implies a more refi ned performance of collective purposes.
According to Jung, attaining of one’s selfness happens through the cycles of partial merger with particular archetypes, and the precise set of them comes as the contents of any psychopractice technology. We should notice that the advanced methodology enabled Jung to perform a persuasive analysis of the kerner of several Tibetan, Indian and alchemic psychopractices.
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In scope of the said context one starts to understand other goals of esoteric practices that are often mentioned — the awareness