The Trickster and the Shaman
The trickster-liminality connection has already been discussed at length in earlier chapters, and thus the shaman-trickster link should be apparent to the reader. However, the similarities of the trickster and shaman were recognized independently of theories of liminality. For instance, Carl Jung in his commentary in Radin’s The Trickster specifically said that “There is something of the trickster in the character of the shaman.” Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1959) declared that the trickster “is a super-shaman,” and Weston La Barre in The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion (1970) commented that the trickster “is plainly a shaman, with a shaman’s skills and failures.”
Though the existence of the trickster-shaman connection is indisputable, trickster stories are not full and direct representations of the shaman in the way we might expect to find in our own culture. As a result there is some confusion as to the exact relationship between the two. Interpretation is required, and it is much facilitated by recourse to Turner’s explication of liminality. However those who have not fully grasped that are often perplexed.
One of the most extensive discussions of “The Shaman and the Trickster” appeared as a chapter in Mythical Trickster Figures (1993). That article, by Mac Linscott Ricketts, listed many similarities between the two figures. But in the end he concluded that the trickster and shaman are opposites and that the trickster is only a parody of the shaman. There is much to support this interpretation, and he listed many instances of trickster stories satirizing the shaman and even blaspheming. Nevertheless Ricketts seemed unable to grasp that the trickster is multi-vocal: that is, he has a variety of meanings.
He was astute enough to recognize his befuddlement, and candidly admitted that: “Even though (as I believe) the trickster and the shaman represent opposing worldviews, the two are found side by side in nearly every tribe. Evidently, what I see as an inconsistency was not felt to be such by the majority of Indians.” Ricketts did not comprehend the trickster as fundamentally paradoxical. He did not understand liminality, or that blasphemy and satire are signals of it.
Ricketts compared the shaman with the Rudolf Otto’s conception of the numinous, and counterposed both of those to the trickster. He said “I believe that the trickster … embodies another experience of Reality: one in which humans feel themselves to be self-sufficient beings for whom the supernatural spirits are powers not to be worshiped, but ignored, to be overcome, or in the last analysis mocked.” He goes on to say that “as I see him, the trickster is a symbolic embodiment of the attitude today represented by the humanist.” Ricketts gives no hint that supernatural forces may be real, quite the contrary; he declares that the trickster “stands in opposition to … supernaturalism.”
In fact Ricketts essentially equates the numinous with only fear of the unknown.12
His trickster is Promethean, and while there is merit in this view, it is woefully incomplete.13
Though Ricketts’ work contains valuable insights, it also exemplifies the confusion so many academics encounter with the trickster. The reasons for the confusion are partly found by examining his social position. Ricketts completed his doctoral dissertation on the trickster at the University of Chicago in 1964, and he has since published several articles on it. He is an example of the older, high status (he was chairman of a department of religion and philosophy), white male academic who has assiduously studied the trickster. His social role leads him to a completely rationalistic interpretation. I don’t believe that this is due to ignorance or lack of intellectual acuity, but rather it reflects his societal position, which shapes his understanding of the world. Ricketts is a structural rather than an anti-structural person. Scholars who share more in common with the trickster, who are more marginal (e.g., women, minorities, graduate students), show greater insight.
Ricketts’ approach and humanist interpretation, especially the deficiencies, wonderfully parallel the modern-day skeptical movement and its publishing house, Prometheus Books, whose founder also edited The Humanist. These matters will be covered in the chapter on CSICOP.
The Sham of Shamanism
Some years ago I began compiling accounts of shamanic trickery from the anthropological literature, but the task quickly became overwhelming. Instead I settled for collecting references that cited multiple cases of trickery, and Table 2 provides part of that list. Shamans simulate paranormal events throughout the world, and the sham of shamanism appears to be one of its most pervasive characteristics. However many writers seem to prefer to pass over it, and Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, while over 600 pages, simply comments: “the problem of the ‘genuineness’ of all these shamanic phenomena lies beyond the scope of the present book.” This scholarly aversion is common, and Morton Smith of Columbia University commented on the “total and deliberate neglect of the importance of sham. This is characteristic of a great many works of contemporary anthropology and ethnology. It is a reaction against the unsympathetic, either dogmatic or rationalist, approach to primitive beliefs and practices which vitiated the work of many early observers.”15
Generally, two explanations are offered for the sham of shamanism. Briefly they are: shamans use deception to enhance healing via placebo effects, and shamans use tricks to demonstrate power and compel obedience. These explanations are not incorrect, but they are incomplete.
Placebo healing is one of the benign uses of trickery. Many shamans used sleight of hand to seemingly remove blood, hair or leaves from a patient or extract rocks or twigs that were supposedly implanted via witchcraft. Sometimes they secretly put worms or bloody tissues in their mouths, sucked on the patient, and then spit out the
Author
Reference
Christopher, Milbourne
The Illustrated History of Magic (1973, pp. 69-81)
Flaherty, Gloria
Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century (1992, pp. 33:
40, 47, 48, 55, 58, 148)
Kirby, E. T.
“The Shamanistic Origins of Popular Entertain
ments”, 1974, pp. 5-15.
Ur-Drama: The Origins of Theatre (1975)
Lantis, Margaret
Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism (1947/1971, pp. 88-
90)
McClenon, James
Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief
(1994, pp. 160-162)
Reichbart, Richard
“Magic and Psi: Some Speculations on Their Rela
tionship” (1978)
Rose, Ronald
“Psi and Australian Aborigines” (1952)
Turner, Edith; with
Experiencing Ritual (1992, pp. 200-203)
Blodgett, W.; Kahona, S.;
& Benwa, F.
Walsh, Roger N.
The Spirit of Shamanism (1990, pp. 101-109)
Warner, Richard
“Deception and Self-Deception in Shamanism and
Psychiatry” (1980)
Webster, Hutton
Magic: A Sociological Study (1948/1973, pp. 474-
496)
Weyer, Edward Moffat
The Eskimos: Their Environment and Folkways
(1932/1969, pp. 437-442)
Table 2 Articles and Books Giving Multiple Citations to Reports of Sham in Shamanism
hidden item. Such practices are not limited to primitive cultures. In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of Americans traveled to the Philippines to be treated by psychic surgeons, who used similar tricks; a few of the psychic surgeons even came to the U.S. and western Europe to ply their trade. They seemed to extract tissues without leaving a scar, and efforts were made to validate their abilities. All the attempts I am aware of came to negative conclusions. The “extracted” materials were found to be from pigs, cows, and decomposed human tissue but not from the patients.
It is often difficult to know if a shaman is intentionally dishonest. He may believe that his simulations actually cure patients via sympathetic magic. The secr
etly hidden object, later revealed, is a symbol of that process, and some clients might even share that view. In other cases, shamans undoubtedly intend to deceive. These issues are beginning to interest anthropologists and others, and there is a slowly growing recognition of the sham in shamanism. For instance Roger Walsh, in his semi-popular book The Spirit of Shamanism (1990), includes an entire chapter entitled “Shamanic Trickery.”
Richard Warner provided one of the best discussions of the matter in his article “Deception and Self-Deception in Shamanism and Psychiatry” (1980). Warner was the medical director of a mental health center and raised some difficult questions about his profession. He pointed out commonalities between shamans and today’s psychotherapists, including questions about deceit that apply to both. Warner admitted that many forms of modern psychotherapy have little innate healing capacity, and the benefits have more to do with the therapist than the mode of treatment. This has been demonstrated by a large number of scientific studies, to the chagrin of advocates of various types of psychotherapy. In fact some research indicates that greater training may make one a worse therapist. Similar concerns were also expressed by Robyn Dawes a psychologist and professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, who won the 1990 American Psychological Association’s William James Award. His book House of Cards (1994) was subtitled Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth and was a stinging indictment of his profession.
Despite the serious failings, therapists are needed in society because people have problems. Troubled people are unlikely to be helped by telling them that the planned treatment is objectively ineffective, nor is that information likely to help the therapist. Research indicates that a doctor’s confident attitude assists in the healing process. Thus for a therapist to be maximally effective, he must believe in his method, but if a technique is objectively worthless, the therapist must fool himself before he can help his patient. Deception and self-deception are at the heart of the psychotherapeutic process. These facts are not lost on student therapists, and Warner pointed out that some quit in despair when they realize the dilemma.
Needless to say, these issues provoke bitter disputes. Clinicians and experimental psychologists have battled for decades over them.
Some clinicians go as far as denying any validity to scientific attempts to assess effectiveness of therapy. One side questions the validity of science. The other attacks not only therapy but also, implicitly, the entire institutional structure surrounding it (a major industry). Much is at stake. If deception is really necessary in therapy, how much science, and promulgation of scientific knowledge, serves the public interest? If the objective inadequacy of the techniques becomes known, would patients be worse off? I certainly am not going to try solve the dilemma, but I raise it in order to place the issue of deception in a new light. It can be helpful to think about the topic more sympathetically when its benefits are considered. Those who would scorn the shamanic trickery of other cultures should spend some time examining similar instances in our own.
The questions raised by deception in shamanic healing are important, but they should not overshadow larger issues. The shaman illustrates the more general connection between liminality and deception, and this crucial nexus has received little recognition. Van Gennep’s and Turner’s discussions of liminality did not include trickery, fraud, or deception, and none of those terms are listed in the indexes of The Rites of Passage or The Ritual Process. Even Barbara Babcock’s superb exposition of the trickster did not substantially address deceit. Yet unquestionably, the shaman and the trickster are deceptive and are quin-tessentially liminal beings. The trickster-shaman-liminality complex signals deep connections that will be a continuing focus.
In the coming chapters we will explore liminality in conjunction with fiction, drama, and myth, with the keeping of secrets, and the emergence of ego consciousness. In all of these, deception plays a role. Furthermore, the innate ambiguities of language and interpretation of texts can all lead to the matter of deception. These are trickster issues, and as I will show, they are directly relevant to the paranormal.
Skepticism of Shamanism
The role and function of skepticism vis-à-vis shamanism has received too little attention. Some writers seem to suggest that primitive peoples were in thrall of the shaman, that they were completely superstitious and saw all shamanic tricks as being supernatural. This is unlikely. It is probable that some people in all cultures realized that shamans engaged in trickery at times. The primitives were not stupid, and skepticism was almost certainly needed. An ineffective shaman could be a real liability to a tribe, and some methods must have been available to limit his power. Skepticism could serve as a check.
Paul Radin, in Primitive Man as Philosopher (1927), devoted a full chapter to skepticism among the primitives, though he did not discuss trickery. He pointed out that a number of primitives expressed doubts about the power of the gods, and probably have done so for millennia. Likewise, Ricketts’ thesis that the trickster mocks the shaman, and shamanic powers, supports the idea that the primitives were more skeptical than generally supposed. They did not see themselves entirely at the mercy of the gods or fully under the spell of the shaman. They satirized them both.
Howard Higgins, an anthropologist with the Canadian Museum who studied the Tahltan Indians of northwest British Columbia, prepared a good discussion of shamanic trickery and skepticism. In 1985 Higgins wrote a short series of articles for the Linking Ring, the monthly magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.19
He was a magician himself, and he witnessed another who pretended to have paranormal powers. Higgins surmised the methods used in the tricks, though others in the audience seemed to believe that the man commanded supernatural forces. Higgins also performed tricks, and he had to reassure even close friends that he was not a witch.
He explained that this was not an indication of gullibility because the Tahltans readily accepted his admission of trickery. He pointed out that the Tahltans could easily believe that a shaman or witch might use both trickery and supernatural powers. These were not mutually exclusive, and exposure of a trick did not necessarily discredit a shaman. Higgins reported a striking case of telepathy among the Tahltan, and he seemed convinced of its genuineness. Earlier peoples did not make the sharp distinction between trickery and paranormal events that we do. They understood that they could exist side by side, and in this their understanding was perhaps more sophisticated than our own.
Other Trickster-Shaman Links
Aside from deception, there are other links between shamanism and the trickster that should be briefly mentioned. A number of commentators have mentioned that some shamans are bisexual or homosexual, but the extent is unclear. Waldemar Bogoras’ work The
Chukchee (1904—09) is often cited in this regard, and a few others have
20
mentioned the connection. Walter L. Williams’ 1986 book The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture reports that berdaches (men who wore women’s dress and adopted at least some of their roles) were typically viewed as sacred and as having supernatural power. Many, but not all, became shamans. Anthropologist Holgar Kalweit cited a number of reports of shamans’ sexual encounters with spirits. Thus sexual abnormality is reported in the lives of many shamans, in accord with the trickster constellation.
Liminality is also a source of creativity, and a few words might be said about shamans as creative innovators. Several authorities have suggested that shamans were among the first artists, and some of their cave drawings were probably used in rituals. Drama too may have shamanic origins. Theatre professor E. T. Kirby suggested that shamans’ performances were the predecessors of theatre, a thesis he defended in his book Ur-Drama: Origins of Theatre (1975). (Dionysus is the god of theatre, and as such, the shaman’s role in its establishment is an instance of Hermes serving as midwife to the birth of Dionysus.) Given all this, shamans almost certainly played a significant role in the development of the arts.
In summary, the relative outsiderhood, the liminality, the “crazy” behavior, the unusual sexual lives, the direct attempts to engage supernatural powers, and the deception, define the trickster constellation as well as the life of many shamans.
As mentioned in earlier chapters, social status is an important issue in theories of the trickster. This is true with shamanism, but the matter is not straightforward. It complicated by the fact that a shaman’s status depends upon the complexity of his or her society. Fortunately Michael Winkelman has explicated the topic in his work on magico-religious practitioners, and that will be covered in the next chapter. Winkelman’s work helps explain problematic aspects of shamanism, especially in regard to status.
Part 3
Overview
The paranormal’s implications for society are emphasized in this Part. The focus is the group, rather than the individual. The perspective here is sociological rather than psychological.
Social processes influence us as individuals at an unconscious level. We need to become aware of them if we are to understand where our own thoughts come from. This is especially true in regard to magic, religion, and the paranormal.
Anthropologist Michael Winkelman produced a monograph entitled Shamans, Priests and Witches in 1992. He described his extensive cross-cultural study of the status of magico-religious practitioners, i.e., people who use supernatural power. He showed that as cultures become more complex, those who most immediately engage the supernatural lose status. Their positions are marginalized. Issues of status and marginality are central to understanding the paranormal, and they are also directly relevant to the trickster and anti-structure.
The Trickster and the Paranormal Page 10
