Wesselman - The re-enchantment: a Shamanic path to a life of wonder

This book is offered with my deep gratitude and great affection to my beautiful lady, Jill Kuykendall, who has shared her life with me as my wife, my best friend, and the mother of our children, and who has been my most endearing, loving, and wise teacher for more than forty years. Her kindness, her great good humor, and her generosity have served as the foundation for our family, our relationship, and for all that followed.

The mysteries have been securely preserved by each cultural tradition of each land, and each will now be closely associated to their restoration. This cultural revitalization movement will form the home for these ancient mysteries as well as provide each culture (and each individual) with their seat of initiation.

HALE KEALOHALANI MAKUA, Hawaiian kahuna elder

Our practice is not to clear up the mystery. It is to make the mystery clear.

ROBERT AITKEN RSHI, Zen master, from a talk given in Hawaii, October 1987

It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. For it is obvious that far too many people are incapable of establishing a connection between the sacred figures and their own psyche: they cannot see to what extent the equivalent images are lying dormant in their own unconscious.

CARL JUNG, Psychology and Alchemy (vol. 12 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung) (R. F. C. Hull, translator)

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I am a scientist, an evolutionary biologist, and a paleoanthropologist who has been involved in the search for evidence of the mystery of human evolution for about forty-five years. I do not consider myself a New Ager, a theologian, or a priest, nor am I a Buddhist, although I walked that path for many years and still value it. My territory as a researcher is prehistorya vast, largely empty expanse of time that extends from the beginnings of written language perhaps five thousand years ago back toward the origins of humanity many millions of years beyond that. I have always been intensely curious about everything, and in line with my scientific investigations of the past, I became interested, even compelled, to explore the nature of my self, my humanity, and the nature of the great mystery of existence in the present.

My expeditionary field research in the fossil beds of eastern Africas Great Rift Valley brought me into repeated contact with indigenous tribal peoples, who still have inspired visionaries known as shamans. This connection was pivotal for me because I sometimes found myself drawn spontaneously into unsought visions and lucid dreams, and my discussions with these traditional people helped to explain and give context for my dreams and visions. These visions tended to be periodic and were much like daydreams, but very, very real. They often happened when I was immersed in the natural world for extended periods, and in response, I, a native New Yorker, was inexorably drawn onto the ancient mystical path of the shaman. I would learnas revealed in my other booksthat this visionary ability appears to run in my family.

In my investigations of what I came to think of as the Mystery, I stumbled into the realization that there is a new spiritual complex coming into being in the Western world, a mystical mosaic drawn from many traditions and many cultures, one that has the potential to replace or at least refresh all of our current mainstream religions with new perceptions and new insights. There are many spiritual paths through which this awakening is happening, and one of the most powerful and luminous is that of the shaman. The worldview of the shaman and the direct revelations that may be accessed through the shamans expanded understanding of how we and reality are really put together are contributing to this new spiritual assemblage.

I am well aware of those ethnic purists who proclaim with fervor that the word shaman can only be applied to tribal mystics of the Tungusic-speaking peoples of Siberia. However, allow me to note that the word shaman was chosen by professional anthropologists and ethnographers in the twentieth century and given a precise definition to accurately describe tribal mystics who perform spiritual practices on behalf of their communities, usually on a part-time basis. Such practitioners are very widespread on planet Earth today, and despite different appellations used to describe these visionaries, there is a remarkable congruence in their practice and in their worldview. Accordingly, it can be observed that the shaman is a universal figure found in some form in every culture and that our Western use of the term shaman is valid.

In this book, we will consider the shaman as an archetype for a particular kind of human: a woman or a man who can serve their communities as a mediator between the outer world of things seen and the inner worlds of things hidden. And we will talk about what that means. We will consider the worldview of the shaman and will visit various visionary perspectives, such as those of the Druids, the Tibetans, the American Indians, the Gnostics, the ancient Egyptians, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians. Yet our investigations will not be another academic compilation of the esoteric belief systems of this cultural group or that. Rather, we will investigate some of the visionary mystical perceptions that are being achieved by everyday folks like ourselves on an ongoing basis.

We will also consider how the shamans perception of reality is being reworked by modern Western mystics into a new form in response to who we are today and who we are becoming. The shift in our cultural mythosthe pattern of basic values and attitudes of a peoplethat is going on right now happens only once or twice in a thousand years. This book will explore this phenomenon and look at the beliefs, values, and trends that are part of the new spiritual complex that is coming into being. As it does, our understanding will be enhanced by encounters with the legendary psychologist Carl Jung.

It is noteworthy that this spiritual reawakening is occurring among many who are in social and professional positions from which it is possible to influence the larger societies ideals and trends. You, the reader, are most likely among the increasing numbers of spiritual seekers who are investigating the full potentials of our uniquely human consciousness and in the process learning to balance the functions of mind, body, and spirit. You represent a distinct and growing cultural subgroup that holds a set of beliefs and values different from those of the general publicbeliefs that cross socioeconomic borders and values that reflect the influence of non-Western traditions currently being molded into the new spiritual complex. This book will discuss some of these beliefs and values, as well as the social context in which they are taking form.

As you will see, the initial stages of our individual spiritual unfolding inevitably involve the experience of enchantment early in life. As we move into our lives as active participants, the enchantment may withdraw for a time, and then sometimes, mysteriously, it may reappear, often through a powerful connection with nature. This re-enchantment through nature, in my opinion, is predictable, even inevitable, because nature is where the juice is. Im talking about the life force that breathes essence and wonder into our world and into our selves.

In these investigations of the ancient, yet curiously modern, tradition of shamanism, perhaps you will discover that you are one of those worthies who possesses the gift of spirit vision. Believe it or not, an extraordinarily large sector of our population does, although many do not know that they have it.