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« on: December 25, 2015, 01:03:47 pm »
couldn't tell you any particulars no, but the shamanic journey is Campbell's hero's journey, the journey into the underworld to get the magic elixir needed to restore the kingdom, etc. To really understand it you'd have to put yourself into the typhonic mindset of early hunter/gatherer man, a world where magic is the power over life and death, the power to kill and to resist being killed, the power to invoke Eros (prana) and stave off Thanatos (taboo), where the notion of a self separate from nature is only just budding, where the notion of time, of a past and a future, could only extend as far as the season. So the boon retrieved from contact with ancestral spirits could be as simple as 'when to hunt', or 'when to relocate', or 'when the river is going to flood'. Knowledge most valuable to emerging man (or any tribe who still exists in this typhonic conscious state, such as in the deep Amazon). The shaman or medicine man gains his power through being right; if his boon serves the survivability of the people, the people begin to revere him, next generational shamans take up his practices, articles, and tools, they eat his shrooms (actually drink the piss of the reindeer who ate the shrooms), sing his songs, play his drum, wear his funny red hat, etc., because they have become imbued with magical energy (mana) through their association with the powerful shaman.