reflections on the archetype of shamanism

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Reflections on the Archetype of Shamanism and Implications in the Healing ProfessionsThe Soul of Shamanism; Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities by Daniel C NoelReview by: Patricia DameryThe San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3 (November 2001), pp. 45-58Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of The C.G. Jung Institute of San FranciscoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jung.1.2001.20.3.45 .Accessed: 29/11/2013 20:38

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Reflections on the Archetype ofShama11ism and Implicatio11s inthe Heafu1g Professions

Daniel C. Noel. The Soul of Shamanisln; Western FantasiesIm aginal Realities. New York, T he C on ti nu um Publish-ing Conlpany, 1997.

Reviewed by Patricia Darnery

The Sou. of Shamanism; Western Fantasies maginalRealities by Daniel Noel is in part an historical account of th ecurrent interest in shalTIanism. Noel s prenlise is that Western

European knowledge about shamanisnl is based on th e an-thropological work of tw o men, Mircca Eliade and CarlosCastaneda, both of whose vorle he labels s unacknowledgedinlaginings. (p. 25) In the tlrst half of the book, Noeloutlines what he sees s the unacknowledged, often uncon-scious or even allegedly deceitful (i n th e case of Castaneda) fictive qualities of these men s works. He holds that whilemany in the current shanlanic lTIOVement en co ura ge th e nlove to practical experience, not to study shamanisnlbut to study \\lith shanlans (p. 28), in fact the closest mosthave gotten is reading several key authors. He proceeds todevelop what he sees s the shanl e lement in the c ur re ntmovement, advocat ing instead imaginal psychology, a modi-t1cation of analytical psychology developed y J,unes HillInan, s a way for \Vestcrners to reimagine it [shamanism ] into th efuture. (p. 9) He includes th e works of Carl lung, JamesHillman, and Th onl as Nloorc s exalnples of inlaginal psy-chologists.

Noel s definition of shanlanism is not easy to extract. often found m ys el f c on fu se d by his use o f the terms

The Scm Francisco ]rmg nstitute ibrary ]o1t1 1laJ, Vol. 20 , N o . 3 , 2001 45

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neoshamanism (p. 88), an d the New Shanlanisnl (p. 14),both reflecting negative judgments of t he c ur re nt nl0vement,and then the more positive, authentic shaIllanisnl. (p. 224)The con1111 nly accepted definition which comes froIn Eliade,

is that process through \vhich th e Shal1lan enters a t rance s tatean d u nd er ta ke s an ecstatic flight or journey in order toencounter spirits from whom th e shanlan at tains heal inginsight for th e benefit of th e community. In order to beconlea shail lan, an ini tiate nlust undergo an intense initiatory ordealinvolving a syn1bolic death. lIpon surviving this ordeal, hereceives new organs \vhich enable hi m to perceive what isbeyond the limitations of ord inary sensory reality. (MirceaEliade. Shamanism rch ic Techniques of Ecstasy \Villard R.

Trask, tr. Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press , 1974) Althoughfe\v, if any, renlaining cultures practice this pure form ofshamanism, the arche type under ly ing this ancient fornl isanother nlatter. Fronl an archetypal perspective, the processinvolves entering an altered state for th e purpose of healingby means of restoration of a proper relationship of th e indi-vidual to th e \vhole. A lany current disciplines use this approachto s om e d eg re e.

\Vhen Noel speaks of authentic shamanism, he seemsto be speaking about sOIllething different from Eliade s defi-nition:

As I was busy reading about rel igion and literature, thetheological ramifIcations of Camus and Sar tre, Melvilleand Faulkner, I was stoking a fascination \vith the longingto imagine, th e need to dream up and tell stories, andthe imagina tion as th e soul of Western spir itual ity in anage of science. It is certainly th e soul of any authenticrenewal of shamanism in the Vest. (Noel, p. 37)

Although there is overlap in th e use of th e imagination, itseems to me that sonle Inajor elenlents are missing in Noel sddinition, particularly th e use of altered states for heal ing. Hisuse of the word soul in relat ion to shanlanisI11 adds toth e confusion. A shamanic process may recoper soul, but it doesnot have a soul As metaphor, though, perhaps it reflects thelevel Noel addresses in hilllSelf in th e writing of this book.

Noel traces his own interest in shamanism to the late

1960s and Carlos Castaneda s accounts of his apprenticeshipwith don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer. At the time, Noel not only

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\vas using Cas taneda s work in his teaching, but he \\ as alsoun de r c on trac t with Varner Paperback to write aboutCastaneda s work. \Vhen Noel \vas refused pcrnlission forreprinting of the quotes, his book, which relied heavily onthenl, could not be publi shed . He was still undecided aboutthe factual reliability of Castaneda s material until 1976, whenRichard d e Mil le s book, Castaneda s J o u ~ n e y ;The Power andthe Allegory, was published. (Santa Barbara , CA, Capra, 1976)De Mille presented what Noel feels s proof that Castaneda s\vritings were fraudulent. Writers Joyce Carol Oates an dRonald Sukenick are also quoted s verif)ring the fictionalqualities of Castaneda s books. Noel says, and italicizes forenlphasis:

Booh we HJC1 e led t believe were factual anthropololJicalfield replwts o f actual sham.anic experiences, and whichafter several years o f attentilJe readinlJ we could begin ts as teachinlJ the puzzled apprentice somethinlJ akin tfictive power, t u n u d ou t by the 1 uid-1970s t hal C been the f lOst s1t1 prising d e m o n s t r t ~ t i o nof how that power a c t u t ~ l l yworked nameZ l on us, on our process of credulous reading. p. 59

N oel s ug ges ts that one result of Castaneda s claim that his

work was authentic was that th e public took his books Blareseriously. According to Noel, had the books been published s tlction, not s nlany books would have sold, and the socialmoven1ent of neoshamanism would not have Inushroollled.The following passage presents this in Noel s characteristicway of writing:

it s also crucial to understand th e forces leading usto equate f ic tion with fa lsehood an d factuality with anexclusive access to truth were th e same forces that de-

stroyed our native vVestern shamanism of contincntalEurope and the British Isles They are also th e forceswhich Castaneda, as th c unmaskcd creator of don Juana nd C ar lo s, can help us to counterbalance in ourselvesif we consciously receive th e lessons of his hoax.

In other \\lords, once \ve attain such a mindful senseof ho w the fictive power of Castaneda s hocus-pocushooked us, t he n t he trickery vith \vhich don Juan soughtto soften Carlos s l iteral ist ic cer ta inty can t ru ly s of te nours as well, opening fo r u s - a n d opening us r -

imaginat ion s f le xi bl e r ea li ty. This is the wa y to

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dcliteralize our reading, joining Castaneda s created char-acters in their genuinely shamanic flight o f fictive po\ver. Idem

The reader s presented w it h t he di lem ma of adopting assump-tions she may not share with Noel in o rd er to take in on e ofhis n10st in1portant points about reali ty perceived with th ein1agination. I agree with Noel s asseSSlnent that our depreciation of that state of mind so important to shamanic see-ing s at th e root of th e destruction of Western shamanicpractices. His chan1pioning imagination s flexible reality s

heartfelt and well developed throughout the book. But en-tangled in this particular passage, and in many others throughout, s his slanting of th e material about particular people.

Alkgations become accepted bets.Noel laments th e authority he gave to Eliade s anthro

pological Titing. t he subtitl ed section called ProfessorEliade In1agines an ISI11, Noel chronicles the development ofhis dis i llus ionment with Eliade s anthropological text, Sha-1 1:zanism; rchaic Techniques of c s t a j ~ v

I used this book s the definitive cncyclopedia of allth ing s s hamanic an d was unaware of its judgments everbeing criticized

Bu t it ,vas not until the 1990s that I caught up withother objections offered by anthropologists wh o rejectedEliade s insistencc that certain patterns of religiousbelief and behavior were wor ld wide, or wh o contradictedhis armchair analyses of particular cultures shamanisms.

I h ad k no wn that Eliade wTote t lc t ion- on the side,assumed- p 9

\Vhen Noel received a copy of a collection co-edited by DavidCarrasco, former Eliade student an d a colleague of Noel s,entitled Wa.iti1t..,q fin- the ]Jawn J.\1i1 cea Eliade in Perspective(David Carrasco an d Jane J\ larie Swanberg, cds., Boulder, CO,and London, Westview, 1985), he discovered a reprint of anEliade essay in which Eliade discusses th e relationship,deeply in1portant to hin1, between th e tw o apparently verydifterent aspects of his \vork. He refers especially to a creativelyindispensable oscil la tion between research of a scientific na-

ture and literary imagination. ldunOn this theme, Noel proceeds to explore an d comparetw o of Eliade s works, The Forbidden Forest a novel nrst

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published in 1955 ~ a cL in sc ot t R ic ke tt s and N1ary P.Stevenson, trs. Notre Dame, IN, and London, University ofNotre Dame Press, 1955 an d the anthropological text,Shantal1ism op cit. , first published in 1951 and writtenc on cu rr en tl y w it h t he novel. In the section entitled Startingwith a Shamanovel, Noel says of The Forbidden orest

It tells th e story o f a group of Romanian intellectualsliving through th e \var years of 1936 to 1948. Sometimestedious to read, its occul t incidents are never theless in-t ri gu ing and its imagery is revealing. A major group ofthese images can be called celestial or ascensional indi-eating a novelistic imagination preoccupied with upwardflights an d elevated vistas. Intersecting with this imageryis th e occultist theme of otherworldly spaces hidden in

this \vorld-as in secret rooms. p. 30 )

Noel then describes th e main character s obsession withmaintaining in secret a h ot el ro om in order to eavesdrop onthe couple next door and to record in paintings his paranormal experience in ordinary reality. Noel says:

vVhen he recounts a dramatic childhood experience ofthis sort we see that his secret room f ixat ion has to dowith a paradise above: a theme with \vhich I now sus-p ec te d, E li ad e s scholarship was similarly preoccupied. Idem

There he [the main character] listens t clues to th ecamouflaged, or occult, miracles happening but hiddenin the ordinariness of protlne space a nd t im e all aroundus. This suggests a parallel realm with similarities toshamanic othenvor lds . Indeed, as becomes evident whenth e novel s influence on t he s ha ma ni sm book is fullytraced The Fm biddcn Forest can be called a shanunovel.An d this is a term which further intimates the shamanic

pm vers at play in th e reading of any work of fiction(including works masquerading as nonfiction). p. 32 )

Noel obviously includes Sha1 nanism as one of these \-vorksmasquerading as nonfiction. He says:

An d just as escape is always sought above in th e novelso ecstasy, as t he shaman s defining experience, seemsmo st o ft en to take these figures higher, not lowerin th e scholar ly survey Eliade wrote in tandem with hisnovel . . . I suspected that even his authoritative objectiveaccount is tilted, b eyo nd t he thousand sources he dre\v

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on in th e late 40 s and the ethnographic evidence since,in the direction of that hidden room in his novel: upward.1\1y rereading of Sha manis1 n: rch ic Techniques of Ecstasyconfirmed that it is in fact shaped to exaggerat e theshaman s upperworld journeys and to ignore -or demoni ze - the equally defining underworld travels. (p.

34)This research of Noel s le d Ine to do some of my o\vn. Noel sprovocative, often trickster-like double Ineaning usc of language made me unwilling to take his asseSS1l1ents at face value.Note th e titles: Booking a lvlagical F li gh t (t he c ha pt erinvolving Eliade s vorks), Telling Tales of Fictive Po\ver( the chapter on Castaneda s works), Lying with theShamanovc1ists (in which he has a go again at Castaneda an dEliade, but no\ v h ol ds up the work of experimental novelist

Sukenick as a more honest shan1anovel ), and S tudying withthe Shamanthropologis ts (which includes a recounting of avlorkshop he took \vith lvlichael Harner) - the titles alonen1ade me s us pe ct m aj or bias.

In reading de Mille s research, I was greeted again by atone very like that of Noel s which, over th e course of a book,can only be described as hosti le . Like Noel, de Mille welldocuments his research. Apparently Castaneda played witht:lcts in ordinary reality, which de ~ i l kpainstakingly delineates. In an early chapter ent it led Fac t of Fiction he wri tes,

anyone \\ ho says th e books are no t factual risks beingto ld C arlos s adventures were real enough in thenonordinary reality \Vhile Castaneda s books trurt al1onordinary reality, they depend on t he o rd in ary realityfor their acceptance as f:lctual reports. Th e author implicitly agreed to that \vhen he ofTered them as conventionalreports of anthropological field \\lork conducted on particular occasions dated by the ordinary calendar vIytest of fact or fiction will be whether th e ordin ry eventsreported in his books would be possible in this ordinaryworld. If not, th e books must be fiction. (de 1\-1ille pp.35-36)

This quote offers a key to unders tanding both de ~ i l e sandNoel s criticis111S. A lt ho ug h b ot h 111en identity thelllseIves asscholars an d cite a great deal of documented research, theyexpress implicit an d explicit outrage throughout their booksin a not so scholarly fashion. Castaneda presents himself as a

scholar and then does not follo\v the rules. He lies abollt factsin ordinary reality, an d de Mille catches him in these lies. Yet

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Castaneda ge ts away with it, even with his dissertation comnlittee at th e University of California at Los Angeles. Ibid.,pp. 64-84)

Although this apparent deception is maddening, I grew

curious abollt how it came to preoccupy both Noel s and deMille s scholarship. Michael Harner offers an understanding.He writes:

To understand the deep-seated, emotional hostility thatg re et ed t he works of Castaneda in some quarters, on eneeds to keep in mind that this kind of prejudice is ofteninvolved. I t is th e counterpart of ethnocentr ism betweencultures. Bu t in this case it is not th e narrowness ofsomeone s ultur l experience that is th e fundamentalissue, but th e narrowness of someone s conscious experi-ence. The persons most prejudiced agains t a concept ofnonordinary reality are those wh o have never experiencedit. This might be termed cog nicentris1n, the ana logue ofconsciousness in ethnocentrism. i\:1ichael Harner. TheWay of the Shaman. New York, Harper an d Row, 1980,p xx)

Do es th e hostility and out rage so prevalent in both Noel s an dde Mille s books ret lect a cognicentrisnl ? Ca n one who hasnot experienced t he s ee in g in nonordinary reality accuratelyjudge Castaneda s reporting of nonordinary experiences? Thereal issue for me is not so much whether Castaneda fabricatedfact in ordinary reali ty as de Mille s research shows he did),but whether he used material that he collected fronl varioussources to fabricate experience in nonordinary reality. Had hedeveloped his psychic organs enough to see and negotiatenonordinary reality, using fact in ordinary reality in a kind ofshalnanic slight-of-hand way? For this reader, this questionrenlains unanswered.

Concerning th e work of Mircea Eliade, there is additionaln1aterial available on Eliade s relationship to th e shamanic inhis journal \vritten durin g the time he authored Shal1 lanism

and The Forbidden Forest In rereading Eliade s work, and laterhis journal, I gained respect fo r Eliade and his understandingof th e shanlanic archetypal s ta te . In n Y view, Noel againn1isses something very in1portant about th e shanlanic state an dthereby n1isreads Eliade. I will discuss Noel s n1isreading now.

Mircea Eliade was a Run1anian anthropolog is t and anacquaintance of lung s. He presented at lung s annual Eranosround table meetings near Ascona, Switzerland. Much of his

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research on shan1anisln is presented in his book ShamanismAt the time he wrote this book, Eliade lived in Paris in exilefronl his beloved Run1ania.

Sonle of Eliade s conclusions regarding his research for

Shamanis1 n\ vere

initially questioned a year af ter Eliade s deathby Jonathan Z. Snlith, one of his younger col leagues at theUniversity of Chicago. A main question involves the idea oft he c en te r in religiolls traditions. The idea of the central axis,whether expressed as cosnlic tree, central pole, or sacredn1ountain, is fundanlental to Eliade s work on shamanisnl. e

draws parallels bet\veen N ear Eastern and Indic religious tra-ditions and the more primitive traditions of nonladic peoplesregarding images of th e center. Eliade s sole referenced ex-

anlple of prinlitive tradition, however, is that of a TjilpaAustralian aboriginal myth and th e role of the sacred pole, an dhis interpretation of the myth appears to be erroneous. onathan Z. Smith. To Take Place Chicago and London,University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 1-13)

Smith \\Tites that Eliade relied on transcripts of the mythrecorded by th e Australian anthropological pioneers Spenceran d Gillen in 1896, published in 1899, an d revised in 1927(B. Spencer and F. ]. GiIIen. The Native Tribes of Central

ustralia London, n.p., 1899, pp. 388-444; The runtaj AStudy of the Stone ge eople London, n.p., 1927, pp. 387388). In the myth as Eliade describes it, th e divine beingclinlbs th e sacred pole an d disappears into th e sky. Subse-quently th e pole is used to divine the direction of travel forth e ancestors. The space abollt th e pole (sacred center) organizes life for th e ancestors. Once the pole is broken, theancestors lie do\vn an d die.

Slnith s careful study of the translations reveals that

Eliade e it he r d id not read th em carefully or erroneously readth e implications of the form of th e transla6ons. The divinebeing is not in th e original translation. It appears only in the1927, probably Chris tianized, version. The thirty-four pagetranscript of th e Inyth is a rr an ge d in bands, or incidents. Ineach one, the ancestors either die or journey on . Slnith saysthat the aboriginal pattern is not o f celestial withdrawal, butof terrestrial transformation an d continued presence. (Sn1ith,p. 5) The ancestors have a creative period an d then they sleepb en eat h t he ground in a sacred place. Connection with th eancestors is on the terrestrial plane , and it is forever available;

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,vithin such a Inythology, there s no celestial rupture thatneeds to be overconle. Idem Extrapolating this into anarchetypal shamanic experience, one might say that theshanlanic experience allows o r contact with what s already

present, although perhaps unconsciolls.The idea o f the center an d central axis s a major motif

in contenlporary shalnanism. The \-vord center has severalroots. The meaning we generally use -and both Smith an dNoel seem l imi ted to i t -comes froll1 th e Middle English an dOld French centre, from Latin centrtun, or fronl Greekkentron, meaning the center of a circle. t has a cosmologicalcompone nt t ha t we relate to easily.

B ut t he re s ano ther roo t to center, the Greek kentein,

to prick. This Ineaning s Blore inlportant to th e shamanicarchetype. I t s th e meaning about which Eliadc instructs th ereader:

The pre-eminently shamanic technique s th e passagetrom one cosmic region to another-from earth to th esky or from earth to the underworld. The shaman knowsthe mystery of the break-through in place there arethree great cosmic regions, which can be successivelytraversed because they are l inked together by a centralaxis. This axis, of course, passes through an opening,a hole; it is through this hole that the gods descendto earth and the dead to the subterranean regions; it sthrough th e same hole that th e soul of the shaman inecstasy can ly up or down n th e course of his celestialor infernal journeys.

Before examples of this cosmic topography are cited,a preliminary remark s in place. The symholism of th e Center s not necessarily a cosmological idea. In th ebeginning, Center, or site of a possible break-through

in plane, was applied to any sacred space, that is, any spacethat had been the scene of a hierophany and so manifested realities (o r forces, tlgures, etc.) that were no t ofour \\lorld, that came from elsewhere an d primarily th esky. The idea of a Center followed from th e experienceof a sacred space, impregnated by a transhuman presence:at this particubr point something from above (or frombelo\v) had manifested itself. Later, i t was supposed thatmanifestation of th e sacred in itself implied a breakthrough in plane. Shama11ism, pp. 259-260)

Th e central axis s that which pricks a coslnic plane , opensan d allows the gods (and shaman) to descend or ascend. It

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is a break-through in plane as Eliade says a ny s acr ed spaceis, an d is a space of s up er na tu ra l m ee ti ng s ( an d perhaps theancestors in the Tji lpa myth) . One of the psychical tools bywhich the cosn1ic planes are pricked is the imagina tion . In

a journal entry dated October 2, 1945, Eliade writes:. . . I should like to show . . . that th e imaginationconstitutes an instrument of cognition, because it revealsto us, in an intel ligent an d coherent form, the modes ofth e real. Bachelard believes that a symbol has a psycho-logical history. This may be true; but what interests meis th e fact that, once cons t itu ted , the symbol is investedwith a double function: existential and cognitive. Onth e one hand, a symbol unitles various sectors of reality(aquat ic symbolism, f or e xa mp le , reveals t he s tr uc tu ra l

solidarity among \Vatcr, 110 0n , b ec om in g, v eg et at io n,femininity, germs, b irth, death, rebirth, etc.). On th eother h an d, t he symbol is always op n in th e sense thatit is capable of revealing transcendent meanings \vhichare not given (not evident in immediate experience.For example, the rites of baptism reveal a plane o f th e realother than the biocosmic (birth-death-rebirth): they re-veal the spi ri tual birth, rebirth to a transcendent modeof being ( sa lvat ion, etc.) The aquatic symbol is notonly a fidelity to a fundamental ly oneir ic temperament

(Bachelard) but also a means of intuiting th e real in itsto tality, b ec au se it reveals th e fundamental uni ty of th eCosmos. inea Eliade ourn l 1945-1955. l\1acLinscott Ricketts, tr. Chicago an d London, University ofChicago Press, 1990, 3

Imagination is an instrument of cognition by means o f \vhichwe break through to other planes of reality, hav in g beenbaptized into a t ra ns ce nd en t m od e of being. This is th erealm of th e shaman, sOlne th ing Eli ade understands thor

oughly.Noel dwells upon Eliade s preoccupation \vith ascent or

celestial planes in the shan1an s journey. I explored this ideafurther in both Shamanism and Eliade s journal. Ascent isoften equated with spiritual uplifting, descent with sutTering.Certainly Eliade was not oblivious to suffering. His journalduring this period retlects a conscious holding of th e under\vorld and desce nt experience. For example:

August 27, 1946

I don t belil:vl: I m th e only one who can transcendrepeated failures an d melancholic, hopeless sufferings

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when, by an dInr t of lucidity an d \:vilJpower, I understandth l t t hey rep re sent , in th e immediate , concrete sense oft he w or d, a descensus infernu1n. Once you wake up1 ealizing that you are \vandering in an infernal labyrinth,you feel anew, tenfold, those spiritual powers you con

sidered long since lost. In that moment, any sutTeringbecomes an initiatory ordeaL Ibid., pp. 22-23)

Aln10st a year later, he writes:

August 11, 1947

Each difficult day yields a meaning only if I looklipan my lif C as a labyr in th ine ini ti at ion. I must decidesomed,ly to write aH that it means to go through a laby-rinth without losing mzc)s wa y The meaning o f this ini-tiatory problem has been los t in th e Occident ever sincethe episode of Ariadne s thread was introduced.) Ibid., p 9

Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread so he could find his wayout of the labyrinth after slaying t he Minot au r. H er actionsaved him but also deprived him of th e initiatory experienceof finding his own way. Eliade suggests that OUf capacity toendure suffering may in itse lf offer the negot ia ting clementsto get us through these labyrinthine initiations.

In a 1945 entry early in th e journal he describes a dinnerparty to which he had been invited. Two of th e guests \veresurvivors of concentration camps an d prisons. He says:

Both said they discovered J new i.i.human condition inprison: they became convinced that man is slmuthingothe t than they had formerly e l i e v e d ~that there is sucha thing as spiritual reality, that indescribable states doexist.

. Several mill ions of Europeans have followed re-

cently an i tinerary which society has not known since th e~ l i d d l eAges. They have been convinced of the reality of states they would have smiled abollt a fe\\ years ago.Skeptics or cowards before being locked lip, they led inth e camps an d prisons a life o f sacrifice, they came tobelieve in a spi ri tual rcality which surpassed thcm but atth e same time consoled them and helped them to survive.. . . Nothing remains, they said, except the memory of an absolute and the certainty of its existence. Ibid., p. 7)

These words They came to believe in a spiri tual reality whichsurpassed thenl but at the same time consoled thenl and

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helped them to survive are deeply shan1anic. y this I meanthat through entering th e sutJering of th e present , and accepting it for what it is, one is opened to the experience o f statesat once exceedingly painful nd ecstatic. The total experienceof the ecstatic state transforms. It n ay well feel like an ascent,if ascent is used in the sense of becoming conscious of thepresence of spirit. But it could equally be described as anabsolute descent into matter, into the present, as spirit inmatter, heaven on earth. It is an experience o f being madewhole by becoming conscious of all aspects of o n e s e l t ~includ-ing th e spiritual body that has been less conscious. It is notescaping, or moving up out of (in the case o f T he se us ), i t isthe full arrival into th e present.

Noel enun1crates the number of ascents an d nlagic tlightsin Eliade s work, and traces them to passages in his fiction,The Fm bidden Forest as well as to references in his life. Eliadeseems as preoccupied with the use of the \\(ord ascent asJames Hillman ( an d N oe l) is with images of descent (JamesHillman. The re m nd the UnderHJodd. New York, Harperan d Row, 1979), an d one can only w on de r a bo u t thc circum-stances in each of their lives that would cause such ditTerentpreoccupations. ceding through th e sense of betrayal that

seems prescnt in Noel s treatment of Eliade (and Castaneda),what I find of most value in N oe l s a rg um en ts is his under-standing that we nlust view any man s theories in context ofhis personal psychology and culture. I \voldd not call Eliade sSharnanism tlctive, as N oe l d oe s, as I \vould not call Jung sCollected Works tlctive or freud s \vork fictive. Yet each workis permcated with the n1an who thought and wrote it.

Noel s answer to his question about th e form of anauthentic contemporary Weste rn shamanism is grounded in

his attitude towards activc imagination. He describes theexper ient ia l shanlan ic work of Michael I-Iarner and JoanHalifax, both people especially influenccd by Eliade an dCastaneda, as exhibiting an unawareness of the role of theimagination in th eir work of journeying. T he y th er eb y pro-mote, according to Noel, passive t ~ t a s i e sof indigenollshealing. (p. 170) He elaborates:

Better than these passive, unconscious fantasies isconscious engagement in wh lt Tung called active imagination, an interactive dialogue with imaginal realities

56 Patricia Darnery reviews



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that brings the sort of healing a vVcstern shamanism canhonestly claim. ldnn

Noel sees HiUlnan s work as informed by the psyChOpoll1pHerll1es. He says:

Imagination, we might say, h ppens as in the dreams thatcomc to us unb iddcn-we can do nothing aboLlt i t,really. Once it d oe s ha ppe n, h )\\ ,ever, i t matters verymuch ho w ,ve deal with it, a nd H er cu le s s .vay is nothow.

The Shamanic journey, especially as Mircea Eliadc hasclassically described it, might seem to be a heroic onesuch as Hercules made, or such as our egos make eachnight, but Hermes is a far better model for an imaginalshamanism. po 149)

Noel spends several chapters arguing that Hillman s approachis bet te r than Eliade s, Castaneda s, o r Har ne r s an d a l i t ~ l x s o

vVhile I respect Hillnlan s work, I have a great deal of troublewith Noel s progranl111atic wish that it be used as th e basis ofan authentic shamanism that moves beyond vVestern fanta-sies literalized as fact. p. 224) Noel writes about Hillman s revolution ary approach to dreams po 144), an d refers toHillman s s t rik ing insight that dream figures are figures of

imagining, not a comforting link to dayworld issues. p. 246)In a description of Hillman s presence at a conference at NotreDame University, N oe l q ue st io ns his o\vn transference:

The expectation is that he [Hillman] ,viII stun us \\lithanother unexpected salvo in behalf of the soul, . 0

Hillman is tallish and slim, he has a sharp hlCe,a prominent nose, an d quick eyes -no t unlike my father,I nervous ly real ize, \vondering abollt th e personal basisof my attraction to his ideas. p. 33

For me , this open adoration of Hi ll man (an d thcn Moore)becomes as burdensome as Noel s disillusionments withEIiade and Cas taneda . It makes it easy to disluiss or discounthis important points about the tool of active imagination,which are ellt\vined in his personal reactions an d musings.

Although active imagination may be thought of as anaspect of th e shamanic archetype, an opening to a \-vide rangeof states of consciousncss, Noel s understanding seems nl0re

heady. In t\vo representative q uo te s r eg ar di ng rea ding and

Daniel Noel, 7 ou of SJm tmism 57



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bookish ini ti at ions (p. 25) he says: reading is agenerally unrecognized example of the sort of imagining thatcan be shamanic for any of us once the power of that imaginingis understood an d honored. (p. 38) And again:

As modern \Vesterll seekers, we long for direct experi-ence beyond rigid dogma and bureaucratic institutions,even beyond book learning. It is most of what wc mean p r ~ r r i l lspirituality t o r el ig io n as th e d(.;signa-tion of our quest for d ee pe r m ea ni ng in our lives. Butwe must rcalize that, setting aside narcotic excursions, ~ h i c hare variously problematic in our culture, th e onlydirect experience of nonordinary reality we can claim as\Vcstcrners to be truly o u r s - a n d recognizably shamanic-is th e experience of imagina tion s power in fic-tions and fantasies, dreams an d reveries, or th e arts ofliterature an d th e like. (p . 60)

Reading can develop th e imagination. But Noel s statementthat the only direct experience of nonordinary reality that ccan claim is th e imagination s power in fictions andt:llltasies Idc1 n) may reHect what Harner has decribedas cogniccntrism. The sensing organs (or shaman s eyes)in1plied in El iade s passage abol lt rebirth to a transcendent111 dc of being, with its 111eans of i nt ui ti ng t he real in its

totality (Eliade, lout nall p. 3), son1etin1esmake lise of th eimagination but reter to something larger. Developing theseorgans involves spiritual birth. To equate the use of th eimagination with shamanic seeing may well reflcct lack ofpractice in experiencing and ditlerentiating th e two. This is

one of my major concerns about Noel s book.Nevcrtheless, sonle of the qu est ion s that Noel s book

raises deserve careful thought and consideration. Vhat are th esources of our knowledge about shan1anism? \Vhen we learn

from or adopt rituals or practices of another cul tu re , wha t isour responsibility to that culture? Those of us involved in th ehealing professions need to consider the ethical and spiritualissues these quest ions bring forward. We might also ask, to\vhat extent is our work guided by the shamanic archetype, and\vhat is th e role of th e imagination? Finally, that qucstion notquite asked by Noel, but certainly raised for this readerthrough he r readings: what exactly is t he pr ic ki ng throughexpericnce that Eliade addresses in his meaning of the center,and to what sub tle percept ion of energies might it avail us?

58 Patricia Damery reviews Daniel C. Noel, e So,,1 o f l an iulism

reflections on the archetype of shamanism

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