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Shamanistic Chants and Modern Poetry
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11592 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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9 / 1986 |
1,200 Words |
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Abraham Blinderman
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The Dakota Indians call him a wakan-man, the Navajos, a sing-doctor, the Azandi of Africa, a witch doctor, the Ceylonese, an endura and the natives of Bali, a balian; but anthropologists now employ one word - shamans - for all of the primitive practitioners of healing who include song, poetry, incantation, dance and magic in their ritualistic attack upon disease
Although modern man is inclined to scoff at the shaman's preoccupation with disease-provoking evil spirits, some reputable historians, physicians, and anthropologists commend the shaman as a true guardian of his people's health. C.M. Bowra finds enchantment in the words of primitive song because the power of the words renews the signer's and the listener's will to resist the incessantly male-violent universe. An eminent medical historian, Felix Marti-Ibanez, sees an analogy between shamanistic medicine and modern, psychosomatic approaches to disease. Bronislau Mallinowski, a noted anthropologist, views medical magic as a primeval possession of man known only through tradition, and affirming man's autonomous power of attaining desired ends. While working with Dr. Denny Thong on the isle of Bali, Dr. Stanley Dean, a psychiatrist, observed the remarkable prowess of hospital-trained balians (shamans) in curing islanders stricken with endemic mental disorders. Interestingly, the balian used poetry that he had created in a trace to help cure his patients.
Primitive people are more poetic than civilized people, but there is a kinship between the shaman's reliance upon magical words in healing and the poet's rhythmic creation of balm. In 1925, Frederick Clarke Prescott, like E.B. White, a student of the renowned Professor Strunk of Cornell, wrote in The Poetic Mind that poetry "is a safeguard for the individual and for the race against mental disturbance, an extravagant hypothesis in view of the paucity of poetry readers, but a tenable viewpoint for poets who have experience mitigation of mental stress in lyrical creativity. Goethe was explicit on this point: "I habitually convert whatever rejoices or worries or otherwise concerns me into a poem, and so I get rid of it, and at once correct my conception of outward things and set my mind at rest. Similarly, Wordsworth praised poetic creativity as a blessing:
To me along there came a thought of grief,
A timely utterance gave that thought relief.
And I again am strong.
Since magic is a component of primitive religion, shamanistic poetry is invariably linked to supernatural themes, a characteristic not uncommon in Western poetry. To acquaint himself with magical forces, the shaman masters the technique of religious ecstasy. While in an ecstatic trance, he creates poetry that has curative qualities. For example, a Yakut shaman of the Arctic possesses a poetic vocabulary of 12,000 words - three times as many words as an ordinary tribesman knows. Among certain polar Eskimos, each family has its personal shaman. His principal healing chore is to restore lost souls to afflicted patients since all disease is caused by wandering souls. The more successful he is in memorizing and composing healing songs, the greater will his income and prestige be.
One of the greatest virtues of shamanistic medicine in many parts of the world is its utilization of communal support for the afflicted in ritualistic healing. Fear of illness is
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