[^^FLEEDING home page]  [Back to PERF main page]


Artist as Shaman

A Direct Show on the subject

From Marion Boddy-Evans (painting.about.com) 


linkl: http://painting.about.com/b/a/040262.htm

blurb:  [www.dracoblu.com]

A call for entries has been issued for the 2004 International 
Juried Online Symbolist Art Show entitled "The Artist As Shaman". 
The entry deadline is 1 March 2004. The organisers of the 
competition have issued the following information:

Like Shamans, artists have the ability to explore alternative 
realms. Artists can retrieve healing energy, knowledge, larger 
truths and ancestral wisdom, to give form to the forces which 
shape our world. "The Artist As Shaman" invites artists to 
interpret and share their connection to nature, mystical 
energies, dreams and visions. The power of the artwork 
to communicate, heal and shift awareness is the foundation 
of this year's show.


Shaman, formally

ref:   [via]

Book Review: The Artist as Shaman: Madness, Shapechanging, 
             and Art in Terri Windling's The Wood Wife 
             By Mary Nicole Silvester  

Introduction 

In popular thought, if not always in fact, shamanism is associated 
with altered states of consciousness and borderline madness, with 
shapechanging and otherworldly journeys, with creativity and genius. 
Terri Windling’s novel The Wood Wife weaves these elements into the 
story of a woman who meets spirits of place when she travels to the 
Arizona desert. 

On one level -- that of the genre fantasy novel -- The Wood Wife is 
simply the story of those encounters and the events that result. 

But, like any true art, this book contains meaning on many levels; 
a deeper reading reveals interwoven stories of the power of art 
and the attempt to master that power, the compelling presence of place 
-- both physical landscape and elusive spirit -- and the deep human 
need to belong. These elements and others contribute to the multi-level 
meaning of the work, like the many layers of otherworlds a shaman 
travels through in search of a wandering soul. 

Shaman

The word “shaman” comes from a Siberian language, Tungus, in which 
it refers to a particular kind of spiritual practitioner. Alice Beck 
Kehoe has argued that “shaman” should properly be used only to refer 
to Tungus spiritual practitioners and the practitioners of culturally 
related peoples. Her arguments are convincing, but anthropologists 
and popular writers alike have followed Mircea Eliade’s work for 
so long that the idea of shaman as a cross-cultural category is 
unlikely to go away anytime soon. 

But what, then, does “shaman” refer to? Lessa and Vogt define a 
shaman as “a ceremonial practitioner whose powers come from direct 
contact with the supernatural, by divine stroke, rather than from 
inheritance or memorized ritual,” as opposed to a priest, who uses 
codified and standardized ritual (301). They also say that shamans 
“are essentially mediums, for they are the mouthpieces of spirit 
beings” (301-302). 

Functionally, according to Eliade, “[t]he shaman is medicine-man, 
priest and psychopomp; that is to say, he cures sickness, he 
directs the communal sacrifices and he escorts the dead to the 
other world” (“Shaman”2546). All of these functions are 
accomplished by the shamanic ability of otherworldly travel out 
of the body and by the help of spirits. In one sense, then, 
the shaman is an intermediary between the world of spirits 
and gods and the world of human beings.“The function of the 
shaman,” says Leslie Ellen Jones, “is to mediate between the 
mortal world and the Otherworld, and therefore, while he is 
not wholly of the Otherworld, he knows it better than ordinary 
people” (79). [ELIADE 1957] 


This liminal function is illustrated in the story commonly 
known as the Sedna myth. Knud Rasmussen described one 
version of this myth in detail, where the shaman journeys 
to the bottom of the sea to visit Takánakapsâluk, 
the Iglulik version of Sedna. The shaman must convince 
the sea spirit to allow the seals and other game to 
return so his people won’t starve. The shaman returns 
to his body to convey the message that someone, or many 
someones, has broken a taboo and offended the sea spirit. 
When community members confess their sins and set their 
intentions towards living properly, Takánakapsâluk will 
allow the animals to return. The shaman is here a messenger 
between his people and the spirit who controls the animals 
of the sea. As we will see, the shaman-artist figures in 
The Wood Wife are also intermediaries between the 
spirits/nature and the human world. The artists speak 
to and for the spirits. 

Another aspect of shamanism important to this discussion 
is the way a person can become a shaman. According to 
Eliade, there are three possible ways: “first, by spontaneous 
vocation (the ‘call’ or ‘election’); second, by hereditary 
transmission of the shamanic profession; and, third, by 
personal ‘quest’ or, more rarely, by the will of the clan” 
(“Shaman” 2546). All three of these appear in The Wood Wife, 
but the first is the most significant. 

Before I go on throwing the term “shaman” about, I should 
note that Windling does not use the word in her novel 
(except once, on page 296). [2] “Mage” is used, though not 
in quite the same way I am using “shaman” (but the two will 
converge later in this paper). I have chosen to use “shaman” 
for its resonances and because it is a useful popular concept

Madman

The tradition of the aritst as hero has associated closely
with it the idea of the artist as "quite mad". Classic to
this image (right or wrong) is that of Van Gogh, cutting 
off his ear -- long after having threatended to cut his
friend, Goghan's throat. Indeed as Silvester points out:

    The figure of the shaman is closely associated 
    with madness. When an initiatebecomes a shaman 
    by Eliade’s first method, “spontaneous vocation,” 
    he “takes the risk of being mistaken for a ‘madman’”.
    [ELIADE, P. 80] The behaviour of someone chosen 
    in this way becomes more and more strange. Such 
    a person “seeks solitude, becomes a dreamer, 
    loves to wander in woods or desert places, has 
    visions, sings in his sleep, etc.” [ELIADE, P. 75]

In this casting the image of Jackson Pollock readily
comes to mind especially by Krasner's comment that when
they were walking in the forest did Jackson seem most 
at piece. I would go so far as to say that in that 
non-judgmental, and natural environment that Pollock's
personal demons were at their most subdued.

Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. 1957. Trans. Philip Mairet. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960.
-----. “Shaman.” Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated 
Encyclopedia of the Supernatural. Vol. 19. Richard 
Cavendish, ed. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1970. 2546-2549