CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4: RESPONSES OF THE SHAMANS, READERS AND WRI TERS
4.1 The Shamans Responses
(a) I ntroduction
As discussed in Chapter 2, shamanism is a phenomenon dating back to the
very beginnings of human beings as producers of myth. I t is a complex and
enduring expression of the human spirit extending beyond the individual self,
whereby the shaman mediates between the individual mind and the archetypal,
transpersonal realm sometimes revealed in dream, vision and trance (Ryan, 1999:2-
3). Ryan contends that the shaman personally encounters an ontologically prior
reality, a realm of essence, within the outer sheath of what is understood as reality
and that the shaman employs a universal grammar of symbols more basic and
essential than any that are culturally specific, which reach back to humankind’s
deepest psychological and even biological foundations, very much like Jung’s
archetypes.
(b) Shaman 1. Maureen R.
Maureen did not answer all of the questions, sometimes a single response
covered several questions.
Q1 Maureen thinks of herself as a creative writer and shaman but differentiated
between the two types of consciousness in that creative writing involves something
similar to Jung’s active imagination: ...as a creative writer and shaman, I don’t
experience these two modes of ‘altered consciousness’ as the same thing: creative
writing involves ... what Jung calls active imagination – an activation of the imaginal
powers and their concretisation as primarily images. Many folk are able to enter
such realms, the difference with the writer is that s/ he is able to evoke them with
words that convey or capture the ambience and essence of the imaginal place as
art. The writer must also be able to invite what Coleridge calls ‘the willing
suspension of disbelief’ (as Tolkien does). S/ he can do this only in the imaginary
place and vision is internally consistent with its own ‘laws’. This similarity with
