The Journey into the Unconscious — Jung and Shamanism, Part 2
This is the next in a long series discussing Carl Jung’s ‘confrontation with the unconscious’. (For what has preceded please see this list.) In the introduction to this section I suggested that there is a link between Jung and shamanism going back through his own depth psychology, mediaeval alchemy, Gnosticism, Greek pre-Socratic philosophers like Parmenides, and perhaps more.
I’m currently exploring the links between Jung and shamanism in more detail. This is important because it shows that his inner journey and the Depth Psychology which emerged from it is a genuine tradition going back many thousands of years, and that this ancient tradition of shamanism still has great healing potential in modern times.
My primary source is Shamanism and the Psychology of C. G. Jung: The Great Circle by Robert E. Ryan. In the introduction I quoted the jacket notes. In part 1 I discussed his first chapter. In the next article I’ll discuss chapters 2 and 3 where he compares Jung’s cosmos with that of the ancient shamans. Before going on to that, here I’ll extract some material from chapter 3 which demonstrates the extraordinary global unity of the phenomenon of shamanism. This is important because it would seem to confirm Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious. As Ryan says, “noting the durability and universality of the shamanic phenomenon itself in diverse and remote areas of the globe and over incredible reaches of time, we shall inquire to what extent… (this) stands as proof of this underlying psychic unity of our race”.
He continues: “Shamanism has left its traces and sometimes still persists into the present in many diverse and widely separated cultures around the globe and throughout history. Shamanic ideologies and techniques are documented among the primitive peoples of Australia, the !Kung (sic) Bushmen of Africa, certain peoples of Siberia and Central Asia, the Malay Archipelago, in diverse areas of the Americas as well as other regions around the world. In the Americas, shamanism strangely bears witness to the truth of the statement which we just quoted from Jung, for we find traces of shamanic culture tucked away at each antipode, the Arctic north of the Inuit and the Antarctic south of the Ona of Tierra del Fuego. And similarly we are also discovering its existence in civilizations with which archaeology provides the only link, for recent archaeological discoveries have shown strong shamanic influences among Olmec and Classic Maya cultures. Likewise, shamanism has left its trace in Shang Dynasty China, in Norse mythology and in ancient Greek myth and religion. In fact, it seems to have a most ancient pedigree dating back to and perhaps even beyond the moment of the transition from the Lower to the Upper Paleolithic. The cave art of southern France and northern Spain appears to testify to the shamanic presence over a period of time which, with the most recent startling discoveries at Chauvet and elsewhere, now appears to extend back at least 30,000 years into our human past”.
Shamanism “bears strikingly precise structural and functional similarities in areas of the world where possible cultural exchange appears either extremely unlikely or extraordinarily remote in time. As we proceed, we shall witness many of these similarities which have also arrested the attention of some of the field’s best scholars. For instance, Eliade notes the ‘disconcerting’ similarity between the Siberian and Central Asian pattern of shamanic initiation and that which ‘is found again, almost to the letter, in Australia’. Johannes Wilbert, based upon his study of shamanism among the remote Warao of Venezuela, likewise notes a close resemblance between Warao initiation rites and those of the Australian Aborigines half a world and a wide ocean apart ‘not only in general content but in specific detail’. He notes, ‘It will have been immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the literature on shamanism that the Warao experience contains much that is near-universal, or at the very least circum-Pacific’. Peter T. Furst, commenting on Wilbert’s observations, further notes that certain very specific symbolisms in Wilbert’s description of Warao initiation practices also quite precisely parallel certain initiatory experiences in Siberian shamanism”.
“These ‘correspondences’ range more widely still and seem to be more difficult to explain, for we can find very similar experiences described in the remote bush of the African !Kung (sic) Bushman, among the Aborigines of Australia and, I believe, outlined on the ancient cave walls of the Upper Paleolithic”.
There are two possible explanations for this. Either “the human mind is ‘prewired’ so that it works only in so many ways”, or diffusionism, i.e. cultural transmission. The latter is considered unlikely, but even if it were partially true, “their far-flung acceptance, similarity in precise detail and exceedingly long maintenance by diverse cultures argue strongly that they appeal to and express underlying psychic predispositions and structures shared by all mankind”.
What are we to conclude from this? It would seem that such psychological phenomena are not the product of human creativity, rather produced spontaneously by the psyche, and that humans tune in to them. It is therefore an open question, and something of a mystery, what is the source of the unconscious psyche’s creativity?
In the next article I’ll explore how this worldwide phenomenon of shamanism connects with the world of Carl Jung.
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