THE BONE- SEED
THE MUTATION OF DEATH
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The extreme initiation is found in the symbols of destruction. The image of Shamanic dismemberment echoes the dismemberment of the historical body of the world from its primal source. It is also aligned to chaos and the varied symbolism of destruction and regeneration that these traditionally suggest.
The initiation of the Shaman has one objective, the integration of death into the consciousness of life. Yet, the words and rhetoric that we use bring us no closer to the meaning of Shamanic death. Once again we are trapped within the prevailing linguistic/cultural mood structure. Nevertheless, there is an underlying texture to this thought process which reveals itself through writing and art in what I would call a mood structure. It is as if something other emerges through the working of the text or canvas that is different and is only initiated, not formed, by the original work.
The idea of mood structure comes from the concept that all realities are thought forms... intricate, organic databases which refer to elements that create the configuration of a particular reality. These mood structures are complex and interacting, mutating pools of feeling and sensation which determine the generic outlines and the intuitive structures of a particular reality. It must be noted that the concept of mood structures and of all reality as thought forms has nothing to do with the relativity. The attempt to relatavise is an attempt to reduce the non-dualistic facticity of thought forms and mood structure to the enthnocentric level of discourse.
These mood structures feed on each other until a state of entropy is reached, a state
of critical mass and the formation of new mode of thought emerges; at first unseen and
unrecognized, except in small places and small details that emerge.
The idea of destruction of the body cannot be analytically reduced to some obvious
meaning. The descriptions of dismemberment are many and all equally dramatic and vicious.
The Aboriginal initiation describes the way in which the initiate is torn apart and opened
up. Quartz crystals replace his organs and from that moment on he is completely changed.
" The initiation is a difficult and painful process, which often is represented by vivid symbolism of death and rebirth- gods take apart the initiate shaman, the novices count their own bones, the spirits then write a new language inside the novice's skulls and replace their organs with quartz."
(p.45.Ellwood: 1980.)
These descriptions tell us very little about the meaning of initiation and
dismemberment.
They cannot be simply left at the level of mere analogy that describes the transformation
and the loss of the old self, although these interpretations are also pertinent.
The meaning lies buried at a much deeper or more intense level. What these reports do is
to awake a mood structure which opens an entrance, a felt and visual crawling space into
the meaning of death itself.
From the experiential reality of the dismemberment, a mood forms that coagulates, as it were, around the visual and sensed material. This mood projects further images which develop the entire mood structure of the Shamanic death, which is not confined to the immediate event of dismemberment. This visceral mood expands on many levels. The idea of flesh and eating flesh, the idea of the scout and the agent hidden within… these are fragments, images and poetic links that provide the pathways to thought.
There is no stasis… the images are forever creating themselves and mutating into different forms. The image of death becomes life and this image of death has to be fully encountered in all its permutations.
Until one mediates on this, and Martin Heidegger talks specifically about this form of
meditation, then nothing is revealed about the moment of dismemberment.
But if one listens to the mood structure which is evoked by these scenes, then something
else emerges...a feeling, an auditory and visionary possibility or a loud roar hidden in
the music.
The scene of dismemberment becomes the ordinary activity of mundane existence.
The extension of the mood structure moves into every area of the mundane to revitalize it.
Even in, and it must be in, the most popular music, the mundane chatter, there is
something, a scout, which emerges, intangible but visceral. It is in this way that we tune
into a different vibration already present in every event. The understanding of a new
facticity from the meanings of death emerges like the bone-seed to renew and revitalize.
The entrance of death into life produces a new species of mood structure.
This is not a space but an area of sound and feeling. We might possibly refer to this as
trance.
This is sometimes experienced as sadness combined with extension. Yet the sadness
is not related to any human nostalgia or longing, although it often deteriorates into
this. It is the sadness of the sea, a sadness which is enormously large and charitable.
A feeling of extension however is the most discernible element. Listening to the death
that is beyond the constraints of a metaphysical mode of thought, we hear something that
is not anything definite and which will appear in each context in a different way. Death
has now changed and we rebel against this invasion into our world of easy linear
structures. The feeling of death in our world is often not welcome. The spirit messenger
and the angel are only for those who have realized the meaning of death in life and life
in death. But death also emerges in much more esoteric ways, obscure and only visible to
the observant.
The concept of pains may help to clarify these aspects. Pains are elements, and agents
which have no clear conception in linear terms.
"In northern California, among the Hupa, Yurok, Chimariko, and Shasta, we find the specialized concept of "pains".These are looked upon both as the source of the shamans' powers and the cause of disease. The "pains" are thought to be animate and self moving, sometimes with personality. They do not, however, possess human form or resemblance but are believed to be physically concrete."
(p.80.Park:1938.)
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Gary Smith. 1999.