Shamanism and mental health

I have a hunch that certain forms of mental health are shamanic potential frustrated.

Reading Mircea Eliade's text Shamanism suggested to me that many with the shamanic potential have some kind of cracking or psychological breakdown, often around the age of twenty. He suggests that this cracking of the daily personality is what creates the space for the opening to a strong connection with non-material aliveness, and that this capacity to connect strongly with both daily life and spiritual energy is one of the primary characteristics of the shaman.

The shaman self-heals, or is recognised by elders as a potential shaman beginning his or her initiation - the psychological cracking is the beginning of the initiation in shamanic cultures, he suggests. Those elders, recognising the nature of the cracking, take the young shaman under their wing and provide training for perhaps five years. The training heals. The sense of purpose and direction heals. The trained shaman then protects the wellbeing of the community.

It is all about wellbeing.

Here are some quotes from Eliade

"But the primitive magician, the medicine man or the shaman is not only a sick man; he is, above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself. Often when the shaman's or medicine man's vocation is revealed through an illness or an epileptoid attack, the initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure. The famous Yakut shaman Tusput (that is, 'fallen from the sky') had been ill at the age of twenty; he began to sing, and felt better... At sixty... "if necessary, he can drum, dance, jump all night." But he needed to shamanize; if he went for a long time without doing so, he did not feel well." -p27-8

"Sternberg also observes that the election of a shaman is manifested by a comparatively serious illness, usually coincidental with the onset of sexual maturity. But the future shaman is cured in the end, with the help of the same spirits that will later become his tutelaries and helpers... the illness is only a sign of election, and proves to be temporary." -p28

"There is always a cure, a control, an equilibrium brought about by the actual practice of shamanism." -p29

"For the Yakut, the perfect shaman 'must be serious, possess tact, be able to convince his neighbours; above all, he must not be presumptuous, proud, ill-tempered. One must feel an inner force in him that does not offend yet is conscious of its power.'" -p29

Eliade emphasises that in shamanic cultures, mental illness is not automatically an indicator of shamanic emergence - mental illness as mental illness also exists and the difference is clearly recognised.

"According to Kai Donner, 'it can be maintaine that among the Samoyed, the Ostyak, and certain other tribes, the shaman is usually healthy and that, intellectually, he is often above his milieu.' Among the Buryat the shamans are the principal guardians of the rich oral heroic literature.... Among the Kazak Kirgiz the baqca, "singer, poet, musician, diviner, priest and doctor, appears to be the guardian of religious and popular traditions, preserver of legends several centuries old." p30

"As for the Sudanese tribes studied by Nadel: 'no shaman is, in everyday life, an 'abnormal' individual, a neurotic, or a paranoiac; if he were, he would be classed as a lunatic, not respected as a priest. Nor finally can shamanism be correlated with incipient or latent abnormality; I recorded no case of a shaman whose professional hysteria deteriorated into serious mental disorder.' In Australia matters are even clearer: medicine men are expected to be, and usually are, perfectly healthy and normal." p31

"More or less pathological sickness, dreams, and ecstasies are, as we have seen, so many means of reaching the condition of shaman. Sometimes these singular experiences signify no more than a 'choice' from above and merely prepare the candidate for new revelations. But usually sickness, dreams and ecstasies in themselves constitute an initiation; that is, they transform the profane, pre-'choice' individual into a technician of the sacred." p33