Shamanic Divination

By Crow

“…the central personage [the shaman] is believed to have direct intercourse through the ecstatic state with the transcendent world that permits him to act as healer, diviner, and psychopomp…” Dioszegi, 1974

There are many approaches to divination in shamanic cultures.  Some techniques are used by everyone in the community and some are exclusive to the shaman or some other spiritual leader.  People depend on everything from the random fall of small hand thrown objects (beans, bones, sticks, stones) to in-depth journeywork to help them deal with the unpredictability of life’s events.  Here I will briefly discuss those portions of several books that deal with various kinds of divination in a number of very different cultures; all shamanic, all known for their divinatory practices.  Most fascinating is the variety of ways human-kind chooses to randomize relationships with material events so they may help us approach the unknown and the uncertain.

Let’s start with Sarangerel, one of our favourite authors. Riding Windhorses has a chapter on Fortune-telling and Dreams; Chosen by the Spirits includes Using Divination for Shamanic Diagnosis and, separately, Divination. “Fortune telling” may strike one as a strange shamanic activity until one realizes that Sarangerel is making a careful distinction between diagnostic divination, done only by a shaman, and other kinds of divination a shaman or an ordinary person may do.  In diagnosis, “the spiritual and physical causes of disease and spiritual problems will be revealed, and may of these techniques will also include “prescriptions” for the patient’s condition.” (Spirits, 115)  She gives detailed directions for the reader to perform numerous divinatory techniques common in Mongolia, both diagnostic and fortune telling.  See Windhorses, pages 124 to 142 and Spirits, 116 to 131.  She also acknowledges the significance of dreaming in shamanic diagnostic work and points out that the shaman who uses this technique must have the talent for purposeful or lucid dreaming.

Vitebsky’s, The Shaman, an excellent introduction and reference book on shamanism which you should all have in your libraries by now, has a short section on Divining.  He discusses diagnostic divination and diagnostic dreaming then states, “Divination is not only used to address the future, but may also find out what is going on elsewhere in the present.”  (105) He illustrates this with an exciting story of the in-trance flight of an Eskimo shaman from Alaska to Siberia in a successful search for a missing person. 

The Healing Wisdom of Africa is primarily about Malidoma Some’s own tribe, the Dagara and it is, indeed, full of healing wisdom.  On page 90, he learns from a personal misfortune, which he should have avoided by using divination.  He is able to make a key connection between ancestors and our divinatory understanding of ourselves and our place in the world: “The indigenous method of bringing to light the roots of conflict and illness through communicating with the Spirit World created a coherent and effective circle of support for individuals.  Rights are safeguarded and conflicts were resolved with the help of the ancestor spirits.” On pages 106-9 he tells the delightful story of how he learned to do divination by (at first unwittingly) spending time with his uncle Guisso, a famous and very active diviner.  In that context he speaks of how traditional diviners are reluctant to work with literate persons: “Literacy represents a kind of clairvoyant knowledge that diviners think does not agree with magical knowledge.” And, “…indigenous diviners…conclude that literacy is a violent knowledge bent on attacking any nonliterate knowledge.”  If you are an “active diviner” you will recognize what Some is talking about.

Our images of Gypsy life often include the “Gypsy fortune teller”.  Imagine my surprise when We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Shamanic Tradition and Culture (Lee 2000) hardly mentions divination at all.  Lee focuses heavily on how the Gypsies, past and to a small degree present, work shamanically and this seems very similar to journeywork undertaken by other spirit-led peoples.  He states (202) that, “As a method of healing, the Romani journey is also instrumental in helping an individual answer questions, decipher riddles and solve mysteries relevant to his or her life…”  That is all he has to say on the subject.

Shamanic Worlds:  Rituals and Lore of Siberia and Central Asia (Balzer 1997) brings us a few more examples of shamanic divining techniques.  Anatoly Alekseev (p 153) quotes Basilov: “[The shaman] could learn from the spirits what would happen to a person in the future, and the location of lost people, animals, and things.” Matriona Ia. Bulatova (p 240) tells how the shaman Matriona Petrovna used needles to get a general reading of the state of everyone present (the needles also became charged with positive energy and were worn by the recipients). Next she told fortunes, including health, work and children, using a gekhik, a special shaman’s club or beater; the prognosis being determined by which side of the beater lands uppermost.

Two works by Professor Mihaly Hoppal were reviewed in an earlier Newsletter; both mention shamanic divination.  In Shamans and Traditions (p 15) Hoppal mentions – without details – dream divining by the Mansi of Siberia and the Guatamalan Maya. On page 108 he quotes Kenin-Lopsan that Tuvan shamans use the khuvaanak or 41 stone method of divination. (See Sarangerel for a similar technique used in Buryatia.)  One qualification for a Daur shaman was divination from a shoulder-blade bone. (p 121) In Shamanism, Hoppal included Dioszegi’s extraordinarily complete article about Shamanism from the 1974 Encyclopaedia Britannica (15^th edition). The opening quotation, above, is from that article.  Also of value are his descriptions of various techniques of bow divination among several Siberian peoples.  Descriptions and photos are included of Tuba (Tuva?) and Chelkan shamans doing the work. (p 278-81)

Two Examples of Bow Divination (The illustration below is the Chelkan shaman)

Finally I would like to mention a Siberian technique which Bekki and I got to view numerous photos of at the 2007 ISSR conference in Hungary.  The photos were part of a paper by Agnes Kereszi; Shamans, Enchanters, Clairvoyants; People with Special Abilities of the Ob-Ugrians (of Siberia) which is published (p 49-57) in  Shamanhood Today: Abstracts and Selected Papers. The technique involves  asking a question then lifting a weight (in the photos, a plastic bucket filled with water).  It was predetermined whether “heavy” or “light” meant a positive or negative answer.  We watched the Ob-Ugrian shaman ask and lift the bucket himself; then have his clients, a young couple with family and career challenges, ask and lift themselves. The answers, with the full bucket sometimes flying into the air, sometimes acting glued to the floor, were well received as accurate by all concerned. Page 53 describes this event and other kinds of (more traditional) weights lifted.  Also mentioned are “dream seers”, those who find lost objects, clairvoyants who could see the future and those who divined by throwing small pebbles. (p 52-53)

Our examples here are weighted a little heavily toward Mongolia and Siberia but I believe they are ample enough to make the point that divination is human and that specialized forms of divination done by shamans are found in many – probably most – shamanic cultures.

 Books Mentioned in this article:

Sarangerel,  Riding Windhorses: A Journey in to the Heart of Mongolian Shamaism, 2000, Destiny Books, Rochester, VT
                    Chosen by the Spirits: Following Your Shamanic Calling, 2001, Destiny Books

Malidoma Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual and Community, 1998,  Tarcher/Putnam, New York

Piers Vitebsky, The Shaman (or just Shaman):Voyages of the Soul; Trance, Ecstasy, and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon, 1995, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK

Patrick Jasper Lee, We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Shamanic Tradition and Culture, 2000, Thorsons, London

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Editor,  Shamanic Worlds: Rituals and Lore of Siberia and Central Asia, 1997 North Castle Books, London

Mihaly Hoppal, Shamans and Traditions, 2007, Akademiai Kiado, Budapest
                        (editor) Shamanism: Selected Writings of Vilmos Dioszegi, 1998, Akademiai Kiado, Budapest

Kornelia Buday, Mihaly Hoppal (editors), Shamanhood Today: Abstracts and Selected Papers, 2007, MTA Neprajzi Kutatointezet – Magyar Vallastoudomanyi Tarsasag, Budapest

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 1955, Penguin  Books, London

Shamanic Divination: One Healer's Experience
Jeffrey Rich, LMT
CEH Certified Shamanic Healing Practitioner

As my shamanic experience and training have progressed, I've discovered that my allies have giften me with a strong gift for divination.  Recently during the two week Shamanic Healing Intensive, some unusual divinatory experiences came my way, and with them came a deepening and enriching of my relationship to my healing allies.  In the process, the allies and I learned to dance a better and more effective healing dance together when working with clients.

The first experience I will relate actually occurred during our final client session of the second week.  I and the other student, Scott, decided to work together on this client since our other scheduled person had had an emergency and couldn't be there that day.  After speaking with "M" and finding out his needs, we began our diagnostic journey to get information from our allies about what to do to help him with his request to make his own shamanic journeying easier and
more effective.

At first my allies didn't show me much or say anything.  I kept repeating M's request for ways toward easier and more effective journeying, yet still receiving little information.  As I was about to give up and finally admit defeat, I saw what appeared to be a dark brown steel egg surrounding him, locking him in.  My hands which had become Badger's claws reached out to rip this thing apart when luckily I felt a tap on my shoulder and one of my allies looked at me and shook his head, "no".  I drew back and asked the allies, "is this a protective device for M?"  Yes.  "Did he put it there?"  No.  "Is it keeping him from connecting and journeying?"  Yes.  "Is it working correctly?  Can you give me specific information for my client so that he'll know what it is we're talking about?"  The answer came in the form of a picture:  overlaid on top of the egg was a set of elevator buttons which turned on from the bottom up, one by one, leaving the top two un-lit.  When I asked again for more information or for how to activate this thing and even whether I should attempt this or not, they merely pointed to the picture of the lit and un-lit elevator buttons again and then pointed to the egg.

When I came out of the journey, I explained to M what it was that I had seen.  "It looks like a strong shell of protection that was put there by someone else for your protection.  The allies tell me that it is important and that it is strong, but not yet activated somehow. There seems to be one or two more steps necessary to make this thing fully operational."  M's eyes widened a little with understanding.  "I did ask my allies if I could or even should do anything to activate this thing, but they did not indicate that I was to do that."  Scott had more succinct information from his allies:  "They told me not to touch it.  But if you want to try ..."

M did explain that he had recently been a part of an initiatory ceremony whose purpose was to install this protective shield.  He also mentioned that to conclude the ritual he was to "share energy" with (I think) nine people, but that he'd run out of time while doing this and had to catch his plane home before all of the energy sharing had been completed.  He then said he'd be sure to finish that part of the ritual as soon as he was able to do so.

The other experience I will relate involves the healing session I did with Crow, one of two such "final exams" to do healing work for the instructors for the Healing Intensive.  Crow asked me to help with physical healing methods (only; this was part of my test) to help him with some pain and abnormal gait issues that had lingered after a recent surgery.  During the diagnostic journey my allies suggested that I use bodywork and acupressure techniques with which I was already well-versed (I'm a licensed massage therapist in the state of Alabama with a private practice entering its tenth year).  After the bodywork had been completed, during which I remained both in the shamanic state of consciousness and simultaneously in ordinary consciousness, I took one more "look" with the aid of my allies and saw that Crow's lower three chakras didn't connect strongly to the rest of his trunk chakras, and that the connections between the three lower ones looked a little like clogged plumbing.  I then used my drum to sonically open these connections and try to dislodge some of the material that was clogging the energy pathways.

When I had finished and I was discussing what my allies had shown me, his eyes twinkled and he said that the information concerning his lower three chakras had also been related to him during a healing session by another practitioner at a previous time.

What was interesting about both of these events and about many of the other divinatory experiences I had during the Healing Intensive was that this particular type of information is given to me by my allies with a sort of "oh, by the way,  while you're here" kind of air.  By learning more about how I work with my healing allies, I found that for me it pays to be very, very attentive to even the smallest details presented to me in journey.  Also, that the deeper I delve and the more questions I ask of my allies, the richer the picture I'm able to present to my client and the more I have to go on to ask the allies about how to approach the healing session.

Jeffrey Rich, LMT
CEH Certified Shamanic Healing Practitioner

Do Trees Have Rights?

by Silver Donald Cameron

Published: 01.07.2007
Source: Chronicle Harold, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Reprinted by permission of the Author

HARDLY ANYONE noticed it, but one of the most important events of 2006 may prove to have been the passage of the Tamaqua Borough Sewage Sludge Ordinance, a law enacted by the 7,000 brave souls who inhabit the community of Tamaqua, Penn.

Tamaqua’s revolutionary ordinance does two things. It denies the right of corporations to spread sewage sludge as fertilizer on farmland, even when the farmer is willing, and it recognizes natural communities and ecosystems as legal persons with legal rights. It is among the first “wild laws” to be passed anywhere in the world.

To understand the importance of wild law, consider this. The law recognizes as “jural persons” various bodies that are abstractions — corporations particularly, but also governments, foundations, universities, churches and other groups. These entities exist in our collective minds — you can’t touch them, smell them or see them — but they all have legal rights, particularly property rights.

Yet other entities that are absolutely real in every sense rivers and trees and animals have no legal rights at all. If Foulwater Mining Corp. dumps tailings in the river, the downstream town of Feckless Flats can sue for damage to its water supply. Both the corporation and the town are fictions, but they have standing in the courts. The river does not and neither do the plants, fish and animals in the stream.

What if they did? A decade ago, researching The Living Beach, I ran across a brilliant 1971 essay by Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, called Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects.

Stone’s essay began at the dividing line between property, with which we have no ethical relationship, and things-with-rights, with which we do. There is no “natural” boundary between the two, though we usually think there is. But, wrote Stone, the history of Western law shows a steady migration of items of property into the category of things-with-rights.

In Roman law, a man had absolute power over his children. He could even put them to death. In 1858, a U.S. court could say explicitly that “a slave is not a person, but a thing.” Natives, Jews, Chinese, women (especially married women), animals all of these have at various times been considered property, and have been denied the most basic of rights. But today, all of them have a substantial basket of rights.

Stone argued that natural objects should have at least three basic rights: the right to institute legal action at their own behest; the right to have injuries to them taken into account in determining legal relief; and the right to benefit from that relief. Since trees and birds and beaches cannot exercise those rights themselves, individuals or groups should be able to apply to the court for legal guardianship, and for the right to litigate on behalf of the natural object.

Stone was arguing for an ethical relationship with nature, and pleading that we start to think in less “homocentric” terms. We are not protecting natural objects for future human generations; we are protecting them for themselves. The environment does not exist for man; it may be that man exists for the environment.

In 2003, a South African lawyer named Cormac Cullinan expanded these ideas in a book entitled Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice. Humans are members of an earth community, Cullinan noted, and we cannot ignore the rights of that community, which makes our own existence possible. We need a new body of law whose first priority is to protect the ecological community in which we live.

This is not a cozy idea. Under such a regime, Nova Scotia Power could be sued on behalf of polar bears, whose habitat is being destroyed by the degradation of the air. Since NSP’s coal-burning plants are among Canada’s worst polluters, the bears might win the case and you and I would have to find other ways to generate electricity. That would be “wild law” with a vengeance.

Wild law could give ocean-bottom plants the right to challenge Clearwater’s bottom-trawling, or a bog the right to an injunction to block a drainage project. It might allow trees to demand that this newspaper be published only electronically.

Wild law will not soon gain that kind of traction or will it? Without rapid and radical change, the days of our own species may be numbered, and the fundamental justice and sanity of wild law is indisputable. Once begun, the process of legal change can move surprisingly quickly. Twenty years ago, who would have thought that an almost universal ban on smoking in public lay within the realm of possibility?

Peer deeply into the sewage sludge of Tamaqua. It may contain the future of the law.